Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Among the immense mass of annuals advertised in catalogues it is often so difficult to make up one's mind what to have. I live, luckily for me, not far from Mr. Barr's Nursery at Long Ditton, and this gives me a chance of seeing a variety of plants and annuals for which no private garden would have room. Two little half-hardy annuals that flowered this year for a very long time seem to me well worth growing, Alonsoa linifolia and A. Warsceiviczii. I do wish such small flowers would have less break- jaw names. They are low- growing (about a foot or a foot and a half high), rather delicate-looking little plants ; but so bright in colour, one scarlet and the other scarlet and orange. They are very effective if grown in a good large clump. Bartonia aurea is a picturesque-growing yellow summer annual, which does well in this light soil. Limnanthes Douglasii, a Californian annual, is much loved of bees in spring, and, if sown early in the autumn, flowers in May. Wallflowers require sowing very early for the following year ; also all the Primrose and Poly- anthus tribe are all better sown in April. I know nothing more puzzling in gardening than the times of sowing annuals and biennials to make them successful, and I SEPTEMBER 165 imagine they must have different treatment in different soils and climates. Constant practice and study are re- quired. All the autumn things do best here sown late in April or at the beginning of May ; otherwise they come in too early. Early annuals and late annuals are worth grow- ing in this light soil ; but Poppies, Salpiglossis, Migno- nette, and Sweet-peas are, I think, almost the only summer annuals we make room for every year. Eschscholtzias and Musk sow themselves, and only have to be thinned. The common Hemp (Cannabis sativa) is a lovely foliage-plant when well grown and not crowded up. It is all-important to remember in the sowing of seeds from January to September, be it in heat or out of doors, and whether perennials, biennials, annuals, or greenhouse plants, that what we want is not a quantity of seedlings all germinating into life in masses, but a few fine healthy plants. The larger and cheaper the packet of seed, the more thinly they should be sown. In the case of rare and delicate plants it is well to sow only one seed in each pot, the smallest that can be got (I have never seen any so small as the French ones), sink them in a box with cocoanut fibre, which prevents the necessity of constant watering. Seedlings, like all other plants, are the better for using nothing but rain-water, if possible. If the sowing is done in a seed bed out of doors, and if the weather is very dry, it is best to soak the ground well first before sowing, and then cover the tiny seed beds with fine gravel, leaving the small stones in, as they give great protection to the seeds from the heat of the sun. We have all noticed the vigour with which self-sown seeds grow in a gravel path. Towards the end of this month, or at the beginning of the next, is the time to take the early layers off the Carnations and to re-make the beds, or, at any rate, to plant them in clearly-named rows in the kitchen garden, so that they 166 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN