By annuals we here mean flowers that bloom in summer from seed sown in early spring. Out of a long list we shall choose twelve that are all easy to grow and last in flower a long time. From these twelve you must choose again, for there would not be room for many in a small plot, and if you crowd them none will do well. It is a great mistake to think that people who can grow nothing else successfully can manage annuals. All the good seedsmen know how often they are blamed for failures when the amateur, or even the professional gardener, should blame himself. He has sown on ill-prepared soil, or too deeply; he has let birds eat the seed, or slugs and snails the seedlings; or he has sown too much seed, and been too lazy to thin out properly. Small birds are dreadful thieves in some gardens, and if you find them in yours you should put little twigs where you have sown your seed, and stretch a maze of black cotton from one twig to the other. They soon get to know that the cotton is there and keep away.

The twelve annuals we have chosen for you are:

• 1. Sweet-peas.
• 2. Mignonette.
• 3. Clarkia.
• 4. Malope.
• 5. Godetia.
• 6. Larkspur (Delphinium).
• 7. Love-in-a-mist (Nigella).
• 8. Nasturtiums.
• 9. Sunflowers.
• 10. Shirley Poppies.
• 11. Alonsoas.
• 12. Eschscholtzia.

For most seeds that are sown in the open ground you must wait till the end of March in the South of England, and till the first or second week of April in the North. The old saying that ‘a peck of March dust is worth a King’s ransom’ will teach you something about sowing seeds. It means that you want your soil to be in a workable state, not hard with frost or sloppy with heavy rains, but friable and just moist with a light spring shower. When these pleasant spring days come, your work in the garden begins in earnest, and so does your pleasure. Some of the bulbs you have planted in autumn will be flowering; others will be pushing their way up towards the light; and your herbaceous plants—those that died down in the autumn—will be coming up again, and making delicious young green leaves. The part of your garden that you have saved for annuals must be carefully hoed and raked now, so that all the weeds are destroyed, and the soil made fine and powdery for your seedlings. Their little roots could not strike down and get any hold in hard, big lumps of earth, and it would be a waste of money and time to sow seed there. You should remove all stones and weeds, and break up the lumps of earth with your rake. The surface of your seed-bed, when ready, should be quite smooth and fine. If the seed to be sown is small, mix it with double its own quantity of sand, or dry sifted earth, as that helps you not to sow too thickly. Do not choose a windy day if you can help it, or your seeds would blow away. For a big patch of seeds it is best to take your hoe and draw shallow trenches, one inch deep and twelve or fifteen inches apart. When these are ready, take the seed in your hands and carefully dribble it in as evenly as you can. When you have finished, rake the earth smoothly over the trenches again, and pat it gently in place. You should always put a stick or a label where you sow seed or set bulbs, as it is easy to forget what one has done, and put things on the top of each other.

In favourable weather some of your seedlings will show their seed-leaves in ten days or a fortnight, but others will take longer. The first pair of leaves are what botanists call cotyledons, and those that come after are unlike them. You will soon get to know both the cotyledons and the other leaves of the plants you grow. You can often tell your seedlings from weeds by observing a whole colony of new-comers exactly alike, where you have placed a stick or a label. As soon as you can handle them they will want carefully thinning, and when you find out how troublesome it is to thin a patch of Poppies properly, for instance, you will understand why we advise you to mix all your small seed with sand, and only to put a pinch into the ground. Firms that sell penny packets of seed tell you that there are two thousand seeds in some of their packets. Poppy seeds nearly all come up, and a well-grown plant should have a foot of soil to itself. So if you made a hedge of poppies all along one side of your border, you would use seven seeds out of two thousand. All gardeners sow more seeds than they mean to use, because they must allow for accidents and insects, and they expect to do some thinning. But the ignorant gardener invariably sows his seed too thick, and leaves his seedlings too close together; so he gets a crowd of starved, stunted plants that do not flower well, and are soon over for the year. You should begin by leaving three inches between your seedlings, and end by giving most of them a foot apiece. Some will require more room, some rather less, and the best way to please them is to watch them constantly, and make sure that each little plant has room to expand. In thinning seedlings you must be most careful not to disturb the roots of those you wish to leave, and when you have sown too thickly this is difficult. Some seedlings will bear pricking out in another part of the garden; some, such as Wallflowers, actually like it; while others will not stand it at all. You should do your pricking out in showery weather.

