nt friend at Kew made me a list of genera and species
which, if all went well, should flower in succession. But there was a
woeful gap about midsummer--just the time when gardens ought to be
brightest. Still, I resolved to carry out the scheme, so far as it went,
and forwarded my list to Covent Garden for an estimate of the expense.
It amounted to some hundreds of pounds. So that notion fell through.

But the patient friend suggested something for which I still cherish his
memory. He pointed out that bulbs look very formal mostly, unless
planted in great quantities, as may be done with the cheap sorts--tulips
and such. An undergrowth of low brightly-coloured annuals would correct
this disadvantage. I caught the hint, and I profit by it to this more
enlightened day. Spring bulbs are still a _specialite_ of my gardening.
I buy them fresh every autumn--but of Messrs. Protheroe and Morris, in
Cheapside; not at the dealers'. Thus they are comparatively inexpensive.
After planting my tulips, narcissus, and such tall things, however, I
clothe the beds with forget-me-not or _Silene pendula_, or both, which
keep them green through the winter and form a dense carpet in spring.
Through it the bulbs push, and both flower at the same time. Thus my
brilliant tulips, snowy narcissus poeticus, golden daffodils, rise above
and among a sheet of blue or pink--one or the other to match their
hue--and look infinitely more beautiful on that ground colour. I venture
to say, indeed, that no garden on earth can be more lovely than mine
while the forget-me-not and the bulbs are flowering together. This may
be a familiar practice, but I never met with it elsewhere.

Another wild scheme I recollect. Water-plants need no attention. The
most skilful horticulturist cannot improve, the most ignorant cannot
harm them. I seriously proposed to convert my lawn into a tank two feet
deep lined with Roman cement and warmed by a furnace, there to grow
tropical nymphaea, with a vague "et cetera." The idea was not so
absolutely mad as the unlearned may think, for two of my relatives were
first and second to flower _Victoria Regia_ in the open-air--but they
had more than a few feet of garden. The chances go, in fact, that it
would have been carried through had I been certain of remaining in
England for the time necessary. Meanwhile I constructed two big tanks of
wood lined with sheet-zinc, and a small one to stand on legs. The
experts were much amused. Neither f