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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

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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. <A small grouping of white pinks gives a still greater charm to the picture, the soft billowy mass of fragrant bloom in June hiding for the time those silvery leaves which seem more silvery still in the coo] winter light.

The necessity for care in the preparation of the soil for the reception of roses is insisted upon in the excellent little guide published by that interesting Society, the National Rose Society, of which the late Dean of Rochester was the first president, and one of the founders. It is there mentioned that the ground in which the roses are to be planted should be dug or “bastard trenched” to the depth of eighteen inches or two feet, and a liberal supply of manure incorporated with it. This should be completed, if possible, a week or two before planting-time, so that the soil may settle down after having been moved. Soils vary so greatly that it is impossible to give directions for all circumstances, but the following advice may be of service: light soils will be improved by the addition of that of heavier texture; heavier soils

AMONGST THE ROSES 53

are greatly improved by the admixture of road scrapings (“road sand ”), wood ashes or leaf mould. Roses delight in ground which is retentive of moisture rather than otherwise, but like nearly all other plants will not thrive in soils which do not allow the rain to pass away readily from their roots. Where the soil or subsoil is waterlogged, the ground should be properly drained before the planting of roses is attempted. Farmyard manure partially decayed is recommended for most soils, while soils that are heavy are best treated with horse-manure, and for the light, cow-manure. A dressing of half, or quarter-inch bones may with great advantage be also added to the soil when preparing beds for the reception of roses.

This society now numbers nearly three thousand members, testimony to the national love of the rose, which we are thankful is extending—a whole- some influence in these days of unseemly hurry and intense competition. The influence of garden- ing brings into play the sweeter attributes of man’s nature, and the rose plays a great part in this beneficent and righteous work.

And how interesting it is to seek out the beginnings of the great work which has sprung up in our gardens, a work which is still developing

54 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

until we may have roses all the year. Many countries have contributed to this worthy end, as the names of the roses indicate, but the Britisher, at first slack, or, perhaps, slow in appreciation of what was going on around him, has awakened to a sense of the importance of raising new hybrids and varieties to beautify our gardens. Many beautiful roses have been raised of late years, several of which are as popular as those that have come from other lands. And surely every rosarian, no matter of what nationality he may be, will remember the great work of Henry Bennett, who died many years ago on the threshold, one might say, of his interesting and important career. It was he who raised the hybrid Mrs. John Laing, a rose almost as popular as Gloire de Dijon, Her Majesty, Grace Darling, Lady Mary Fitzwilliam, and sorts almost as famous.

The origin of our garden roses, except, of course, the species or wild kinds, is shrouded somewhat in obscurity. Early in the last century the blush tea rose was introduced from China, and a few years later the yellow variety came from the same country. The late Mr. William Paul, one of the most distinguished of British rosarians, in his famous work, The Rose Garden, links the China

AMONGST THE ROSES 55

or monthly rose, the tea-scented, and some other groups, to Rosa indica. Probably the tea rose originated from the China or monthly rose, and no doubt the wild forms of Rosa indica were grow- ing in China years before the actual introduction of the blush and yellow forms. It is difficult to define exactly the true tea rose, owing to the raising of a host of hybrids which closely approach its standard, but the distinguishing characteristics are slenderness of growth, as opposed to the solidity of the hybrid perpetual; the thorns or prickles are mostly reddish in colour, and almost trans- parent, and the wood itself when the plant is in full growth appears covered with bloom that gives to the grape a subtle beauty. The young leaves and wood generally are shining ruby-red in colour, almost transparent, and there always appears to be a never-ceasing attempt on the plant’s part to emit new growths from the older wood, a restless activity which is to be seen amongst the China or monthly roses, and the pretty little dwarf polyanthas.

Another attribute of the tea rose is its flow of ’ flowers, which in climates that are suitable to a winter flood of blossom never ceases from January to December. Under a tropical sun the plants

56 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

kill themselves with this prodigal outpouring of flowers, which are as delicate in scent as they are in colouring.

It is said that the old Devoniensis was one of the first English-raised roses, having its origin ‘in the single yellow tea known as Thé Jaune. Devoniensis was used by Bennett, who crossed it with the famous Victor Verdier, and obtained the beautiful hybrid, Lady Mary Fitzwilliam, from which indirectly has come Caroline Testout, Frau Karl Druschki, and the majority of the hybrid teas. During the summer months a rose may be seen in flower in the Royal Gardens, Kew, called Rosa indica (Miss Lowe’s variety), and from that we believe most of our tea roses have been derived, fertilised with other forms of the same species.

The hybrid perpetuals differ largely from the tea-scented roses; they are popularly supposed to have sprung from hybridising the hybrid Bourbon with the hybrid Chinese and damask perpetual, among the first raised being one named Princesse Helene, which Mr. Wm. Paul ascribes to the work of that eminent raiser, Monsieur Laffay. The wood of the typical hybrid perpetual is stout and upright, the spines coarse, and the leaves

THE ROSE GARDEN, NEWTOWN HOUSE, ‘NEWBURY Seat of Lady Arbuthnot. The rose-garden was

made by the late Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, K.C.S.I,, a famous amateur rose-grower.

AMONGST THE ROSES 57

large and leathery, whilst the flowers are of large size. Many unquestionably possess tea blood, naturally Victor Verdier, which I believe is as much a hybrid tea as Captain Christy. Hybridisa- tion of the rose through natural agencies has been taking place ever since roses were known, and the groups have become mixed to so great a degree that to trace the precise origin of many of them is an almost hopeless task. The hybrid tea in most cases can be clearly recognised as inheriting its nature from the two groups, the hybrid per- petual and the tea-scented, but here again the predominance at times is largely on one side. As our knowledge of the Mendelian theory deepens we may be enabled to explain more fully the origin of some of the older groups which we must now regard as mere conjecture.

With the wealth of material at command, there is no excuse for ugly rose gardens, and yet they abound. As I have more than once pointed out, lovely as roses are and have been hitherto in our gardens, it is scarcely too much to say that the beautiful rose garden has yet to be made. Their culture has been irreproachable, reflecting the utmost credit on gardeners and raisers, but, as far as we are aware, they have not yet been so used as

8

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to show all the best that roses can do for us for the beautifying of our gardens.

It is not to be expected that the best possible use of roses should be commonly seen, for to form it well the rose garden would have to be the work of the consummate garden artist; of one who combines the knowledge that will enable him to rightly form the place to its own circumstances and that of its environment with a keen appreciation of form and colour, and an intimate acquaintance with the flower. For among the multitude of roses that may be had, one has to remember that they are derived, as I have mentioned, from many different species, inhabitants of nearly all the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere; and that their ways are as different and almost as many as their places of origin.

So the maker of the rose garden has to have a complete knowledge of the wants and ways of his material ; also in designing the garden, whether its lines be free or formal, he will bear in mind its best purpose, which is to present a picture, or series of pictures, of some of the most beautiful of flowers, disposed in such ways as may best display their own loveliness, and at the same time take their proper place in the whole scheme. The knowledge

AMONGST THE ROSES 59

needed is not only the first and most necessary thing, which is to be able to grow roses. This is purely a horticultural matter, which should not be confounded with what is to come after. The roses of the rose garden must be well grown, the material of the picture must be of the best, just as the artist requires the best quality in canvas, colours, and brushes, but well-grown roses only do not necessarily make a rose garden, and that is why those that we see in many large places, where plentiful labour and all needful means and appliances are freely provided, leave us with a sense of emptiness and regret, even though the roses there seen may be of the loveliest and grown to perfection.

When this is felt—and alas! it is in nearly all so-called rose gardens—it is because it has not, in the first place, been considered as a whole, in proper relation to the place itself and all that is about it ; and secondly, because no intelligent or careful thought has been taken about the arrangement of the details. There are the paints and brushes and the canvas, but where is the artist? The rose garden is usually a target of concentric rings of four feet wide beds in turf, with arches at the four sides, and, perhaps, a meeting-place of arches in the centre, and it is often placed in the middle or at

60 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

one end of a rather large space of turf. Even this rather hackneyed arrangement may be improved by good colour masses, though we have never seen such a garden that had even this redeeming point.

But now that our eyes have been opened to wider and deeper views of gardening, and to a grasp of the subject that is not only more powerful but also more refined ; and now that, in obedience to the almost unspoken demand there has arisen a bountiful supply of new and beautiful things in the rose world ; now that all is ready for the doing of better work, it is to be hoped that the knowledge of good growing and the equally necessary dis- criminating taste will work together, so that the rose gardens of the future may be so much better than those of the past days, as are the beautiful roses that we now have than the wildlings from which they are descended.

