But now, leaving the question of summer bedding-out, we are glad to note signs of real advance in other directions. It is something that within the last ten or fifteen years our gardeners should have discovered that bare earth, all spring, is not particularly beautiful, and should have taken to what is called Spring gardening. All flowers are welcome in spring, and even masses of double daisies are acceptable. But indeed in all the most elaborate bedding-out of summer, there is nothing that can give greater pleasure for colouring than a blue lake of _Myosotis dissitiflora_, or of autumn-sown _Nemophila insignis_. Then again, owing to our more rapid and easy intercourse with Holland and Belgium, tulips and hyacinths, which, however, were always in favour, are more used than they were some years ago. The quantities sent over by the gardeners of the Low Countries must be very great. Not only do the choicer bulbs go to our own nurserymen, but they are now sent direct to many private gardens; while large auction sales in London, Liverpool, and elsewhere, clear off the inferior roots or those exported by the less well-known growers. Mr. Burbidge tells us that the value of the flower-roots sent from Holland a year or two ago was nearly 60,000_l._, and one English grower imports annually 160,000 tulip bulbs. A certain proportion of these will be required for forcing purposes for the house and the conservatory, but many more will be used in the open garden. A bed of well-grown tulips is certainly a very beautiful object, and there are some at least who believe in the rich fragrance of the tulip, which a living poet says “might be the very perfume of the sun.”