Pricking out means taking up all your seedlings and planting them in rows to grow bigger. We will tell you as we go on which flowers should be raised in this way. Seed that is to be pricked out is usually sown in a box or a shallow earthenware pan with holes in it, or in the ground under a bell-glass. Any grocer will give or sell you an empty soap or sweetmeat box that will do for seeds. It should have one or two holes bored in the bottom, and a few potsherds or bits of broken brick for drainage. The soil should be sifted and moist. A bell-glass is a dome of glass with a knob at the top, and should be about twelve inches across and ten inches high. You can get one for eighteenpence at a china-shop, and you will find it useful if you have neither a frame nor a greenhouse. You may put it on half-hardy plants at night to keep the frost from them, or on newly-sown seeds to hurry them on. In very cold weather you would leave it on plants all day, but slip a bit of wood under one side to let air in for an hour or two at noon. When you use it for seed, you do not move it until the seedlings appear. You should not prick out your seedlings until they have made four leaves besides the cotyledons. When you grow seed in pans or boxes, you do not thin out the seedlings, so they will probably be close together. If they are dry you should begin by watering them with a fine rose; then take your hand-fork, put it in close to the plants you wish to remove, dig it well down, lift gently, and a whole group of plants will come up with a lump of earth.

Break the seedlings gently apart, each singly. Great care must be taken not to bruise the plants or tear the tender roots. When you have separated about a dozen, plant them out, and as you do this consider how much space will be required for each. Snapdragons and Marigolds should be a foot apart, but Lettuces can do with nine inches, and Violas with rather less. Sometimes seedlings are pricked out into neat beds in a reserve part of the garden, and transplanted later to the borders where they are to flower. Sometimes they are put out at once into their permanent situation. This is partly a question of habit and partly of room. When a plant is not going to flower till next year, you would rather keep it out of your show border this year, so if you have a nursery border you let it grow up there. If it is going to flower in a few weeks, you may as well give it a good place at once and leave it alone. Then, again, some things are the better for the check of transplantation, while others recover with difficulty or not at all. In gardening it is easier to make general rules for the gardener than for his plants. He must be as wise as a good doctor, and find out what treatment different plants require, what food, what surgery or medicine, and what stimulants; and he must even learn, just as a doctor must, to apply his general knowledge to his special case. For instance, the very Geranium that he has taken into his greenhouse every winter in Yorkshire may be planted against the south wall of his house if he lives in Cornwall, and trusted in a few years’ time to reach the roof, and give him flowers for his Christmas dinner-table. All that he knows about gardening must be influenced, and sometimes considerably altered, by his own local conditions of soil, aspect, and climate. You must remember this when you buy your seeds in the spring and your bulbs in the autumn, and choose those that do well in your neighbourhood. You should always observe what plants other people near you are growing in their gardens, and what conditions they give them. In that way you can learn a great deal about the management of your own.

Sweet-Peas.

‘Here are sweet-peas on tiptoe for a flight,
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.’

