September 12. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
453 
In borders of this kind, which may be about five feet 
wide, there are two or three points deserving special 
attention. In the first place, I take it for granted that 
low and prostrate forms should prevail at the margin ; • 
that spirey or pointed forms, such as the Clarhia elegans, 
Antirrhinums, Salvia patens , &c., should be allowed to | 
rise above dense and bushy flowers of half-height, and 
to give expression to the upper outline, that flowers of 
majestic habit, as Hollyhock, Dahlias, &c., be allowed to 
rise occasionally towards the back, aud that the above 
lining, all placed at considerable intervals, so that no 
two touch—a sprinkling of flowers of bushy habit be 
introduced here and there, as a sort of undergrowth, to 
relieve the stalkiness of the taller forms. My border, 
which I so much like, has Hollyhock at the back, tree 
Roses in the second row, and the prostrate forms in 
front; there being but three rows, and, of course, the 
other form suggested interspersed through them. And 
to satisfy those who fear to recognise form and outline, 
for fear of losiug colour, I may add, that these borders 
are universally covered with flowers of all hues, aud no 
lack of fragrance from the Mignonette, Rose, Musk, &c., 
combined with rich colours. R. Errington. 
GATHERING SEEDS. 
Every one in the country gathers seeds of some plant 
or another, and most people think they know how to 
harvest a few garden-seeds ; but there is not one in ten, 
according to my experience, who has any knowledge of 
the natural law about saving seeds at all, or of the best 
and easiest way of managing this branch of domestic 
economy. Go where I will, I see evidences, at this 
season of the year, of very bad management in the seed 
way. A bundle of Clarkia drying here—another of 
Larkspurs, of Candytuft, of Mignonette, or Nemophila, ' 
and so on—the under side of each bundle is either too 
damp aud rotting, or the whole bundle lias been so 
turned and harvested that all the best seeds are scattered 
about or lost altogether ; in the next place, you see large 
sheets of paper or old newspapers put under the different 
bundles as they are gathered ; perhaps on the stages of 
the greenhouse, as they would do in Germany, and other 
places on the Continent, where, if reports be true, they 
turn their hothouses or their old conservatories into so 
many barns at the end of summer. Here, in England, 
the most that the untidiest gardener will attempt is to 
hang up a bundle of some seeding plant in a dry vinery; 
the conservatory is too much under the eye of fashion 
ever to be littered in this way. But, if it is true that 
one black sheep taints the flock, I must begin shearing; 
for I have seen and heard of places, and many of them, 
where The Cottage Gardener is anxiously looked for 
every week, and where flower-seeds have been actually 
dried, this very season, on the stages of the con¬ 
servatory, where ladies go through in aud out to the 
drawing-rooms. Well, one hears of strange things 
occasionally, but this is past strange and strangling; it 
is mean and slovenly ; it is also very bad management— 
seeds are roasted, not ripened, in this way. 
In farming, the straw is a valuable part of the 
crop, and must be saved as carefully as the grain. In 
the seed trade, part of the crop keeps best in the 
pod, aud the pod is easier kept on the dried herbage of 
the plant than in any other way. Both the farmer 
and the seedsman, however, are too much up to the 
mark of their calling to need being told their best 
way of proceeding; not so a generation of garden 
amateurs, who ought to save every possible shilling in 
one part of the garden so as to lay it out on another part. 
All these save part of their own grown seeds every year, 
and as it has come to my eyes and ears that they do not 
go the right way about it, I write to mend matters, 
without apology. 
In the first place, therefore, I give the natural law on 
sowing seeds in my own way, which is this:—the germ, 
or living part inside, say a Pea or Bean, or Mignonette, 
is completely finished, and fit for its own office of growing, 
a long time before the walls or the body which covers it, 
is ripe; and if we could preserve this germ without 
ripening that which incloses it, the germ would sprout iu 
one-half the time it takes to get it to do so now ; this is 
a very singular thing and ought to be minded; it has 
been known in practice, and by men of science, for ever 
so long ; but the great bulk of people, taking their ideas 
from the grain harvest, have an idea that the body of 
the seed, and not the germ, is the great thing to look to 
and get ripe ; no such thing, but only a popular fallacy. 
Iu flower-seeds, all we want is a renewal of the different 
plants. In farming, they want the body of the seed for 
bread, beer, and whisky, and other things, so they look 
for the perfect ripening of the body of their grain, from 
which alone these tilings are made; then, when some of 
this grain has to be sown for another crop, it takes a 
much longer time to come up than it would if the body 
of the grain were not so ripe; and the reason for this 
delay is, that so much time is lost in bringing back, as 
it were, the body of the seed to that state, or nearly to 
that state, in which it was a certain time before it was 
ripe in the field. 
Science gives this explanation in a very different 
way; but it all comes to the same meaning, and my 
way is the easiest to understand and to remember; 
as to the thing itself, there is not the smallest doubt 
about it, it belongs to the rudiments, or A. B. C. 
of gardening. At wbat time the germ of the different 
seeds would sprout before the body of the seed itself 
i W as ripe, no one knows rightly, because experiments have 
not been made to prove the thing; so that the youngest 
| readers of The Cottage Gardener might make them- 
! selves even-handed with the oldest gardeners on this 
j very curious subject; but much more useful to know, 
than curious. 
j Now if we call this part A., the next part of 
1 the subject, B., is more difficult. It does not follow 
that because the germ of a seed is fit to grow before 
j the body of that seed is ripe, that the germ could be 
kept alive for a long period it the body round it 
were not ripe. Here, again, if we did but know it, the 
different kinds, no doubt, have different periods to which 
! the germ could live without a ripe body; even with a 
ripe body, some seeds are short lived, and others seem 
not to lose their life for many generations, and we might 
| reasonably suppose that those, seeds which “keep” the 
longest after being ripe, would do so with an unripe 
body; but that is not so sure, perhaps it may turn out to 
be the contrary; at any rate, we have had no trials to 
prove it one way or the other. 
Hero, again, we are on tho same level, which brings 
me to C. the third letter; and C. is very easy 
indeed, representing a simple way of gathering and 
preserving the more ordinary garden seeds for general 
use; and we begin with Mignonette , as being the 
only one of our ordinary seeds which is always 
gathered half-ripe, three-parts ripe, and all ripe. \ou 
never buy a packet of it without samples of the throe 
stages of ripeness; the dark seeds of Mignonette are 
those which were full ripe when gathered, and the light 
seeds are those iu the stages of half or three-parts ripe, 
yet the one grows as well as the other—a lesson for all, 
but not one out of a thousand ever thinks of learning 
from it that seeds not quite ripe may be kept for two or 
three years without danger. It may be asked, What 
advantage is there in saving any seeds till they are fully 
ripe ? The answer is just the poiut I am driving to; it is 
of the greatest consequence to all who like to see the 
