The most beautiful bed of pansies I've seen was in a South Dakota yard on a sizzling day. Pansies are supposed to like it cool, but those great velvety flowers were healthy and perky in the glaring sun. I sought out the gardener and asked him what he did to produce such beauties in that weather. He seemed puzzled by my question. ``I just love them,'' he said.

The more I talked with him, the more convinced I became that that was the secret of their riotous blooming. Of course his love was expressed in intelligent care. He planted the pansy seeds himself, buying them from a pansy specialist. These specialists, I learned, have done a great deal of work to improve the size and health of the plants and the resulting flowers. Their seeds produce vigorous blooming plants half again the size of the unimproved strains.

I asked him if he took seeds from his own plants. Occasionally, when he had an unusual flower that he wanted more of he did; but pansy seeds, he told me, soon ``run down.'' It's best to buy them fresh from a dealer who is working to improve them.

His soil was ``nothing special,'' just prairie land, but he had harrowed in compost until it was loose, spongy and brown black. I fingered it and had the feeling of adequacy that comes with the right texture, tilth and body. It isn't easy to describe it, but every gardener knows it when his fingers touch such soil.

Nothing is easier to grow from seed than pansies. They germinate quickly, the tiny plants appearing in a week, and grow along lustily. It doesn't really matter which month of the year you sow them, but they germinate best when they have a wide variation of temperature, very warm followed by cool in the same 24 hours.