In talking of the Welsh Poppy in July I spoke of it as one of the plants which are such weeds that at times one says, 'Oh, I wish I had never introduced the horrible thing into the garden at all!'

Another of these is the Campanula ranunculus, or Creeping Bell-flower-'creeping,'not because of its growth, but because of its root. After rain in July, August, or September, or even much later, I know nothing more lovely than the way it throws up its flower-stems, quite in unexpected places. These when picked and fixed in vases in the Japanese way are most graceful, and last a long time in water. Another terrible weed is the wild annual Balsam, Impatiens glandulifera, which sows itself in the most audacious and triumphant manner; but it takes little root-hold, and is easy to pull up in the spring. What a wonderfully handsome, yet delicate, plant it is! with its beautiful flowers, its long pointed leaves, its red square stems, its seed-vessels shaped like buds, which burst with a crack and scatter the seeds far and wide. Were the plant difficult to grow, no garden or greenhouse would be without it. It deserves a place, even if reduced to one plant, in every moderate-sized garden; it looks •especially well grown as a single plant in good soil. To add to its perfections it has a delicate, sweet smell, and does well in water. Gardeners will always look upon it, with a show of reason, as a horrid weed; but flower-lovers will never be without it. The little yellow Fumitory is invaluable for walls and dry places and under shrubs, always looking fresh and green and flourishing, however dry the weather or apparently unfavourable the situation. It is a weed, but it keeps away other weeds, which, as the old nurse said, was the great use of mothers-they kept away stepmothers. Another low-growing, fast-spreading small plant I strongly recommend is the Polygonum affine. It has pink flowers, which continue in bloom many weeks; it can be increased with the greatest facility by division, and it is a good border plant, as the leaves take beautiful colours in the autumn. The hardy Plumbago larpentce is a first-rate plant for a sunny, dry place, and its bright-blue flowers continue till the frost comes. Tradescantia virginica is a plant constantly turned out of borders, as it spreads so fast; but all it requires is severe thinning in the spring, and again sometimes in the summer. I have four shades-the ordinary blue, a deep red-purple shade, a pale grey, and a pure white; they are lovely flowers, and interesting through their unusual shape. All these last-mentioned plants are well worth growing in even the smallest gardens. September l5th.-I have flowered out of doors this year for the first time the beautiful Amaryllis belladonna. Anyone who has a garden, or a wall or a corner near a greenhouse, where the conditions for growing this Lily can be carried out, ought to spare no effort to make it successful. The instructions have been clearly given in the 'English Flower Garden,'but I have found two other things helped the growth-one is planting them by the wall of the greenhouse where the warm pipes run; and the other is, when the leaves have died down in June, and the earth is weeded and raked, to cover the beds where the bulbs are planted with pieces of glass, so that the rains of July, which are so frequent, should not damp the bulbs before they are ready to start into flower in September. When the flower-buds appear, a dose of liquid manure may be given them; and a little fern to protect their leaves in early spring is desirable. I know nothing more beautiful than the fine, pink, Lily-like flower on its thick, rich brown stem when brought into a room. September 16th.-About this date is when we look, here in the South, for the first sign of cold, or even for frost. The weather must be watched, and any half-hardy things that have not done flowering are best taken up, potted, and encouraged to go on flowering. The drought this year kept many things back. My Tuberoses and the sweet-smelling white Bouvardia-the one best worth growing, especially outside-I must now take up, and they will go on flowering in the greenhouse. The pink and red Bouvardias are pretty, but have no sweet scent, like the white; the pink ones are a true pink, and that is always worth cultivating for a greenhouse, where every shade of magenta should be excluded. I am sure many of the eye-shocks we receive with regard to colour-both in dress, in rooms, and in the arrangement of flowers-is not so much owing to what would be called bad taste as to various degrees of colour-blindness. An inability to see colours at all, much less to see the shades truly and correctly, is far more common than we imagine, and is one of the things that should be tested in children, as-though probably the defect cannot be cured, any more than short sight, which is now so much helped by glasses, etc.-any good oculist would give advice as to the best method of cultivating the eye to be true as regards colour. The improvement in the arrangement of cut flowers in the last twenty years is very great indeed, and in almost every family there is one member at least who gives it real love and attention; but I hardly ever see a greenhouse, large or small, that is hot left entirely to the tender mercy of the gardener, who thinks of nothing, and quite rightly, but of his plants being healthy. He spots everything about-red, white, blue, grey, yellow-and often in the very midst he places some well-grown but terrible blue-pink or magenta Pelargonium, which puts everything out of tone. In the greenhouse, as in the garden, two things are to be aimed at-form and colour: and in a greenhouse one must be sure to add plants that give forth a sweet smell. To get the colour good, you must keep the plants in groups, the same colours as much as possible together, a bold mass of yellow, red, or blue, dividing them with green or nearly-green plants. Cryptomeria japonica makes a charming greenhouse shrub, and will grow in very small pots, and not grow quickly; it is, however, only one of many. Another small green growth that is very pretty, and easy to grow and increase by division, is Pilea muscosa. For smell I know nothing more delicious than the mixture of Lilium auratum and Humea elegans; but lately I have had to give up that tiresome though charming half-hardy biennial, as, like the Hollyhocks, it is so apt to get a disease, its leaves growing spotty and falling off. In the 'English Flower Garden' it is said that this happens from sowing it too early the previous year. A thick-leaved plant called Bochea falcata I find a useful greenhouse plant. It has to be two or three years old before it flowers, but is easy to increase from cuttings in July. I tried drying it off like the Cactuses, but that does not answer; it requires a warm greenhouse all the winter and a little water. For baskets in the greenhouse I use Fuchsia procumbent; it has a lovely little miniature flower, and later a pretty fruit three times as big as the flower. Campanula garganica (blue, and the white one too) and Convolvulus mauritanicus are lovely basket plants. The last-named, nearly hardy, is from North Africa, and easy to increase from division or cuttings. The Cape Mesembryanthemums are pretty basket plants, and do well in a sunny greenhouse. Small, old-fashioned Ivy-leaved Geraniums grow prettily in baskets. But the flowers are endless that can be grown in this way; some require a saucer to keep in the moisture, others do not. Nothing, however, will teach all this but experience and constant reference to the books.

