d whims. Hyacinths and early tulips blossom their
best the first spring after their autumn planting (always supposing that
the bob-tailed meadow-mice, who travel in the mole tunnels, thereby
giving them a bad reputation, have not feasted on the tender heart buds
in the interval).

The auratum lily of the gorgeous gold-banded and ruby-studded flower
exults smilingly for a season or two and then degenerates sadly.

Madonna, if she be healthy on her coming, and is given healthy soil free
from hot taint of manure, will live with you for years and love you and
give you every season increasing yield of silver-white-crowned stalks,
at the very time that you need them to blend with your royal blue
delphiniums. But this will be only if you obey the warning of "hands and
spade off."

The three species of the well-known recurved Japan lily--_speciosum
roseum_, _s. rubrum_, and _s. album_--have the same love of permanence;
likewise the lily-of-the-valley and all the tribe of border narcissi and
daffodils; so if you wish to keep them at their best, you must not only
give them bits of ground all of their own, but study their individual
needs and idiosyncrasies.

Lilies as a comprehensive term,--the Biblical grass of the field,--as
far as concerns a novice or the Garden, You, and I, may be made to cover
the typical lilies themselves, tulips, narcissi (which are of the
amaryllis flock), and lilies-of-the-valley, a tribe by itself. You will
wish to include all of them in your garden, but you must limit yourself
to the least whimsical varieties on account of your purse, the labor
entailed, and the climate.

Of the pieces of ground that you describe, take that in partial shade
for your Madonna lilies and their kin, and that in the open sun for your
lilies-of-the-valley, while I would keep an earth border free from
silver birches, on the sunny side of your tumble-down stone-wall
rockery, for late tulips and narcissi; and grape hyacinths, scillas,
trilliums, the various Solomon's seals, bellworts, etc., can be
introduced in earth pockets between the rocks if, in case of the
deeper-rooted kinds, connection be had with the earth below.

It is much more satisfactory to plant spring bulbs in this way,--in
groups, or irregular lines and masses, where they may bloom according to
their own sweet will, and when they vanish for the summer rest, scatter
a little portulaca or sweet alyssum seed upon the soil to prevent too
great bareness,--than