and strength. Moral: Plant
carefully, support your tall plants, keep all your plants in easy
circumstances, don't put them to the trouble of ripening seed (unless
you specially want it). To this end cut off fading flowers, and also
cut off buds in places where they would not show well when they came
out, and all this economized strength will go into the blossoms that
remain.

_You cannot grow everything. Grow what suits your soil and climate,
and the best kinds of these, as well as you can._ You may make soil to
suit a plant, but you cannot make the climate to suit it, and some
flowers are more fastidious about the air they breathe than about the
soil they feed upon. There are, however, scores of sturdy, handsome
flowers, as hardy as highlanders, which will thrive in almost any
soil, and under all the variations of climate of the British Isles.
Some will even endure the smoke-laden atmosphere of towns and town
suburbs; which, sooner or later, is certain death to so many. It is a
pity that small florists and greengrocers in London do not know more
about this; and it would be a great act of kindness to them and to
their customers to instruct them. Then, instead of encouraging the
ruthless slaughter of primroses, scores and hundreds of plants of
which are torn up and then sold in a smoky atmosphere to which they
never adapt themselves, these small shopkeepers might offer plants of
the many beautiful varieties of poppies, from the grand _Orientalis_
onwards, chrysanthemums, stocks, wall-flowers, Canterbury bells,
salvias, oenotheras, snapdragons, perennial lobelias, iris, and
other plants which are known to be very patient under a long course of
soot. Most of the hardy California annuals bear town life well.
Perhaps because they have only to bear it for a year. _Convolvulus
major_--the Morning Glory, as our American cousins so prettily call
it--flourishes on a smutty wall as generously as the Virginian
creeper.

_North borders are safest in winter._ They are free from the dangerous
alternation of sunshine and frost. Put things of doubtful hardihood
under a north wall, with plenty of sandy soil or ashes over their
roots, some cinders on that, and perhaps a little light protection,
like bracken, in front of them, and their chances will not be bad.
Apropos to tender things, if your little garden is in a cold part of
the British Isles, and has ungenial conditions of soil and aspect,
don't try to keep tender things out of doo