Directions for sowing the biennial Chinese and Japanese pinks were given in the chronicle concerning the hardy seed bed.  These pinks are not really fragrant, though most of them have a pleasant apple odour that, together with their wonderful range of colour, makes them particularly suitable for table decoration.

In addition to the mixed colours recommended for the general seed bed, the following Japanese varieties are of special beauty, among the single pinks:  Queen of Holland, pure white; Eastern Queen, enormous rose-pink flowers, Crimson Belle, dark red.  Among the double, Fireball, an intense scarlet; the Diadem pink, Salmon Queen, and the lovely Oriental Beauty with diversely marked petals of a crepy texture.

The double varieties of course are more solid and lasting, if they do not insist upon swelling so mightily that they burst the calyx and so have a dishevelled and one sided look; but for intrinsic beauty of colour and marking the single Chinese and Japanese pinks, particularly the latter, reign supreme.  They have a quality of holding one akin to that of the human eye and possess much of the power of individual expression that belongs to pansies and single violets.

By careful management and close clipping of withered flowers, a bed of these pinks may be had in bloom from June until December, the first flowers coming from the autumn-sown plants, which may be replaced in August by those sown in the seed bed in late May, which by this time will be well budded.

“August is a kittle time for transplanting border things,” I hear you say.  To be sure; but with your water-barrel, the long-necked water-pots, and a judicious use of inverted flower-pots between ten A.M. and four P.M., there is no such word as fail in this as in many other cases.

[Illustration:  SINGLE AND DOUBLE PINKS.]

Upon the second and third classes you must depend for pinks of the taller growth ranging from one to two feet in height and flourishing long-stemmed clusters of deliciously clove-scented flowers.  The hardy Margarets might be wintered in the pit, if it were worth the while, but they are so easily raised from seed, and so prone literally to bloom themselves to death in the three months between midsummer and hard frost, that I prefer to sow them each year in late March and April and plant them out in May, as soon as their real leaves appear, and pull them up at the general autumnal garden clearance.  Upon the highly scented perpetual and picotee pinks or carnations (make your own choice of terms) you must depend for fragrance between the going of the May pinks and the coming of the Margarets; not that they of necessity cease blooming when their more easily perfected sisters begin; quite the contrary, for the necessity of lifting them in the winter gives them a spring set-back that they do not have in England, where they are the universal hardy pink, alike of the gardens of great estates and the brick-edged cottage border.