It is an excellent plan, if you have a very sunny window that you are glad to have shaded in the summer and not in winter, to put two bars of wood like a bracket out from the wall as a support for one long bar; or if your window is high, and so requires more width to shade it, have two, or even three, bars across the top. You plant on one side a Vine or a Wistaria, and train it over this kind of wooden eyebrow. If you have a Wistaria, the flowers hang through in spring; if you have a Vine, the little bunches of grapes hang charmingly along the top of your window in autumn. In both cases the branches become quite bare at the first frost, and so your room is not shaded at a wrong time of year. I think this method of growing certain plants usually grown against walls will please many plant-loving people.

I have been so often asked about London gardens, and in two cases have taken real and active interest in them-one a small square piece of ground behind an old house in Westminster; and another much larger, very near the Addison Road Station. In all cases in and near London I say, emphatically, 'Avoid evergreens.' They get black and miserable, and look horrid, even in winter; though, if syringed and pruned, I think both Aucuba and Box, and especially the latter, might be kept clean and flourishing, and even prove useful for picking. Ivy, too, on a wall facing north is often preferable to the bare wall. I have said a great deal in August against growing Virginia Creeper and Ampelopsis veitchii, because of its spoiling and hiding beautiful old houses; but in London, and where we want to hide, they are the most useful and, indeed, invaluable Creepers that can be planted. They have every merit, are quick growers in any soil, graceful if pruned and cared for, and yet doing well if left alone. Their growth in the spring and early summer is full of beauty, and in London they hasten to lose their leaves without colouring them.

On the back of a house my parents built in '41, in Rutland Gate, was planted, I think, the first Virginia Creeper I ever remember in London. In those days beyond this house it was all fields and nursery gardens. London was not then quite so black as it is now-not in that part, at any rate. I well remember the beauty and glory of this Virginia Creeper. It was never pruned, and hung from top to bottom of the house in lovely masses of falling foliage. Virginia Creepers, like many other things, vary a little in their growths; one that has its leaves out early in the spring is the best for London. The Ampelopsis is prettier for being very much starved, as the leaves keep smaller, and less like the redundant growth at Boston, which I so condemned before. But on the whole, even for London, I prefer the growth of the common Virginia Creeper.

Autumn effects need never be thought of in London at all. When people come back to the West End, after the holidays, it is nearly winter. The poor leaves, choked and smothered in soot, have fallen sadly and greyly to the ground, leaving all their autumn glory to their more fortunate country brethren; and all can be swept clean and tidy before anyone comes back. Amongst deciduous shrubs all the ordinary common ones do very well, and only want attention and pruning, and pulling-off of suckers, as the same plants require in the country. Privets, being half-deciduous, do very well also. Bamboos are useless, as they are never in full beauty, even in the country, till the autumn and winter. In all small gardens it is my advice to avoid turf, and especially in London. It never looks well, and is expensive and troublesome to maintain, which is one reason the day-gardener likes it. Have as wide a border all round the wall as you can afford, and some red gravel or a bricked or tiled square in the middle of the garden to sit on.

Have a sunk tub, in the sun, from which to fill a hose, to water more delicate things; and do not hose too much, especially if your soil is damp, except in very warm weather. On the walls have Ribes sanguineum and Forsythias, as they flower very early. Vines and Fig-trees, white Jasmine, and Jasminum nudiflorum, all do well in London. Wherever there is room on the walls facing south put the deciduous Magnolias (see 'English Flower Garden '). The Magnolia grandiflora has such polished and very shiny leaves; it grows very well near London. I remember some very fine plants of the same that used to grow in gardens at Walham Green and Fulham, where in my youth people gave what are now called garden-parties and used then to be called 'Breakfasts '-why, I do not know, as they never began till three o'clock in the afternoon. Perhaps the French refugees brought in the fashion of such entertainments, full of the recollections of the de'jeune'champetre of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. and their Courts.

I know a Magnolia in Addison Road-I think it must be a M. conspicua-that, though crowded up and apparently neglected, flowers most beautifully every spring, nearly as well as the famous one which is such a marked ornament every year in the Champs Ely sees. A Forsythia at the corner of Marlborough House garden in the early spring has often excited my admiration. I quote these examples to show that plants will grow and flower in London still, if well chosen and cared for.

For the borders, I recommend no edging; it is expensive and useless. The gravel is enough; and it is, I think, prettier to disguise the fact of a line than to accentuate it. Plant what you have in bold clumps-the tall plants, of course, at the back; but rather in waves of height, with bays of the front low-growing things, running back towards and under the wall. Anything looks better than a row of plants all the same, or nearly the same, height. There are the line of the wall and the line of the path. Your object must be, not to repeat these, but to work into your border that which makes either beautiful form or beautiful colour, or both at the same time. Do not repeat your clumps over and over again. For instance, if you have a good number of German Irises (many of which grow admirably in London), put them into two large groups-one facing east or south (which is the best) and the other facing north or west. In this way you may hope for a succession, an object that anyone who plants for flowering reasons ought never to have out of their mind. Spanish Irises would, I believe, do very well in a London garden if planted every year in a sunny corner in October. They are not expensive (see catalogues). Buy no double or even single Dutch Hyacinths; they are not worth it. They last a very short time, are often injured by the weather, and can be seen in the Parks in mournful and irritating regularity and perfection. Buy Snowdrops, Crocuses, Scillas (see 'English Flower Garden '), especially S. hispanica, blue, white and pink (though the pink one is rather the least pretty), S. bifolia, S. sibirica, S. italica, and our own common Blue-bells (Wood Hyacinths), S. nutans. I think the only real Hyacinth worth trying would be the early Roman. The only seed I would recommend sowing in place is Mignonette, and that would want watering. For all other annuals, and many other things that are not annuals, I would pocket my gardening pride and act in the following manner:-In April, and again in May, make out from the books a short or long list of plants, those common things that you would like to have, which flower early. Send or go to Covent Garden, taking a basket with you, and buy the seedlings there two or three inches high; bring them back, plant them at once, and water them and watch them. Plants are just like children; it is a keen, watchful, ever-attentive, thoughtful eye they require -not, figuratively speaking, pulling up by the roots to see how they are getting on. If you cannot go to Co vent Garden, go to the nearest nurseryman, and try and get there what you want. I would buy Daisies, Forget-me-nots, Violas, Pansies, common Marigolds, Nasturtiums, blue Lobelias, Geraniums, Sweet Verbenas-in fact, nearly all the things you see. Only make notes year by year as to what does best, and try to learn for yourself what likes full sun and what likes half-shade, and what can be planted in April and what not till the end of May. I believe in this way a very bright London garden might be seen-during May, June, and July, at any rate-at a very small expense.