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Selection of Varieties: California

Ranking close to the Shirley poppies in my affections are the little eschscholtzias or California poppies. They are really my one great garden extravagance-these jolly little eschscholtzias; for I send each year to England for the seed. Somehow one does not mind in the least spending a considerable sum on perennial seeds or on roses or bulbs which will give their joys for years to come. If one's conscience pleads that one is being extravagant, it is easy to justify one's self. But with annuals it is different. Their beauty is so fleeting-the space of our short season and it is gone. So it is only after a struggle with conscience that one summons up courage to send abroad for a dozen packets of annual poppy seed at one shilling sixpence per packet. But what satisfaction they give when they are in bloom! The English seed firm from whom these lovely named varieties of eschscholtzia may be purchased states on the title-page of its catalogue that they are "seedsmen by appointment to His Majesty King George V." So perhaps these very varieties of poppies which I so love are grown in the royal gardens at Hampton Court or at Windsor. But I doubt if they are any more lovely when they bloom for His Majesty the King than they are when they bloom for me! Almost everyone is familiar with the ordinary little California poppies with their cheerful yellow and orange coloring, but these new varieties have soft tints of rose and ivory, flowers of delicate pink with prettily crimped petals, rich cherry-red, dull coppery tones, glowing orange, and scarlet. The foliage is soft gray-green in tone and finely cut.