I find that this is the best time for sowing annuals that have to be sown in place. If sown later, they never do so well. Poppies, Love-in-the-Mist, Mignonette, Sweet Sultans, Bartonia aurea, etc. This latter is a very effective annual. It must be sown in a large clump and well thinned out, which is the secret of most annuals. Twice a year, about March 15th and September 15th, I sow together broadcast Love-in-the-Mist and Gypsophila gracilis. They seem to support each other, and fixing a day for the sowing prevents one from forgetting.

In the old convent gardens Calvary Clover was supposed not to grow unless sown on Good Friday. It is a curious little annual, with a blood-red spot on each leaf, and the seed-pod is surrounded by a case which pulls out, or rather unwinds, into a miniature crown of thorns. A friend has asked me what she should plant on the front of a lovely old house facing south. It now has on it at one end Ivy and on the other an old Wistaria. My first advice is take away the Ivy; the place is too good for it, and it hides the beautiful old brickwork. An old Wistaria is quite lovely if part or all of it is dragged away from the house and trained over wooden posts, either in front of a window or a door, so as to form a kind of pergola. Until this is done, or it is grown as they do it in Japan-namely, as a standard, with its branches spread and supported all around, and you stand beneath it-you have no idea of the joy that is to be got out of a Wistaria, with its beautiful lilac blooms hanging from the bare and twisted branches above your head and the blue sky behind them. The whole effect is indeed different and very superior to that of seeing the blooms hanging straight and flat from branches nailed close to the wall. Unless it is protected from the north and east, it is of course more liable, in unfavourable springs, to have its blooms injured by late frosts. The plant itself, I believe, is absolutely hardy.

The creepers I recommended to plant on a south front are as follows:Magnolia grandiflora-the roots must be pulled about, not cut, and manured in the autumn for the first few years after planting, to make it grow quickly; a Yellow Banksia, single if possible, but they are not easy to get; an early yellow Dutch Honeysuckle; a Pyrus japonica; Chimonanthus fragrans, now called Calyc-anthus praecox; a Reve d'Or Rose; a La Marque Rose (no house is perfect without one); a few Clematises, which in non-chalky soils must have chalk and lime or brick-rubbish put to their roots, not manure; Choisya temata, a low-growing shrub, wherever there is room between the other plants; a Marechal Niel Rose. Forsythia suspensa, Jasminium nudiflorum (white Jasmine), Clematis montanay and late Dutch Honeysuckle will all do on the east and west sides of a house as well as on the south. Two other things that would grow on the south wall are Bignonia radicans and Garrya elliptica, a charming evergreen with fascinating catkins, which form in January. The male or pollen-bearing plant is the handsomest.

This list I actually made in the autumn, which is really the best time for planting; but there is often so much to do then that planting is apt to get postponed, and rather than lose a whole year, spring planting is quite worth trying. In damp soils I really believe it answers best. In dry soils, or where a plant is likely to be robbed by the roots of neighbouring shrubs, or by old-established climbers, it is not a bad plan to sink in the ground an old tub or half-cask, or even an old tin footbath with the bottom knocked out. Then fill it with the best soil, and put in your plant; it will benefit more in this way from watering in dry weather. There is nothing so disappointing as to lose a plant in spring, as that means the loss of a whole year.

Having given the above list, which is pretty well as large as any moderate-sized house would hold, I may as well add some further names to choose from, all of which are worth growing. Magnolia purpurea, M. steliata, and M. conspicua may all be grown against walls, or planted in sheltered situations as shrubs. Yellow Jasmine (not nudiflorum) in favourable situations does well. Crataegus pyracantha Icelandi is the best of the Pyracanthuses-I believe, an invaluable shrub. If well pruned, it berries so brilliantly that where people only inhabit their houses in late autumn it is perhaps one of the most satisfactory plants that can be planted. I know one large red house which is covered all round up to a certain height with this plant, and the effect is very decorative, though to have a house entirely covered with only one species of plant is very dull from a gardener's point of view. Unless carefully cut back and pruned early in the winter, it never flowers and berries well, but forms a dense mass of dark-green leaves.

Cotoneasters, various, are useful much in the same way, and, I think, endure better very dry situations. Forsythia fortunei and other varieties. Pyrus japonica, now called Cydonia, various shades (this is one of the most precious and invaluable of the early flowering shrubs, and deserves the best places to be found on warm walls). Ceanothus grandiflorus (Gloire de Versailles) is the largest flowering variety, I believe, and a pretty pale-blue colour, flowering in July, which is always valuable. C. caeruleus is a beautiful dark-blue colour; it flowers earlier, and is not so hardy. Cercis, or common Judas Tree, and Buddleia globosa both look well on walls where there is room. Vitis coignetice is a very handsome rapid grower, and covers quickly a barn, a roof, or a dead tree. The claret-coloured Vine, with its little bunches of black grapes, is very effective. The grapes are used in France and Germany for darkening the colour of wine. Abelia mpestris, a lovely little, rather tender shrub, would grow admirably against low greenhouse walls. Why are such spots generally left quite empty by gardeners in large places? The single white McCartney Rose would do well in a similar situation, and for those who are in the country in June it is well worth a place. Aimee Vibert, Gloire des Rosemaines, and Fallenberg are delightful Roses for house or pergola. Sweet Verbena (A loysia citriodora)-Why, oh ! why, is this little shrub, which everyone is so fond of, grown so little out of doors ? Practically, with a little care, its roots are quite hardy, as in the very severe winter of two years ago only one of mine, out of five or six plants, was killed. It requires nothing but planting out late in May, watering, and not picking at first, as the growth of the shoots makes the roots grow. It may be picked in early autumn as much as you like, but the summer growth should not be cut down to the ground till the following spring. It is the easiest plant possible to strike in spring, and there should be plants of it planted in greenhouses, others grown in pots, and brought on in stoves in spring; but nearly all gardeners are satisfied with one little plant of it in a pot, unless they are urged to increase it. Mock Orange (Philadelphus grandiflorus) looks very well against a warm wall in July, but should not be nailed in too tight. Piptanthus nepalensis on a warm wall is admirable, but rare; I have only seen it once.

Schizophragma hydrangeoides is a good wall-plant. For those who can get it to do on a half-shaded wall, is there any greater joy to the south country gardener than the Tropaeolum speciosum ? There is an illustration of it in the 'English Flower Garden' (FlameNasturtium), where it is depicted growing up strings. I think, however, it looks better if grown over some light creeper, Jasmine especially. It wants peat and moisture, and, above all, it must be in a place the spade or fork never reaches, as its thin little creeping white roots are easily disturbed, and even mistaken for a weed and thrown away.