The charming rose pictures which are repre- sented in this chapter, that at Newtown House in particular, show the glory of the rose in its full summer beauty, and should have a great teaching value. Here are to be seen many of the newer varieties boldly massed against the light green back- ground of trees,—roses everywhere, rippling over a wall and filling each square box-edged bed with

AMONGST THE ROSES 61

fragrance and colour. This approaches one’s ideal of what arose garden should be—a warm massing of colour, provided by the favourites of old and the newer varieties and hybrids which have been raised in recent years.

Raisers are now directing attention to climbing roses which flower in the autumn months. Dwarf or bush plants give freely of their dainty clusters until the eve of Christmas when the weather is kind, but few blooms linger on the climbers. Aimée Vibert may have a few of its white clusters, and perhaps a rosy bud may peep from the still green leaves of Dorothy Perkins, but there is no abundance. If only one were able to bring the flower beauty of June and July to September and October how great would be the joy of the lover of the rose!

Many English gardens boast of a pergola which brings thoughts of sunny Italy to our mind. The pergola has been the means of enabling one to grow climbing plants, and roses in particular, in a way one could not do before, and a well-built structure when covered with blossom is a garden picture fair to see. In the illustration of Brantwood Dorothy Perkins is a sea of pink, and this is just the right rose for such a place, against the first

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pier which it will quickly cover with its wonderfully strong growth, almost hidden with flowers in late summer and early autumn, but I may point out that the pergola should be solid—a rickety suc- cession of poles is not beautiful. There is a great advantage in having solid piers of masonry for such structures, but often the expense of this cannot be undertaken, and something lighter and less costly must be used. Sometimes the pergola is of squared wood, with the beams partly supported and much strengthened by slightly curved or cambered braces of the same; the curve of the brace adds to the strength of the support and satisfies the eye. The feet of the posts, instead of going into the ground, should rest on a stone, letting an iron dowel into both stone and posts, and fixing it firmly. Thus there is no danger of the foot of the post rotting. For the first year or two there is no need to fill in the top with the slighter poles that later will support the more extensive growths of the creepers; indeed, the whole thing is very pretty, with a different kind of form and beauty to the mature pergola with its fully filled roof. In their earlier years one sees more of the individual plants, and their first vigour of growth and bloom can be more fully enjoyed.

AMONGST THE ROSES 63

The pergola may also be constructed of oak and of larch. This, of course, will be long-lasting, but after some years signs of weakness must be looked out for. A span of larch or oak nailed er bolted to a shaking post will prolong its life for a few more years, but there always comes a day of sore regret (when constant repair is needed) that it was not made more structurally permanent at. the beginning. Climbing and rambling roses, wistaria, clematis, vines, Virginian creeper, jasmine, honey- suckle, and Dutchman’s pipe, or aristolochia, are amongst the best of plants for the pergola. This is the recommendation of Miss Jekyll, whose authority on such a question is undoubted.

Whilst the climbing roses are in mind, we must not forget their extreme beauty when grown on pillars, arches, or against trees. I well remember a small orchard of old apple and pear trees, It was below a terrace of flowers. Thousands of daffodils fluttered in the spring winds, but sweet as this picture was, a mingling of tree blossom and daffodil, it was not sweeter than in early summer when the roses were in full beauty. The plants made tremendous. growth, and the flowers hung in exquisite trails from the leafy branches—Crimson Rambler darting out a tongue

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of scarlet bloom, and Aimée Vibert making snowy mantles everywhere. This was a garden of roses, the most beautiful sorts filling the borders and beds round the house with colour and the air with sweetness. Against the house itself, in a warm sunny corner, Fortune’s Yellow was as much at home as on the Mediterranean shore, and no rose is lovelier than this—apricot, salmon, and other shades painted on petals which have none of the stiffness of many a “show” variety. The “climb- ing” roses which give me most pleasure are Aimée Vibert, pure white, and flowering very late in the year; it seems always in bloom, and has another virtue in its almost evergreen leaves. It is quite possible that a group of true evergreen roses will be raised in the future. The Wichuraiana Jersey Beauty glistens with colour through the winter, almost as fresh and sparkling as the holly in the neighbouring hedgerow; Alister Stella Gray has self yellow clusters which appear in both summer and autumn; Bennett’s Seedling, white, a very old garden rose sometimes called Thoresbyana ; Bouquet d’Or, one of the Gloire de Dijon race, but without the extraordinary freedom of the type; Félicité Perpétué, creamy white and ever- green; Gloire de Dijon, which I need not

oe

THE PERGOLA, BRANTWOOD, SURBITON

Entrance to the rose-garden of Mr, C. W. Dowdes- well, head of the famous firm of art-dealers.

AMONGST THE ROSES 65

describe; Gustave Regis, a delightful flower especially in bud; Janet’s Pride, a sweet briar ; Lady Penzance, also a sweet briar and raised by the late Lord Penzance by crossing the sweet briar we know so well—the common wayside rose with the beautiful Austrian copper briar ; Maréchal Niel in the south ; Meg Merrilies, another Penzance briar with crimson flowers; Paul’s Carmine Pillar, the most beautiful red single rose which has been raised; Réve d’Or, a rose for a warm garden, the flowers being yellow in colour; Rosa multi- flora, which bears a wealth of small white flowers in clusters; the Garland, the flowers white, touched with softest pink, more adapted for a fence than a pergola or pillar; Crimson Rambler, a blaze of crimson in high summer, and William Allen Richardson, which has the colour of a cut apricot. This is neither a complete nor an ideal list, but these are the climbing roses I love, because they are in the garden and seen weekly, companions of leisure hours; but certain roses show to most advantage against a pillar or a pole—such as Conrad F. Meyer. This has the Wichuraiana blood, but there is a prodigious strength in the spiny stems, which shoot up to a great

height. It is one of the earliest of roses to 9

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flower, and before Midsummer Day has dawned will probably have given a few blooms. These are huge in dimension and delicious in colour. If one knows the old cabbage rose, some idea may be obtained of Conrad F. Meyer. There is a suspicion of coarseness in the big flaunting pink- coloured flowers, but no hybrid is sweeter. It is amongst the most fragrant of flowers, and in the enjoyment of its rich incense we forget the spines and great thick petals. Climbing Mrs. W. J. Grant, salmon pink; the beautiful climbing form of Kaiserin Augusta Victoria; Gloire Lyonnaise, lemon-coloured; Gruss an Teplitz, crimson, and as sweet a rose in scent as the garden can boast of; Coupe d’Hébé, pink, the famous variety as white as a snowdrift ; Madame Plantier, Cheshunt Hybrid, red; Euphrosyne, pink; Reine Marie Henriette, red ; Leuchstern, white and pink ; Reine Olga de Wurtemburg, also red, but a different shade; Pink Rover, soft rose; the rich red Ard’s Rover, and the intense crimson-coloured Bardou Job. But one rose, reserved for the last in the list for special mention, does not receive its due meed of praise—Madame Alfred Carriere ; it is a flower to gather for filling bowls in the house, and the buds open early in summer, late in the

AMONGST THE ROSES 67

summer, and throughout the autumn. Many are the roses that may be cut long-stalked for free arrangement in winter, but early in June there is only this one good rose that can be so used. Madame Alfred Carriere, classed as a hybrid Noisette, has large pale leaves of the tea-rose char- acter, and large loose flowers of a low-toned warm white—capital to gather in the hand and put straight in water without elaborate arrangement. It seems to care little where it is planted—in town or country, but in the free, fresh, life- giving air of the country the flowers are purer and more abundant.

When writing of the rose one’s thoughts revert to the Royal Gardens, Kew, which are the centre of botanical research in this country, and fair to look upon at all seasons of the year. But in rose time it is a pure delight to the rose lover to walk through this beautiful garden, and see there the opportunities that exist for bringing the rose into greater prominence, making it take its share, not only in adorning a few beds or a border, but in the woodland, or fringe of copse, and in brave masses on the lawn. There may be seen the exquisite Una, raised by Messrs. Paul and Son of Cheshunt ; Electra, and many another rose which only reveals

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its characteristic flood of colour when it is planted with no niggardly hand. One bed there of Una, a creamy white flower of exquisite beauty, is seventy feet in circumference, and fifteen plants fill this great space. When they are in full bloom scarcely a leaf is visible; it is simply a cloud of flowers. And this brings other thoughts, thoughts of the adaptability of the rose for the woodland. As a well-known rose grower remarked, “The planting of roses should not stop at the garden boundary.” Why not use some of the delightful hybrid sweet briars, and other single and _ half double roses to border the paddock, or in the woods? One of my earliest recollections of roses is centred in some huge bushes of the native briar flowering in rich profusion in an old stone quarry to which I was sent to gather moss for use at our flower show. Whilst, then, roses are to be found in almost every hedgerow, and in their simple beauty are not excelled, I think we might supple- ment them by mingling the fragrant sweet briars, which we owe to the late Lord Penzance’s energetic labours in hybridisation. We need not stop at planting sweet briars, for there is an abundance of other kinds at command. There are the charming Japanese roses (Rosa rugosa), which

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are being supplemented every year by beautiful novelties, the flowers of which, in some cases, are snowy white, others approaching in brilliance and size the hybrid perpetuals. What fine groups, isolated in a sunny meadow and protected from the cattle, could be formed from the shrub roses, such as Macrantha, Maiden’s Blush, Hebe’s Lip, Carmine Pillar, Sericea, Moschata Nivea, Austrian Copper, and the Scotch roses. One especially I would recommend for estate planting, and that is Rosa cinnamomea blanda. Its wood in winter is as showy as the dogwood, and the pretty pink flowers are very attractive in June. When plant- ing, see that the work is well done, not just a spadeful of soil dug out and the plants stuck in the hole. Trench the ground, plant and spread out the roots very carefully, and, if possible, obtain the bushes on their own roots, then one may expect a flourishing group, though grown under half-wild conditions.

