ie yy A} tity it iy o¢ Hele ‘ t i eer e ae AAA i, it deat REO on a 9b sits ie y eM iii ig tb we WH a) } Cn 15, ba4 aight f Gini n° is i) mle ‘! CoCo WM Hoh Hee Bai UG We 6 Gatch Nita Sie ( HA RA ‘ee 44 5, Ha Al Sisise : vital ee LAY . es? eh init PAM A A TNA) of ce t eat uit sie rl Lae Me, ft, Cah at i ie eine ay On) A a? ewe ia (har tet EAM pacar Hidhiseearia i iA i bt i 4, ut é they ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY ser SE ie Library SB 466.G7C7 1 WAM Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002803140 LIBRARY Department of Floriculture _ and Ornamental Horticulture 3 New York STATE CoLLEGE of AGRICULTURE at CORNELL UNIVERSITY ITHACA, N.Y. GARDENS OF ENGLAND AGENTS America . THe Macmirran Company 64 & 66 Firrn Avenue, New York Ausrratasia THE Oxrorp Universiry Press 205 Frinpers Lang, MELsourne Canapa . Tue Macmirran Company or Canapa, Lrp. Sr. Martin’s Housr, 70 Bonp STREET, ToronTo Inpia ,) «) Macmitran & Company, Lrp. Macmittan Buirpinc, BomBay 309 Bow Bazaar Street, CatcuTTa THE SUNDIAL, WOODSIDE, CHENIES Seat of Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, who re- planned the garden, utilising the old trees as a back- ground in the striking manner shown, which gives the garden a sort of Watteau effect. GARDENS OF ENGLAND PAINTED BY BEATRICE PARSONS DESCRIBED BY E, T. COOK PUBLISHED BY A. & C. BLACK - LONDON - MCMXI re, First Published 1908 New Impression 1911 PREFACE TuHeE following pages contain a few thoughts— perhaps rather on English gardening than English gardens—which I have been asked to write. I am much indebted to Mrs. Davidson for the chapter on “Cottage Gardens,” to Mrs. Bardswell for her thoughts on “The Herb Garden,” and to Mr. S. W. Fitzherbert for “ Winter in the Garden.” Miss Beatrice Parsons heartily thanks those who have lent pictures painted by herself for the purpose of illustrating this book. EK. T. COOK. June 1908. CONTENTS TuHoucuts on Cotrrace GARDENS . Lavenper anp Rosemary . Tue Hers Garpen . AMONGST THE Roszs. . THOUGHTS ON GaRDENING, 1Ts HEALTHINESS AND 1ts DEVELOPMENT . Tue Beauty or Simpte GrRoupPine . Tue Heatu GarpDEn . Frowers sy Water SIDE AND ON THE WaTER SurRPAcE . SPRING IN THE GARDEN . SUMMER IN THE GARDEN . AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN. e i XII. WINTER IN THE GARDEN ‘< A . vii 103 115 133 149 167 183 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FAOING PAGE . The Sundial, Woodside, Chenies ; Frontispiece . A London Garden in August F ‘ F 8 The Dovecote, Stonelands, Sussex. 5 . 25 “ Carmino,” Falmouth . ‘ : : 2: 32 . The Rose Garden, Drakelowe. : : . 41 The Rose Garden, Waxwell Farm, Pinner . . 48 . The Rose Garden, Newtown House, Newbury w oF . The Pergola, Brantwood, Surbiton . ; . 64 (From the picture in the possession of H.M. the Queen.) . The Terrace Garden, Hoar Cross House F . 81 . Daffodils, Waxwell Farm, Pinner : , - 88 . Herbaceous Borders, Dingley Park . ; - 105 . Spalding Parish Church, from the Lake Garden, Ayscough Fee Hall ‘ 112 . Rhododendrons, Upper Pleasure Ground, toot Park 129 . The Dutch Garden, Moor Park : . - 136 . Tulips in “The Garden of Peace” . ‘ . 145 . The Round Garden, Drakelowe ; F ,- 152 . The Lily Walk, Dingley Park ‘ F . 169 (From the picture in the possession of H.I.H. the Empress Dowager of Russia.) . August at Holyrood House, Spalding ‘ . 176 . Entrance to the Gardens, Ayscough Fee Hall - 185 . A January Moonrise, Golders Hill, Hampstead » 192 ix BSS. I THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS I THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS THERE is a love of flowers fast knit into the very fibre of our British nature which probably lies at the root of the national reputation for gardening with which we are accredited; nevertheless, it is a love we share with such children of Nature as the Kaffir or the South Sea Islander. Nothing, nowadays, is more characteristic, as we know, of our English countryside, and there is nothing that strikes a foreigner more forcibly, than the cottage gardens, with their aspect of homely comfort and even luxury, which everywhere fringe our roadsides and village lanes with the broidery of flowers. Yet it is very doubtful whether it is an inborn bent towards the tillage of the soil, or even native-bred industry, which has fostered this love of flowers into the desire to cultivate plants for the sake of their beauty. Other peoples are 3 4 GARDENS OF ENGLAND far ahead of us in these respects. In France and in Belgium, our nearest neighbours, for example, we see small plots of garden ground cultivated with the utmost skill, crop succeeding crop of vegetable produce, tended with the keenest sense of profit and with seldom an inch to spare for any vanities in the way of flowers. In England alone we find cottage gardens of fair size, many of them sadly enough going to waste for want of care and practical diligence, but even so, often with the redeeming feature of some few bright flowers— while, at its best, the cottager’s plot is a marvel of gay colours and sweet scents, as well as of thrifty produce, and becomes the envy of many whose position in life is far higher. It may be the neutral tints of our mist-laden atmosphere that make sea-girt folk like ourselves crave for the contrast of rich, warm colour. Perhaps it is the sweet English spring-time, sur- passed in no other land, with its budding greenery, its primroses and flooring of blue, which stirs some lurking sense of the poetry which lies hidden below the surface of every nature, however rude and simple, that creates this longing to have such beautiful things always with us. Who can tel? Whatever the compelling influence, the fact remains THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS 5 that the love of flowers, unless it is killed by that which is coarse and evil, is strong in the heart of every British man and woman; and long may it be before it is displaced by any taste less worthy ! All the same, we may not dare to lay the flattering unction to our souls that gardening, in any true sense, is an instinct of pure British growth. Looking back through the records of past ages, we become dimly aware that before the beginning of the Christian era, the inhabitants of Britain, brave, and, for long years after their partial submission, practically untamable, were little conversant with arts or agriculture, and owed all the training and skill which, a few centuries later, made these islands one of the granaries of the world, to the influence of the all-conquering Romans. To this day, indeed, we benefit by trees and fruits, if not by flowers, bequeathed to us at their departure. About the intervening cycles we know little, except that within the precincts of the monasteries and religious