Biennials are plants that do not flower till the second year after sowing. They are sown in spring and summer, pricked out when large enough, and transplanted, either in the autumn or the following spring, to their flowering places. If you can only have a small patch in a small garden, we advise you to buy, ready-grown, every spring, the few biennials you need. You can get all the well-known ones cheaply by the dozen, or just as they have been sown in a box. But if you are one of those lucky children who grow up in a big garden, we advise you to beg for a little extra bit for a ‘nursery,’ and then to try your hand at growing some of the easier biennials and perennials from seed. Some people will tell you that this operation is beyond the skill and patience of any child, but we think that if you will follow our instructions carefully you might succeed. Do not dream of trying all we tell you about in one season. In every chapter we speak of more plants than any one child could crowd into one small garden. You must choose some of your great favourites to begin with, and each year add a few new ones to the plants you have learnt to manage well.

Skilled gardeners grow some biennials, as annuals, by raising the seed in frames and greenhouses early in the year; but this, we think, would be too difficult for children to do without help. So you must, as we have said, buy your biennials ready-made, or you must get someone to raise them in heat for you, or you can sow your own seed one year, understanding that the seedlings will not flower till the next. Of these three plans we think the purchase of ready-made seedlings the easiest, but in some ways the least satisfactory. At any rate, if you must adopt it, try to get them from good nurserymen. Those you buy in the London streets or from advertisement columns are often grievously disappointing, so that when your biennials flower you discover you have thrown your money and your labour away. Your Snapdragons are either hideously splotchy or crudely magenta; your pink Canterbury Bells are blue and white; your Wallflowers are spindly and colourless. A few experiences of this kind will soon drive you to buy your own seed from one of the best firms, and for a few pence and some happy hours of gardening to get more plants of the best colour and quality than you can possibly use. Then you will have the pleasure the true gardener always finds in giving some of his plants away, or you can exchange your surplus stock for plants you do not possess yet.

Wallflowers (Cheiranthus).

This is a good biennial to start with, because every seed comes up and comes quickly. Sow thinly on a partly shaded patch of ground, and prick out when the seedlings have four good leaves. Do this on a showery day, if possible, and plant in rows ten inches apart each way. It is important to sow your seed early in the spring, because where the winter is severe the plants should be in their permanent quarters by May or June. If you transplant them late in the autumn, they suffer greatly from frost. In London market-gardens the seed is sown early in February; the plants are put out in May, and by Christmas are in flower. A seedling Wallflower has a tap-root as well as fibrous roots, and this is why the seedling should be pricked out once before it is transplanted to its permanent quarters. If you left it where it was sown it would send down a great root like a carrot, and then when you tried to move the plant you would kill it. Many gardeners pinch off the tap-root when they prick out, and then the Wallflower makes fibrous roots that can be safely transplanted. Mr. Robinson says that a well-grown Wallflower in a London market-garden could not be covered by a bushel basket, so now you know what size your plants ought to be, and how many you will have room for in your border. If you buy them ready-made late in the autumn, you will probably find that each plant has two bare, lanky stalks, with a miserable little bunch of leaves at the top; and when a frost comes they will look so dejected that you will pull them up and throw them away.

Pansies and Tufted Pansies (Viola Tricolor).

The Pansies, or Heart’s-ease, and Tufted Pansies (known to nurserymen as Violas) can be treated as annuals, biennials, or perennials, according to position, climate, and soil. In a Cornish garden from October to Christmas we had Pansies in flower from seed sown at the end of May, so they were annuals. But we had put them in their permanent places that autumn, because we wanted them to live through the winter and make the border gay the summer following, when they became biennials. At the end of the summer we kept the best of them to flower another year, and, if they liked, a year after that.

The seed should be sown in early summer in light, moist, leafy soil. It soon comes up, and when the seedlings have three pairs of leaves they should be pricked out. The Pansy, like the Carnation, has a tiresome trick of producing its best flowers on its poorest plants, so you must be patient and careful with the weak, backward ones, because they may give you the finest blooms. Pansies would rather be moved in autumn than in spring, and remember that they like a rather shady place in your border, and a good loamy soil. They either die or make poor little flowers in hard, dry ground. If you want your Pansies and Violas to go on flowering all the summer, you must be careful to pinch off the dead flowers. The roots you see in London shops and markets, wrapped in hard clay and showing two or three big flowers, will not do much good as a rule. If, however, you have some, and want to keep them alive, you should soak the cake of clay off the fibrous roots, plant in a puddle of water, and protect from the sun and wind for several days with a flower-pot. We have been told by a well-known gardener that she can make anything live by planting it in a pool of water, and out of our own experience we would say that we can make most things live by shading them for some days, except from showers, with a flower-pot. It is most interesting to see how a flagging plant will revive after a few hours of shade and shelter.

