The seed of Foxgloves should be sown in June, either in boxes or in the open ground. You can prick them out to where they are to stand, or you can sow in their permanent quarters and thin to nine inches or a foot apart. Remember that they are tall plants, and must be at the back of your border. As you get three thousand seeds for a penny, you will have some over to sow in wild places. STOCKS (MATTHIOLA). These sweet-scented flowers make a display in your border all through the spring. They like a rich, well-dressed soil, and are generally poor and spindly on a starved one. The Brompton and Intermediate are good kinds to grow. Sow the seeds in summer in partial shade, and in moist weather plant out, nine inches apart, where they are to bloom. Make the soil firm round the young plants. Mr. E. T. Cook, in his ‘Gardening for Beginners,’ says that amateurs often make a mistake in rejecting the dwarf seedlings and keeping only the tall ones. The dwarf ones have more fibrous roots, and make more double flowers. The colours of Stocks have been greatly improved of late years, and if you get your seed from a good firm you need not grow the magenta ones you often see in small gardens. CHAPTER VI BEDDING PLANTS BY bedding plants we mean those plants that are raised in great quantities under glass, and are put out into our gardens in May. To be sure, you hear of ‘spring’ and ‘summer’ bedding, because in the autumn, when you take up your summer plants, you can fill your bed with bulbs and spring flowers, such as Stocks, Wallflowers, Primroses, and Forget-me-nots. The principal of ‘bedding’ is, you see, to plant your piece of ground, so as to have a good display twice a year. Every autumn you throw away your summer plants, and every summer you throw away your spring ones. This, at any rate, is what thousands of people with small town gardens do, and it is the form of gardening beloved of the jobbing gardener and the local florist. We recommend it to people who have money, but take no interest in their gardens, and to small children who will find it the easiest form of gardening, and even to children who live in or near great cities where some plants will lead a merry life, but where none will lead a long one. But it is not a high form of gardening, and cannot teach you much as long as you buy every six months and throw away. Of course, when you raise and increase your bedders, either spring or summer ones, you are gardening in the true sense of the word. But most of the flowers you see in town gardens from May till October are raised in heat from seeds and cuttings, and we think the appliances and the skill required would be beyond you.