den in their
beautiful foliage? There are few gardens without a bed of lily of the
valley, but too often the place chosen for it is some dark corner
where nothing else would be expected to grow, but it is supposed as a
matter of course that "it will do for a lily bed." The consequence is
that although these lilies are very easy things to cultivate, as
indeed they ought to be, seeing that they grow wild in the woods of
this and other countries, yet one hears so often from those who take
only a slight interest in practical gardening, "I have a lily bed, but
I scarcely ever get any lilies." Wild lilies are hardly worth the
trouble of gathering, they are so thin and poor; it is interesting to
find a plant so beautiful and precious in the garden growing wild in
the woods, but beyond that the flowers themselves are worth but very
little. This at once tells us an evident fact about the lily of the
valley, viz., that it does require cultivation. It is not a thing to
be left alone in a dark and dreary corner to take care of itself
anyhow year after year. People who treat it so deserve to be
disappointed when in May they go to the lily bed and find plenty of
leaves, but no flowers, or, if any, a few poor, weak attempts at
producing blossoms, which ought to be so beautiful and fragrant.

One great advantage of this lovely spring flower is that it can be so
readily and easily forced. Gardeners in large places usually spend
several pounds in the purchase of crowns and clumps of the lily of the
valley, which they either import direct from foreign nurserymen or
else procure from their own dealer in such things, who imports his
lilies in large quantities from abroad. But we may well ask, Have
foreign gardeners found out some great secret in the cultivation of
this plant? Or is their climate more suitable for it? Or their soil
adapted to growing it and getting it into splendid condition for
forcing? It is impossible that the conditions for growing large and
fine heads of this lily can be in any way better in Berlin or
elsewhere than they are in our own land, unless greater heat in summer
than we experience in England is necessary for ripening the growths in
autumn.

There is another question certainly as to varieties; one variety may
be superior to another, but surely if so it is only on the principle
of the survival of the fittest, that is to say, by carefully working
on the finest forms only and propagating from them, a strong and