If you have a small garden full of delicate flowers, we should advise you not to grow Sunflowers at all. A group of them looks well in a shrubbery or at the back of a mixed border, and we have seen them used with admirable effect in a straight row, standing like sentinels on guard behind all the other plants in the bed; but they take up room, and require a great deal of food. If you want them, and your garden was not dressed in the autumn, some well-rotted compost should be dug in for the Sunflowers in spring. The young plants will not stand frost, and are usually raised in heat; but you can grow them quite successfully under a bell-glass, or, in warm parts of England, in the open ground. If you mean to raise them in this way, you must wait till quite the end of April or the beginning of May. The big seeds should be covered with an inch and a half of soil, and if you sow where they are to stand, put two close together to provide against failure. If both come up and live, the smaller of the two can be removed. Slugs devour the young plants if they can get at them, so you should put a little soot round each one. They need strong stakes, as most of them grow to a great height, and are easily blown down. There are some, however, that are not more than four feet high, and have a great many small flowers useful for cutting. Stella and Primrose Stella are good dwarf varieties. SHIRLEY POPPIES. If you happen to have a rough bank or a piece of waste ground where nothing much will grow, you can make it bright with annual Poppies, and if you let them seed themselves, they will come up in quantities year after year. They prefer a light soil to a heavy one, and they must have sun. It is of no use to sow Poppy-seed in a shady garden. In the border the amateur gardener invariably sows too much seed, and when it comes up his troubles begin. Poppy-seeds are small and cheap, and as a rule every seed germinates. You sow it in fine soil, and either cover it lightly or just rub it in with your hand. If you have not been careful to sow only the tiniest pinch mixed with sand, you will soon see the seedlings as thick as cress above the soil, and if you leave them you will not have any good plants, as Poppies want room to grow. They have tap-roots, and will not transplant, so you must thin them hard, leaving them at least six inches apart. Shirley Poppies have delicate stalks, and when you grow a clump in your garden, you should put a few stakes amongst them, and tie them with raffia or string, as otherwise they get beaten down and spoiled by a summer storm. The seed should be sown at the end of April. The Shirley Poppies have most beautiful colours, and they will last some time in water if you cut them when the buds are just beginning to show colour. Wilks’s re-selected Shirley is one of the best varieties. The Peony and Carnation-flowered Poppies make larger and stronger plants than the Shirleys. They should be sown in