July is a very busy month in all gardens. The borders must be cleared and replanted, the seeds of perennials have to be gathered and sown, and many other things require attention. The Delphiniums may bravely be cut down after flowering; it does them no harm, and they often break again and have stray flowering sprays in the autumn. Some of the best seed should be sown every year. The same with the Ver-bascums; if cut down, they flower again, in rather a different way, but very charmingly, in the autumn. July is also the great time for sowing perennials, or perennials that are treated as biennials; and when you have fine flowers or good colours, it is quite worth while to mark the flowers by tying a piece of bass or coloured wool round the stalk. These little white ties are recognised and respected by the gardeners while clearing the borders, a work which it is essential to do in July. I sow a great many things every year, and find them most useful-Gaillardias, Coreopsis lanceolata, Snapdragons (Antirrhinums). Oh, how useful and beautiful are the tall yellow and the tall white Snapdragons! They can be played with in so many ways: potted up in the autumn, grown and flowered in a greenhouse, cut back and planted out in the spring to flower again, admirable to send away; in fact, they have endless merits, and in a large clump in front of some dark corner or shrub they look very handsome indeed. They are lovely picked and on the dinner-table, especially the yellow Snapdragons, but, like many other things, they just want a little care and cultivation, which they often do not get; and they ought to be sown every April, and again in July. The smaller the garden, the more essential are these plants for people who like having flowers to pick; but I warn everyone against those terrible inventions of seedsmen, the Dwarf Antirrhinums; they have all the attributes of a dwarf, and are impish and ugly. The flower is far too large for the stalk, and they are, to my mind, entirely without merit. July is the time I take up both the English and the Spanish Irises, which makes them do ever so much better. The English Irises are best planted again at once, only taking off the small bulbs. The Spanish Irises are best dried in the sun and replanted in September. In both cases the small bulbs are planted in rows in the kitchen garden; they take up little room, and in this way the stock is increased. In our soil, unless treated in this way, they dwindle, cease flowering, and ultimately disappear. I lost many from not knowing this in my early gardening days, when I was certainly green in judgment. The Spanish Iris likes a dry place in full sun; the English Iris does best in half-shade, and likes moisture if it can get it, but flowers well without; the leaves are what suffer most from dryness-long, succulent, moisture-loving things that they are.