Sophie Lyall

“ In England the flowering of the crocus is looked upon with a certain amount of joy. It is not, like the first snowdrop, the solitary blooming of some brave single flower, which gives hope that the winter may be going, but the sudden bursting into bloom of hundreds, which declare that the sun has power again. A ribbon of yellow on the grass, battalions of compact mauve figures on the slope, whole armies, violet and white and gold, delicately fragrant, alive with humming bees, definitely proclaiming the doom of winter. ”

“ Every grower must have a barn; the big men, of course, more than one, the number and size varying in proportion to the gardens. Those of the little men are sometimes rather makeshift places, wherein, at other times of the year, other things are kept and the true character of a bulb barn somewhat lost. The true character is, pre-eminently, orderliness; seen at perfection a bulb barn is, in its own way, as typically Dutch as a hyacinth, it is the perfection of order and system, and yet somehow cosily human too. Round the sides of the great barns there are shelves with upturned edges ”

“ A wonderful sight presents itself on first entering the gardens, vistas of alleys with flowers of every variety, and kind, and colour, cut by borders and beds which contain each one kind of flower only. Hyacinths are in the greatest number. Early tulips, narcissi, anemones, and others are laid out in successive order. The effect is surprising. Never, when they are once selected and placed in position, does a grower ever touch his bulbs again, he dare not disturb them once they are planted, but if a bulb dies or refuses to grow they may possibly embed a flower in a pot in its place ”

“ It is difficult for the imagination to picture a piece of earth so brilliantly enamelled with flowers, and yet such variety and beauty in detail. The rarest and finest specimens are put apart from the rest in chosen spots, and these again are arranged in symmetrical order, with such taste and so unsullied and trim, that one can hardly believe Nature has been allowed any hand at all in the arrangement. ”

“ And the mower, if he has an eye for beauty, admires the flowers, even though he says nothing about it, and cuts them down to order. A boat-load of cut hyacinth flowers, with their beauty, and their scent, and their cutting off at highest perfection may touch the imagination more than a four-ounce bottle of heavy red-brown oil, which represents the life and fragrance of half a square mile of jasmine flowers. ”

“ SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW Exactly what influences favour in flowers, or indeed in most other things, it is hard to say; no Dutch bulb-grower ever attempts to do so. It may interest the leisurely student of mankind to discover the causes and trends of fashion, but the grower asks little or nothing about it, he merely accepts the evidence of his carefully-kept books, and the character of the attention given to some certain flower or groups of flowers at the shows, and sets himself to supply the demand that has arisen, or is about to arise. ”

“ It is impossible to trace the history of many of the innumerable and beautiful shades and blends that exist now.
Iris anglica is another striking feature of the bulb gardens in early summer, coming into flower just when the Spanish are over, and presenting a more gorgeous and striking effect. It is a native of the Pyrenees, and no relation in root or anything else to the tuberous-rooted flag-irises of England. The Dutch growers had it, in the first instance, from English sailors or merchants, and either mistook its place of origin or named it after the nation from whom they received it. ”

“ Besides the hyacinth and tulip of historic fame, and the humbler crocus and snowdrop, there are calochortus of California, tigridias of Mexico, begonias of Jamaica, tuberoses of Persia, gloxinias and achimenes, cannas and crinums, amaryllis and arums—flowers native to all parts of the world, brought in the first instance by indefatigable collectors, who often have faced real enough perils in their work—the cold in Siberia, the heat in Africa, hunger and thirst, the ever probable risk of robbery and violence of the Kurds in Central Asia, the happy hunting-ground par excellence of collectors. ”

“ These unconcerned at one time had a craze for tulips,—then tulips were romantic; now they are not, and romance is gone. Now these folk merely order, or let their gardeners order, so many red and so many white, so many double, single, striped, or plain. There is no more romance now to them in tulip producing and buying than in grocery producing and buying: that is to say, they talk little more about the one than the other, their horticultural conversation is now centred on hybrid teas and herbaceous borders. It was not so a hundred years ago, tulips were then in fashion. ”

“ They are the grower’s chief purchasers, and though he feels a little hurt when they, ignoring his plain directions for cultivation, and getting poor results in consequence, complain of the quality of his bulbs, he never gainsays their taste in varieties. On the contrary, he compiles his catalogue to what he thinks is their fancy, and grows by the acre whatever they and their gardeners ordain to be beautiful. But the real interest and life of bulb-growing did not begin with the enthusiasm of folk of this kind, nor did it die when that died. ”

“ By choosing the right tide, one drops down the river in the afternoon, in itself an interesting and instructive thing; spends the night at sea, which if one has to go to sea seems the best time to spend there; and, if it is summer, sees the piers of Ymuenden when sea and sky look like the two halves of a pink pearl in the dawn. After Ymuenden one is in the Great Canal of Amsterdam, and it is a bad sailor who can then find reason to object to the motion or vibration. ”

“ To go to the more distant gardens, it is well to choose the morning, if it is spring, the time of the bulbs which have made Holland famous. A windy time, this, in Holland, one well understands then the advantage of pollarding the trees. Also one understands the necessity of the high hedges or screens which separate the garden into squarish patches. They are sometimes of beech, more often hornbeam, they quite enclose the piece of land, only at each corner there is a square-cut gateless gap, which makes a large area, seen from a distance, suggestive of a gigantic maze. ”

