Stan Bah tomer spate re ak £ $9 ves. ter oS iwerait ney i (a= el Nees =i san ae A aaa ae = = IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN ys ee a AVES : ye Mary AS MEASURE ATR CE Y fh ss \)\ sity \ \ yi Rasy S SAH iN Hy | PA St Pa Wate’ Pay Ws y Aff Edi h, LALA fi iA ur i Pais ‘ate ii iy W\\ceaay SAN DAD HN Ri * nt ; ) BUR Rhy) pu NCUA Wisse a St BANS ANNs WH \\ VS Wi: VY NN WANE su i | i | ly : ue i il] rik fel il) M ull a fea iN iil A Bitton Church. ENe mn GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN BY HENRY N. ELLACOMBE, M.A. VICAR OF BITTON, AND HONORARY CANON OF BRISTOL, AUTHOR OF ‘ PLANT LORE AND GARDEN CRAFT OF SHAKESPEARE y ILLUSTRATED SECOND EDITION 35 7 50 “spf” EDWARD ARNOLD LONDON NEW YORK 37 BEDFORD STREET 70 FIFTH AVENUE 1896 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION THIS volume owes its existence to certain papers of mine which were published in the Guardian during the years 1890-1893. In republishing them I have omitted some, and slightly altered others, but only so far as seemed necessary in order to bring them into book-form. At the time of their first appearance I received many kind communications and suggestions from readers of the Guardian and others. To all such I am glad to have this opportunity of returning my hearty thanks, as well as to the proprietors of the Guardian for kindly allowing the republication. HENRY N. ELLACOMBE. Birron VICARAGE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, April 1895. CONTENTS PART I. A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN CHAPTER PAGE I. JANUARY, , ‘ ; : : : 2 : 3 II. FEBRUARY, - : : ; . - : ae aks III. MARCH, . : : ; : : : : 5) Gil LV. APRIE,. 5 : ; : ; : : : sie rae Vv. MAY, 5 ‘ P ‘ : ‘ ‘ : ee Od, VI. JUNE, . : : - : : : : - | 68 WE. JULY, « ‘ : : P ‘ : : LS VIII. AUGUST, . : é : : ‘ : : > oe IX. SEPTEMBER, . : : . ; ; : eee 3; X. OCTOBER, - : : : F . - . 105 XI. NOVEMBER, . ‘ : : : : 3 > HIG XII. DECEMBER, . : : : : - : ¢ -128 PART II. XIII. SPRING FLOWERS, . ; ; : : - . 149 XIV. SHRUBS, . : : : ; : : : a 7) XV. LILIES, . 2 : ‘ : ‘ : F 5 Gir XVI. ROSES, . : : ; : : : : . 174 XVII. CLIMBING PLANTS, . - : : - : Be RB: XVIII. GARDEN WALLS, : ; i ‘ ‘ j pees XIX. AUTUMN LEAVES, . : ; ‘ ; : VAIS? XX. PALMS AND BAMBOOS, : i : F 3 spe XXI. BRAMBLES AND THISTLES, : A : : 5) BBB XXII. TREES IN THE GARDEN, . : : - ‘ . 247 XXIII. BIRDS IN THE GARDEN, . : : - : : 2208 XXIV. GARDEN ASSOCIATIONS, . : : : , «, -, 269 XXV. GARDEN LESSONS, . : : ; : ; — 219 XXVI. PARSONAGE GARDENS, . é : : : . 289 INDEX, . : : : : : : : . 299 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE GARDEN, BITTON VICARAGE, . : : Frontispiece TWELVE DESIGNS ILLUSTRATING THE TWELVE MonrtTuHs, facing the first page of each chapter, 1-x11 THE Moat GARDEN, Lenps CASTLE, Kent, . to face page 204 PLACE DES PALMIERS, HyERES, : : : i A DEVONSHIRE LANE, . , ‘ ; ‘ > CaTALPA TREE IN THE BITTON VICARAGE GARDEN, ,, THE GARDEN OF AN ITALIAN VILLA, A ; aA CEDARS IN THE BITTON VICARAGE GARDEN, . 5 TREES ON THE REcTORY LAWN, EVERSLEY, . ¥5 223 238 248 254 272 292 - _ 5 ae eee a a he Sa) ie. 7Y I ee ge aa CT CHAPTER I January Introduction—The garden described—Cyclamens— Christmas Roses. Every garden has its own special and separate char- acter, which arises partly from the tastes of the owner or his gardener, but still more from the situation, aspect, and soil of the garden. It is this that saves our gardens from monotony; if the conditions of every garden were the same, it is to be feared that the love of following the fashion of the day would make our gardens painfully alike. But this is pre- vented by the happy law that before success can be reached the nature of the garden must be studied, and the study soon leads to the conviction that we cannot take our neighbour’s garden as the exact model for our own, but must be content to learn a little from one and a little from another, and then to adapt the lessons to our own garden in the way that our own experience (often very dearly bought) tells us is the 3 4 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN best. And because of this special character in each separate garden it follows that each garden has something to teach, which cannot be taught so well elsewhere ; and the happy result is that no one with a love for gardening who visits other gardens with his eyes open can ever go into a garden (especially if the owner of that garden is a true lover of flowers) without learning something. And it is this that makes the records of good gardens such pleasant reading ; we cannot all go to Lancashire, Scotland, or the Thames Valley, but we can be thankful for the records of the gardens in those places as we read them in Mr. Bright’s Year in a Lancashire Garden, or The Chronicle of a Year, chiefly in a Garden (also in Lancashire), in Mr. Milner’s Country Pleasures, or in Miss Hope’s Gardens and Woodlands (near Edinburgh), or ‘E. V. B.’s’ delightful Days and Hours in a Garden (in Middlesex). With this conviction in my mind I think that a record of a garden far removed from Lancashire and Scotland, and even from Middlesex, with very different surroundings, and carried on under very different conditions, in south-west Gloucestershire, may have an interest. I must first describe the garden. It is not a large garden—the whole extent, including a good propor- JANUARY 5 tion of lawn, being about an acre and a half, and in shape a parallelogram, or double square. It lies on the west side of the Cotswolds, which rise about half a mile away to the height of 750 feet; and about fifteen miles to the south are the Mendips. These two ranges of hills do much to shelter us from the winds, both from the cold north and easterly