THE AMATEUR’S FLOWER GARDEN. 
99 
vinced of a glimmering of faith in herbaceous plants. An 
instance of this has amused us lately. When inspecting a 
stock of hepaticas in. flower in Ware’s great nursery at Tot¬ 
tenham, we met a customer who was enraptured with them. 
Having, in company with some half-dozen persons, enjoyed 
the brilliant display of colour produced by some three or four 
thousand plants in a mass, this admirer ordered one plant , 
which, being drawn out at once, was found to consist of a 
tuft as large as a duck’s egg, with two flowers expanded, and 
three or four leaves on the way. The attendant naively sug¬ 
gested that people should buy these things in the same way 
that they buy bedding plants—by the dozen, the score, the 
hundred. 
The best way is not everybody’s way. The furnishing of 
an extensive border by the purchase of sufficient of the very 
best herbaceous plants, will prove a more expensive business 
than every reader of this book may be prepared for. It 
follows that something should be said on the raising of plants 
by cheap and simple methods of procedure. Many good 
plants produce seed abundantly, and the careful cultivator 
may by this means increase the stock to any extent that may 
be desired. The best seed is that saved at home, and the 
best way to deal with it is to sow it, as soon as it is ripe, in 
large shallow pans and boxes, and keep these in cool frames 
until the plants appear. Some kinds of seeds remain a whole 
year in the soil before they germinate, and therefore it is only 
the patient who are well rewarded. As amateurs are apt to 
lose seeds that they would fain save, we shall present our 
readers with a rule of action that we have followed many 
years in saving seeds of all kinds that are likely to scatter as 
they ripen. Provide a lot of common bell-glasses, of various 
sizes, and place them mouth upwards on a bench in a sunny 
greenhouse. When a cluster of seeds is full grown and just 
beginning to ripen, cut it and throw it into one of the bell- 
glasses, with a label inscribed with its name. The ripening 
process will soon be completed, and the seed will shell itself 
out from the pods, and be found ready cleaned and fit for 
storing away with the least imaginable amount of trouble. 
We have saved all kinds of seeds in this way, and may say 
with truth that the scheme has been worth hundreds of pounds 
to us. The ingenious practitioner will soon discover how to 
modify the plan advantageously. Thus, flower-pots, with the 