We like to remind you of these charming lines by Keats, because then you will always think of them when you look at your own Sweet-peas on a summer day. But our business is to tell you how to grow them, so that they are ready for the poet when he comes by, and we do not begin with a summer day, but with one at the end of winter, when the seed lists come and set you thinking of spring. Sweet-peas have become such a popular flower of late years that we have heard people talk of the ‘Sweet-pea world,’ by which we suppose they meant the growers who cultivate the many new varieties and the rare shades. When you are grown up you will have to decide for yourself whether you belong to any of these ‘worlds’ in the florist’s sense of the word. We have never had the least desire to grow a black Tulip or a blue Rose, but there is no doubt that when ‘fanciers’ take up a flower they improve it for a time. If you gave up gardening for ten or twelve years, and then began again, you would find that there were new varieties of some of your old favourites, and that the sorts you used to grow were not admired now. The most popular and well-known flowers all have such a history. Your grandmother would remember when every Dahlia in the garden was as stiff as the modern little Pom-poms, but much bigger. Then, about twenty-five years ago, the single Dahlias ousted the stiff ones, and now we all grow Cactus Dahlias, with long pointed, twisted petals. So with Sweet-peas. Fifty years ago no one wanted anything but a mixed clump, some of which would be mauve or purple, some marbled, and some pink. Now it is usual to grow each colour by itself, and every year we seem to get better colours and bigger flowers. The fanciers of the ‘Sweet-pea world’ have taken Sweet-peas in hand, and by careful cultivation and selection have given us many new and beautiful varieties. At first novelties are dear, because the stock of seed is small, but for a few pence you can have a hedge that would have rejoiced Keats; and if you are a wise child, you will certainly grow those that have become plentiful. We will give you the names of some varieties that we like best, but you will easily understand from the little we have told you that some years hence our list will probably look old-fashioned. Even to-day anyone you happen to know in the ‘Sweet-pea world’ might make a different choice. The names we give you are the names of the Sweet-peas we like and have grown with success.

• 1. King Edward VII. (vivid red).
• 2. Gorgeous (orange-salmon).
• 3. Blanch Burpee (white).
• 4. Navy Blue (violet-blue).
• 5. Lady Grizel Hamilton (mauve).
• 6. Mrs. Collier (yellow).
• 7. Lovely (pale pink).
• 8. Miss Willmott (salmon-pink).
• 9. Black Knight (maroon).
• 10. Countess Spencer (wavy pink).
• 11. Nora Unwin (frilled white).
• 12. Gladys Unwin (pale pink).

Sweet-peas grow very tall if they are healthy and properly staked, so they should be sown all along the back of your border to make a hedge. If you buy a packet of some expensive variety that gives you only a few seeds, you might sow those separately in a circle.

The best month for sowing is March, and you must dig your trench six inches deep and three inches wide. If there are many mice about who would eat your seeds, it is a good plan to soak them in paraffin a few minutes before sowing. Gardeners often damp them and shake them in powdered red lead, but as this is poison it must be used with care. It is not always effectual, either. We once saw a mouse caught ‘red-handed,’ his little paws coated with the lead we had put on our seed to protect it from him. When your trench is ready, sow your seed singly all along the row, leaving two inches between each seed. If your two borders are each seven feet long, you would sow forty-two seeds on either side, so you see that you can only grow a few kinds in one summer. When you have sown them, do not cover them with all the soil you have dug out. They should only have three inches on them at first, because the seedling wants to find its way up to the spring sun. Later on, when it is a strong plant, and supported by a twig, you can put back the rest of the soil. Sweet-peas are very thirsty plants, and when the long dry days come they like to have their roots deep down in the moist earth.

Their two great enemies are slugs and sparrows. In or near a town where sparrows swarm, you cannot grow Sweet-peas at all unless you protect the young shoots when they first show above the ground—about three weeks, that is, after the seed is sown. Later, when the leaves expand, the birds leave the plants alone. You can buy either ready-made pea-guards or a length of wire-netting, which should be doubled in the middle and put over your row like a long tent, with sticks at either end to keep it firm. If you cannot have wire put a double line of sticks at intervals along your row, and wind black cotton across and across from one stick to the other. This terrifies the sparrows, and they will not go near it. If you have many slugs, you should keep the ground near the seeds sprinkled with soot or lime. As soon as the plants are three inches high, they should be thinned to six inches apart, and should have a row of small twigs stuck all along the line for their tendrils to seize. When they are a foot high, you can earth them up with the soil left on one side of the trench, but you must put it evenly on either side of your Peas. When they reach the top of the little twigs, the tall ones must be put in firmly on either side of the row, and by the middle or end of June your Peas should be in flower. If you want your plants to last in flower all the summer and well into the autumn, you must not let them form a single seed-pod. Every day you should cut both your fresh flowers and any withered ones you see. In dry, hot weather they should be well watered at the roots from a can without a rose. Give each plant a soak of water at the roots, and do not trouble about the leaves. We emphasize this advice because Sweet-peas after they are six inches high suffer easily from drought, and we know that many children think they have given a plant a drink if they spray its upper leaves with a fine rose. You might as well give a thirsty baby a drink by splashing its face.