Roses have a winter beauty when those are chosen which have beautiful heps or fruits, such as Macrantha, the Japanese roses, and the majority of the Penzance briars, and writing of the Penzance brjars reminds one how great a depth of gratitude we owe to the late Lord Penzance, who wedded

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the wild briars of the hedgerow to the Austrian and others. It was left to the eminent lawyer within recent years to see the beautiful results that might accrue from this intercrossing—a race resulting which is beautiful in flower, in fruit, and in strongly perfumed foliage.

The garden without roses is unworthy of the name. We would have them everywhere, and free masses to show the rich and varied beauty of both the old and new varieties or hybrids. My favourites are A. K. Williams (H.P.), a warm crimson in colour and perfect in form; Anna Olivier (T.), soft buffshade ; Antoine Riviere (H.T.), cream, touched with salmon rose; Augustine Guinoisseau (H.T.), nearly white, very free and late-flowering ; Bardou Job (H.T.), a wonderful crimson colour, almost single, and is very vigorous in growth; Beauté In- constante, red and yellow, but as suggested by the name, variable, strong growth; Camoens (H.T.), a rose I have planted lavishly, its clear rose-coloured flowers appear from early summer until the frosts; Caroline Testout (H.T.), a splendid rose, the flowers held up on strong leafy stems, and the pink colouring is clear and pretty ; Charles Lefebvre (H.P.), an old friend, crimson, and one of the sweetest in scent; Cramoisie Supérieur (China), a

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crimson China, and the brightest of its colour ; Dr. Grill (T.), rosy fawn; Fellenberg, a China rose which never seems out of bloom, very vigorous; General Jacqueminot (H.P.), crimson, one of the best known of all; G. Nabonnand (T.), already described ; Gustave Regis (H.T.); Kaiserin Augusta Victoria (H.T.), cream colour; Killarney (H.T.), a charming flower, soft pink in colour and of strong growth; La France (H.T.), one of the most popular of all roses; La Tosca (H.T.), a hybrid that has a great future before it; Madame Abel Chatenay (H.T.), one of the most beautiful roses existing ; Madame Chedane Guinoisseau (T.), pure yellow; Madame Eugene Resal, a China rose of exquisite shades reminding one of those of Madame Laurette Messimy; Madame Hoste (T.), lemon-yellow ; Madame Jules Grolez (H.T.), soft rose; Madame Lambard (T.), rosy salmon; Maman Cochet (T.), rose and its white sport ; Maréchal Niel (N.), for a warm county or under glass; Marie van Houtte (T.), soft yellow, with an edging of rose to the petals; Marquise Litta (H.T.), rose carmine; Mildred Grant (H.T.), white, strong growth; Mrs. Bosanquet, a very soft pink flower of much charm ; Mrs. Edward Mawley (T.), carmine and pink; Mrs. John Laing (H.P.); Mrs. R. G. Sharman Crawford

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(H.P.), rose; Mrs. W. J. Grant (H.T.), pink; Muriel Grahame (T.), cream; Paul’s Carmine Pillar; Prince Camille de Rohan (H.P.), an intensely dark crimson colour, and deliciously sweet ; Reine Marie Henriette (H.T.), a climbing rose of a cherry-red colour, flowers in autumn; Reine Olga de Wurtem- burg (H.T.), the most notable of the full red roses, and a few flowers appear in autumn, but its chief display is insummer; Réve d’Or (N.), yellow, very suitable for a pergola, but should have the warmest, most sheltered pillar, as it is tender; Rosa multi- flora, a climber of strong growth, and bearing a profusion of white flower clusters; Rosa Mundi, not the true York and Lancaster rose, but similar to it, the flowers conspicuously striped ; Rosa rubi- folia, of value for the warm purple-red foliage, very beautiful on the rock garden ; Rosa sinica anemone, a lovely flower, single, and rose in colour, the leaves quite glossy, it should be placed against a fence or rough oak stems ; Souvenir de Catherine Guillot, orange and buff; Stanwell Perpetual, a Scotch rose, of blush colouring, flowers both early and late, and may be placed against a low fence ; Suzanne Marie Rodocanachi (H.P.), warm rose; the Garland, faintest blush, an old garden favourite ; Turner's Crimson Rambler, one of the most popular

AMONGST THE ROSES 718

of climbing roses; Ulrich Brunner (H.P.), cherry colour; Viscountess Folkestone (H.T.), almost white, a lovely flower; William Allen Richard- son (N.).

“H.P.” signifies Hybrid Perpetual, “T.” Tea, and “N.” Noisette.

10

V

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING ITS HEALTHINESS AND ITS DEVELOPMENT

Vv

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING ITS HEALTHINESS AND ITS DEVELOPMENT

Ir is surely a matter of national congratulation that the love of gardening has sunk deep in the affections of the British race.

In striking contrast to many other pursuits the interest in horticulture flows on and on but never does it ebb. There are few outdoor amusements— unless, indeed, they are bolstered up by fictitious excitements—of which the same remark can be made. The last thirty years have seen the wax and wane of many open-air games and occupations. Tennis and croquet, so absorbing in their day, have had their ups and downs. Bicycling, useful as it is, does not hold the position in public favour which it did a few years ago. Motoring, though just now in the ascending scale, may have given

place in another decade—who knows ?—to airships 77

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or some other excitement. The young and the old may indulge in these and many more pastimes while health and: strength last; then the wear and the tear of the nervous system begins to tell upon them, and they drop behind in the race for distinction, while the weakly are kept out of the running altogether. Doubtless all these in moderation tend to healthfulness of body and mind, but it is just at the point where all of them fail in their turn that gardening comes in and fills the gap, and happy is he or she who has a good foundation of experience to begin upon.

As I have written before, the reason why gardening will always hold its own is not far to seek. Nature—the Mother of Gardens— holds in her bountiful hands the inexhaustible gift of life, and horticulture is one of her chosen handmaidens to distribute the blessings which she is able and willing to bestow upon all who will work for them.

In many branches of Natural History destruc- tion is bound to precede exact knowledge.- The entomologist pins his beetles to the board; the ornithologist shoots his bird to make sure of its species. The gardener, on the contrary, cherishes

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the germ; his aim is not destruction, but growth and progress in the pursuit of practical knowledge, and the result of his work is living beauty. And while he toils to wrest her secrets from Nature she rewards him, all unwilling, with the health of mind and body which comes of congenial occupa- tion in the open air. It is true, in a measure, that the gentleman must be born, not made, and that just as we have met with isolated cases in which the song of birds gives pain rather than pleasure, so here and there we may find those so closely wedded to the life of towns that a garden to them would be as a howling wilderness. But even such as these depend upon the products of the soil so long as they come to them without trouble; the health and enjoyment, however, that follow on genuine work in a garden never come to such as these.

We have heard an erstwhile smart soldier, now an eminent horticulturist, declare that he had never found any pursuit so engrossing or so pleasur- able as the culture and ordering of his garden. We have known delicate boys and girls, upon whom doctoring seemed to be thrown away, recover health and strength in tending the gardens set aside for them to work in. We have been

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acquainted with veterans of both sexes who, to the last days of a green old age, have taken the liveliest delight in garden work and garden lore. And have we not all made friends with children who revel in their own little out-of-the-way plots where they may grub as much as they please without let or hindrance ?

We may be sure that no pursuit will give quicker or better returns in health and well-being for thought and work and money expended than horticulture in any of its varied aspects. For in a well-ordered garden good work goes hand-in- hand with good play and many another bright and pleasant thing. There is no exaggeration in calling it, after John Parkinson’s old-world phrase, “in very deed an earthly Paradise.”

