BULBS FOR THE ROCK GARDENS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 590, 16 February 1929, Page 28

BULBS FOR THE ROCK GARDENS

Willi so many people making rock gardens of one sort, and another, there should be plenty of demand for ixias, ritonlas, lachenallas, snowflakes, daffodils, jonquils and sparaxis. Filling each pocket full of one thing Instead of planting a straggler here and there will do something worth while. A shilling or two is not quite enough to do much bulb buying. A dozen bulbs when there should be hundreds will only make a fool of a place. All round the suburbs there are poverty-stricken rock gardens that are more like ballast dumps than glory spots. Bulbs are the right sort of plants to till many of those strange combinations of stone, cement and bad craftsmanship. Many a time lately you might have seen a man or woman carrying a

bunch of orange-scarlet flowers that are like small trumpet-lilies. Those flowers are valottas. The plant producing them is a bulbous thing, easily grown, cheap to buy. All you need do is to line up the seed-shop counter, pay the Is and take the plant—bulb and foliage come to you at the same time —and pop it into the soil in some sunny situation where the thing can stay for quite a long time.