To grow Sweet-peas in a clump, take out the earth from a circular patch that you can mark with a garden sieve or a big flower-pot. Sow from eight to a dozen seeds, and thin to four plants when you feel safe from slugs and sparrows. Treat them just as you do those grown in a hedge, but when you put in your tall stakes make them all slant a little towards the centre, so that they meet at the top. The Hazel branches that you get easily in many neighbourhoods are best for Sweet-peas. Where these are scarce, you must use what you can find. The wire hurdles recommended for garden Peas where stakes are scarce would answer, but they are expensive and ugly. If your garden is not airy and sunny, it is a waste of time and money to try Sweet-peas. They are impatient of shade, of starved soil, or of a crowded garden. If they come up at all in such conditions, they will never do well, and will most probably be devoured by green fly.

Mignonette.

You are sure to want some Mignonette in your garden, because it is so fragrant; but in choosing a place for it you must remember that it will not make a splash of gay colour in the border. It grows from ten to twelve inches high; but, as you do not tie it up, it should be sown in front of plants whose stalks are not really longer, but which require a stake. It likes a good loam, but it will grow in almost any soil if it gets enough sun. Do not give it fresh manure, or it will run to leaf. It is one of the few annuals that should be sown in firm, hard ground. We do not mean ground that is hard because it is poor and neglected, but well dug soil that you tread or press down to make it ready for your seed. When you have done this, you sprinkle the seed thinly, cover it with half an inch of fine earth, and pat that down firmly with your hands or your trowel. You should choose a fine April day for your first sowing, and you should reserve a little seed for a second sowing in case the first is a failure. This sometimes happens even when your seed comes from a good firm and you sow it properly. It is a great mistake to buy poor Mignonette seed, as often none of it comes up. In ten days or a fortnight a soft spring rain will bring up the little plants, and then, if you have sown too thickly, you will find out how troublesome it is to thin them; but you will not have fine Mignonette unless you do this ruthlessly. Crowded plants will give you stunted flowers. The best way is to fix your eye on a seedling that is outgrowing its brothers, and remove all that are near it, taking great care not to disturb or loosen the one you wish to keep. You should watch your Mignonette and thin it out several times, so that each plant has room to breathe and grow. Six inches at least should in the end be left between the plants, and then you will only have left half the distance recommended by many good gardeners. So you see what a tiny pinch of seed would give you all the plants you need. Mignonette must be sown where it is to bloom, as it has a tap-root, and will not stand transplanting.

Clarkia.

This annual comes to us from California, and is very pretty and easy to grow. But it likes a good soil. On a dry, starved one we have seen it so poor that we hardly knew it was Clarkia, and yet these miserable dwarfed specimens came from the same packet of seed that had grown into a bed of lovely pink and salmon-pink sprays two feet high in another part of the garden. If your border has been well prepared and is sunny, your Clarkia seed is sure to do well in it. You can sow it either in a large patch or in little drills or trenches ten inches apart, and it should be covered with one inch of fine soil. The centre of the bed would be a good place for it. Sow in April, and thin out the small plants to six inches between each. There are a good many varieties. We recommend Salmon Queen and Carnation Flaked Pink.

Malope.

