I consider no trouble too great, whether the garden be large or small, to grow the beautiful stately Madonna Lily (Lilium candidum). It requires very different treatment from other Lilies, and flourishes in rich, heavy soils in full sun, where many Lilies would fail. Gardening books often tell you it is fatal to move these Lilies, but I think this has arisen from gardeners moving or disturbing them when they have 'done' their borders in October or November, and when the Lilies have made an autumn growth; moving them then is fatal. When I used to leave them alone, they made an excellent top growth in spring, but dried up and died down without flowering. What I now do when they begin to die down some time this month, whether they have flowered or not, is to dig them up carefully with a fork, remove all offsets, re-make and manure the ground well, mixing with it some brick rubbish or chalk, and then replace the large bulbs, planting them rather deep, and not too close together. In this way every bulb flowers. A little liquid manure helps them to open well when they are in bud the following June. The small offsets are put into a nursery apart, and many of them will flower the following year in a way that does admirably for picking.

A few years ago I brought from Paris some bulbs of Ornithogalum pyramidale, the flower-spikes of which are sold at the end of June in the Paris flower market under the name of L'epee de la Vierge. I have never seen the plant grown anywhere in England as I have grown it, and yet in every way it is quite one of the most satisfactory flowers for picking that I know. If you gather it just as one flower is coming out, the whole of the long spike grows and flowers in water up to the very top, bending and curling about, and assuming the most graceful curves. No one can grow a better flower plant to send to London. It has one fault in the garden-the leaves droop and turn rather spotty and yellow before the flower comes quite to its prime; but this defect can indeed be forgiven for the sake of its many merits. I cultivate it nearly as I do the above-mentioned Lilies; only, when the bulbs are dug up, we place the small ones at once in a nursery, but the large ones are well dried in the sun and not replanted till October. A mulching when they begin to show through in the spring does them good. Mr. Barr sells the bulbs, but I cannot say if his are as fine as those I brought from Paris six or seven years ago. I know no summer-flowering shrub so beautiful as the Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora. I have tried over and over again to grow it, but it does badly and then dies. It is not the soil only, for I once saw a magnificent specimen growing under a wall at Ascot, where the soil is the same as ours. I suppose it never has had quite a good enough place. It should be cut back hard every spring, and, when growing freely, wants much watering; I am told that constant applications of soot-water do it good. I daresay I shall succeed in time.