winds, and from the south-west winds, which in this part of England are sometimes very violent. I attach great importance to this kindly shelter from the great strength of the winds, for plants are like our- selves in many respects, and certainly in this, that they can bear a very great amount of frost if only the air is still, far better than they can bear a less cold if accompanied with a high wind. The garden then has this advantage of shelter; it has also the advantage of a good aspect, for though the undula- tions are very slight, the general slope faces the south ; and it has the further advantage of a rich and deep alluvial soil, which, however, .is so im- pregnated with lime and magnesia, that it is hope- less to attempt rhododendrons, azaleas, kalmias, and a host of other things; and it has the further dis- advantage of being only about 70 feet above the sea-level, which makes an insuperable difficulty in the growth of the higher Alpines. On the whole, 6 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN the garden is favourable for the cultivation of flowers, and especially for the cultivation of shrubs, except those which dislike the lime. With this introduction I go to the record for January. ‘This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes ; to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him : The third day comes a frost, a killing frost ; And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls.’-—K. Henry VIII, iii. 2. This may well stand as the description of the gardener during the December and January of 1892-3. The first three weeks of December were so mild that many letters were written to the papers de- tailing the goodly collections of flowers that could be picked in almost all parts of the kingdom. Here I had an abundance of the bright flowers of Cyclamen coum; I picked several flowers of the sweet- scented Chimonanthus ; the Iris reticulata was shooting so thickly through the ground that, knowing how rapidly the flowers are formed after the first appear- ance of the leaves, I thought it quite possible that I might gather some of the lovely blossoms even on New Year’s Day ; the snowdrops were pushing their white sharp points through the grass and in the beds in every direction; on many of the cottages there JANUARY 7 was a golden covering of Jasminum nudiflorum, and the China roses had many half-opened flowers. But Christmas Eve brought a change ; then came ‘a frost, a killing frost ’— ‘ An envious, sneaping frost, That bites the first-born infants of the spring,’— and for three weeks a very low thermometer. But, in spite of the cold, some flowers, though very few, bravely held their own; and though they looked sad enough while the frost lasted, yet as soon as the thaw came they brightened up again, and looked as happy as if the mild weather of the early part of December had met with no interruption. Two flowers especially distinguished themselves in this way, the cyclamen and the Christmas rose, and on both I must say something. I am often surprised that the cyclamens are so little grown, for, with the exception of the Persian cyclamen, they are all quite hardy, they give no trouble, they may be let alone for years, and they increase rapidly by their seeds self-sown. The autumnal cyclamen (C. hederefolium) produces its pink or white flowers before the leaves, and at a time of year when we have many other plants in flower, and so, though the flowers are very pretty and sweet-scented, they are not so much noticed; but they are followed by very beautiful leaves, which look like variegated ivy-leaves, 8 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN and which keep their beauty all through the winter and spring. But for January we have the cyclamen of the south and east of Europe (C. cowm), which produces abundance of flowers, not so large as the autumnal species, but of a rich red (sometimes white) colour, and so freely producing plants from self-sown seeds, that I am sure I am not exaggerating when I say that I have hundreds of plants, many of them growing far away from the parent plants. I suppose they like the soil here, and though they are mostly wood plants I grow them under a south wall, as I do most plants that flower early in the year, for I think such early visitors deserve all the help and shelter we can give them. I wonder that those who have woods do not try to naturalise the cyclamen, but I never heard of its being so used; yet that it could be naturalised is certain, from the fact that it has found its way into English and other floras. But it is quite a southern plant, and is not found wild north of Switzerland, and there the native species (C. ewropeewm) is a summer bloomer, very pretty, but not equal to C. coum, and not so easily grown, yet it grows on some parts of the Alps up to 1500 feet, and I have it from the Rhone Glacier. I suppose the cyclamen is an old inhabitant of English gardens, for Gerard named some places in which it was to be found wild, — JANUARY 9 but Gerard’s localities of British plants are not to be trusted, and his editor, Johnson (who had no scruple in speaking disrespectfully of him), says it was never found wild in England. Turner, in 1548, could not go beyond, ‘I heare saye that it groweth in the west countrye of Englande’; and Parkinson says (no doubt with an eye to Gerard), ‘There groweth none in the places where some have reported them to grow.’ Still the mere report that the plant was found wild shows that it was at that time a common plant. I have a decided affection for this cyclamen—partly for its early appearance, even before the spring is with us; partly from old associations, dating from my earliest childhood ; and partly from the botanical and literary interest of the plant, on which, even at the risk of being tedious by speaking too much of one plant, I must say something. The botanical interest is chiefly connected with the curious habit of the plant to form its seed-vessel in the usual way, and then for the seed-vessel to hang down, and by a succession of coils of its flower-stem to bring the seed-vessel close to the ground, and there to bury it. The cyclamen belongs to the primrose family, and not only is it unlike all the other members of the family in this peculiar habit, but, so far as I 10 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN know, there is no other plant that does the same. Naturally all who have observed and written upon the plant have noticed this habit, and there is little doubt that the name of the plant was derived from this coiling habit, though some writers (e.g. Cowley and Miller) thought that the name came from its round roots and leaves ; but the fact that Pliny gives the name also to the honeysuckle, which has the same habit of coiling its branches, is to me a suffi- cient proof that this was the origin of the name. What special benefit comes to the plant from this habit we cannot say: it is easy to say that by it the seeds are protected during the winter; but that helps very little. There are tens of thousands of plants whose seeds are shed on the ground, and have to fight the battle of life through the winter ; and why this par- ticular protection should be given to the cyclamen above other plants is a riddle as yet unanswered. Darwin studied it, and could only say that it was a successful effort of the plant to turn away from the sun, for the protection of the seed, but could go no further ; so there we must leave it. But it is worth notice that the same coiling occurs generally in the Persian cyclamen, but in another part of the plant (besides the coiling of the flower-stem), for in that species it is a very common (if not universal) JANUARY ll habit of the petals when beginning to fade to twist themselves into miniature corkscrews. And in the same connection it would be interesting to know whether this coiling takes place in the double cycla- mens (presumably not seed-bearing). I have never seen the double cyclamen, and do not suppose the beauty of the flower would be increased by doubling ; but our forefathers had it ; it is described by Parkin- son, and appears in some of the old Dutch and French engravings of spring flowers, and, I suppose, it was known to Rapin (1672), for so only can I interpret his lines :— ‘Greeca peregrinis venit cyclaminus ab oris, Coreyrz geminam montes peperere frequentem.’ The literary interest of the cyclamen is connected with the name. There can be no doubt that it is the plant described by Theophrastus, and Dioscordes, and Pliny, and mentioned by Theocritus; and the curious thing is that the long Greek name kvxAdpuvos has held its own through the Latin Cyclaminus into our common English cyclamen. In two of the oldest English Vocabularies cyclamen is translated ‘slite,’ but the name is not given in the later Vocabularies, and seems never to have been a common English name. There is an old English name for it, the sowbread, but I can find no evidence that that was 12 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN ever a name in common use ; it was simply the trans- lation of the continental pain de porceau, Pan Porcina, and with one exception I have never met with it in English literature except in the old gardening books. The one exception is in Calverley’s translation of Theocritus, and if Dr. Lindley was correct in saying that it is the common food of the wild boars of Sicily, there is a decided fitness in Calverley’s translation of the Fifth Idyll, The Battle of the Bards :— ‘Go to the river and dig up a clump of sow-bread leaves.’ But I should think that the plant was never suffi- ciently common in England to get a common name, and Turner (Names of Herbes, 1548), says :— ‘I have never hearde yet the Englishe name of it. Me thynke that it might well be called in Englishe rape violet, because it hath a root lyke a rape, and floores lyke a violet or sow-brede.’ Certainly sowbread could never have been an ap- propriate English name for the flower: its scarcity would have forbidden its use as food for pigs, and I once had a practical proof that English pigs care little for it. I had a night-raid on my garden from a family of hungry pigs, and in the morning it was easily seen that they had been grubbing in a bed that had a large number of cyclamens in it, but not a = eR eR rt mer kk JANUARY 13 single root was touched by them. Of the cyclamen, with all its charms as one of our best spring flowers, I have now spoken satis superque. I must speak more shortly of the great flower of December and January, the Christmas rose. This, like the cyclamen, has both a botanical and literary interest. It has now been certainly proved that our Christmas rose is not the hellebore of the Greek and Latin writers, which was supposed to cure madness ; they spoke of two sorts, the black and the white, and the black was either the Helleborus orientalis, which comes from the mountains of Eastern Turkey, or Helle- borus cyclophyllus, which is found on Mount Helicon and Mount Parnassus ;-while the white hellebore, which was far the strongest medicine, is certainly the Veratrum album, which grows in great abundance on Mount Cita. Our Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, comes from the Carpathian Mountains, where it is so abundant that it is said to grow in millions, and where during the three months of August, September, and October, the Aus- trian and Hungarian peasants dig them up by the thousand, when they ‘yield a golden harvest to certain Austrian Jews who call themselves plant-collectors.’ This is comparatively a modern trade, arising from the popularity of the flower during the last thirty years. Before that few gardens had more than two 14 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN or three plants, though it has been grown as a garden plant certainly from the beginning of the sixteenth century. Prior to that I can find few records of it, but when we come to the great gardening books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the beautiful winter flower gets its full meed of praise, and from that time it was never lost to English gardens ; but I do not know of any writer, other than the writers of botanical books, who speaks of it, except Erasmus Darwin (and he, of course, may be ranked among the botanical writers), and what he says may be worth quoting, not only because I suppose very few now read The Loves of the Plants, but also for the curious note on the plant :— ‘Bright as the silvery plume, or pearly shell, The snow-white rose or lily’s virgin bell, The fair helleborus attractive shone, Warmed every sage and every shepherd won.’ And the note is this : ‘The Helleborus niger has a large, beautiful, white flower adorned with a circle of tubular two-lipped nectaries. After impregnation the flower undergoes a remarkable change ; the nectaries drop off, but the white coral remains and gradually becomes quite green, and degenerates into a calyx.’—Loves of the Plants, ii. 198-202. Accurate observer as he was, it never seems to have occurred to him that the ‘large, beautiful, white’ JANUARY 15 portion always was the calyx, while the curious little trumpet-shaped green parts which he calls ‘two-lipped nectaries’ are really the petals of the corolla, which very soon fall off. I have met with one other poem on the Christmas rose, by C. Mackay, but it is scarcely worth quoting ; and about ten years ago there was in Punch (Dec. 30, 1882) a very spirited set of verses on the flower, too long to quote im eztenso, but I shall quote part of the first verse as a specimen :— ‘Know ye the flower that just now blows, In the middle of winter—the Christmas rose— Though it Tack ee to erase ee To the eyes right fair is the Christmas rose— A fiddlestick’s end for the frost and snows ; Sing hey, sing ho, for the Christmas rose,’ Of the Christmas rose proper there are several varie- ties, chiefly differing in the size of the flowers and their suitableness to different localities ; and there are many species. We have two in England, both of which grow in the Gloucestershire woods, H. fetidus and H. viridis, and both worth growing in the garden, especially H. fwtidus, for its handsome and lasting foliage. For the same good character I grow and admire H. argutifolius from Corsica, which looks more like a dwarf large-leaved holly than a Christmas rose. I also grow and am fond of the many hybrids raised 16 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN about thirty years ago (chiefly at Berlin) between H. guttatus and H. abschasicus ; for, though they lack the pure colour of our Christmas rose, they produce an abundance of really handsome flowers in the early spring, and their fine foliage continues in beauty all through the year. A curious thing in these hybrids is that, unlike the Christmas rose, which is one of the very best flowers for cutting and keeping in the house, their flowers very soon fade after cutting. There have been many devices tried and recommended for curing this bad habit, such as splitting the flower stems, or taking away the stems altogether, and letting the flowers almost rest on the water; but I have tried them all, and succeeded with none. Closely allied to the hellebores, and so closely that it was formerly included among them, is the bright little winter aconite, now called Hranthis hyemalis ; it has the same trumpet-shaped fugacious petals, and is one of the first flowers of the year. I noted the half- opened bud of the aconite this year, on January 22nd, and on the same day a half-opened snowdrop, but they were both beaten in the race by the very lovely Iris histrioides, which was fully open on January 19th, and is a gem of the first water. This, then, may take rank as the first flower of the year, by which I mean the first of which there was no appearance before the New JANUARY 17 Year; for the cyclamen and Christmas rose may be ranked among the flowers of December as well as of January. And so the flowers are again coming to us in their appointed courses. As yet there are but very few, but every day will unfold some new treasure; but few though they are, they are very lovely, and almost because they are so few they are very dear to us, and we may well be thankful for them. CHAPTER II February Hybrid Hellebores—Crocus—Snowdrop—Snowflake— Early flowering shrubs. THE month of February has a very doubtful character. ‘In February the sun enters Aquarius,’ is the record of the almanacks, and so Spenser describes ‘cold February ’ sitting ‘In an old wagon, for he could not ride, Drawne of two fishes for the season fitting, Which through the flood before did softly glide, And swim alway.’ It was ‘February fill-ditch,’ and Don Pedro laughs at Benedick for having ‘such a February face, so full of frost and storm and cloudiness.’ But it is not always so; and when we do get a mild February it is a most enjoyable month, especially to the gardener. The flowers which I recorded last month are still in full beauty, the cyclamen and the hellebores—not, however, the true Christmas rose, which has passed away, but many of the other species, and especially 18 uae erie ee SOA Mae = FEBRUARY 19 the fine hybrids, which this year are showing quite splendid masses of flowers. I grow a great many ; the masses get larger every year, and some of them are very curious ; for the hybrid flowers have lost their hybridity, and have gone back to not one, but both the parents ; so that I have clumps in which both parents are growing from the same root. I need not say that this is a very curious feature in vegetable physiology, but there are many other such instances on record. If any one was asked to name the chief flowers of February, I suppose he would name the crocus and the snowdrop; I certainly should with reference to my own garden, for I am glad to say that both these beautiful families revel here. I have large clumps of snowdrops in every direction, and almost an equal number of the old yellow crocus, which I highly prize. It is not, however, quite the earliest ; this year the lead was taken by C. stellaris, a very bright little flower, considered to be an old garden variety of the common yellow ; but in most years C. imperati is the first, and it is certainly one of the prettiest. It comes from Naples and the mountains of Calabria, and is perfectly hardy, but here it increases very slowly. Both of these were in flower before the end of January ; but the mild February has made the garden rich with all the species that flower in the spring. 20 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN There are more autumnal than spring crocuses—I mean more species; but beautiful though they are in themselves, they never can have the same value as those which come to us when the garden generally is so bare. The so-called Scotch crocus (C. biflorus) is another very delicate one, which will stay in the same spot for years and go on increasing, and when the sun shines a mass of them is like a mass of silver. But of all crocuses I value most the old Dutch yellow crocus,—not to be reckoned among the oldest inhabitant of our gardens ; but so long has it been in cultivation that its native country is not known, and it has lost the power of seeding. There are many varieties of it, but the one I like best is one in shape like a bottle-gourd, or old pilgrim’s bottle, and so is called C. lageneflorus. Its peculiar shape and deep golden colour make it very attractive. ‘At their feet the crocus brake like fire,’ is Tenny- son’s account of the herbage on which the goddesses walked to meet Paris, and he is not the only one that has spoken warmly of the golden crocus. It is tempt- ing to quote some of the descriptions of its many admirers, but I pass them all by, to speak of one book only, which once was warmly welcomed, but is now, perhaps, almost forgotten, but which always comes to my mind when the season of the crocus and the FEBRUARY 21 snowdrop returns. I mean Forbes Watsons Flowers and Gardens, a book published five-and-twenty years ago, and which came with a pathetic interest, for it was written on a deathbed of great suffering, and which appealed at once to all readers by its charm- ing style and beautiful thoughts, and was doubly welcome to gardeners by the way in which he lovingly pulled to pieces, as it were, the few flowers of which he wrote, in order to find in them for his own great delight, and to point out to others, the hidden beauties which can only be found by those who love them as he did. I do not intend to quote all he said about the crocus or the snowdrop, for he has three chapters on them, but any one who has read the book, and who is now rejoicing in the spring beauties of his garden, will thank me for reminding him of it. Few, perhaps, can see in the flowers all that Forbes Watson saw in them ; it is a remarkable instance of the way in which a thoughtful man can read his own thoughts into almost anything, and perhaps into flowers more than anything else, if he is a lover of flowers. Tennyson, in the Day Dream, says this may happen to any man :— ‘ Any man that walks the mead, In bud, or blade, or bloom may find, According as his humours lead, A meaning suited to his mind.’— 22 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN Bell-lovers have said the same thing. ‘He that hears bells,’ says Burton in his Anatomy, ‘will make them sound what he list; as the soul thinketh so the bell clinketh.’ I will dismiss the crocus with two lines only from Forbes Watson—‘The yellow crocus is a perfect flower, leaving nothing that we could wish to add to or to alter’—and will pass on to the snow- drop. Of all February flowers I suppose the snowdrop is the most popular. Its thorough hardiness, its patience under any ill-treatment, its easy cultivation, and, above all, its pure beauty, make it welcome to every garden, and there is no more valued plant in the garden of the poor, and in children’s gardens. I suppose no flower brings so many associations and past remembrances with it; certainly it does to me, for it has always been a favourite flower here. I not only grow a great number of the common snowdrop, but I grow most of the species, and would grow all if I could, but some will not grow here. The Crimean snowdrop does very well here, and I like it for its plaited foliage, and for the pleasant story which tells what a delight it was to our soldiers when they saw it during the first dreadful winter of the Crimean war. It was grown in England before that, but by a very few, and I fancy that all that are FEBRUARY 23 now grown date from the Crimean war. Clusius, who described it, noticed that it was sweet-scented, but the scent is very faint. The finest snowdrop with me is G. imperati, from Naples and Genoa, and in some years it is the earliest, but I do not often see it in other gardens; and I suppose it is particular about soil, for