houses scattered up and down the land, the culture of simples and medicinal herbs and some few esculents was always fostered; but there is proof enough to show that nationally—whether it be regarded in its aspect of industry or of pastime— gardening gradually fell away until it became almost 6 GARDENS OF ENGLAND a lost art. It is true that at the end of the four- teenth century, when Piers the Ploughman made his complaint, the farmer, if he had little else to keep hunger from the door until August brought the new corn, could boast at least of “parsley and leeks and many cabbage plants,” but a little later on, during the Tudor dynasty, so much elementary husbandry as even this implies had disappeared in the harsh misery of the times, for old records reveal that the Royal table itself had to be supplied with “sallets of herbs” brought over from Holland, while many a stout Dutch sloop carried its cargo of onions and carrots to Hull for the use of wealthy English nobles and well-to-do merchants. Luxuries such as these were not for the poor, for in those days, when “a sum equal to twenty shillings was paid at that port for six cabbages and a few carrots,’ a cabbage, from its rarity, was a gift worth offering. Thus, languishing, did the art of gardening stand stationary, until troubles and persecutions abroad made England, as she has ever been, a house of refuge, among more exalted persons, for Flemish weavers and cloth-workers. It is far from im- probable that we may look back as far as to the reign of Queen Elizabeth for that reawakening of cottage gardening which has never since lost its THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS 7 hold, and which makes so greatly for the charm of rural England. The newcomers, frugal-minded, and accustomed to supply their simple wants at home by the labour of their hands, and to live mainly upon the produce of their narrow patches of garden ground, were not slow to discover that, in their adopted country, they could add considerably to their resources by'cultivating coleworts and carrots, which, with peas and celery, met with a ready sale, Wherever they settled—in the Cinque Ports, in the Eastern counties, on the outskirts of London at Wandsworth or Battersea, in Manchester and Macclesfield, the spade and the hoe, no less than the shuttle and the loom, were necessities of daily existence to these luckless but undaunted emigrants. Thus they set the tune to which, in course of time, lazier feet began to dance the measure. By slow degrees, English craftsmen and cottars, taking heart, began to find out that they, too, might add to the comforts of home, and to the pence in the ill- filled pouch, by following the lead of the strangers. But the Flemish were florists no less than growers of dainty comestibles ; and it is more than probable that flowers, appealing strongly to national sentiment, became the true incentive to the revival of gardening in provincial towns and 8 GARDENS OF ENGLAND country villages. It was about the same period that a wave of scientific research—botanical, in common with other branches of learnng—swept over Europe, and horticulture was eagerly taken up—as a pastime by the wealthy no less than as an aid to study by the scholar. Yet it is doubtful whether the leaven of gardening would have penetrated our English country life in the wide- spread manner that it has, had not men, of foreign extraction indeed, but of the like grade in life with the labourer and the artisan, pointed the way. By these means, it came to pass that many a rare plant and bulb—relics of old homes gone beyond recall—found a passage, with onions and cabbages, over the storm-tossed waters of the North Sea into English gardens; and still more, perhaps, crossed the Channel from the opposite coast of France. For, with regard to decorative gardening, it is possible that, even more than to Flemish cloth-workers, we are indebted to the French silk-weavers who settled in Spitalfields— rural enough in those days—and whose love for floriculture was remarkable. With many of these fugitive Huguenots the tending of plants was a veritable passion—a solace, besides, to allay the A LONDON GARDEN IN AUGUST This tiny garden, on the banks of the Thames, Hammersmith, is an example of what can be done in a very small space. It belongs to Mr. C. Spooner, architect, and the lady in the picture is his wife, an accomplished artist. 2 a a ea aa 3 BOR TAIL 7 et THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS 9 fretting sense of exile—while they vied with each other to produce the finest and best specimens of their skill that could be grown. The flower shows which were commonly held in friendly rivalry by these Spitalfields silk-weavers were the origin and precursors of those which survive in full vigour to this day. Thus, by example—no doubt also by precept—the science of gardening, little by little, was revived and strengthened after long decadence, through the length and breadth of the land, until not a farmstead, not a cottage, scarcely even the merest hovel, but had its knot of flowers, its pot- herbs and roots, its “sin-green” on the thatch, or woodbine clinging to its poor mud wall. In thus expressing, however, the gratitude that is due to foreign influence, there is no wish to be- little that which has survived and risen to a level above and beyond those early days of reawakening —our own English garden craft. The British artisan to this day may look upon vegetable fare as a poor staple of existence, never having learnt to prefer onion soup and salad to roast beef, but he seldom grudges garden ground to roses, or holly- hocks, or pinks; and in the well-loved borders of humble country homes, thousands of beautiful hardy plants which otherwise would have perished, 2 10 GARDENS OF ENGLAND have found a safe asylum when the fashion of the day cast them adrift from the parterres of the mansion and the villa. Moreover, when that same foreign influence tended towards the introduction of a formality in garden design which has always been more or less out of accord with the liberty and freedom of the national ideal, it has been the artless grouping of wallflowers and early tulips, of “ pianies” and white lilies, of gillyflowers and love- in-the-mist, with rue and rosemary, southernwood and lavender, in the unstudied beauty of the cottage garden which has helped to keep the balance weighted in favour of the fuller grace of Nature. It has been well said of late by a writer in the Times that “this is the great difference between gardening in England and in other countries—that in England the cottage garden sets the standard, whereas in other countries the standard is set by the garden of the palace or the villa.” It is, in fact, the love of