If you have a light, warm soil, you can easily strike cuttings from your best Violas and Pansies. One way is to cut them down in June. A month later a number of young shoots will appear, and these should have soil put amongst them into which they will root themselves. In two or three weeks you can take away these young plants and put them in a nursery bed. A cutting should be set one-third of its length into a little bed of sandy soil that you have previously made smooth and moist. You must always slice them across the stalk just below a joint, and cut off the lower leaves. They should be taken in moist, warm weather, and placed in partial shade. As they grow pinch off the tops, and then they make more roots, and are stronger. We have no great gardening authority for saying so, but from our own experience we should advise you never to cut down a favourite plant for increase, except in showery weather. We have lost many by meddling with them during a drought. If you only have a few Pansies you will not want to cut them down at all in June, but you can look out for young shoots, and try to take a few cuttings.

Campanula Medium (Canterbury Bell).

Canterbury Bells are most useful and beautiful flowers, and easily grown. If you want the lovely pink ones be sure to get your seed from a first-rate firm, as the cheap seed and the cheap plants are likely to be blue or white. Canterbury Bells are beautiful in blue and white, as well as in pink, and we only mean that for some reason the pink ones seem a little more difficult to get hold of. Sow your seed in shallow boxes in March or April; prick out in showery weather when the seedlings have four leaves, and transplant to their permanent places in September. You will find that the strongest seedlings will flower the following year, but the small ones take two years to mature. Canterbury Bells sow themselves easily if you leave the seed to ripen, but they flower longer if you pick off each bell as it withers. They require stakes.

Sweet William (Dianthus Barbatus).

One celebrated lady who writes about gardens says that she does not like Sweet Williams, because they remind her of the plush chairs in German furniture shops. We think ourselves that the ordinary red ones are rather stiff and flaunting; but the new salmon-pink and deep rose-coloured ones are not a bit like red plush, and they make lovely patches of colour in our gardens; also, they are easy to raise and manage. If you grow them from seed, sow out of doors in April, prick out when the plants are large enough, and transfer to permanent quarters in September. Next year you can take cuttings from the best plants when they have done flowering. You are always told by skilful gardeners that a cutting should be sliced straight through the stalk just beneath a joint, and planted in sandy soil and slight shade to make roots; but now we will tell you how an unskilful gardener, who found cuttings difficult, increased her Sweet Williams with perfect ease. It may be the wrong way, but the Sweet Williams did not seem to think so. When they had quite done flowering, each plant had sent up a quantity of young green shoots that evidently did not mean to make flowers that summer; so the unskilful gardener took up her best clumps, tore each one into from twelve to twenty pieces, planted them in fine, rather moist soil in partial shade, and by late autumn saw that every one was doing well and making a good plant for next year.

Evening Primrose (Œnothera).

A handsome, clear yellow flower, growing six feet high, and blooming for many weeks, but one of those that never know when and where they are not wanted. You know the true gardening rhyme, don’t you?—that ‘One year’s seeding makes seven years’ weeding.’ We believe that when once the Evening Primrose has had a chance in a garden, its seeds will come up there till the crack of doom. However, they have tap-roots, and are easily pulled up. If you have none and want them, you should sow in June where the plants are to stand, and thin out severely, leaving two feet between the plants. Remember that in this chapter we are talking of biennials, that will not flower until the following year. If you have one of those heart-breaking gardens made of rough, starved soil or builder’s rubbish, you might sow Evening Primroses as carefully as you can all along the back of the border. Then, in the following spring, when your Evening Primroses are spreading plants, you could sow Giant Poppies in front of them, and Dwarf Nasturtiums in front of the Poppies. One of the great secrets of gardening is to find out how to make the best of your conditions, even when they are unfavourable.

Snapdragons (Antirrhinum Majus).

