Another mistake that even older people often make is to think about buying their bulbs about a month after they should have been in the ground. There is a ‘best time’ to plant and a time that will ‘do.’ The best time to plant spring flowering bulbs is the end of September. The difficulty is to find places for them then, when your border is still gay and crowded. But some of the summer flowers will be over, and can be thrown away, and others will be cut down later, and can have some bulbs tucked under the soil not far from their roots. Crocuses like to be planted about three inches deep, and they may be left undisturbed year after year. You could put clumps of them on your rockery or in front of your border, and plant Siberian Squills, winter Aconites, and Snowdrops near them. Then when April comes, you could sow Mignonette or Nasturtiums just behind the dying foliage, and in time the summer flowers would spread and fill up the bare places for you. There are seventy species of Crocus, and many bloom in autumn. Some of these are wild now in various parts of England, though they probably came long ago from the Pyrenees. You will find the spring-flowering ones most useful for your border; but though they are easy to grow, you have to watch for their two enemies—mice and sparrows. Mice eat the corms, and sparrows pull the flowers to pieces in order to get at the stamens, that affect them as a sedative. It is generally found that they do not attack the striped ones. If you are troubled by sparrows you must put little twigs near your crocuses and wind black cotton from one to the other. Crocuses seed themselves freely, and take from two to three years to flower. You can also lift them in June, and separate the young corms from the parent one; but you must not expect these very small corms to flower the following year. SIBERIAN SQUILLS (SCILLA SIBERICA). The flowers of this little bulb are a most vivid sapphire blue, and you should certainly have some either on your rockery or in front of your border. They like a sandy loam, so if you have a clay soil you should get some sand and plant your bulbs in it. Set them two inches below the surface any time from July to September. They will increase if left undisturbed, or you may lift the bulbs in June and carefully separate the little offsets. NARCISSUS, OR DAFFODIL.