THE RIGHT USE OF ANNUALS 169 



about sowing in the autumn, and it is commonly sup- 

 posed that only a few kinds will survive the winter 

 if this is done. Yet the present writer has found that 

 even Phacelia campanularia, commonly supposed to 

 be a rather delicate annual, will often live through 

 the winter, if it is sown early enough, on a fairly light 

 soil and in a light place. Indeed, it will flourish in 

 a garden year after year from self-sown seedlings; 

 and so will Love-in-a-Mist and Collomia coccinea, 

 an excellent and little known annual, and Linaria 

 Maroccana, to say nothing of Nemophila and Bar- 

 tonia aurea, and Eschscholtzia and Cornflowers, and 

 other annuals which are often left to seed themselves 

 in our gardens. 



It is always risky, however, to trust to self-sown 

 seedlings. They may not come up when you want 

 them, and you do not know where they are until 

 they germinate. Yet many people who observe that 

 self-sown seedlings always do better than seed which 

 they have sown will not make the obvious deduction 

 from that fact. They think that there is some mys- 

 tery in the process of natural sowing; whereas the 

 fact is merely that nature sows at the right season, 

 and that her seedlings, thinned out by her winter 

 severities, have time to grow strong and root deeply 

 before the summer heats. 



It is worth while, therefore, to experiment largely 

 with autumn or late summer sowing, especially on 

 light soils, since the experiments will be cheap in any 

 case, and failures can be easily remedied in the spring. 



