Sweet-peas may be sown this month without harm, but it is too early for your other seeds, as long as you depend on an outdoor garden. The impatient, inexperienced gardener reaps nothing but failure when he sows too early. If you are lucky enough to have a frame, you will find it most useful, even though the elaborate, costly hot-beds described in gardening books are beyond your reach. A simple hot-bed can be made with some manure, which must be put in the frame and turned over two or three times with a garden fork. It is then spread out flat, and covered with good garden soil. You can either sow your seeds in this soil or put your seed-boxes on it a few days after it is made. If a hot-bed cannot be made you can fill your frame with cinders, and place your seed-boxes on them. The boxes must be lifted in some way, so as to be near the glass, or the seedlings would grow spindly. On warm days you must open your frame and let in air, or the soil will turn sour and mossy. In showery weather let in rain, and in a drought water judiciously. The four elementary things to remember about seeds grown in a frame are: they must be raised in some way, so as to be near the glass; they must have air to keep the soil healthy; they must be shaded from strong sunshine; and they must be moist, but not too moist. You do not want them either to be withered by drought or smothered by moss. MARCH. This is a busy month in the garden. When it ‘comes in like a lion’ you have to sit idle; but directly there are mild, dry days you should be at work. Wherever you mean to sow seeds the ground should be well dug, and then raked smooth and fine. If you just rake the top, and leave the soil beneath in a hard cake, your seeds will be like those sown in the parable that fell on stony ground and had no depth of earth. They will spring up, but they will have no roots, and when the sun comes they will wither away. In a cold climate Sweet-peas and Mignonette should not be sown till the middle or end of this month, and most other seeds will do better if sown in April. March is too early for Nasturtiums or Convolvuluses, two flowers most children wish to grow. Towards the end of the month you can divide those herbaceous plants that are not spring-flowering, if you wish to increase them. You must not disturb plants that are just going to flower, but all the strong kinds will stand division and transplanting when they have only sent up young leaves. For instance, you could take up a Phlox, a Michaelmas Daisy, or even a Pyrethrum, on a showery day, pull it to pieces, and find that every bit made a strong plant by the autumn. In the rock garden the mossy Saxifrages that have bald places in the middle should be taken up, divided, and firmly replanted. This is the way to treat many little rock plants that grow themselves shabby in a year or two. Any new hardy perennials you want may be planted in favourable March weather, and so may the autumn-flowering Gladioli. APRIL.