Seeds 



59 



of my shovel all kinds of desirable but unsolicited tenants 

 have moved in and make themselves very much at home. As 

 my heart is grateful for any garden good, when unsought Anne 

 Hathaway poppies, that are given the freedom of the vegetable 

 garden rods away, offer themselves as stancher friends than 

 shy pentstemons or reluctant Lobelia syphilitica, the fault is 

 not wholly mine if a lusty poppy bed flourishes over the heads 

 of these recalcitrants. 



" Oh, but that is not gardening in the strict sense," you will 

 say, severely. 



"Of course not," I reply, "but it is flowers, and plenty of 

 them, and if not of one kind, then another, by all means. I 

 like surprises some people call them disappointments; all 

 depends upon how you look at them." The earth must be 

 clothed, and every seed-bed 4* a living testimony to Sir 

 Thomas Browne's commentary on that memorable third day 

 of Creation: "Gardens were before gardeners, and but some 

 hours after the earth." Equal suffrage dates from the mo- 

 ment, when, after the appearance of dry land, the earth busied 

 itself bringing forth grass, herbs and trees, each yielding seed 

 after its own kind. 



I continue to experiment with twenty-five to fifty new va- 

 rieties every year, just to see what they are, though I retain 

 but few of the annuals as permanent residents. If, after three 

 years' trial, I do not get results from a perennial seed, I buy a 

 single plant of it, and propagate by division of the root, and 

 also sow its first seed as soon as it matures, and again the next 

 spring. I have tried to cover the peculiarities of seeds and 

 their special requirements in the Appendix. Some are ex- 

 tremely difficult to grow under ordinary conditions. I have 

 utterly failed to germinate Dictamnus, Lobelia syphilitica, 

 ^Ethionema, Trollius, Romneya coulter a, Adenophora and 

 Ranunculus. These I have bought as plants. Some seeds 