This annual, if well grown, is about two feet high, and should be in the centre of your border. It has large red, white, or pink trumpet-shaped flowers that bloom at intervals amongst the leaves of the tall stems. It is most useful for cutting, as it lasts in water a long time, and is decorative. It likes good soil, should be sown in April half an inch deep, and patted down firmly when sown. As soon as the seedlings can be handled they must be thinned out; but there will be none to thin if you cannot keep away slugs. Many gardeners recommend you to dust the young plants with soot or lime.

Godetias.

These, too, are useful for cutting, and can be grown in a variety of delicate colours. We think that Sutton’s Double Rose and Crimson King are two of the best. The sprays of the Double Rose are like Oleander flowers. They are not quite as tall as Malope or Clarkia, but should be treated in the same way, and if well grown will be tall enough for the centre of your garden.

Larkspurs.

In ‘The English Flower Garden’ Mr. Robinson says that ‘the annual Larkspurs are so little used in gardens that it is only in seed-farms that we have the pleasure of seeing them now and then in all their beauty.’ You can have them in various heights and colours, and for early or late flowering. The earliest flowering ones are the Dwarf Rocket Larkspurs, and the pink ones are beautiful flowers. They are twelve inches high. If you buy seeds of the taller kinds, you must put them towards the back of your border, for they grow three feet high. Of these the Rosy Scarlet is the best.

Nigella.

This is one of the most beautiful annuals there is, and its charming English name is Love-in-a-mist. Be sure to get the variety called Miss Jekyll, after the celebrated gardener. The flowers are a delicate yet vivid blue, surrounded by fennel-like leaves. They are easy to arrange for the room, and last well in water. The seed may be sown in March to bloom in June, and again in April or May for a later display. The seed-pods that succeed the flowers are ornamental, and those that ripen early in the summer sow themselves and flower in the following year. Some people say they can transplant Nigella, but many gardeners prefer to sow it where it is to stand. Thin out when the plants can be handled, as each one left, if well grown, will cover a square foot.

Nasturtium.

Everyone knows Nasturtiums, and the most ignorant gardeners can grow them. But they are so beautiful that good gardeners make room for them, too. They succeed best on poor soil. If you give them rich soil, they ‘run to leaf,’ as gardeners say, and do not produce many flowers. Even in a London square they will make a gay corner, provided they get sun. You probably know that there are two kinds—the dwarf ones, growing about nine inches high, and the Giant Nasturtiums, that will climb to the top of a tall fence, and cover it in the course of the summer. The seed should be sown at the end of April where it is to flower. We have transplanted Nasturtiums with great success, but it is not usually recommended. Sow each seed separately in a little hole two inches deep that you make with a stick. If you want a whole row of them, sow two quite near each other, then a foot farther on another pair, and proceed in this way all along your row. When the seedlings are up you can remove one of each pair, and you will not have an ugly gap in your row where a single seed has failed.

Sunflowers (Helianthus).

If you have a small garden full of delicate flowers, we should advise you not to grow Sunflowers at all. A group of them looks well in a shrubbery or at the back of a mixed border, and we have seen them used with admirable effect in a straight row, standing like sentinels on guard behind all the other plants in the bed; but they take up room, and require a great deal of food. If you want them, and your garden was not dressed in the autumn, some well-rotted compost should be dug in for the Sunflowers in spring. The young plants will not stand frost, and are usually raised in heat; but you can grow them quite successfully under a bell-glass, or, in warm parts of England, in the open ground. If you mean to raise them in this way, you must wait till quite the end of April or the beginning of May. The big seeds should be covered with an inch and a half of soil, and if you sow where they are to stand, put two close together to provide against failure. If both come up and live, the smaller of the two can be removed. Slugs devour the young plants if they can get at them, so you should put a little soot round each one. They need strong stakes, as most of them grow to a great height, and are easily blown down. There are some, however, that are not more than four feet high, and have a great many small flowers useful for cutting. Stella and Primrose Stella are good dwarf varieties.

Shirley Poppies.

