Straker's, and whenever I see something nice in seed I bag it. In
another week it would drop beneath the plant it grew on and, not being
cared for by a gardener, would be smothered or hoed up. In a nice
little seed-bed all to itself it can unfold all manner of pleasure for
its abductor.

Plant your flower seeds on a nice ripe, rich bed--that is, one
compounded of old and even half-used manure. Keep the seedlings
watered as they grow and by judicious pricking-out give them the room
they need. About October you can plant the best of them in the place
where you want a good bush next year, and, if it is a perennial, you
have for many years to come a beautiful plant with a personal history.
Even if you have bought your penn'orth of seed there may be a pleasant
anecdote connected with it. My garden is at present amazingly blue
with Dropmore Alkanet (Anchusa). Three years ago I bought three seeds
for a penny. Two of them came up. I slashed up the plants and now I
have half-a-dozen clumps as well as a similar number left in the old
garden whence I have removed.

If you asked me what kinds of seed in particular you ought to plant
for perennial flowers just now, I might want many more pages to tell
you in. Let me give you a very short list of those that most appeal to
me on the spur of the moment. It will be enough to go on with:--

Trollius (globe flower).
Helianthemum (rock rose).
Epilobium (willow herb).

Hollyhock.
Echinops (globe thistle).
Anchusa Italica, Dropmore variety.

Lupine.
Tritoma (red-hot poker).
Heuchera (coral-root).
Yarrow.

Lychnis (garden campion).
Inula (Elecampane).
Funkia (Plaintain lily).
Eremurus.

This list is representative because it includes some species, such as
Eremurus, Trollius and Tritoma, that are not usually grown from seed
by the amateur. To raise these rather expensive monsters from
pennyworths of seed is a floral adventure which brings its own
abundant reward.

I should be very proud of a garden that consisted entirely of plants
that I had raised from seed. It might be one that had never had
anything else in or the seedlings might gradually oust the bulbs and
corms and grown plants with which the garden began. There would be
many things there intrinsically as well as extrinsically valuable.
Carnation seed, for example, is constantly producing new varieties,
and to grow rose seedlings is even to court fortune. It is a