3l8 GARDEN FLOWERS. 



the plant, bloom, and seed soon reward us. It may be sown 

 four times a year with advantage in pans, or pots, and may 

 be planted out anywhere, three or four plants in a patch. It 

 may be sown in pots, and be thinned ; the plants taken out. 

 being transplanted somewhere else. If in winter, the pots 

 must be kept in the greenhouse, or in pits, or frames with 

 glasses ; if in summer, they may be in the open air. No 

 plants will bear rougher treatment ; none sooner show when 

 they have been removed to better soil. Mignonette is noth- 

 ing to look at except by means of a magnifying glass ; it 

 makes no show ; but its scent, which has no superior among 

 all the fragrant flowers of the garden, will always secure for 

 it a place in the most recherche collections. Scatter the seed 

 upon the borders ; let the plants come up like weeds ; they 

 are acceptable anywhere — everywhere. It is so nearly 

 hardy, that we have seen the old plants and young seedlings 

 from the self-sown seed, standing side by side after a mild 

 winter. Mignonette, although an annual, can be struck from 

 cuttings, which in their turn do very well, and almost assimi- 

 late the plant to a perennial. They bloom more dwarf un- 

 der these circumstances, but they are not the worse for that ; 

 and as to foliage, generally speaking, that is not much to 

 look at after the plant begins to bloom, and does not improve 

 the second year. Large quantities of mignonette are grown 

 for the market ; for which purpose it is generally sown in 

 pots, half a dozen seeds sprinkled in each pot, and all of 

 them submitted to the common garden frames with lights ; 

 the seeds are sown about September, and the plants have 

 all the air that can be given all the winter. Of course, they 

 keep growing, except in frosty weather ; and in the spring 

 months rapidly come forward. These plants show bloom 

 very early, before they have grown much, and are in flower 

 until others, sown in February and March, come in to succeed 



