32 BOOK OF THE COTTAGE GARDEN 



Dianthus, and glowing Salvias — all may be raised in 

 pans in heat in January and February, and will be ready 

 for the open ground by May. Those who are without 

 a heated greenhouse or hotbed must defer sowing until 

 early April, placing the seed pans in a cold frame facing 

 south, when the majority will germinate freely in fine 

 soil. They will even thrive if sown in the open in their 

 flowering positions, but May is the earliest time for out- 

 door sowings and the provision of light, loamy soil is 

 necessary to ensure success. It is a pity that so many 

 of these delightful half-hardy things should have hitherto 

 been badly used ; the nurseryman and the street-hawker 

 with his boxes of pinched, sickly seedlings have blinded 

 us to the real beauty of the so-called bedding plants 

 when used in free and unconventional ways. The much 

 abused Lobelia becomes an exquisite thing when we 

 cease to associate it with the everlasting scarlet Geranium 

 and yellow Calceolaria. In spreading tufts and patches 

 among perennial plants, its intense blue is wonderfully 

 effective; I never realised its value until I saw it used as 

 a dwarf carpeting plant to beds of pink Carnations. It 

 will be a good day for our gardens when we learn to 

 separate half-hardy annuals from the idea of carpet- 

 bedding ; there is no need to grow them apart from 

 other flowers, their rightful place being the mixed 

 border, where, in scattered colonies among other things, 

 they are especially happy. 



Strictly speaking, biennial plants are those which 

 produced from seed in one year, flower the year follow- 

 ing, ripen seed, and then perish. But we need not 

 concern ourselves much with botanical definitions, which 

 are liable to considerable modification and exception. 

 In favoured districts many " biennials " flower during 

 the same year in which they are sown, whilst precocious 

 specimens are for ever contravening accepted rules as to 

 their blooming period and limit of endurance. By 



