Annuals 



So it is with the annuals. Year after year I did 

 as I was bid and had narrow borders for them, or 

 put them here and there, wherever there was room 

 to spare, with the most unsatisfactory results, and 

 an amount of work and worry which was never 

 justified by the result. I wanted to be bold and 

 yet lacked boldness. . . . Then came a time of 

 greater intimacy with the garden, of a keener sense 

 of rhythm, and I took my courage in both hands, 

 wrestled with the new idea, resolved to have all 

 beds and borders as wide as possible, and invented 

 my double border with its grass paths, in which the 

 herbaceous plants should not only provide shelter 

 for their cousins, the annuals, but show off their 

 beauties to more advantage. 



The result is that in these all-important borders* 

 so near the house, there are flowers right through 

 from April to September, and, in good seasons, even 



later. 



The annuals that I chiefly grow are antirrhinum, 

 pale yellow and pink and deep red; salpiglossis, 

 deep blue ; scabious ; nigella Miss Jekyll ; asters, 

 mauve and pink ; salvia patens— which is really 

 herbaceous, but not quite hardy, although it will 

 live through the winter in one of the borders— 

 these are put in in large clumps and go well with 

 the dark-blue delphiniums and purple cranesbill— 



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