flowers, pure and simple, not landscape gardening nor schemes of colour, nor display of art, still less commercial value, that permeates the typical English garden, and forms one strong connective link between all ranks of English people. The national importance of the cottage garden THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS 11 can hardly be rated too highly, for its influence for good, in very diverse directions, is incalculable. It is not merely that it can and does add considerably to the material well-being of the labourer’s family ; it also keeps alive the sense of the beautiful in surroundings that are too often mean and rough ; and, speaking generally, there is no surer test of individual character. Ill-kept, with waste of ground which might be, but is not, well stocked with valuable food, and with little thought of any adornment of flowers, the cottage garden is a sure indication of sloth, unthrift, and an unreliable disposition ; while the well-ordered plot at once suggests a balanced mind, contentment, and a comfortable, if humble home. A significant fact may be noticed at the present day by those who are brought into neighbourly contact with country folk, that the best-kept gardens belong most frequently to elderly people. The younger and stronger members of village com- munities spend their scanty leisure mostly in other ways than in tilling to the best advantage the plot of ground which seldom fails to fall to their share. How great a loss is involved in the gradual weakening of all ties to the land is brought home to every thoughtful mind, but perhaps the influence 12 GARDENS OF ENGLAND of the cottage garden is scarcely taken into account as it might be. That influence, however, is not so much to be maintained by honours won at cottage- garden shows, though these have a certain value, nor even by the healthy stimulus of mutual emula- tion. It is, in great measure, wrapped up in that inborn instinct of the love of flowers for their own sake, which has here been touched upon—the question of food supply being entirely subordinate, yet following by natural sequence. The more this love of flowers and of cultivating them can be cherished and developed, therefore, in the children of the present generation, the better for the nation. It is only here and there that a hard-worked master or mistress of our English elementary schools can be found who is qualified to add gardening to the ordinary school routine, but some there are, and they should be held worthy of special honour. But, at any rate, every country school should be provided with a school garden, which, by some means, according to the circum- stances of the village or district, might become, under expert guidance, a nursery ground for well- instructed cottage gardeners. The enthusiasm is there, burning low in the nature of scores of English boys and girls, and it only needs kindling— THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS 13 as has been abundantly proved wherever it has been given a fair trial—to break into the flame which would help, in time, to burn up much of the dross of half-hearted interest in the real work of life that prevails, and the reckless craving for pleasures, often more or less vicious, which is steadily sapping the moral strength of the British race. : II LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY II LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY Wuar a happiness it is for the world at large that there are common things of life of which we never tire—the sweet air and sunshine, the green of grass and trees, the bread we eat. Into the order of such common things we may surely bring rose- mary and lavender, two familiar everyday shrubs, but which seemed of late years, though by good hap not now, in some danger of being thrust out of sight—not so much that we were weary of them, as on account of that craving for novelty which hankers after all untried things in. hopes of betterment. How often in the end we come back to the old friends, having found none more worthy ! Probably no shrubs would seem to be more closely interwoven with English country life than these two. Nevertheless, they are not native-born, 17 3 18 GARDENS OF ENGLAND nor even naturalised. The home of both one and the other is in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean shore, where they are happy in torrid sunshine and dry rocky soil. Nor is there any special mention of them as known in England before the middle of the sixteenth century, when rosemary and southernwood, and, twenty years later, lavender—reputed to have come in with Good Queen Bess— found their way into the physic gardens of the time. For this reason, and perhaps incited thereto by imaginative writers, we have accustomed ourselves in thought to associate the hoary grey of lavender with the terraces of stately Elizabethan architecture, yet it must then have been a plant of some rarity, though Parkinson, some seventy years later, could speak of it as “our ordinary garden lavender.” At that date the dwarf species was evidently in greater favour, for in the later edition of Gerarde’s Herbal, revised by Thomas Johnson, we find it stated that there is “in our English gardens, a small kind of Lavander, which is altogether lesser than the other [and the floures are of a more purple colour, and grow in much lesse and shorter heads; yet have they a far more gratefull smell: the leaves are also lesse and whiter than those of the ordinarie sort. This did, LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY 19 and I thinke yet doth grow in great plenty in His Majestie’s private garden at White-Hall. And this is called Spike, without addition, and some- times Lavander Spike: and of this by distillation is made that vulgarly known and vsed oile which is tearmed Olewm Spice or oile of Spike ”]—the sentences within brackets being Johnson’s own addition in 1633 when Charles I. was king. A list of medicinal virtues follows, but it is Parkinson, not Gerarde, who tells us that the heads of the flowers “are much vsed to bee put among limen and apparrell” — a custom handed down from mother to daughter in English homes for many a century after. As we let our thoughts wander back to the England of old, how well we may picture to our- selves some snugly thatched and roomy homestead with the old-world garden shut in by its sheltering yew hedge, where, in the glow of the sunshine of an August afternoon, the lavender bushes are breathing out their fragrance on the hot quivering air, and the bees change their drone of deep con- tent to an angry hum, as the house-maidens come down the path and begin to cut the long spikes from which such bounteous stores of honey might have been gathered. Within