Among the immense mass of annuals advertised in catalogues it is often so difficult to make up one's mind what to have. I live, luckily for me, not far from Mr. Barr's Nursery at Long Ditton, and this gives me a chance of seeing a variety of plants and annuals for which no private garden would have room. Two little half-hardy annuals that flowered this year for a very long time seem to me well worth growing, Alonsoa linifolia and A. Warscewiczii. I do wish such small flowers would have less break-jaw names. They are low-growing (about a foot or a foot and a half high), rather delicate-looking little plants; but so bright in colour, one scarlet and the other scarlet and orange. They are very effective if grown in a good large clump. Bartonia aurea is a picturesque-growing yellow summer annual, which does well in this light soil.

Limnanthes Douglasii, a Californian annual, is much ioved of bees in spring, and, if sown early in the autumn, flowers in May. Wallflowers require sowing very early for the following year; also all the Primrose and Polyanthus tribe are all better sown in April. I know nothing more puzzling in gardening than the times of sowing annuals and biennials to make them successful, and I imagine they must have different treatment in different soils and climates. Constant practice and study are required. All the autumn things do best here sown late in April or at the beginning of May; otherwise they come in too early. Early annuals and late annuals are worth growing in this light soil; but Poppies, Salpiglossis, Mignonette, and Sweet-peas are, I think, almost the only summer annuals we make room for every year. Eschscholtzias and Musk sow themselves, and only have to be thinned. The common Hemp {Cannabis sativa) is a lovely foliage-plant when well grown and not crowded up.

It is all-important to remember in the sowing of seeds from January to September, be it in heat or out of doors, and whether perennials, biennials, annuals, or greenhouse plants, that what we want is not a quantity of seedlings all germinating into life in masses, but a few fine healthy plants. The larger and cheaper the packet of seed, the more thinly they should be sown. In the case of rare and delicate plants it is well to sow only one seed in each pot, the smallest that can be got (I have never seen any so small as the French ones), sink them in a box with cocoanut fibre, -Which prevents the necessity of constant watering. Seedlings, like all other plants, are the better for using nothing but rain-water, if possible. If the sowing is done in a seed bed out of doors, and if the weather is very dry, it is best to soak the ground well first before sowing, and then cover the tiny seed beds with fine gravel, leaving the small stones in, as they give great protection to the seeds from the heat of the sun. We have all noticed the vigour with which self-sown seeds grow in a gravel path. Towards the end of this month, or at the beginning of the next, is the time to take the early layers off the Carnations and to re-make the beds, or, at any rate, to plant them in clearly-named rows in the kitchen garden, so that they may be carefully moved in the spring with a ball of earth. I find that the beds made up in early autumn do much the best, though one is loath to disturb Carnations which may go on occasionally throwing up a flower, or whose foliage, in any case, is so very beautiful half through the winter if the weather keeps mild.