If you happen to have a rough bank or a piece of waste ground where nothing much will grow, you can make it bright with annual Poppies, and if you let them seed themselves, they will come up in quantities year after year. They prefer a light soil to a heavy one, and they must have sun. It is of no use to sow Poppy-seed in a shady garden. In the border the amateur gardener invariably sows too much seed, and when it comes up his troubles begin. Poppy-seeds are small and cheap, and as a rule every seed germinates. You sow it in fine soil, and either cover it lightly or just rub it in with your hand. If you have not been careful to sow only the tiniest pinch mixed with sand, you will soon see the seedlings as thick as cress above the soil, and if you leave them you will not have any good plants, as Poppies want room to grow. They have tap-roots, and will not transplant, so you must thin them hard, leaving them at least six inches apart. Shirley Poppies have delicate stalks, and when you grow a clump in your garden, you should put a few stakes amongst them, and tie them with raffia or string, as otherwise they get beaten down and spoiled by a summer storm. The seed should be sown at the end of April. The Shirley Poppies have most beautiful colours, and they will last some time in water if you cut them when the buds are just beginning to show colour. Wilks’s re-selected Shirley is one of the best varieties. The Peony and Carnation-flowered Poppies make larger and stronger plants than the Shirleys. They should be sown in the centre of a small garden, and will make a great show in July.

Alonsoas.

The Alonsoa, or Mask-flower, comes to us from Peru, and is a most satisfactory annual because it is easily grown and goes on flowering until the winter frosts come. There are several varieties, and one of the best—the Alonsoa Warscewiczii—has a name you remember because it is so queer, but will never know how to pronounce, unless you have Polish or Russian friends to tell you. Its flower is bright scarlet, and if you look at it closely you will see that it is like a small snapdragon. You must be careful to put a label where you sow it, and watch for a colony of seedlings all alike, because the seed-leaves of the Alonsoa are very much like one of our commonest weeds.

Eschscholtzia.

These are often called Californian Poppies. They are white, pink, and various shades of yellow, and they have feathery green foliage. They succeed in almost any soil, and may be sown either in spring or autumn. Slugs and snails do not like them, so if you are much troubled with these pests you should certainly have some Californian Poppies. They will seed themselves in most situations, and the same plant will often flower a second year. They are described in seed catalogues as nine inches high, but though they really grow rather taller than that, it is not usual to stake them. At the same time, these and many other flowers inclined to straggle a little may be supported with great advantage, just as Sweet-peas are, by a few branched stakes of Hazel or some similar wood. When you treat a non-climbing plant in this way, your stakes should be rather shorter than the plant, and artfully hidden by its leaves. No tying is necessary where these branched stakes are used.

Messrs. Sutton and Sons, of Reading, have consented, at our request, to sell three collections of flower-seeds suitable for children’s gardens.

The first collection will cost 2s. 6d., and will contain twelve varieties of annuals and biennials.

• 1. Nigella, Miss Jekyll.
• 2. Sweet-pea, mixed.
• 3. Mignonette, large-flowered.
• 4. Malope, Pink and White.
• 5. Antirrhinum, intermixed (biennial, unless brought on early in heat).
• 6. Nasturtium, Dwarf, King of Tom Thumbs.
• 7. Clarkia (Salmon Queen).
• 8. Shirley Poppy.
• 9. Annual Larkspur.
• 10. French Marigold (half-hardy).
• 11. Sweet William (biennial).
• 12. Wallflower, Dark (biennial).

The second collection will contain six varieties, and cost 1s. 6d.

• 1. Nigella.
• 2. Sweet-pea, mixed.
• 3. Mignonette, large-flowered.
• 4. Malope, Pink.
• 5. Antirrhinum, intermixed.
• 6. Nasturtium, Dwarf, King of Tom Thumbs.

The third collection will contain four varieties, and cost 1s.

• 1. Nigella, Miss Jekyll.
• 2. Sweet-pea, mixed.
• 3. Mignonette, large-flowered.
• 4. Malope, Pink.