doors, the grey 20 GARDENS OF ENGLAND flower-heads lie drying on the broad seat of the lattice window, and as we venture to lift the lid of the capacious oak-chest or peep into the “aumry ” — that pretty old word-relic of France which still lingers in Scotland, if not farther South—we catch a glimpse of piles of household linen, mostly home spun, ready for the fresh lavender to be laid lovingly between the folds by gentle mother-hands while it waits the time when son or daughter shall fare forth from the parent rooftree to a nest of their own. All this is now but an echo of the past, though the faint refrain of it all abides with us still, Alas, no village inn can boast of its lavender-scented bed-linen as in the coaching days now far off. The broad oak staircases and bright polished furniture, the cosy carven settles and the rare old china beau-pots filled as the seasons came round with snowdrops or lilies of the valley, with damask roses, or, daintier far, white roses of Provence—all these, and lavender bushes amongst them—which used to be the pride of countless old-fashioned hostelries, where are they? Little is left of them but shadowy memories put away in the inmost recesses of our thoughts, and only brought out now and then with the same sense of half-pitying .condescension with which we unfold LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY 21 the faded silks and satins of some long-forgotten ancestress. The very name of lavender carries with it a sense of wholesomeness, and the pure fragrance of Nature, and we cannot but rejoice that the good gardening and good taste which, in cultural matters, were never more to the forefront than now, have bidden us to restore it once more to its rightful place in our gardens. There are so many ways in which lavender can be used: sometimes as a low hedge to divide the well-filled ranks of the kitchen garden from the flowers planted on each side of a central pathway ; sometimes grouped in the herbaceous border to give the needful touch of silver-grey which serves to heighten the colours of bright-hued flowers ; or it may be planted with excellent effect to lean over the top of a retaining wall. It will even bear clipping like box to make a formal edging, if it should be desirable, in a garden design of purple and grey. A lavender walk is, perhaps, the most delightful of all in June, when the soft spikes are beginning to push up from every branchlet, and the light passing of a hand over the bushes stirs the faint scent of the young growth in August, when the first early flowers are breaking into blue, 22 GARDENS OF ENGLAND and the time has come to cut the sheaf of spikes which will fill the house for many a day with the incense of their fuller perfume; or again, later on, when the quiet grey of the persistent leaves suits the mood of the sombre winter’s day. Memory recalls such a lavender-walk, backed by a hedge of old-fashioned pink China roses, a mingling which is very hard to beat in its delicate harmony. ~There are few months in the year, save in dead of winter, when roses are not to be gathered there, but it is in late autumn, when flowers are few, that a plantation of the kind is most precious. It is well to remember that lavender does not last for ever in perfection. It must be cared for, or it will lose all too soon the soft swell of its kindly outline and grow twisted and gnarled, unsightly for lack of timely clipping. For this work there are two seasons—in the autumn, if a harvest of flower- spikes is looked for in August, but if merely the grey tone of leafage is wanted, the bushes must be cut back in spring before the young growth has had time to start. RosEMARY was earlier known—or perhaps it is more just to speak of it as having been earlier esteemed—than LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY 23 lavender. It offers, also, a curious instance of gradual change in name-form, upon which, by going back to original derivation, we get an interesting sidelight. The native home of rose- mary is on both coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, and in the days long before it was carried thence, most likely as physic merchandise, to British shores, the shrub was known as rosmarine, or, in Old French, romarin. It may be found so called in the literature of the fourteenth century —rosmarine, the bush of the sea-spray. But in process of time, the word, pass- ing into our English tongue, was clipped as such words often become in familiar speech, and the final letters dropped away, leaving it rosmart. By and by, popular sentiment stepped in, and either on account of the incense-like scent of its leafage, or the hue of its pale-blue flowers, the Virgin’s colour —the plant was dedicated, as so many others in those days were dedicated, and it became the Rose of Mary, as it remains to this day. In truth, it has no more affinity with a rose than the rose of a watering-pot, which has the same Latin name-root of ros, meaning dew. Yet even as it stands thus dedicated to-day, rosemary dates back for nearly five hundred years as an English garden-plant, nor 24 GARDENS OF ENGLAND does it seem any longer to crave the sea-dew for its well-being, for—albeit a little tender in a very severe winter—it thrives on land just as happily as by the sea. No English garden, indeed, should be without rosemary. It is rooted in our history and in our literature no less than in the everyday customs of our rural life. Two faithful virtues, constancy to the living and remembrance of the lost, have always been close entwined about the rosemary branch, which in the West Country we still Grow for two ends, it matters not at all Be’t for my bridall or my buriall. In olden days, no bride went to church without rosemary in her wedding posy, and tradition has it that Anne of Cleves, staking her life’s happiness on a poor venture, wore the green sprays wreathed in her hair—a feeble spell on which to trust in a hazard so fraught with peril. At country funerals it is still customary, in many localities, to drop sprigs of rosemary into the open grave. Rosemary makes as good a hedge as lavender and gives a different tone of colour, so that there should be room for both in most gardens. Some- times it may be seen covering the gable-end of a THE DOVECOTE, STONELANDS, SUSSEX Seat of Godwin King, Esq. The house is Tudor, and has received additions from the present owner. It was originally one of the stone mansions built by the Sussex ironmasters, when this lovely countryside was given over to iron-production, but the dovecote is- new. 4 LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY 25 cottage to the very eaves, for with a little training, it will reach a height of fifteen feet or more. How the bees revel