But to enjoy gardening in all its fulness, there must be patience. It is not recognised as it might be that gardening is the most powerful counterpoise within our reach in the exhausting struggle for existence which is now a component part of our national life. It is not by the expell- ing force of one excitement over another that it works, but by the soothing anodyne of a calm and quieting influence insensibly acting upon over- strained nerves and tired brains. If this be so, and

THE TERRACE GARDEN, HOAR CROSS HOUSE

The house: built by the late Hon. Mrs. Meynell- Ingram, sister of Lord Halifax and well known for her benefactions to the church. The church tower in the picture is Mr. G. Bodley’s famous church (built - by Mrs. Meynell-Ingram) where Canon Knox-Little was rector until his recent retirement. :

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 81

experience abundantly proves it, let us resist with all our strength the temptation to bring the hurry of workaday life into our gardens. A beautiful pleasaunce, which is to me the embodi- ment of repose and peace, cannot be created by the wave of a magician’s wand. We need not regret it, for were it so it would lose its power over the restless spirit. Be we never so impatient, the law of the earth must needs be fulfilled, and we ourselves must tarry for her precious fruits.

Perhaps it is an old garden that must be re- ordered, and the impulse on first looking round about it is to cut down and to pull up, and re-cast the whole. Wait, and you will reveal unsus- pected treasures above ground and below—a happy combination of tree and climber, a little opening framing a bit of sunset sky or glimpse of woodland —patch of some rare bulb not to be replaced. Axe and spade soon make a clearing, but there is sure to be some feature of the old garden, beloved in bygone time, and precious even yet, which once taken away will be a loss irrecoverable.

Or our lot may be the making of a new garden destined to be a fit and perfect setting to the home,

which is the Englishman’s haven of content. This i

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is a serious matter indeed, and the forecast should be made, not without competent help if need be, but also with personal thought, and care. The ground plan and main outlines settled, let us pause, and pause again, before taking in hand the details. Because we do so the garden in the interval need not be a wilderness. Multitudes of quick-growing climbers, gourds, and flowering plants will give their little life to help bridge over this waiting time.

How different this is from the fussy impatience which must have its good things, or their counter- feit, at once—brooking no delay. “Life is too short,” says such an one, “to linger over detail ; let the thing be done, and the sooner the better. Money shall be no object, as long as all is in order by August when the house will be full.” We come perilously near to a casting away of the finest essence of gardening when we lose our hold of patience.

For patience in garden work as well as in all else brings its own reward. Years pass on, and the sapling, planted long ago, is rearing a lofty head; the climber hangs its kindly drapery over the dead trunk we fain would hide, and makes it a thing of living beauty; and memories of friend- ship lurk in every garden plot.

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Whilst thinking of the influence of gardening upon the health, and the need for patience to get this full value of so ennobling a pursuit, one may well look back over the past fifty years and consider the tremendous strides that have been made by the traveller and the hybridist to make our gardens what they are in the present age. An increasing love of an outdoor life and of consider- ations of health are not alone responsible for the national interest in the art of gardening. There is something else underlying this remarkable awaken- ing, and that is the great work, too lightly regarded by the public generally, not through want of appre- ciation but from ignorance, that has been and is being accomplished by enthusiastic amateurs and nurserymen of the latter part of the last century, a work far from having attained full fruition.

The British race is without rival in the realms of horticulture. We know this to be true from a comparison that can be made between the flower exhibitions in this country and abroad, and when this inevitable conclusion has been arrived at, it is no detriment to the work that has been accom- plished by hybridists in other lands. France we thank for the exquisite hybrid roses that grace our gardens, for the great work of Lemoine, Latour-

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Marliac, Vilmorin, and other hybridists and growers who have made the gardens of the world finer by their devotion and skill in the art of raising new plants, fruits, and vegetables.

But the British hybridists and nurserymen have not received their full meed of praise, not merely in the cultivation of flowers, but in bringing into life new and improved forms, and this raising of new flowers is one amateurs may take up with even greater enthusiasm than is evident at present. Already they have given us beautiful flowers. But more and more they should do what Mr. Wilks has done with the field poppy, and the late Lord Pen- zance did with the sweet briar, the one by selection and the other by hybridising and crossing; what Mr. Engleheart is doing with the daffodils, and Mr. Caparne with the irises. Nurserymen, seedsmen, and gardeners are not behindhand in this beneficent work, as we see by the wonderful improvement of late years in sweet peas, in great part due to the labours of Mr. Eckford ; in China asters, in seedling carnations, and hybrid garden roses. The careful watching and delicate manipulation needed for hybridisation should especially appeal to the leisured garden-lover ; it is mostly, and most easily, in plants raised from seed that good new kinds may

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 85

be grown. What a pleasure it is to watch for the flowering of a batch of young plants from carefully selected seed, or perhaps from seed specially fertilised in order to drive the strain in the desired track ; and how the pleasure is increased as year after year it becomes better and answers to the careful efforts directed by the intelligent observation of the plants’ capabilities, and by good taste in the object aimed at!

But the raiser of new flowers is not always filled with a desire for the beautiful only. There are false ideals. Nothing is more frequent in seed lists than to find the words “dwarf and compact” used in praise of some annual plant, and used with an air of conviction, as if to say, “There! Now we have got it! Dwarf and compact! We have done our duty by it; purchase it, grow it, and be happy.”

Is it an ungenerous and ungrateful act on the part of some of us that we are not content to accept “dwarf and compact” as the end of all beauty? Is it not rather, as we venture to think, a question that demands the most careful considera- tion and the exercise of the most well-balanced judgment in the case of each individual kind of plant that is commonly grown for the adornment of our gardens ?

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For planting beds in a geometrical garden where the object is merely to fill spaces of certain shapes with a mass of some chosen colour, these dwarfed plants are all very well, and no doubt this is a way of gardening that has its uses. But because the dwarfed form may suit such use in perhaps one garden out of a hundred, it is not a reason for denying the best possible form the plant might have to the other ninety-nine. May it not be one of the many cases in which the practice of what is the easiest has falsely taken the place of what is best ?

For any one of the great firms who benefit us by growing acres upon acres of beautiful plants for seed, to accept as a general article of faith that all annual plants are the better for dwarfing is certainly to adopt an attitude of mind which does not put an undue or fatiguing strain upon the imagination.

It is, no doubt, very easy to make this mistake, for here and there is a plant that just does want a certain degree of dwarfing, and when such a form occurs in a seed bed the condensing of the mass of bloom at once gives the dwarfed plant the appear- ance of being better furnished, and the idea, adopted with good reason in the case of one seed bed, is apt

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 87

to draw away the mind from other considerations, and to fix also, in the case of others, on that special quality as the one most worthy of encouragement. So it goes on from plant to plant, until it has come to be much too readily accepted among seed growers, seed merchants, and gardeners, that “dwarf and compact” is necessarily a term of praise, and in the greater number of cases the most desirable habit for an annual plant.

It is true that with many plants we are still at liberty to choose, and that in seedsmen’s lists we are offered both tall and dwarf kinds of such plants as larkspurs, marigolds, zinnias, salpiglossis, and so on. But, on the other hand, there are good things of which only the dwarfed forms remain, and though a great many people who love their gardens would be glad to have the plants in the bolder shape the desired form is denied them. Part of the difficulty also comes from the pursuit of novelty as a quality that is thought to be desirable in itself. When in the course of its attrac- tion, a plant does come to have some high degree of beauty of form and flower how rarely do the producers seem to recognise the fact that here is a beautiful thing to be treasured and guarded, and not driven further into directions that detract from

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that beauty merely for the sake of some newer, but not necessarily better development.

Some whole families of favourite plants want deliverance from the thraldom of “dwarf and compact.” We want, for instance, bolder forms in the families of stocks. We want the whole plant more free of growth and more branched; we want them more beautiful. What wallflowers are so fine as the great bushy ones in cottage gardens on fairly stiff soil? What garden wall- flowers can compare with them ?

The over-doubling of flowers is another matter that is often fatal to beauty. Many a flower is the ‘better for a judicious degree of doubling, but when it is carried too far it turns what should be a handsome flower into a misshapen absurdity. This has been done in the case of the zinnias. In this fine thing moderate doubling is a gain on a well- grown plant a couple of feet high. But there is a monstrous form where many rows of petals show one above the other. In this the flower is robbed of all its natural beauty, and becomes an absurd cone of quite indefensible ugliness, and it is all the more deplorable an object when this monstrous flower is grown on a dwarfed plant. The orthodox hollyhock is also much too tightly doubled, so

DAFFODILS, WAXWELL FARM, PINNER

This is an example of a fifteenth-century farm- house enlarged and adapted to modern standards of comfort. The garden has been skilfully relaid, in harmony with the house, preserving many of the old trees, and is entirely charming.

