bedding, good for cutting, and in some of the mammoth varieties subtly
fragrant. Verbenas may be raised to advantage in a hotbed, but if the
seed be soaked overnight in warm water, it will germinate freely out of
doors in May and be a mass of bloom from July until late October. For
beds grouped around a sundial or any other garden centre, the verbena
has no peer; its trailing habit gives it grace, the flowers are borne
erect, yet it requires no staking and it is easily controlled by
pinching or pinning to the soil with stout hair-pins.

One little fragrant flower, fraught with meaning and remembrance,
belongs to the annuals, though its family is much better known among the
half-hardy perennials that require winter protection here. This is the
gold and brown annual wall-flower, slender sister of _die gelbe violet_,
and having that same subtle violet odour in perfect degree. It cannot be
called a decorative plant, but it should have plenty of room given it in
the bed of sweet odours and be used as a border on the sunny side of
wall or fence, where, protected from the wind and absorbing every ray of
autumn sunlight, it will often give you at least a buttonhole bouquet
on Christmas morning.

[Illustration: THE SUMMER GARDEN--VERBENAS.]

The cosmos is counted by catalogues and culturists one of the most
worthy of the newer annuals, and so it is when it takes heed to its ways
and behaves its best, but otherwise it has all the terrible uncertainty
of action common to human and garden parvenues. From the very beginning
of its career it is a conspicuous person, demanding room and abundance
of food. Thinking that its failure to bloom until frost threatened was
because I had sown the seed out of doors in May, I gave it a front room
in my very best hotbed early in March, where, long before the other