in the grey-blue flowers on a bright morning in early spring! For that reason alone, beekeepers do well to grow plenty of it, as well as lavender, for the excellent flavour it will give to their honey. A hedge in the open will flower a little later than the sheltered plants nailed against a wall, which is all the better for the bees, but it is doubtful whether the statement that rosemary flowers twice in the year, which is often made, has any foundation in fact. «Put in rosemary cuttings on Good Friday and they are bound to grow,” is an old-fashioned country adage; and so they certainly will, but better plants can be raised from seed. It is a shrub which seeds freely, and if a grain can be coaxed to take root in the crevice of a ruined wall, it will wax strong and hardy, and no prettier way o° growing it can be found than to let it shape itself as it will. It likes the lime of the crumbling mortar, and is far more aromatic in such scant harbourage as it can find for itself, than when given the luxury of richer soil—only it asks for sunshine. We may see in some country gardens a simple archway made of rough oak boughs clothed with 4 26 GARDENS OF ENGLAND rosemary, which is one very charming way of using it; but it is quite as appropriate against a grand terrace balustrade as among the homely herbs of the kitchen garden, or trained over a farmhouse porch. In some way or other, be our garden what. it may, we must find room for rosemary, and it should be planted, not in some neglected out-of-the-way corner, but where it can be seen and approved. So, too, there should be plenty of it if possible, for we surely fail to catch some undertone of that mysterious rhythm of life which vibrates through the common air we breathe if we cannot, now and then, throw a rosemary branch into the fire upon the hearth, and let its familiar sweetness awaken tender memories of the days that are gone. Lavender and rosemary—two good old friends —not to be cast on one side for newer comers. Treat them well, yet without grudge of shears in due season, and then, come summer, come winter, green of rosemary and grey of lavender will breathe out new lessons of stainless fragrance and steadfast faith, to stir within us nobler thoughts than we sometimes harbour of the loyalty which wearies never, though Time steps on. III THE HERB GARDEN III THE HERB GARDEN “NoTHING but leaves” or little else is in the herb garden. Is this the reason that the happy, useful, pretty spot where once the herbs grew, is now so often absent from even the best-cared- for gardens of the present day? In vain we look around to find the pleasant borders wherein our grandmothers and great-grandmothers were wont to cultivate the sweet-leaved plants which in their train brought health and fragrance. Brilliant colours and perfect blossoms so powerfully attract the modern gardener that he forgets the virtues of the aromatic herb, simply because its flowers are inconspicuous and its features homely. But scents and savours belong more to the leaf than to the flower. “Nothing but leaves” indeed! Without leaves where would the doctor or the cook be? Both food and physic depend greatly 29 80 GARDENS OF ENGLAND upon herbs, their subtle essences and delicate flavours. Pot-herbs and medicinal herbs are alike indispensable to man’s well-being, and they are fascinating for all sorts of sideway reasons. Why then do we not make a pleasure of growing them ? At the outset comes the question “ What is a herb?” Many definitions have been attempted, but most of them are failures. It is, however, fairly safe to use the words of a well-known herb enthusiast, Lady Rosalind Northcote, who -has pondered the question carefully. “Speaking generally, a herb is a plant, green, and aromatic and fit to eat, but it is impossible to deny that there are several undoubted herbs that are not aromatic, a few more grey than green, and one or two unpalatable, if not unwholesome.” A complete list of plants that are certainly herbs would contain the names of about as many of those that are out of fashion at the present time as it does of those that are still in use. The length of the list would be a surprise to many. Or HeErss IN PRESENT USE Walking through any ordinary garden, what will it have to show us in the way of pot or THE HERB GARDEN 31 kitchen herbs? Well, in all gardens one is quite sure to find mint, sage, and parsley. These three our cooks insist on, but unless we happen to possess a French cook there will not be many others. The herb-lover, however, wants a dozen more at least. He expects to see sunny, fragrant banks of thyme, of marjoram and sweet savoury, cheerful clumps of chives and chervil, bushes of camomile, rosemary, and lavender, along with borage, balm and rue. All the mints, too, he would have. Besides lamb-mint (Mentha viridis), there should be cat-mint and the comfortable, hot-cold peppermint. Tarragon is another half- forgotten precious herb for whose flavour we are grateful when we are enjoying it in Vinaigre ad Estragon, but few of us know how good a freshly gathered stalk or two may be in making salads. Following the advice of friends from France, the herb-borders of the writer are never without chives. A few spikes in omelette or salad will give just so much of the flavour of the onion as to ensure piquancy without any of the drawbacks of a savour that is over-strong. Chervil is a delightful change from parsley for garnishing dishes; it is quite as pretty, though, truth to tell, not nearly so 32 GARDENS OF ENGLAND lasting. Borage is one of the triumphs of the herb garden; its flowers of lovely blue would make it well worth growing even if the leaves did not possess the flavour of the cucumber, refined and etherealised. No one would vulgarise his claret-cup with real cucumber if once he had tried the delicate flavour of the borage leaf. Sorrel is another plant one learns to use in France, where soups that are quite delicious are made of nothing else than herbs and a little bread. Sorrel helps to flavour them. If cooked as soonas it is picked, and prepared in the same way as spinach, it makes a capital dish. Marjoram of different kinds, and both sorts of sweet savoury, are still used in soups and stuffings, but not much else. Isaac Walton gives instructions for dressing a pike, that, besides pickled oysters, includes winter savoury, thyme, and some sweet marjoram. Else- where may be found an old-fashioned recipe for “dressing a trout” with rosemary and one or two common pot-herbs. No one can read old cookery books without seeing how much the herb garden was valued in former times. Few fish in these days are treated with herbs; we have nearly lost the custom. Other herbs still used at the present time, but “CARMINO,” FALMOUTH