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 89

that it becomes a tight wrinkled hemisphere. The beautiful hollyhock has a distinct wide outer petticoat, and the inner portion is not so tightly packed but that its component petals, though closely grouped and loosely crumpled, admit of the free play of light and colour.

The undesirable influence of false ideal and of the rage for novelty, rather than a calm judgment of what is most beautiful, is also seen in the matter of colour. Some flowers have naturally only a tender tinting, which seems to be so much a part of their true nature that attempts to- force them into stronger colouring can only detract from their refinement. Such a plant is the delicious mignonette, with a tender colouring that seems like a modest self-depreciating introduction to its delicious and wholesome quality of sweetness. The slightly warmer shade of the anthers in the plant of normal tinting, with a general absence of any positively bright colouring, is exactly in accordance with the plant’s character, and with that modest charm that gives it a warm place in every good gardener’s heart. But when, as in some of the so- called improvements, the graceful head is enlarged and condenséd into a broad, thickened squatness,

with large brick-red anthers, the modest grace that 12

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formed the essence of the sweet flower’s charm is entirely gone, and in its place we are offered a thing that has lost all beauty and has only gained a look of coarseness. Their broad thick blooms have also a suspicion of rank quality about their scent that was never apparent in the older forms.

-All honour and grateful acknowledgment are due to seed growers both at home and abroad for the many grand plants that we owe to their careful labours, and one feels assured that these remarks will be taken in good part.

When writing of the modern development in gardening, the enthusiasm of the collector must not be forgotten, and one name will at once occur to mind, Mr. E. H. Wilson, who through the enterprise of the Messrs. Veitch of Chelsea has travelled Western China in search of new species and varieties with unbounded success. We who love our gardens owe a deep debt of gratitude to the Messrs. Veitch for their good work in sending out Mr. Wilson to collect new plants for the adornment of European gardens. Lecturing in 1903 the late Mr. J. H. Veitch spoke then of Mr. Wilson, whom we number amongst the greatest of recent plant collectors, and reference is made also to Dr. Henry, to whom we are indebted for many beautiful intro-

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 91

ductions, the Lilium Henryi not the least in beauty and interest. “In the spring of 1899 Sir William Thiselton-Dyer of Kew was kind enough to select a young man from the staff of the Royal Gardens who possessed, as far as could be judged, the necessary qualifications for undertaking a pro- longed journey in certain districts of China. The selection has proved a happy one, and the success of the venture so much beyond expectation that I have felt justified in despatching Mr. Wilson on another trip to the Chinese-Tibetan frontier, some thousand miles farther inland than he has been before. In order that Wilson might be fully equipped for obtaining the best results from the neighbourhood, he first visited Ichang in the Yangtsze Valley, and the western Hupeh generally, and is conversant with the most striking of the trees and shrubs known to be in that district ; some months were devoted to visiting Professor Sargent in Boston, and in finding Dr. Henry, at that time in the Chinese Customs service and stationed at Sezemao in Yunnam, on the borders of Tonkin. “The necessity of consulting Dr. Henry, and benefiting by his unrivalled knowledge of Chinese trees and shrubs—a knowledge freely imparted to Wilson —was so obvious that a year was devoted

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to this alone. The journey to Sczemao via Tonkin proved arduous, and at one time the chance of reaching Henry by this route seemed hopeless ; but the steadfast purpose of the young Kew student, of which on this as on other occasions he gave ample proof, enabled him to reach his destination. After spending some weeks with Henry, who taught him much, Wilson left for Ichang via Hong Kong and Shanghai, and during the two succeeding years— 1900 and 1901—sent home great quantities of seed so carefully prepared that it practically all germ- inated.” Wilson’s labours have not finished, and during the next few years he will still further enrich our gardens.

Whilst writing of the modern development of gardening, the great uplifting that has taken place in the planting of our public parks must not be forgotten.

Although there is still much to be desired in the way flowers are grouped and associated in the London and provincial parks, there is much to be thankful for, having in mind the ribbon borders and scrolls of the Early Victorian era. Much we owe to the late Mr. Jordan for this improvement in the planting and ordering of our parks.

VI

THE BEAUTY OF SIMPLE GROUPING

VI THE BEAUTY OF SIMPLE GROUPING

Ir may appear at first superfluous to devote a chapter to “simple grouping,” but the beauty of the garden much depends upon the way the flowers are arranged. Too often do we see plants dotted about promiscuously, a plan the paltry triviality of which, naturally enough, leads to the herbaceous border being stigmatised as “a confused muddle without any beauty or interest.” The system of planting in lines is, if possible, even more objection- able. Nature groups her flowers—does not plant them in lines—and, as far as practicable in a well- ordered garden, we should be guided by the methods of that “predominant partner.” A certain lady writer once defended herself for having advocated planting in lines by saying that she was merely writing for beginners, but beginners

have as much right to demand beauty in the garden 95

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as the expert, and to give such advice is to start off the novices, whose minds, so far as gardening lore is concerned, are virgin soil, on the wrong road, and one which will necessarily have to be retraced when they realise—as it is to be hoped they will, sooner or later—that in following such counsel they are getting farther away from Nature and nearer to the artificial. The larger a herbaceous border is, the greater are its possibilities for effect. In all but small gardens one about 140 feet in length and 15 feet in breadth might be provided for, and this would give sufficient space for the display of bold grouping. Even with such ample proportions it is not advisable to make use of a large selection of plants. The kinds should be strictly limited, but each should be present in natural masses. Contrasts are often very beautiful in the garden and arrest and fascinate the eye, but it is well in the herbaceous border not to strive after contrast so much as to endeavour to furnish a colour scheme in which the strong tints shall merge imperceptibly into softer and fainter shades, thus creating a restful effect that is welcome to the eye. Where the border is re- quired to be ornamental from early spring to the late autumn it can never be so gay at any particular

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time as one from which only a short season of beauty is demanded. Where, as is often the case, the owners only enjoy their garden for a few months in the year, it is by no means difficult to have it gay for the required period by congregating in it such plants as flower naturally at that season of the year, whether it be spring, summer, or autumn. Where, however, the border is open to daily inspection through practically the whole growing period of plants, subjects flowering at different seasons must be included, so that at no time will the border lack something which may charm the eye. Spring bulbs must be used, the fading foliage of which may be hidden by later- growing plants. Among a large group of herb- aceous ponies golden trumpet daffodils may be planted, these creating a delightful colour effect when their rich yellow blossoms contrast with the young carmine leaf-shoots of the pzonies; while, later on, the spreading foliage of the latter will completely hide the withering leaves of the narcissi. Here and there should be colonies of Michaelmas daisies for the autumn, and it is well to plant these late-growing things in front of such examples as become unsightly after their blooming season

is past, such as the lyre flower, Dicentra 13

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spectabilis, and the oriental poppy, which they will effectually screen from sight. If an attempt is made to provide a colour scheme such as was suggested earlier in the chapter, where a mass of blazing scarlet in the centre merges into glowing orange, yellow and palest sulphur, and purple fades through darker and lighter blues to lavender, an endeavour should be made to preserve the colour effect for some months by using plants of the same tints which are later in coming into bloom. It is not necessary that the herbaceous border should be absolutely confined to hardy plants, for such things as dahlias and cannas are invaluable for their colouring and may well be put out in the early summer, when they will provide a brilliant autumnal effect. By far the best edging for the herbaceous border is one of rough stones sunk well into the ground. Such an edging imparts a _pleasing finish to the border and infinitely increases the interest in the collection of plants, since it permits the culture of Alpines, which will succeed as well in the edging as in a rock garden, and will contrast charmingly, with their low growth and compact masses of attractive flowers, with the higher-growing perennials in the border at their rear. Although it has been pointed out that a

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more pleasing effect is produced in the herbaceous border if a skilfully arranged colour sequence is provided where tints melt suavely from bright to fainter hues, than if direct contrast in colours is striven for, these are often very charming in the garden. There are few more beautiful sights than a colony of white Japanese anemones in full flower against a low wall covered with the foliage of the Virginian creeper in the zenith of its crimson loveliness. The white flowers of the poet’s narcissus rising out of a carpeting of blue forget-me-not are a charming sight, and the scarlet Gladiolus brenchleyensis, associated with the tall, white spires of Galtonia candicans, form an effective contrast.

Staking is a subject of the utmost importance in the herbaceous border, for the most delicate colour schemes are irretrievably ruined should the tall plants be bound, as they too often are, like sheaves to stakes. The artistic eye revolts from the picture presented by tightly-bound, towsled flower-heads manacled to coarse wooden spars. The proper way is to thrust some thin bamboo canes, painted green to harmonise with the foliage, into each clump, the outer canes inclining a little from the centre, while the plant is yet making

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strong growth. If, before the plants come into flower, the canes are loosely tied together with tarred twine, the supports will be unnoticeable.