These are most beautiful and useful flowers. They will do well in poor soil, and even on the tops of walls, where there is not much soil for them—in fact, some of the finest specimens, grown from self-sown seed, are to be found in such situations. There are three kinds: tall, medium, and dwarf, and there are a great variety of colours. Some are self-coloured, and some are mottled, striped, or flaked. If you buy cheap seedlings you get ugly magentas or poor, washed-out mixtures; while if you raise your own from good seed, you get most lovely shades. Snapdragons may be treated as annuals or biennials, and each has its own difficulty. If you treat them as annuals, you must raise the seed under glass in February, so as to have flowers in July. We think you probably have no greenhouse or frame of your own, so we will tell you how to grow Snapdragons out of doors as biennials. The difficulty in this case is not to get your stock of plants, but to keep them through the winter, as Snapdragons are not quite hardy, especially in a close, damp soil. We have heard of nursery gardeners losing their whole stock in a frost. On a light soil and near a south wall you can, with a hammer and nails and a few laths, knock up a wooden framework that will hold a piece of sacking or an Archangel mat over your plants, and keep the worst of the frost from them. If you can’t use a hammer and nails, and live in a cold climate, we think you will have to buy your Snapdragons every spring.

The seed of Snapdragons is very small, so it is a good plan to mix it with sand or fine soil before you sow it. The sowing can be done any time between April and August, and either in boxes or pans, or in the open ground. If you have a struggle with weeds in your garden, we advise you to sow all seeds that will bear transplantation in boxes or pans, as you can dodge the weeds better in this way. We have heard of people who poured a kettleful of boiling water over the soil they meant to use for seeds, so as to destroy the weeds in it first. If you do this, you must wait till the soil has passed through the soppy stage in which a flood of hot water leaves it before you put it in your seed-box. An old iron tray, no longer tidy enough for indoor use, is convenient for this and for many other garden operations. When your Snapdragons have four good leaves, prick them out in rows nine inches apart in the most sheltered corner you have, and protect them from frost till the spring, when they will make a show all through the summer in your border. You will find that some people get quite angry with you for growing tall ones or dwarf ones, according to the kind they themselves prefer, while other people will forbid you to look at a flaked or bizarre Snapdragon. You will have to bear this if you agree with us, and like both dwarf and tall ones, all the clear selfs, and even some of the bizarre. A ‘self’ in gardening jargon means one colour, as opposed to striped, flaked, or speckled.

Forget-Me-Not (Myosotis Dissitiflora).

There are several varieties of the Forget-me-not, but you will find this a good kind to grow, either for your border or your rockery. It makes a charming edging for bulbs, or a carpet through which Tulips and Daffodils send up their leaves in spring. The seed should be sown from April to June, and pricked out into a shady place. In the autumn your plants can be moved to their flowering quarters. They look very well near White Arabis, a plant you can buy anywhere, or near the Yellow Alyssum.

Foxgloves (Digitalis).

Foxgloves are so beautiful that you will want to grow them even if you have a sunny, sheltered, well-dug, and well-dressed garden where anything will succeed. But they are one of the few flowers that will never fail you who garden under difficulties. They do not mind shade, and can be grown amongst shrubs, and even under trees. They do not mind poor soil, though they make a finer growth when they are fed, and they will endure the air of cities. When once they are established in your garden, you have them for ever if you choose, as they seed themselves freely; but you cannot keep the pure white strain unless you either grow new ones from good seed or pull up every pink one before the buds open and let the bees into their flowers. The bees, as you no doubt know, are great gardeners, and fertilize your plants for you.

The seed of Foxgloves should be sown in June, either in boxes or in the open ground. You can prick them out to where they are to stand, or you can sow in their permanent quarters and thin to nine inches or a foot apart. Remember that they are tall plants, and must be at the back of your border. As you get three thousand seeds for a penny, you will have some over to sow in wild places.

Stocks (Matthiola).

These sweet-scented flowers make a display in your border all through the spring. They like a rich, well-dressed soil, and are generally poor and spindly on a starved one. The Brompton and Intermediate are good kinds to grow. Sow the seeds in summer in partial shade, and in moist weather plant out, nine inches apart, where they are to bloom. Make the soil firm round the young plants. Mr. E. T. Cook, in his ‘Gardening for Beginners,’ says that amateurs often make a mistake in rejecting the dwarf seedlings and keeping only the tall ones. The dwarf ones have more fibrous roots, and make more double flowers. The colours of Stocks have been greatly improved of late years, and if you get your seed from a good firm you need not grow the magenta ones you often see in small gardens.