Cultivation of Flo webs. 343 



is also a blue lobelia but it is a much coarser p'ant, although the 

 blossom has a beautiful color. Tuere are also many varieties of 

 aquileg ; es or columbines, but the prettier is the bright blue, long 

 spurred, Rocky Mountain variety. There are many other peren- 

 nials that are worthy of mention but space forbids. We must 

 only say in reference to perennials, that they are well out of the 

 ground and some of them budded before the season is far enough 

 advanced to plant seeds of our annuals. 



Verbenas may be raised from the seed, procuring the colors you 

 desire in separate papers, as the mixed papers are apt to produce 

 too many light colored flowers, with scarcely a scarlet or rich col- 

 ored one among them. I have had better success with my ver- 

 bena-bed when it was so placed that the sun did not reach it until 

 about ten o'clock, leaving the dews to remain on the bed awhile in 

 the morning. In such a situation, I have never heard of the 

 plants being affected with the black rust, which sometimes makes 

 so much trouble. The following spring, after you have planted 

 your verbenas, if you do not disturb them too early, you will find 

 hundreds of seedlings coming up that will make strong and thrifty 

 plants for the ensuing year, but you will need to plant some of 

 the scarlet varieties, as there is such a tendency to run to the 

 light colors, although I have kept them bright without renewal 

 for three year.-. 



Pansies require a cool, moist situation, and ought, by all means, to 

 be planted in clumps or beds, as then their rich mass of bloom, so 

 mixed and many colored, produces the best effect. They may be 

 raised from seed, and are best started in the house or hot bed, 

 and then transplanted where they are to fljwer, placing them 

 about five inches apart, and after having once commenced to 

 bloom, they will continue to do so all summer, and you might al- 

 most say, all winter, as since we have been here in Wisconsin I 

 have had a pansy bed that I covered late in the fall, and every 

 month that winter, by raising the covering carefully, I picked 

 beautiful pansies for bouquets. When we remember that they are 

 natives of Siberia and Sweden, growing in great luxuriance in 

 their pine forests, we can easily see why they require a cool situa- 

 tion. As the young plants produce the largest flowers, it is best 