It is in the autumn that the wisdom of bold grouping is most apparent, for in September we enjoy the grand pictures of rich colouring that are painted by careful groupings of Tritoma and scarlet Dahlias and Gladiolus, with the strong and deep yellows of Rudbeckia and Helianthus and African marigolds, while the same range of rich strong colouring is repeated at their foot by masses of yellow and orange and scarlet Nasturtium. Where such grouping as this, carefully designed and carried out, plays its part for some central third of the length of a 200-feet-long border, whose breadth is 14 feet, here is space to show the merit of the arrangement and the value that masses of strong colour so arranged can acquire, especially when the ends of the same border are treated to a corresponding way in large groupings of cool and pale colouring.

Such a border is the delight in autumn of Miss Jekyll’s garden at Munstead. The colouring is gorgeous, and in such a border as described, the cool coloured ends have a groundwork of quiet, low-toned bluish-green, as of Yucca and Iris; of

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bright, glaucous blue-green, as of Crambe and Klymus, both valuable for such use; and of grey and silvery tones in large masses, represented by Santolina and Cineraria maritima, with white and palest pink and pale yellow flowers only. Groups of colour so arranged not only give the fullest strength value of which the flowers are capable, but they give it in a way that strikes the beholder with an impression as of boldness tempered by refine- ment, whereas the same number of plants mixed up would only have conveyed a feeling of garish vulgarity, mingled with an uncomfortable sensation as of an undisciplined, crowded jumble of coloured material.

As in colour, so it isalsoinform. The beautiful grouping of Nature in wild land is the best possible lesson that can be studied as a guide to the grouping of plant and shrub and tree, and though it often happens that for good effect in gardening an isolated form may be needed, it is usually as an exception to the general rule of good grouping, being much more beneficial to the garden picture.

VII

THE HEATH GARDEN

HERBACEOUS BORDERS, DINGLEY PARK, | .NORTHAMPTONSHIRE The seat of Viscount Downe. A very old house,

parts of it date from the eleventh century. The house outside the gate in the picture is the Rectory, also

very old,

VII THE HEATH GARDEN

My excuse for introducing a special chapter upon the heaths is to bring a beautiful group before those who wish to free themselves from evergreens which have become wearisome. It has been my pleasure and privilege to visit many of the most interesting of English gardens, but in few is the heath in the woodland or in those open grassy spaces which offer a suitable home. It is always with a knowledge that some fresh lesson may be gleaned that I repeatedly visit the Royal Gardens at Kew, and one of the latest additions is the Heath Garden, near the Pagoda; there are grouped the most interesting kinds, and when the flowers are open a flood of softest colouring comes from the little bushy shrubs. On rough banks, in the woodland, and

even in grass, the heaths will flower, not in the 105 14

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autumn only, when the wild heath smothers our hillsides with colour—hill upon hill of misty purple—but in the time also of the first flowers of the New Year.

The winter heath (Zrica carnea) seems to me as rare as any recently introduced shrub. I seldom see this little gem of the early year in gardens, and a group of fifty I once had was to even those who had no ordinary knowledge of flowers a joyful surprise. This group was in dry soil and in rough grass. During the summer it was pleasant to contemplate that in the early. days of the year the brownish shoots would be smothered with rosy bells—a mass of colour lighted up by the weak January sunshine.

Once I saw a path of heath turf. This was in August and in Miss Jekyll’s garden at Munstead Wood. I wish there were more such paths in our gardens. When pleasure-grounds are on peaty soil where heath grows naturally, very pretty and pleasant paths may be made of heath turf. The ground must be dug over and have all stones, bracken, and other roots removed. It is then carefully levelled and trod firm, all hollow places filled and rammed, finished with a wooden rake, then rolled and left to itself. By the second

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year it will be covered with a close growth of heath seedlings; those of Calluna should preponderate. By the autumn of the third year the mowing machine may be passed over it; after that it is mown once a year in October. It forms a close springy turf, feeling to the foot like a Brussels carpet. In August when the Calluna is in bloom the effect is surprisingly beautiful.

How well I remember that heathy path, and this reminds me—I am not wandering, I hope, from the heaths—of some notes in Miss Jekyll’s Home and Garden. They have been of much use to me in my garden of sand, and, I am thankful to say, of sunshine. “The natural soil of my heathy hilltop is so excessively poor and sandy that it has obliged me, in a way, to make a study of plants that will do fairly well with the least nutriment, and of all sorts of ways of meeting and overcoming this serious difficulty in gardening. It is some compensation that the natural products of the upper ten acres of my ground— Heath and Bracken, Whortleberry, fine grasses and brilliant mosses below, and above them a now well-grown Copse of Birch and Holly, Oak, Chestnut, and Scotch Fir—are exactly what I like best in a piece of rough ground ; indeed, I would scarcely exchange

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my small bit of woodland, especially after some years of watching and guiding in the way it should go, with any other such piece that I can think of. “The main paths through this woodland space are broad grassy ones kept mown; they enable one to get about with perfect ease among the trees, and being fairly wide, about fifteen feet, they incite one to a broad and rather large treatment of the tree-groups near them. But there are smaller paths about four feet wide that pass for the most part through the more thickly wooded places. They were made for a twofold purpose, firstly for the sake of having paths where paths were wanted, and secondly for obtaining the thin slice of black, peaty earth, the only soil my ground can boast, that overlies the great depths of yellow sand and stony strata that go down for nearly two hundred feet before we come to water. As the paths were made, this precious earth was stored in heaps by their sides, and these heaps have been a precious reserve to draw upon ever since. In some places this peaty surface is only an inch thick, though in some hollow holes there may be as much as four inches. Below that is an inch or two of loose sand, partly silver sand; this we also save; then comes hard yellowish sand and what is called the

THE HEATH GARDEN 109

‘pan,’ a thin layer of what is neither stone nor sand, but something between the two. It is like thick flakes of rotten dust; hard enough for the spade to ring on when it reaches it, supported by the firm sand below. In all cultivation for wood- land planting it is necessary to break through this pan; nothing thrives if this is not done.

“No part of my copse was broken up except a space of about forty feet wide next to my southern frontier, where I wished to plant groups of Juniper, Holly, Mountain Ash, and Ilex; and a roundish area about the middle of the ground for Cistuses. Both are now so well covered with a natural carpet of the wild heaths that one would not know that they had ever been touched, and I could wish for nothing better, both as a ground- work to what has been planted and as a growth that harmonises with all that is near.”

But a real heath garden I should like to see in every large estate. Our native species are amongst the most beautiful plants in the British flora. It is not possible, of course, except under unusual circumstances, to produce the exquisite effects that Nature provides, but in the made heath garden a variety of kinds may be grown which will give as much pleasure as the ling and

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heather covered hillsides, the purple of the heath, and the yellow of the autumn gorse. The hardy heaths are not only beautiful with regard to the individual flower, but they shower their blossom over the dense leafage, lasting many weeks in rich beauty. It is not unusual to have some sorts in bloom for five weeks, and when a collection is planted it is heath time the whole year. With all this wealth of subtle beauty at command it is strange that such a family of shrubs should not have gained a firmer hold upon the affection of all who love their gardens, but I hope this little chapter may have some influence in bringing this exquisite family of shrubs into the sunshine of Fashion’s fancies. One who has worked amongst the heaths for many years suggests That the best possible position for a heath garden is a hillside on peaty ground. Although it is not necessary that the soil should be composed of peat, the best results, as one well-known grower of heaths mentions, are obtained in soil of a naturally peaty nature. “Providing the ground is free from lime or contains it in only minute quantities, it is quite possible to grow first-rate specimens in loamy soil. Where a rhododendron will grow, heath may be expected to do the same. Next to peaty

THE HEATH GARDEN 111

ground, light-loam or sandy ground will be found the best rooting medium, and this will be greatly improved if it is trenched one and a half feet in depth, and a few inches of peat and decayed leaves forked into the upper layer. It is not advisable to dig out beds to a depth of one and a half or two feet and fill them with peat, as better results are obtained if a few inches of peat are forked into the surface soil of the natural ground. Even when lime is prevalent, and this has to be removed, it is better to partly fill the bed with sandy soil free from lime than with peat.”

