Not the smallest and dryest garden should be without Stachys lanata, a white woolly leaved plant, called Rabbit's Ears by cottage children, and particularly attractive to some people, who through life retain the love of a child for something woolly and soft. Certain characteristics are always reminding us, especially in some women, even when old, that they were once children. These leaves were formerly used as edgings to beds in a very objectionable way; but when grown in large clumps, they are most useful for picking. When cut, they go on growing in water, as Buttercups and Forget-me-nots do, and mix very well with many flowers, especially with Narcissus poetictos, any of the German Irises, and the lovely white Scilla campanulata, a cheap bulb, of which we can hardly have too many. There is a blue and a pink kind, but the white is the most lovely; and, in my opinion, all three are better worth growing than the usual Hyacinths, double or single. I think the people who live in the country in spring would find it more satisfactory to grow their greenhouse bulbs in large, open pans, several together, and covered with some of the mossy Saxifrages, than the usual two or three in a pot that gardeners are so fond of. If the pan has no hole at the bottom for drainage, you must put in lots of crocks, and be careful not to over-water; but bulbs like their roots moist.

I made a curious experiment with the little double Prunus. One moved last autumn, and one moved last spring out of the nursery into a sunny, sheltered border, are both covered with bloom, and lovely objects. Another plant, which was left in a sunny border for a year, has no bloom on it at all, though it is quite healthy. This is one more proof of how much is to be done with reserve gardens and moving in this light dry soil. Next month I shall choose a wet day, and move them all back again into the nursery. The white Dog-tooth Violet and the various Fritillarias are very satisfactory things. They like shade and a certain amount of moisture, but it is not necessary for their cultivation; they will grow anywhere. The common Saxifraga, London Pride, is a most desirable, useful plant; it is the better for dividing every two years. It travels well picked, and is so pretty and decorative in water; it looks well with large red Oriental Poppies, with no green at all. Silene, too, looks well with it in small glasses, for a change.

Deutzia crenata is a charming shrub, and flowering well this year. Unless the garden is very small, anyone who lives in the country in spring ought to have it. There is so little room for shrubs in a very small plot of ground, and no garden can be beautiful except when the lie of the ground and the surrounding circumstances are beautiful. The only ambition that can be indulged in with a small flat ground is to grow the greatest number of healthy plants possible in the least amount of space, and so secure continuous and varied flowers for nine months of the year.

The planning and laying-out of a small garden without great natural advantages ought to be as practical and simple as possible, a mere improvement on the cottage garden:-A small, straight path of brick or paving-stone, or grass or gravel, though that is the least desirable of all to my mind. Let beds be on either side. If you have shrubs round the edge of the garden to hide the paling, have a grass path in front of the shrubs, and then square or long beds in the middle. Never have a small lawn with beds cut in that; nothing gives so much labour and so little satisfaction as beds cut out of grass, and what makes them uglier still is bordering them again with some plant. The flowers are much better out in the open, away from the moisture-devouring shrubs. In gardening, as in many things in life, let your wits improve on what is rather below you; never look at the squire's big garden in your neighbourhood, and then try and imitate it in small. Nothing makes a more charming edging for beds, if you have gravel paths, than large flat stones; they retain the moisture, and many small, low-growing things feather over the stones and look very well indeed.