a florist nurseryman admired it here, and at once ordered three thousand from Germany, and in three years they had all died out. I have another which I admire for its deep green foliage, though the flower is small—the G. latifolius from the Caucasus. Something must be said about the pretty name, or rather the pretty names, of the snowdrop. The common name is not the old name, and certainly, to nearly the end of the seventeenth century, it was described as the white bulbous violet. Such a cum- brous name might do when the plant was only a garden plant, and probably not a common one, but when it increased and multiplied so as to be found in every garden, and was becoming naturalised in many places, another name was wanted, and none more fitting could be found than the pretty name of snowdrop, which was creeping in in Gerard’s time (he gives the name very doubtfully), but which only came into general use by very slow degrees. I suppose it was adopted from the common names of the flower in its 24 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN native countries, such as France and Germany. Its German names may be translated as snowflake, Feb- ruary flower, naked maiden, snow-violet, and snow- drop ; and its French names as the white bell, the bell of the snows, the bell of winter, and the snow-piercer. The pretty Latin name Galanthus—i.e. milk-flower— was invented by Linnzeus to distinguish it from Leuco- jum, which he restricted to the snowflake. I think it would have been better if he had reversed the names, calling the snowflake Galanthus and the snow- drop Leucojum. For I have no doubt that the Aevxdiov of Theophrastus is our snowdrop; he describes it as bulbous and the first flower of the year, and some- times even flowering in winter, and coming almost at the same time as, but generally a little before, the dog’s-tooth violet, and always before the narcissus, the lily, and the bulbocodium, and much used for garlands. This applies better to the snowdrop than to any other flower, and the snowdrop is a Greek flower, while the snowflake is not. It is also men- tioned in two epigrams in the Anthologia Palatina, and the lines are so pretty that they are well worth transcribing :— Hn NevKdiov Oadret, Oadrec 5é PlNouBpos vdpkiooos, Oddre 0” ovpecipoira Kplva,—v. 144. FEBRUARY 25 théEw Nevdiov, whéEW F array dua piprots vdapkiocov, TAELW Kal Ta yeh@vTa Kplva. mréEw Kai Kpdkov nOvv* émimdéSw F dx Gov moppupenv, mrEEw Kal pirépacra poda,.—v. 147. For a charming account of the beauties of the snow- drop I will again refer to Forbes Watson’s book ; it is very exhaustive, and says much for the sweet at- tractiveness of the flower; butI think this is shown by no writer (and many have sung its praises) so touchingly as by Tennyson in two lines, in which he makes the poor dying May Queen pray that she may be spared just a little longer :— ‘I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again, I long to see a flower so the day before I die.’ Very shortly I must speak of the spring snowflake. It is a most graceful flower, closely allied to the snow- drop, and does well with me, but, unlike the snowdrop, it increases very slowly. Its chief difference from the snowdrop is that the three sepals and the three petals are all the same length, thus giving the flower a bell- shape, so that it more deserves the name of bell of the snow, bell of the winter, etc., than the snowdrop. It is not a true British native, though the summer snowflake, which really only differs in size and time of flowering, is undoubtedly wild on the banks of the Thames. 26 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN I must pass by the hepaticas, though they may take rank among the earliest spring flowers. 1 would only advise that they should never be disturbed—they dis- like removal and division. All the sorts are worth growing, and easily grown,—single and double red, single and double blue (the double blue much resenting any interference), and the single white. There is a double white on record, but I never saw it, and have been told by a good botanist that it is the autumnal form of the single red. This, if true, and my in- formant was a very accurate man, is curious ; but there are two distinct forms of the single white, one with red and the other with white anthers, and there is a large blue Hepatica from Greece, H. angulosa, which in some gardens is very beautiful, but will not grow everywhere. I might well leave the daffodils for the March record, for they are flowers of March rather than of February, but there is one, the earliest of all, which comes into flower in the beginning of February, and seldom lasts into March. This is the Narcissus minimus, a beautiful little plant with the small flowers almost prostrate, and undoubtedly only a variety of the common pseudo- nareissus, but sufficiently distinguished both by the size and time of flowering. It is a curious fact that these varieties succeed one another according to their size. FEBRUARY 27 First comes minimus, which is followed by minor, that by the typical form, and that by major and mazimus. Whether there is any connection between size and earliness of flowering I cannot say. Yet it is certain that all the early spring flowers are of low growth; and this succession among the narcissi may be only a coincidence ; but it is curious, and, I think, worth noting. There are some good shrubs in flower in February, though none of them very conspicuous. The fine Nepal Berbery, or Mahonia, is perhaps the most conspicuous, and both for its flower and foliage it is well worth growing ; but it is rather tender, and has a straggling habit of growth which cannot be kept in order by the knife; it dislikes pruning. The dwarf heath from the south of Europe (Erica herbacea) is in full. flower during February, and is certainly con- spicuous enough both to ourselves and to the bees ; and if after flowering it is clipped with the shears, it makes a very cushion-like mass that is pretty all through the year. Among other shrubs in flower the Daphne Mezereon attracts from its delicious scent, but its stiff growth prevents its taking rank among pretty shrubs, yet many admire it much, as Cowper did, and described it as— ‘ Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset With blushing wreaths, investing every spray.’ 