Snowdrops (Galanthus).
If you have any shrubs or trees in your garden, you can plant your Snowdrops near their roots; and if they like the soil and the situation, they will increase quickly. They are very fond of peat, but they will grow well in any healthy soil, and they may be left undisturbed year after year. There are many varieties. One of the largest is Galanthus Elwesi, but it wants a sheltered spot and a light soil. If you plant your Snowdrops in clumps near Crocuses and Winter Aconites, put at least fourteen or fifteen in a clump, and set them rather close together. The bulbs should not touch, but there should not be more than the breadth of your thumb-nail between each. Beginners nearly always set their bulbs too far apart, and then the clumps or rows look stinted.
Crocuses.
Another mistake that even older people often make is to think about buying their bulbs about a month after they should have been in the ground. There is a ‘best time’ to plant and a time that will ‘do.’ The best time to plant spring flowering bulbs is the end of September. The difficulty is to find places for them then, when your border is still gay and crowded. But some of the summer flowers will be over, and can be thrown away, and others will be cut down later, and can have some bulbs tucked under the soil not far from their roots. Crocuses like to be planted about three inches deep, and they may be left undisturbed year after year. You could put clumps of them on your rockery or in front of your border, and plant Siberian Squills, winter Aconites, and Snowdrops near them. Then when April comes, you could sow Mignonette or Nasturtiums just behind the dying foliage, and in time the summer flowers would spread and fill up the bare places for you. There are seventy species of Crocus, and many bloom in autumn. Some of these are wild now in various parts of England, though they probably came long ago from the Pyrenees. You will find the spring-flowering ones most useful for your border; but though they are easy to grow, you have to watch for their two enemies—mice and sparrows. Mice eat the corms, and sparrows pull the flowers to pieces in order to get at the stamens, that affect them as a sedative. It is generally found that they do not attack the striped ones. If you are troubled by sparrows you must put little twigs near your crocuses and wind black cotton from one to the other. Crocuses seed themselves freely, and take from two to three years to flower. You can also lift them in June, and separate the young corms from the parent one; but you must not expect these very small corms to flower the following year.
Siberian Squills (Scilla Siberica).
The flowers of this little bulb are a most vivid sapphire blue, and you should certainly have some either on your rockery or in front of your border. They like a sandy loam, so if you have a clay soil you should get some sand and plant your bulbs in it. Set them two inches below the surface any time from July to September. They will increase if left undisturbed, or you may lift the bulbs in June and carefully separate the little offsets.
Narcissus, or Daffodil.
If you buy bunches of these flowers you find that the man who sells them to you calls some Daffodils, some Narcissi some Polyanthus-Narcissi, and some Jonquils. But when you look at a gardening book or a bulb list, you will find them all under the head of Narcissi. There are hundreds of varieties, and some are difficult and delicate, while others increase quickly in good soil. We fear that the little London gardener will find that his Daffodils flower the first year, and never send anything up again except green leaves; but in the country the strong kinds, such as Emperor or Horsfieldi, have been known to increase twentyfold in two years.
The best time to plant these bulbs is in August or September, but when they are to replace summer-flowering plants they have to go in later. Any good garden soil will suit the Daffodil, but a stiffish loam is what it likes best. The bulbs should never come into direct contact with manure, but if your soil is very poor you could have some dug in nine to twelve inches deep. There is some diversity of opinion about the depth at which to plant, but we have good authority for saying that from two to five inches is enough. At St. Loy, the well-known Cornish flower-farm, the manager believes, after many careful experiments, that deep planting is a strain on the bulb, and weakens the growth. If you are afraid of hard and prolonged frost, it is better to give your Daffodils a winter blanket of manure, dead leaves, heather, furze, or ashes, whichever you can conveniently procure. This must be removed when the bulbs want to push through the ground. In June and July, Daffodils lose both roots and leaves, and may be taken up for division. The rule about division is quite simple. When you see a baby bulb wrapped up to the neck in the sheath of the parent bulb, you must not take it away, but plant them again together. It is only when the young bulb has its own sheath that you may detach it carefully at its basal root where it still touches the old one. When you want to separate bulbs, do not tear them asunder. Press them gently together, and if they are ripe for separation they will come apart easily.