Many are perplexed as to the correct time to plant heaths, but as this authority says, “This is not of great moment, any time between August and March being suitable providing the weather is not very dry or frosty. The plants should be trod firmly into the ground, and as soon as they are planted given a good watering, followed by a top dressing of decayed leaves. One point in their cultivation which is not always heeded is the cut- ting back of the shoots after flowering is over. This cutting back removes the seeds and the plants are not impoverished, as would be the case if the seeds were allowed to mature. It has the ad- vantage of keeping the growth compact. Heaths

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are usually increased in two ways, by cuttings and by layers ; the former is the more satisfactory and gives the finest plants. Cuttings of tiny shoots are made during late summer and early autumn, in- serted in pots of sandy peat, and placed in a close propagating case until they are rooted. As soon as the roots are formed they are hardened off and transferred to a cold frame for the winter. About May they are planted in beds by themselves, called “nursery beds.” By frequent attention to stopping

- of the shoots bushy plants may be obtained in two years from the time the cuttings were inserted. Layering is possible at any time, and consists in weighting down branches with pieces of stone into loose soil. The branches should be left undisturbed for twelve months, then planted in borders for a year until they are placed in their permanent positions.

There are two groups of heaths, the taller or tree-like forms and the dwarfer group, both possess- ing characteristic beauty, and both making large luxuriant groups in the garden and woodland. The heath called Erica arborea is, as the name suggests, a small tree, and in the Isle of Wight there are examples of it thirty feet high, with a trunk circumference of thirty-nine inches. Very

‘

SPALDING PARISH CHURCH, FROM THE LAKE GARDEN, AYSCOUGH FEE HALL

This unique garden is believed to be, contemporary with the old hall, early Tudor style, which originally belonged to the Ayscough or Askew family. The Protestant martyr Anne Askew was of this family. The spire belongs to one of the grand old churches for which Lincolnshire is famous. The garden was recently acquired by the town of Spalding, and is now public—and no town in England can boast a more in- teresting garden.

THE HEATH GARDEN 113

frequently the wood from which the briar-pipe is made is supposed to be that of some rose, but it is made from Erica arborea, briar being a corruption of the French bruyére. Along the Mediterranean coast, where it is found in abundance, it is very charming in spring when covered with a cloud of white bloom. LE. lusitanica or E. codonodes, to use a name under which it is better known ; E. australis, which is not, however, very hardy ; FE. mediterranea, or the Mediterranean heath ; E. stricta and E. Scoparia are the most worthy of this section. The majority of these are more for the south than the north of England, but E. medi- terranea is one of the most warmly commended by Mr. Bean, the assistant curator of the Royal Gardens, Kew. Writing to me some time ago he mentioned that at Kew a group seventy feet across made a beautiful picture of purple colouring in three or four years. “The habit of remaining for a long time in beauty, which is so marked a char- acteristic of the heaths, is possessed to the full ex- tent by this species. It is beautiful from March to May, and is all the more appreciated because the majority of the trees and shrubs that bloom at this season have yellow, pink, or white flowers.” Three

varieties may be commended, the white-flowered 15

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alba ; nana, of dwarf growth suggested by the name ; and glauca, of which the foliage is bluish-green.

The dwarfer heaths will appeal most strongly to the majority of the readers of these notes. E. carnea, the rosy-flowered winter heath, belongs to this group, and has been already mentioned ; and associated with this are the Scotch heather (E. cinerea), with its richly coloured varieties, atro- sanguinea and atropurpurea; the Dorset heath (£. ciliaris) ; E. maweana, supposed to be a variety but with a mixed rose-purple shade in the flowers ; the cross-leaved or bell heather (EZ. Tetralix) ; the Cornish heath (. vagans) ; and the common heather of mountains and moor, the familiar Erica or Calluna vulgaris. Of this there are many beau- tiful varieties ; my favourite, I think, is the crimson Alporti, which appeals to me as strongly almost as Erica carnea. Alba is white, and there is a golden- leaved form, aurea by name.

A heath garden is a garden I never tire of.

VIII

FLOWERS BY WATER SIDE AND ON THE WATER SURFACE

Vill

FLOWERS BY WATER SIDE AND ON THE WATER SURFACE

A PLEASURABLE feature of many modern gardens consists of the wealth of flowers by the lake or pond side, and on the surface of the water itself. This has been brought about largely by the beauti- ful work of M. Latour-Marliac, who has given us the exquisite hybrid water-lilies or nymphzas which he has obtained by crossing with a view toa variety of rich and subtle colours ; and this love of flowers that delight to float on the water surface or to have their feet in the moist soil by the pond or water edge is shown in many of the public parks, Regent’s Park occurring to mind as one of the most notable instances. It is interesting to learn that this phase of gardening is spreading in the United States, and the following words of wisdom by Mr.

Jackson Dawson, superintendent of the famous 117

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Arnold Arboretum in America, may well be quoted here. They are taken from a paper delivered some time ago before the New England Association of Park Superintendents. Mr. Dawson then said, and his remarks are applicable also to this country, that “ one of the great needs in our parks is some natural bits of planting near our ponds or lakes. While I would not like the whole pond or shore covered with shrubs or aquatics, I would like some little bits of Nature left. What looks more unnatural than a beautiful pond or lake divested of all natural beauty, leaving the trees trimmed up like so many sentinels and every vestige of shrub and flowering plant cleared to the water’s edge? On the other hand, what is more beautiful than the trees or shrub- bery hanging over a river’s bank or gracefully grouped at intervals along the edge of a pond? We have so many plants that love this moist situation. Imagine a planting of groups of azaleas, clethra, viburnums, cornus, and myrica, and with irises, hibiscus, forget-me-nots, etc. Can we not have more winter gardens in our parks and make those we have more ornamental instead of the unsightly things edged with stone walls that we call ponds? Neither pond nor brook should be planted with stone unless actually necessary to hold

FLOWERS ON WATER SIDE AND SURFACE 119

the soil in place, and even then they should not be laid like a wall, but as near on a natural slope as possible to the water’s edge, with plenty of pockets left to plant, so that eventually the stones will not be seen, but will have the appearance of a natural bank. What we need most is some natural bits of planting near our ponds or lakes. As a rule we have too much trimming and clearing up around them, often destroying the shrubs which were really beautiful, and turning what was a beautiful bit of Nature into desolation. I have seen ponds and bogs where all the natural shrubbery and native planting was cleared up to the water’s edge, and the trees in the park trimmed up like so many sentinels, thus destroying all the charm of the once natural woods and river banks. We know, of course, that in public places we cannot have all such places decorated, but we could have more than we do. We surely have material enough to plant such places with perfectly hardy plants, and when once planted I am sure the public will appreciate them. A lake or pond properly planted can be made a thing of beauty from spring to autumn, and even into the winter. Those places need not all be planted, mossy openings can be left, but when it is planted the planting should be

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massive, and so planted that a continuance of bloom could be had from spring until the middle of autumn. Trees and shrubs gracefully grouped with herbaceous plants on edges and aquatics in the water present at once a beautiful contrast with water not so decorated. I have seen many fine natural effects which might well be copied—for instance, a group of ilex, with cardinal flowers, and white water-lilies along the Hudson ; a river with overhanging trees and shrubs; a swamp of car- dinal flowers, red weed and bidens, ete. I could enumerate groups without number, all beautiful and offering you object-lessons so that you might make hundreds of combinations, and of chiefly native plants. Add to these many fine herbaceous plants and aquatics that are hardy, and a water garden could be made the finest feature in many of our gardens and parks.”

And what is true in America is true here. Nature offers us many beautiful pictures to copy—the loose- strife, a sea of purple in late summer, the yellow of the flag, the fragrant meadowsweet, and the fleets of white water-lilies, basking in the warm summer sunshine. We have an illustration of a beautiful lake garden in the picture of “Spalding Parish Church from the lake garden,” and a more

FLOWERS ON WATER SIDE AND SURFACE 121]

gorgeous scene, ‘“Rhododendrons, the Upper Pleasure Ground, Moor Park.” Here may be seen the value of bold planting, masses of rhodo- dendrons smothered in the early summer days with pink and purple flowers that gain in splendour by their reflection in the water. Such a shrub is peculiarly appropriate under these circumstances, the masses of flowers shown in such relief by the surrounding woodland. It is, however, the water- lily that has brought water-loving flowers into our gardens, and a lake surface bejewelled with the hybrids of Latour-Marliac and others is a summer picture not easily forgotten. All honour to this great French hybridist for endowing our gardens with such wondrous beauty. I hope that the following remarks gleaned from a lecture given by him a few years ago before the Royal Horticultural Society will be welcomed amongst these thoughts on English gardens. He mentioned in that memorable lecture that the nympheas are nearly all of equal hardiness but frequently differ amongst themselves in their early or late blooming, in their standing up above the water or floating on it, in their flowers being many or few, or in their general structure and growth being compact or wide-spread-

ing. Some of these form strong clumps which 16

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constantly increase in strength, but do not spread about, whilst others are of a roaming nature, their stolons and rhizomes wandering over a large space, and quickly spreading across the roots of other varieties. In natura] lakes or ponds it is impossible to prevent this confusion ; but this irregular growth should not be permitted in artificial basins and aquaria, where each plant in the collection should remain distinct and thrive independently ;_ besides, it would not only produce inextricable confusion amongst the plants, but the weaker would be smothered by the stronger. In order to obviate this difficulty it is indispensable that the basins should be divided into several compartments by partitions which should not be higher than three- fourths the depth of the water in such a way that they only prevent the roots and rhizomes from meeting, without preventing the leaves from inter- mingling on the surface.

