CHAPTER XII 



ANNUALS 



FOR several reasons, every one who has a garden, large or 

 small, will wish to grow at least a few annuals. Others 

 may require an entire garden of them. Not every lover 

 of flowers owns the land he lives on; and where it is rented for a 

 short season only, and quick returns are required rather than future 

 gain, a wealth of bloom, a pyrotechnic effect of colour, may be had 

 with annuals for a small outlay. The best results with perennials 

 come only after the second year, or when the plants are thoroughly 

 established; but annuals, hardy or tender, put forth the supreme 

 efforts of their exuberant lives in two or three months after their 

 seeds are sown, and most of them have bloomed themselves to 

 death in as many more. True, the garden of annuals only is bare 

 until early summer unless seedlings have been started indoors or 

 under glass and transplanted to the open when spring nights can be 

 trusted not to pinch them; and the first frost of autumn obliterates 

 all trace of the tenderest of them, of all except a few hardy ones 

 like marigolds, nasturtiums and Drummond s phlox that eke 

 out our meagre autumn bouquets. Light hoar frost can be 

 endured by not a few, but black frost finishes them forever: they 

 perish root and branch. Only the seeds of a few among the host 

 can survive a northern winter in the open. 



A plant that lives only one brief summer would be a poor 

 investment of time and money, if one have a permanent home, 

 unless the flower have some transcendent merit of fragrance, or 

 exquisite form or lovely colour, like the sweet pea, for instance, 



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