“ Violets like sunshine, a good position, and fat living, and, though the leaves hide the flowers in some varieties, it is of those that the scent is strongest and most betraying. It is not the fault of the plant if it is suffered to “blush unseen.” But snowdrops really do like retirement and poor ground. In Holland they decline entirely to grow in the open in fields or gardens, and they cannot thrive, really cannot live, in manure and all fat soil. ”

“ So a field of flowering crocuses is more than a thing of delicate beauty, and more than a sign that winter is over and past, and the time of the return of the storks is at hand, it stands for so many fawn-coloured bulbs—a marketable commodity, and each in itself a mystery of re-creation and increase. ”

“ A BULB-GROWER’S GARDEN
Other growers there are whose tastes are scientific, or perhaps for photography or the microscope. These, too, are turned to account; exquisite photographs of flowers illustrate the bulb lists; patient examination of pollen and plant parasites, careful and systematic experiments with soils and fertilisers, give help and enlightenment in the growing and varying of the bulbs. Others there may be who have had some thought of another profession before family circumstances gave them to this life, but they are not the worse growers on that account. ”

“ Yet none the less it seems they love flowers, often they are to be seen carrying them home, and seldom one passes houses with no vase of them in the window in blooming time. And this, surely, argues a real love of flowers, when one comes to think that they are in themselves neither rare nor valuable here, many of the cut blooms thrown away almost as much as the poppies in our English corn-fields. Of course a certain number of the flowers are sold in Dutch towns—as in the towns of other countries, some few growers even may grow a small quantity for that special purpose. ”

“ Of late years iris, dethroned from an honourable place in medicine, has come much into fashion as a garden flower. Not without reason, many sorts are easy for the amateur to cultivate, and all are very effective. The variety among them is enormous; not only are there in the hands of growers many comparatively new discoveries from North Africa, Central Asia, Asia Minor, and South Europe, but the improving and altering of all the families, new and old, has made the varieties wonderful both in number and beauty now. ”

“ The bulbs in Holland are grown for their roots as much as are carrots and potatoes, as much as the grass is grown for hay. It is the poet, not the mower, who sighs over the flowers of the grass that perish ”

“ The procession, to which the umbrellas give something of dignity if not solemnity, moves slowly along a field, each man taking a row and examining the hyacinths one by one for signs of the disease. With his umbrella he shields the sun from his head and neck, the weather usually seems to be hot on these occasions; with his tool he neatly and cleanly lifts the suspected bulb from among its fellows. ”

“ Dutch barns, even the least well kept of them, are too orderly for that. They are rather too foursquare and deficient in the unexpected annexes and the mysterious doors leading to nowhere and anywhere which are part of the true fascination of barns. Nevertheless they have attractions; they are warm-coloured, lofty, silent, and full of a pleasant dry smell; they are essentially not people’s houses though, especially at some seasons of the year, they are houses of quiet, stored life. ”

“ One feels disinclined to believe Saint-Simon is quite accurate in his theory, that the variations in kind and colour of hyacinths raised by seed are entirely due to the interference of insects, for in the case of bees, it has been observed by certain men of science that bees invariably prefer to visit flowers, not only of one kind but of one colour during the course of one journey. That thus a bee, beginning on a certain white flower, will choose out these white flowers, leaving out every coloured one of that or of another species, until, laden with honey, it returns to the hive. ”

“ Well, one may say the florists of Haarlem have played the predominant part, and their long experience, aided by the succours of reason, have shown them how to assist Nature by seconding her efforts, and thus to raise her to a stage beyond herself. In any case, the flowers they cultivate seldom reach such a high state of development elsewhere. However active and industrious they may be, no amateur, with all his talents, has ever reached to such surprising perfection—in strength and form of stem and blossoms ”

“ There is no part of a bulb which can be pointed out as exclusively serving for the production of young bulbs. They come sometimes from the centre, sometimes from the stem—bursting open the bulb and becoming so like it in form that gardeners have some difficulty in distinguishing the parent bulb from the new. It seems inconceivable that Nature should put such strength into such a delicate production as the young bulb; when once it finds space to develop itself there is no part of the old bulb it will not force to let it through. ”

“ In Haarlem many of the bulb growers living outside the Groot and Kleine Hout Poort had to send away such quantities to foreign countries that the spaces near their houses became too small to plant them out, so they were forced to rent more ground to make new flower-fields, as their trade was increasing so rapidly. These flower-fields, so neatly and cleanly kept, made very beautiful surroundings to our town. When the hyacinths are in full flower they are, with their different colours, row upon row, a very beautiful sight, and many people are thus attracted to visit our country. ”

“ Mice can give much trouble to bulb growers; they are very partial to some kinds of bulbs; they eat them in the ground unless they are driven out by deep digging and laying the earth open to the frost beforehand. In the barns they naturally assume that the grower has kindly put up a good store for them. But by traps and cats and poison and wonderful Dutch orderliness they are kept under. In a bulb barn at night one hears few of the mysterious rustlings and patterings that make an English barn suggestive of hid but active life. ”

“ One must make allowances for seasons and accidents, and one ought not to expect the bulbs sent off annually by the growers to be always equally good, for in some years they are more successful than in others—also the same bulb which flowers splendidly, as a rule, may take it into its head to yield a very poor flower, though it may be planted in the same soil—between two others which are doing their best; one can see no cause why they should be so uncertain, except perhaps they pump in sap more vigorously at one time than another. ”