File:The century book of gardening; a comprehensive work for every lover of the garden (1900) (20595725951).jpg

Title: The century book of gardening; a comprehensive work for every lover of the garden
Identifier: centurybookofgar00cook (find matches)
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Cook, E. T. (Ernest Thomas), 1867-1915, ed
Subjects: Gardening
Publisher: London, The Offices of "Country life" (etc. )
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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DAFFODILS IN IHE GRASS AT HUNTERCOMBE MANOR, MAIDENHEAD, BERKSHIRE. FLOWER GARDENING IN THE GRASS. DAFFODILS fluttering in the lush meadows of our English counties, or the Snake's head Fritillary rising modestly above the grass in some Oxfordshire mead, teach us certain truths. The true flower gardener must sit at the feet of Nature and seek to discover her hidden mysteries, her life, whether of the heavens or the earth, which she dapples with dainty jewels for her followers to fling around their homesteads. No wild, hysterical scattering of flowers without reason, but a judicious selection of the fittest things to lighten the meadow, hide away in the distant woodland, or group in the shrubbery, here, there, and everywhere, artlessly and without apparent plan, yet in very truth with a set system in the mind's eye. Native flowers, and others from sunnier lands than ours, may be used in many charming ways w hen the grass is not mown before the leaves of the bulb have ripened. But if no meadow-land creeps up to the pleasure grounds, flower gardening of a simple kind may be enjoyed, planting Scilla, Crocuses, Solomon's Seal, Snow-drops, Daffodils, Winter Aconite, Tulips, and Chionodoxas in little groups, perhaps, in some recess in the shrub margin or at the base of an old tree. Here the delicate blue Anemone Robinsoniana is happily placed ; its frail flower opens wide in the awakening day, and the bulbs increase freely in a cool, well-drained soil. Little groups around a tree or sheltered by surrounding shrubs are good pictures in spring, as pleasing as the native kind, sprinkling the shady hedgerow and copse with tender pink. It is in the springtime of the year that the flowers of mead and hedgerow expand, as if to welcome the warmer, sunnier days. Before the sun, however, can really filter through the woodland, the Snowdrop whitens the earth with its drifts of blossom, a mantle of flowers in February, before the first Daffodil has ventured out of its brown sheath. The Winter Aconite will establish itself in some soils, but is uncertain. Where it extends without assistance the flower gardener is fortunate, for in the spring the yellow blossom in its quaint collar of green gives a fresh charm to the pleasure ground and shrubbery. But chief reliance must be placed upon the Daffodils, the garden host that comes with

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