BY annuals we here mean flowers that bloom in summer from seed sown in early spring. Out of a long list we shall choose twelve that are all easy to grow and last in flower a long time. From these twelve you must choose again, for there would not be room for many in a small plot, and if you crowd them none will do well. It is a great mistake to think that people who can grow nothing else successfully can manage annuals. All the good seedsmen know how often they are blamed for failures when the amateur, or even the professional gardener, should blame himself. He has sown on ill-prepared soil, or too deeply; he has let birds eat the seed, or slugs and snails the seedlings; or he has sown too much seed, and been too lazy to thin out properly. Small birds are dreadful thieves in some gardens, and if you find them in yours you should put little twigs where you have sown your seed, and stretch a maze of black cotton from one twig to the other. They soon get to know that the cotton is there and keep away. [Illustration: JANUARY.] The twelve annuals we have chosen for you are: 1. Sweet-peas. 2. Mignonette. 3. Clarkia. 4. Malope. 5. Godetia. 6. Larkspur (_Delphinium_). 7. Love-in-a-mist (_Nigella_). 8. Nasturtiums. 9. Sunflowers. 10. Shirley Poppies. 11. Alonsoas. 12. Eschscholtzia. For most seeds that are sown in the open ground you must wait till the end of March in the South of England, and till the first or second week of April in the North. The old saying that ‘a peck of March dust is worth a King’s ransom’ will teach you something about sowing seeds. It means that you want your soil to be in a workable state, not hard with frost or sloppy with heavy rains, but friable and just moist with a light spring shower. When these pleasant spring days come, your work in the garden begins in earnest, and so does your pleasure. Some of the bulbs you have planted in autumn will be flowering; others will be pushing their way up towards the light; and your herbaceous plants—those that died down in the autumn—will be coming up again, and making delicious young green leaves. The part of your garden that you have saved for annuals must be carefully hoed and raked now, so that all the weeds are destroyed, and the soil made fine and powdery for your seedlings. Their little roots could not strike down and get any hold in hard, big lumps of earth, and it would be a waste of money and time to sow seed there. You should remove all stones and weeds, and break up the lumps of earth with your rake. The surface of your seed-bed, when ready, should be quite smooth and fine. If the seed to be sown is small, mix it with double its own quantity of sand, or dry sifted earth, as that helps you not to sow too thickly. Do not choose a windy day if you can help it, or your seeds would blow away. For a big patch of seeds it is best to take your hoe and draw shallow trenches, one inch deep and twelve or fifteen inches apart.