March 30. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
49!) 
ANTIRRHINUMS. 
The 20th of April is the right time to sow Antirrhinum 
seeds in the open air, so as to have the seedlings coining 
j into flower, to succeed annuals, which are sown at the 
same time, or a little earlier. Mr. Appleby has referred 
! to me for the value of this flower for beds, and that is 
i the way I brought it in; but I never missed it for years, 
although I used it only as one of the auxiliary plants. 
\ If you sow a bed of Carnation Poppies, or any lancy 
Poppy, or a bed of Glarkia, or mixed Clurkia, or of 
Candytuft, or Navelwort, or Leptosiphon, or, indeed, of 
\ any annual of the month or six weeks flowerers, between 
the first and middle of April, and sow the Antirrhinum 
as above directed, it will be ready in bloom to make 
your bed quite full of bloom next day or the selfsame 
day as you pull up the annuals, and you may discard 
i them any day they look seedy, or going oft. Another 
thing is in their favour ;—seedlings of the Antirrhinum 
flower in a few weeks after they come up, and 
i they will transplant all through the season; so that 
j you can have a bed of them of one colour, or of 
many colours; and by keeping each colour in a 
row or ring by itself, a bed of them makes a decent 
appearance; or the planting may be all in regular mix¬ 
ture of colours ; but that is easier done from first seeing 
the plants in flower, when any colour or shade that 
does not please you may go to the common shrubbery, or 
out-of-doors altogether. In October, a bed of Antirrhi¬ 
nums comes in as useful as Wallflowers, to plant out for 
the winter, merely for covering the ground. 
Saponaria calabriea, the low-spreading annual which 
makes the pink-lace bed to the end of the season, will 
do so just as effectually from seeds sown in the open air 
as from those in a hotbed ; and the first week in April 
is the best time to sow them. A pot, or a hand-glass, 
ought to bo laid over them at first, and they need not 
; be transplanted out for beds, or patches, till the latter 
1 part of June. Then a bed of Nemophila, or of Eucaridium 
grandi/lora, or any other low, early annual, may occupy 
and flower in the space intended for the laoe-plaut, or 
I if it is only to be used in patches. It may be sown any 
[ time in April, when it will flower. Some of my neigh¬ 
bours here have used it both ways, and it answered as 
J well as it ever did with me with all my force and hot¬ 
beds ; so that it is a perfectly hardy annual after all. 
CHINA ASTERS. 
j We cannot get them very early without a slight hot- 
I bed to get them over the first stage, and now is a good 
time to sow some seeds for that purpose. It is as 
auxiliary plants that they are so useful for the flower- 
garden, as they can be moved from the reserve ground 
to the flower-bed, in full bloom, about the beginning of 
August, or a little later, when the great bulk of the 
annuals which were sown in April are past. The end 
of April is time enough to sow them in the open ground 
for this purpose. 1 used to sow them about the 10th 
of May, but that was to suit the time I allowed for the 
* other annuals, which 1 used to sow a fortnight later 
i than most people, to suit the return of the family to 
■ the country. 
! 
ABRONIA UMBELLATA. 
This is a new annual, and one that will flower from 
i Juno to the end of the season, and requires to be treated 
j in the spring like the blue Lobelias; that is, a slight 
hotbed to get it up, and an airy, cool place after that, 
till the weather is warm enough to plant it out for the 
season. It might do to sow it at the end of April, in 
the open air. It is a nice creeping plant, like the 
Verbena, and with flower-heads in the same style. The 
colour is a light lilac, or violet, and the flowers are very 
sweet, particularly towards the evening. It was found 
by Hartweg, growing in sand on the sea-shore near 
Montery, in California; and now I see it in the seed 
lists. Also, the very dwarf Coreopsis, which I mentioned 
from Claremont last summer. This is a wonder; the 
species being from three to four feet high, and this lorm 
of it hardly six inches, but very close and bushy, and 
full of flowers, which are as large as those on the old 
species. Some people speak well of the new annual 
Calceolaria vhelidonioides, but from what I saw of it in 
1852 and 1853,1 would not prize it much. I think it is 
more suited for damp, shady places, where the sun gets 
little hold of it. 
TAGETKS SIGNATA, 
though so called in some lists, is the same as I often 
spoke of as tenuifolia. It does best on poor, dry soil, 
and is the last annual to yield to the frost; it will also 
transplant from a seed-bed in the open ground as late as 
the middle of July, when it is coming into flower; and in 
September it is the most flowery of the annuals. j 
The beautiful Sphenogyne speciores does well only 
from the end of May to the end of July to be in flower; 
and from the first to the end of April is the only time to ] 
sow it. The American Groundsel is only good from 
cuttings; although they offer seeds of it, they are not | 
worth having for a gift: they come in like single Daises, j 
and have little colour. 
SALPIGLOSSIS COCCINEA, 
as it was called, makes a very fine bed in a dry season; 
but the colour is a reddish-yellow, and it grows up a 
yard high, or more, and looks remarkably well in a mass. | 
The beginning of April is the time to sow it on a, slight ] 
hotbed, and to get more air as soon as it has four leaves, j 
The very same treatment would do for the different j 
varieties of Thunbergia alata ; or they might be sown ; 
across a very slight temporary hotbed, and the glass to j 
be taken off all day as soon as they are up. This is the I 
easiest way I know of to get up half-hardy seeds , and 
any one, who ever saw early radishes grown on a hot¬ 
bed, could manage a seed-bed in the same way or 
rather in two ways—one, by making a common dung- 
bed, and the other by making a hole in a spare piece of 
ground, a little longer and wider than the frame, and 
eighteen inches deep, and filling it up with hot dung till 
it°was higher, by six inches, than the regular ground, 
then to bank up earth all round it after putting on the 
frame, then a few inches of fine-sifted soil, and to sow 
the seeds in rows or circles in this top soil, then a 
slight watering, and on with the glass; and little more 
is needed but to watch for the coming of the seedlings. 
This is the easiest way in the world to get up lots of seed¬ 
lings with very little attendance, only a slight watering 
now and then, and to mind to give the bed plenty of 
air as soon as the seedlings appear above ground, and 
when they are all up to take ofi the glass every fine 
day, after breakfast, and to put it oir at night till all 
danger of frost is over. Now, about the Thunbergias; 
what I was going to say, is, how well they do out-of¬ 
doors, in sheltered places, treated like Sweet Peas, as 1 
saw them, in 1852, at Claremont, where they ripened 
seeds as freely as Sweet Peas, along in front of one of 
the plant-houses. The grand secret is, to get them up 
early in April; not to coddle them, but to bring them up 
hardy, and to plant them out of nursing pots about 
the end of May, or as soon after as the weather pro¬ 
mise to hold on fine and steady. 
CENTAUREA CYANEA. 
A pinch of this blue Corn-flower ought to be sown in 
every garden in the kingdom, il only tor cut fioweis 
for the mantlepiece; it is next to the Mignonette for 
long standing; and there is a white variety of it, 
also a grey one, and a dull pink, with other shades, 
