136 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



makes them all the prettier for garden purposes. 

 High cultivation has, alas, imparted a strain of 

 delicacy to many of these hardy plants, even snap- 

 dragons, so that seedlings seem now to require 

 more warmth and shelter in winter than their more 

 robust and homely kindred used to do ; but the 

 less cosseting they get, the better. None of these, 

 indeed, are of merely annual duration ; but it is 

 now a common practice, and a very convenient 

 one, to treat them as though they were. There are 

 even polyantha roses which, with no more pre- 

 tention to being annuals than the last, are so 

 precocious as to begin to bloom within three months 

 from the date of sowing, and go on producing their 

 apple-blossom clusters year after year. 



If a gentle hot bed can be made up in readiness, 

 a busy time will come in February, when all man- 

 ner of delightful half-hardy plants can be brought 

 on that will fill the garden with flowers in the 

 summer. Pentstemons, ricinus for good foliage 

 effect, cosmos of the early-flowering strain, the 

 compact-growing varieties of verbena, the white 

 and red-flowered tobaccos, and ten-week stocks, 

 may be set down as representing a few of them. 

 These again are not all annuals ; but according 

 to our modern methods they may be grown as 

 such. In March another batch can be sown in 

 boxes in a sheltered position out of doors salpi- 

 glossis, the large-flowered scabious, nasturtiums, 

 the charming salmon-pink Clarkias, coreopsis, 

 mallows, lupines, and nemesia, which does better 

 without artificial heat if it can be sufficiently pro- 

 tected from wind and weather. Sweet sultans, 