An example of what can be done in England in the way of gardening near the sea. The owner, Mr. Wilson Fox, made this garden, planting a screen of Scotch “firs first, and when the flowering shrubs and herbaceous plants were well established, gradually re- moving the firs till the present splendid sea-view was regained, » THE HERB GARDEN 33 seldom grown in private gardens, are purslane, wormwood, tansy, sorrel, burnet, fennel, anise, caraway, sweet basil, bugloss, coriander, dill and hyssop. Horse-radish was formerly counted as a herb, and so were wood-sorrel, dandelion, and cresses. Some of these plants are less attractive in appearance than others, but all become interesting when once we know all about them. There is hardly a herb in the garden that, besides being of use, is not mixed up with poetry, romance, and magic. But the little plants themselves are dumb, though the scents or “souls” of them, as Maeterlinck calls their perfume, reveal glimpses of their inward characters. In most herbs it is the leaf we value for its virtue, and in some the seed: very rarely it is the flower. Naturally, we like our herb garden to be beautiful as well as curious, so, of the more homely herbs we need only have a specimen or two, and of the handsome and deliciously scented ones, as many as we like and can find room for. Some of the wormwoods are pretty enough to be an ornament to any garden. A few of mine are sometimes put among their cousins in the flower- beds, where they puzzle everybody, often not being 5 34 GARDENS OF ENGLAND recognised as herbs by even the most accomplished gardeners. Culpepper says of the bitter worm- wood, that “being laid among clothes it will make moths scorn to meddle with them.” In France there are wide, waving fields of Artemisia absin- thium, the wormwood from which is brewed the far too fascinating cordial, absinth. Fennel, with its strong, queer taste, was once delighted in for flavouring broths, baked fruits, and pippin pies. “A fardynge’s worth of fennel-seed for fastyng dayes,” was thought a treasure. Tastes must have changed a good deal since those early days. Dill is a pretty umbelliferous plant, in flavour an exaggeration of fennel. Its seeds were used to soothe little babies and make them go to sleep. The entire herb was employed in working spells and counter-spells of blackest magic. In coriander, too, it is the seeds which “trem- bling hang upon the slightest threads,” that are of value. They are compared in Holy Writ to manna. This Eastern herb is naturalised in England and grown for the druggist and con- fectioner. Sometimes, among sugar-plums and caraway comfits, we light on funny little rough pink and white balls that have an odd and THE HERB GARDEN 35 unfamiliar flavour ; when we get through the sugar and come to the seed, we know what coriander tastes like. Hyssop, a good-looking evergreen aromatic shrub, besides all other virtues, is endowed with the power of averting the Evil Eye. But however tempting it may be to wander away among the labyrinths of herb lore, this is no place for it. Far wiser and more practical it is to read what a great authority (A. Kenny Herbert) in culinary matters has been saying lately about the disuse of kitchen herbs. <“Con- tinuing the custom handed down from olden times, our cooks,” he says, “still use mint with lamb, green peas and new potatoes; thyme and > marjoram in stuffing for veal and hares; sage with ducks, geese, and pork, and fennel with mackerel. Specialists, too, in the preparation of turtle-soup, recognise the value of sweet basil in their flavour- ing. But in few kitchens is summer savoury (sarriette) used with broad beans, basil in cooking tomatoes, rosemary in seasoning poultry, purslane as a gamish for vegetable soups, chervil in salads and fish sauces ; or ravigote, a blend of many herbs, for a like purpose.” It really seems as if in the matter of herbs and their uses a little going backwards would forward 36 GARDENS OF ENGLAND us in the end. What do our cooks do now, poor things! when they want herbs for flavouring ? We give them dried herbs from the shops in bottles, a makeshift method that admits of no variety and very little taste. How different in the days of the old olitory or herb garden, where the culture and culling of simples was as much a part of female education as the preserving and tying down of “rasps and apricocks.” There was not a Lady Bountiful in the kingdom but made her own dill-tea and diet-drinks from herbs of her own planting :— Herbs too she knew, and well of each could speak That in her garden sipp’d the silvery dew; Where no vain flower disclos’d a gaudy streak, But herbs for use, and physic, not a few. SoME vERY OLD-FASHIONED HERBS Of herbs that are even more out of fashion than those we have been considering, there is a long list. Many of the names are unfamiliar ; others we only know as wild plants. Here are some of them: Alecost, angelica, blites, bloodwort, buck’s-horne, cardoons, clary or clear-eyes, dittander, elecampane (which makes a sweetmeat), fenugreek (beloved of cattle), Good King Henry, herb patience, hore- THE HERB GARDEN 37 hound, lady’s-smock, lang-de-beefe, lovage, penny- royal (which made a drink for harvesters), rampion (one of Hans Andersen’s fairy stories is about rampion), saffron, self-heal, skirrets, smallage, samphire, Sweet Cicely. Alecost or costmary is a charming herb, with long, narrow leaves of palest green, tasting slightly of mint; it was used in flavouring beer, hence its name. Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odorata) is a pretty, graceful plant, the stalk and leaves of which taste as if sprinkled with sugar, but not at all of myrrh so far as I can perceive. Bees love it, and so did housemaids in time gone by, who used oil made of its seeds to polish and scent their oaken floors and furniture. Both these plants deserve a place in every herb border. From the bulb of saffron the useful medicine colchicum is extracted. Samphire, St. Peter’s herb, properly a sea-cliff plant, was once so popular as a pickle that it was made to grow in gardens. Did space permit, there is a good deal to be said about all these old-world plants, now seldom seen, but every one supplying scent or savour, food or medicine. 