28 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN Three February shrubs may be classed together, the Hamamelis, the Parrottia, and the Cornus mascula. They are all examples of Forbes Watson’s remark that most of the early shrubs produce their flowers without leaves. He gives reasons for this which I cannot fully understand. The Hamamelis and the Parrotiia flowers are simply bundles of stamens, very pretty, but not very conspicuous, and both foreigners ; but we have one British shrub with similar flowers, with which I will conclude my February record. I always look out for the little female blossoms of the filbert, and always admire them. Every one knows the male catkins, which look so pretty when the nut- trees are bare of leaves, and some know the little crimson blossom which is now open ready to receive the pollen from the catkin. It is very small, but if examined with a moderate lens it will be seen to be a bunch of bright crimson pistils enclosed within some bracts. As soon as it is fertilised a very curious thing happens, of which I know no other instance. The little flower is placed upon last year’s wood, and if it were an apple, or a peach, or any other fruit-tree, the perfect fruit would be there also. But the nut acts otherwise ; it at once starts away from the old wood, and forms behind itself a thin branch, four or five inches long, at the end of which it ripens into a nut; FEBRUARY 29 and as it so travels it carries with it the bract in which the flower was formed, and which at last becomes the pretty cup in which the nut lies. It is this leafy cup that has given the name to the tree. The Romans called it corylus, inventing the name from the Greek xédpus, a helmet or cap, for I believe kdpvAos is not found as a true Greek word. The tree is a native British tree, and the old British name was hesel, a name which it is not at all likely was taken from corylus, but it has the same meaning, for hesle is a cap or hat, and hesel-nutu is the hatted nut. I wished to say something about the pleasure that a gardener can get by watching the different ways in which different plants come through the ground ; but I must leave that to another chapter, and bring this long record to a close with the hazel. Few people are aware how our true British Flora gives us almost no flowers for January or February, and, I believe, none at all for January. Of course, I am speaking only of the normal time of flowering, for stray flowers, either premature or late, may often be found ; and I exclude mosses and fungi, many of which flower in winter, some very conspicuously, as the scarlet pezizas. But the hazel and the spurge laurel, and the two poplars, are, I believe, the only truly wild British plants that flower before March, and this may 30 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN give us some idea of the debt of gratitude we owe to the old gardeners, who have made our winter gardens bright with Christmas roses, cyclamens, crocuses, hepa- ticas, and snowdrops. Since their time many other winter flowers have been introduced, but very few have yet succeeded in getting a fair footing. Why some have succeeded with us, and others, which seemed as likely, have failed, is a large and very interesting subject. CHAPTER III March Celandine—Daffodils— Dog’s-tooth violets—Anemones—Spring shrubs—Strength of flowers in bursting through the soil— Uses of frost. ‘Marcu cometh in like a lion,’ and ‘March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers.’ But however cold and blustering March may be, it is not merely a nursery for flowers to come in May ; it has abundance of flowers of its own, both in the fields and hedgerows and in the gardens. There are perhaps no more welcome flowers than the wild-flowers of March ; in the hedgerows are primroses and violets, and everywhere is the bright coltsfoot and the lesser celandine, certainly one of the brightest flowers of the year, and ‘so called bycause that it beginneth to spring and to floure at the comming of the swallowes’ (Lyte). But for all its beauty and fresh- ness, I cannot join in Wordsworth’s well-known praises of it, for it is a sad weed in the garden, 31 32 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN springing up everywhere and defying the neatest gardener. . There are many more welcome wild-flowers, but I must leave them for the garden flowers. First, of course, come the many daffodils, which ever since the day of Perdita we have been taught to look on as the chief flowers of March. With the exception of the rose and lily, I suppose no flower has had so much written on it, and such loving praises given to it, as the daffodil or narcissus. From Homer downwards many a poet has so praised it, and few English poets have passed it by. Gower, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Herrick are among the early writers; and among the later writers I need only mention Wordsworth and Jean Ingelow, and I need do no more than mention the names. During the last twenty years the daffodils have been raised (or degraded ?) to the rank of fashionable flowers, and