16 AUGUST 1946, Page 14

In My Garden Garden books usually advise us to sow

annuals in the autumn, with a view to earlier flowering. It seems to me that the great value of annuals is that they will flower late. The Shirley poppies the cornflowers, love-in-a-mist and marigolds that were sown late in die spring are now just coming into full flower at the date when most other things in the herbaceous border are going off or have quite gone. They successfullY succeed those self-sown in autumn. An oddity of the season is the free second flowering of the sweetbriars and Penzances.