38 GARDENS OF ENGLAND Makine THE Hers GAarDEN How to set about making and furnishing a herb garden is the next question. No one must expect a single border to contain all the herbs he will be longing to grow. Some herbs require one aspect and some another; some like a moist place, some a dry ; and soil, too, must vary, if we are to please all the different kinds. No doubt the old super- stition that plants are apt to quarrel among them- selves and sometimes refuse absolutely to be neighbourly, originated, in the first instance, in the fact that there are great differences of opinion among them as to the soil in which they like to live. Rue will not grow with basil, so they say ; radish detests hyssop; and I know myself that mint and parsley will never agree. Among herbs there are Annuals, Biennials, and Perennials. Annuals, as a rule, do best where they can get ample sunshine, but it will be found that those which are thin-leaved will soon scorch up if exposed to a very hot sun. Some of mine (among them wormwood and Sweet Cicely) did badly for two years on the south side of a fence. When moved to the other side, where there was a little shade, THE HERB GARDEN 39 the same herbs flourished. One has to learn a good deal as one goes on, for there is rather a lack of information in gardening books in the matter of herb-growing ; even a few hints may be better than nothing. Coriander and anise like a warm, dry soil ; sweet marjoram and summer savoury must be sown in light earth and kept watered after being thinned out; borage can be raised from seed at first, and will then scatter itself wherever it finds foot- hold, and come up year by year with no further trouble. Chervil, if successive crops are wanted, can be sown any time between the end of February and August. If the leaves (which are ready for use when about two or three inches high) are cut quite close, the plants will soon spring up again. Of Biennials our old friend parsley is the chief. He likes a deep soil, not too rich, and is not averse to a little soot. An odd idea still lingers in the gardening world that it is unlucky to plant parsley roots ; you must sow it or expect the most disastrous consequences. And we must never be surprised -when parsley seed is a long time in germinating— it has gone to the nether regions and back again three times before being allowed to spring up! 40 GARDENS OF ENGLAND Perennials form a numerous family. Those from the South want warmer quarters than the rest, but most of them are hardy. ‘Tansy grows anywhere; homely as it is one loves its tight little golden flowers. Horehound and rue like a shady border and a dry and chalky soil. Now and again it is a good plan to cut the rue down and let it grow into a well-shaped bush again. Ah! the smell of rue; it is the quaintest smell in all the world ; not at all nice, but so clean, so purifying. No wonder it was used to keep off fevers and even worse things. Rosemary, sage, and hyssop like a light and sandy soil. Mint, peppermint, and pennyroyal delight in moisture. Look at the wild peppermint in sedgy places. Elecampane likes shade and a fairly damp place, where it grows sometimes as much as six feet high, throwing up spikes of pretty yellow flowers ; it is propagated by off-sets. Saffron prefers sand and sun and to be grown from seed. Basil it is safer to raise from seed in a hotbed, and plant out in a warm border about May-time. Coriander may be sown in March, during dry weather, and the seeds put in half an inch deep. Sorrel we increase by dividing the roots. There are two kinds, the French sorrel and the English THE ROSE GARDEN, DRAKELOWE (BANKS OF THE TRENT) This quaint garden was one of the original Dutch. gardens laid out in the time of “Dutch William ’” III. The temple at the end was built from the designs of Mr. Reginald Bloomfield—author of “ The Formal Garden in England.” THE HERB GARDEN 41 or garden sorrel. The first likes a dry soil, and the second rejoices in a damp one. It is a strong grower and will overrun the garden if allowed. Thyme affects a light, rich earth, but who does not know the kind of banks on which the wild thyme grows? We have got to bring those into our gardens. Thyme is best propagated by cut- tings. It is an insult to anybody to tell them how to grow balm. Once in a garden never out of it, but luckily it is a darling, precious, welcome weed, and can never come amiss. Let us stick a bit in the ground whenever we can to be ready for pinch- ing as we pass it! The varieties of Artemisia, such as wormwood, tarragon, and southernwood, all prefer a dry and rather poor soil. Lavender loves a sandy soil, and is happiest near the sea. Bergamot grows any- where. Rosemary grows well from seed, but to save time we always propagate by cuttings ; it loves to spread itself against a wall, where its flowers show to advantage. Winter and pot mar- joram like a dry, light soil ; sweet marjoram is not a perennial. Winter savoury we propagate by cuttings. Bugloss does not care where it is put, and will grow happily in a gravel-pit—the same with alkanet, which has rather a pretty blue flower, 6 42 GARDENS OF ENGLAND and is sometimes mistaken for borage, of which it is a very poor imitation. The best time to start a herb garden is early spring, having prepared the plots beforehand. All herbs that are wanted for storage should be picked before they flower. ‘Dry them in the shade,” says one of our old advisers very quaintly, “so that the sun draw not out their vertue, but in a clear air and breezy wind that no mustiness may taint them.” Wandering in the herb garden it is a pretty pastime to look closely at the plants and observe the signs, or signatures as they were called, which betray their several virtues. The stem of the viper’s bugloss is speckled like a snake, so it is a remedy against poison or the sting of a scorpion. Heart-trefoil, or Calvary clover, by many reckoned a herb, has heart-shaped blood-stained leaves, and defends the heart. St. John’s wort is pierced with tiny holes like the pores of the skin, and is a sovereign remedy for cuts. In other herbs their common names express their qualities, as in self- heal, clary (clear-eyes), or horehound, which cures a barking cough or a dog’s bite. THE HERB GARDEN 43 Tue IpEAL HERB GARDEN The ideal herb garden would have one or two things in it not strictly herbs, perhaps, but im- possible to exclude from that debatable ground between the flower and kitchen garden where mostly herbs do grow. Bergamot or bee-balm, mary-gold, and sweet woodruff, each must have a place in it ; so must rosemary, lavender, and myrtle. Bay trees may overshadow it and the coral-fruited barberry. Snow-white camomile and the pink or purple mallows must have a sunny corner, and the tall tree-mallow space to spread its velvet, healing leaves. Southernwood (pet-named old man or lad’s love) must be admitted, and so must santolina, the little grey shrub better known as lavender cotton, or French lavender. Of leaves there will be many grey and many green, and not a few with specks and flecks of gold, so that, even without any flowers whatever, the borders may be gay. There will not be much difficulty in establishing a herb garden, for herbs are not exacting; very few of them