much has been published about them, and every- thing that has been written has been thoroughly searched for and abundantly quoted. I would only draw attention to one poem of great beauty, which is very little known, by Aubrey de Vere. It is called ‘Ode to the Daffodil,’ and is entirely in praise of the wild daffodil, and so it reminds me that though I place the daffodil among our garden plants, it is gos MARCH 33 really one of our native plants, and surely one of the most beautiful. There can be no doubt that the common wild daffodil, or Lent lily, is a genuine native ; it is found throughout the whole of England, but is supposed not to be truly native in Scotland or Ireland, though found almost through the whole of Europe. The beautiful family is now considered to consist of forty-two distinct species, besides many varieties and hybrids, and its headquarters are in the south of Europe. A few, however, are found in Northern and Western Asia, one in Teneriffe, and a few in North Africa. I do not know whether any grow in Egypt, but on the wreaths found in the old Egyptian tombs there are specimens of JN. tazetta, which have kept their freshness wonderfully for more than three thousand years. None of the family are found wild in America, but as garden plants they are highly prized there, and are imported in large quantities. The crocuses have not only been very abundant in flowers, but two of the species, the common yellow and the pale lilac (C. vernus), have held their beauty much longer than usual. I cannot say why it should be so, but here the sparrows scarcely touch the crocuses, though I hear from many friends, especially in towns, that they cannot grow the yellow crocus on c 34 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN account of the sparrows. I have plenty of sparrows, but they do not attack the crocus; nor am I much troubled with mice, which in some gardens work woful destruction among the crocus bulbs. Now and then I see signs of a mouse, but a good garden cat and a few traps soon get rid of the little plagues. Once, however, the mice, or rather the small field voles, entirely destroyed a number of young apple- trees, eating all the roots away, but not touching any part aboveground. For some time they refused all baits, but at last I tried the Brazil nut, and that was irresistible, and I have never had a similar in vasion of the little creatures. Before the crocuses had passed away the dog’s- tooth violets were in full flower, and I rank them among the very prettiest of our spring flowers. Yet they are by no means common, and I suppose that arises from their very slow increase, for my own plants, which have certainly been here over thirty years, scarcely increase at all. Though fairly common in the south and east of Europe, it does not seem to have been introduced into English gardens before the beginning of the seventeenth century, and then was considered to be an orchid, though really of the lily family. Some of the family are found in America, with spotted leaves very similar to the MARCH 35 European plants, but the flowers, instead of being reddish purple (hence Linnzus’s name for them, Erythronium, from épvOpos, red), or sometimes white, are all yellow, or yellowish white. The common name, dog’s-tooth violets, they get from the sharp little roots, and it has been their name for a very long time ; but the tooth form is not so clear in them as in another beautiful spring flower, the toothwort, or Dentaria, now classed with Cardamine. The plant is closely allied to our cuckoo flower, or ladies’ smocks ; and we have one wild one (D. bulbifera), which is rather pretty, but very inferior to the Continental forms, D. digitata, and D. enneaphylla, yet an interesting plant, from its habit of producing little bulbils in the axils of the leaves, which fall off and soon form new plants, just like the bulbils of some of the lilies, or of the bulbiferous ferns. But the purple and white species are really beautiful plants, very hardy and very easily grown, and great ornaments in the spring garden; yet sixty years ago Sweet expressed his astonishment that it was not more common, and it is still very seldom seen. The roots are very generally, though not always, curiously like a set of teeth, hence the name ;— ‘The root of it being white and smooth and shining, as teeth ought to be, it was fitly named Dentaria, Dentillaria, and Alabastrides, and as fitly Coralloides, the divers round 36 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN small knobs set together, whereof the root is composed, resembling the knaggy eminences of the corale.’ 1 I can do little more than name a few of the good flowers that make our spring gardens so bright. The Iris orchioides has a brilliant yellow flower, and is a great acquisition, introduced about twenty years ago from Turkestan; the different fumitories (Corydalis) make very pretty clumps ; and the two forms, purple and white, of Sisyrinchium grandiflorum, from Van- couver’s Island and the Rocky Mountains, are most graceful plants, and come very early. Then the ane- mones are beginning to show their many beauties ; the first here was the rich blue Anemone blanda from Greece, followed very closely by our own wild yellow anemone (4. ranunculoides), and that by the grand anemones of Southern Europe, 4. fulgens and others ; and before the end of the month the pretty Pasque flowers (A. pulsatilla) will be in full flower, and the yellow A. palmata, from Hyéres, curious from being the only anemone that has two flowers on a scape. I have named enough now to prove that March has a rich array of flowers of its own; but as I walk round the garden I note many more, of which I must only give the names—