THE GARDEN WEEK BY WEEK 



Feb. or the Japan Pink. It rarely exceeds six or eight inches 

 ^"^4 high, but it has large, fringed flowers with a good range 

 of colours. One can buy white, salmon, scarlet, and 

 crimson separately. There are both single and double 

 types, and I know of few more beautiful plants than 

 the double white Japan Pink. It throws a few singles, 

 but not many, and the best of seedsmen cannot eliminate 

 singles entirely — witness ten-week Stocks. One can 

 also get the fringed Mikado strain, which is of much 

 taller growth, and has single and semi-double flowers 

 of many colours. 



The Indian and Japan Pinks are nominally biennials — 

 that is, plants which bloom one year from seed sown the 

 previous year, and die. But while their cousins, the 

 Sweet Williams, are generally treated as biennials, the 

 Indian Pinks are grown as annuals, being flowered the 

 same year as sown, and discarded after blooming. If 

 sown in February in a greenhouse or warm frame, 

 hardened, and planted in May, they are sure to bloom 

 the same year ; indeed, they will generally do so if sown 

 in a unheated frame in March. 



Petunias. — The Petunia just lacks that softness which 

 makes a flower intimately lovable, but it has such bright- 

 ness and freedom of blooming as to win popularity. 

 And will it not flower cheerfully in somewhat unfavour- 

 able circumstances — in poor soil, for example ? It will 

 do so ; indeed, some growers go so far as to declare 

 that it is best put into poor earth, because luxuriance of 

 growth is checked, and a natural tendency to flower- 

 ing thereby engendered. It is, of course, the fact that 

 flowering, as a step towards Nature's great object of 

 reproduction, is encouraged by weak growth. If a plant 

 is not vigorous, Nature hastens to get flower and seed 

 out of it, lest it perish barren. But we generally get 

 70 