want fussing over. The greatest difficulty lies in getting the variety we should like to have. Some we must beg from friends, others we may find in cottage gardens, and a good many 44 GARDENS OF ENGLAND (by no means all) will be found in the florists’ lists. It is not half so easy to get a really good collection of herbs together as it is to get the rarest, finest bulbs or roses, or herbaceous plants or orchids, but it is well worth doing. And to those who cannot give up room for a whole herb garden, my advice is, have a border of herbs; let it be near the kitchen, and teach the maids to use it. IV AMONGST THE ROSES IV AMONGST THE ROSES WHEN an elaborate history of modern gardenng comes to be written, much should be said of the rose, which has brought to our gardens a sweetness of fragrance and beauty of colouring that were denied in a large measure to our forebears. True, there was the quaint little moss rose, the Provence or “old cabbage,” as if such perfumed petals deserved so coarse a name; Celeste, pink as a maiden’s cheek ; the dainty Coupe d’Hébé, and the richly coloured damask. I love these favourites of sweet memory, and the rose lover should plead for their retention, especially those that have been named, and the following: the Moss de Meaux, the Provins, with its quaintly striped forms, Rosa Mundi, and the true York and Lancaster (both striped roses), the double yellow Banksian—a flood of golden glory in early summer, Rosa lucida, Rose 47 48 GARDENS OF ENGLAND d’Amour—beautiful when smothered with double pink bloom and even more so in hep time, Maiden’s Blush, the rose-coloured Boursault— called Morleth, the common pink China rose, Cramoisie Supérieur, the warmth-loving Fortune's Yellow, and Madame Plantier—white as a snow- drift when burdened with flowers in summer, and charming as a standard or pillar rose. I hope the day will never come when these old rose friends are cast aside for novelties which may have few of their virtues. One of the pleasantest features of the modern garden is the free way in which the rose is planted. Vivid are the recollections of sunny hours spent in gardens in which the rose was the queen, and one never tires of a flower that in its most modern development will bloom from early summer until the Christmas bells ring out in the winter wind. This is truer of the South of England than of the Midlands and North, but at the time of writing, a few days before the great festival, a few flowers still linger. I hope to fill a bowl with rose flowers on Christmas Day, and not buds seared and hurt in the winds and rains of December, but those which will open as fresh and fair as any rose of summer or autumn. My rose friend late in the THE ROSE GARDEN, WAXWELL FARM, PINNER See note to Daffodils, Waxwell Farm, AMONGST THE ROSES 49 year is the tea G. Nabonnand—a poem in form and colour. It does not glow with colour in the garden, but half-open buds expand into flowers with trembling petals painted with tender shades —a mingling of softest salmon, buff, and pink, and one detects the presence of this beautiful creation by a fragrance sweeter than the flower brings forth in the drowsy summer evenings. The white Frau Karl Druschki gives freely of its symmetrical blooms, and the joyous little Camoens defies even the winter snow. A strange picture was a group of Camoens in the snow, its cherry-red flowers peeping up from the caressing mantle, but such was the case once in my hilltop garden. I think the dry soil and cool winds which blow across the groups of roses may account for this unusual picture—a marriage of rose and snow. But perhaps the greatest joy in late December is to find in some sunny corner the graceful flowers of Madame Laurette Messimy, the sweetest of the China roses, hanging from the still evergreen shoots; or the monthly rose itself, which has been planted more largely of recent years than generations ago, when it was the pride of squire and cottager. I never advise planting this pink “ China” in a bed by itself; it is too vigorous—a strong leafy bush, and 7 50 GARDENS OF ENGLAND without the association of rosemary and lavender seems to lose something of its wonderful colouring. A grey border is a border of quiet beauty. I shall ever remember its winter effect in Miss Jekyll’s exquisite garden at Munstead Wood. Winter there is as full of colour and of interest as in the high summer days, or in autumn when the star- worts are in bloom. The modest China rose should hold a high place amongst the many roses that the flower-lover considers essential to the planting of the modern garden. One of the soonest to bloom, and in full flower when other early roses are only budding, it has a long season of flowering, while its autumn bloom is also abundant and prolonged. China roses, it must be remembered, can be used in many ways—in hedges, in beds, and with other plants or shrubs. Some of the happiest associations are with the tree-ivy, that blooms so freely in ‘October, or with rosemary, joining hands with this fragrant shrub in the very first of the summer days when it is still in bloom, and making an admirable companion to its autumn clothing of deep-toned grey foliage. But I wish to describe a small border in a Buckinghamshire hilltop garden. It is in full AMONGST THE ROSES 51 exposure to sun, wind, and rain; there is no shelter whatever, and when the roses were planted, it was felt that their lot was not a happy one, but there they are, big lusty bushes, steeped in pink flowers in early summer days—a picture of fault- less association of colour. The pink China and the warm salmon-rose tints of Madame Laurette Messimy and Madame Eugene Resal are in perfect harmony with rosemary and lavender, both the tall and dwarf forms, the lamb’s ear, or Stachys lanata, and the deep grey-green of Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa). At one corner the blush- white Bourbon Souvenir de la Malmaison gives bountifully year by year of its homely flowers, but its growth is not strong—perhaps the exposure is too unkind. It may seem presumptuous to advise the devoted flower-lover to prepare the border thoroughly before planting, but this fact is mentioned as the outcome of experience. The border under consideration was trenched two feet deep, the gravelly soil removed, and loam, stacked for twelve months, filled in to take its place, with a layer of well-rotted manure just beneath the roots of the plants. There must be many exceptions to a general rule in gardening. Advice given for one place is not suitable to 52 GARDENS OF ENGLAND another ; but this one can say with absolute truth, that on a poor soil, such as falls to the lot of many, it is unwise, expensive, and brings certain disappointment, to lay a poor foundation.