A depth of two feet is sufficient for the tanks. A bed of earth six inches deep on the bottom of the basins will suffice for the culture of water- lilies ; it ought to be as free as possible from gravel and stones. The best soil is somewhat heavy loam from the garden or meadow, but that composed of leaf-mould and alluvial matter is

FLOWERS ON WATER SIDE AND SURFACE 123

also suitable. As regards the choice of water, that from a stream or river is to be preferred, though that from wells will do. When the water is taken from running streams it ought to be turned off in summer, so as to keep the tempera- ture of the water the same as the air. It must not be forgotten that nymphezas thrive best in stagnant water, or, at least, a very gentle current. In stocking a tank with water-lilies the object should be to obtain a harmonious and sequence of shades and colours and generally good effect, and for that purpose plants with high stalks should be avoided, as that would destroy the general view. It is necessary also to suppress conferve and certain under-water plants which are clogging and clinging, such as chara, vallisneria, elodea, and potamogeton, which live at the expense of the water-lilies without adding anything to the picture.

I think the remarks of Latour-Marliac on the way to obtain new forms are of great interest, and should of course be followed by those who wish to experiment. If new varieties are wished for recourse must be had to seed and hybridisation. The method of sowing is quite simple. It is only necessary to place the seeds in shallow vessels in spring and carefully keep them full of water.

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The work of hybridisation is more complicated, as it is necessary to cut away entirely, at the very first moment of expansion, all the stamens of those flowers which it is wished to artificially fertilise. On the second day dust the stigmas with a brush covered with pollen from those kinds chosen for the crossing of them.

Success in hybridisation depends principally on the care of the operator in only using buds of vigorous growth, well chosen, and fitted to produce types that will be free-flowering and perfect in form and colouring. The flowers usually sink after the third day from opening, and the pods which they produce come to maturity at the bottom of the water. When they are ripe they half open and allow a multitude of seeds about the ‘size of small pearls to drop out. These immediately rise to the surface surrounded by a gelatinous substance. They must then be collected at once with the aid of a small strainer, as they hardly float a day and then sink straight to the bottom, from which the sticky substance prevents them moving. After their capture they should be kept in water; they will be safer under these conditions until they begin to grow.

Those who have no tanks but wish to begin

FLOWERS ON WATER SIDE AND SURFACE 125

the culture of water-lilies can make shift with casks sawn through the middle. In temperate countries no winter protection is necessary, but not otherwise. As protection against frost Latour- Marliac recommends that a trench be made at a depth equal to one-third the height of the tubs, which are then placed in it and banked up to the edges with the soil dug out. One would hardly believe what a charming effect can be produced by tubs arranged in this way.

Of pests.we are sometimes troubled with water- rats, but M. Latour-Marliac complains of two kinds of larvee, the one black and the other white, produced by certain small yellowish-white butter- flies which deposit their eggs on the floating leaves. Their larve, at first almost invisible, develop to about the thickness of a wheat straw and devour the leaves of the water-lilies during the night. They are very clever in hiding themselves during the day, laying fragments of the leaves on their bodies and covering themselves with bits of lemna or azolla. These pests may be destroyed by pouring on the surface of the water some drops of a mixture of three-quarters colza oil to one quart of paraffin, a sufficient dose to poison them without injuring the plants.

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I have enjoyed many hours among the water- lilies, and rejoice that the culture of water flowers is increasing. Water gardening has drawn aside the veil hiding the wonderful richness of groups of flowers unknown almost in English gardens, and the race of hybrid nymphzas of which I have already written has deepened this love for a fascinating pursuit. There is nothing difficult about making a water garden; the plants for the most part run riot in the moist soil by the water, and the nymphezas are as vigorous as the arrow- head that sends up its spike by the margin.

It is not necessary to have a large expanse of water—broad lakes, rippling streams, or quiet back waters, as in gardens of moderate size pretty pictures may be formed with a careful choice of plants. That is the point—to choose the most beautiful flowers, and to let each reveal its true nature, which is not possible when hosts of things are crowded together as if it were meritorious to make a mere collection. A quiet sheltered pond or lake, screened from harsh winds, and not too large, is advisable, but one must of course adapt oneself to circumstances. When the expanse of water is not large, the flowers—the nympheas in particular—are more under control, rats and water-

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fowl may be held in check, and the beautiful floating bloom is under close observation. To look across a lake upon which the nymphezeas are spreading out their fleshy leaves, amongst which the flowers seem like huge gems, is to see a rare picture of garden beauty, but the enjoyment is keener when one has the privilege of punting near the flowers in the hot sun of a July day, and looking into the very centre, the gorgeous shades of crimson or of the more delicate tones of rose-pink and yellow seeming to reflect the sunlight itself.

When planting flowers by water side over- crowding must be avoided. Growth under these conditions is usually quick and rampant, and many of the kinds used are of considerable stature. Sometimes it is wise to restrict the selection to a few sorts, such as the late Mr. G. F. Wilson did in his pretty retreat at Wisley, now the experi- mental gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society. By the margin of a pond the Japanese irises were planted lavishly, and also the Siberian iris, which precedes it in flowering. The result was satis- factory—no overcrowding or overlapping, or any fighting for the mastery between things of different character.

I cannot refrain from introducing the notes

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written at my wish to The Garden, by the late Director of the Royal Gardens, Kew, just before his retirement after years of beautiful work in those many acres by the Thames side. Sir William Thiselton-Dyer said: “ Though in detail it has been my constant care, the lake was not my creation. It was begun in 1856 by Sir William Hooker, and completed in its essential features by Sir Joseph Hooker in 1870.

“The first point is, I think, its moderate size ; it covers a little more than four and a half acres. I do not mean to say that large pieces of water have not their own charm. But then they are apt to dominate the landscape instead of being an element in it. A piece of water should be an item in a composition and not its master. It is a common thing in a large domain to form a sheet of water by throwing a dam across a shallow valley, and allowing a stream to fill the hollow. The result is rather a reservoir than a lake. The dam is always obvious ; it may be skilfully planted with trees, which, no doubt, mask it at the expense of closing the only extended view the lie of the ground affords. There is usually a boat-house, but rowing under such conditions is an amusement apt to become monotonous.

RHODODENDRONS, UPPER PLEASURE GROUND, MOOR PARK

This place, now the seat of Lord. Ebury, was originally a monastery, and was given to Wolsey by Henry VIII., who used to visit there, with Anne Boleyn, In more recent times Sir William Temple was a frequent guest, and is credited, with having planned the Italian or Terrace garden in front of the house. Moor Park, the house he built near Farn-

ham, was so named after this one. _ \

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“Supposing, then, the lake to be of moderate size, the first indispensable condition is that it should not be seen all at once. The fundamental principle of landscape gardening is the excitement of curiosity. Every step should invite some further exploration and reward with some new but not final discovery. The lake should therefore be broken up into islands relatively large in size, but set off with ample water surfaces. The islands should be heavily wooded with well-disposed clumps of trees. These give effects of light and shadow on the water which are often in striking contrast. The neighbouring banks in this case should be well wooded, too, but more sparsely. Where the lake is more open and the banks barer, the vegetation on the island should be kept thinner and lower.

“The margins should avoid any stiff or hard outline, and should continue here and there into promontories, which will define corresponding bays. The former should be accentuated by boldly placed trees, or may be clothed with shrubs. The bays may be edged with well-chosen water plants, which should not be allowed to form a continuous hedge, but should be broken here and there to allow the

turf to slope down to the water side. 17

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“One of the charms of water is that it enhances by reflection any colour effect. This may be taken advantage of along the banks and on the islands, by planting bold groups of shrubs or such herbaceous plants as, if not actually aquatic in habit, like a moist subsoil. Even in winter a charming effect has been obtained at Kew by planting groups of coloured-bark willows on one of the islands. When the sun catches them they light up like lambent flame.

“Water surfaces should be allowed to produce their own effect, and should not be allowed to be covered up with floating plants. If this is neglected the lake degenerates into a swamp. Clumps of water-lilies should be kept near the banks, and not at such a distance as to make the beauty of their flowers inconspicuous.

“JT have said above that a lake should not be merely an object in itself, but an item in a com- position. When made, the task of weaving it, as it were, into its surroundings is best accomplished gradually, and is often effected, as at Kew, by judicious cutting out. Two objects should be arrived at: the one is to open up points of view in which the presence of water will tell; the other is to obtain a pleasing balance in the disposition of

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trees and foliage. No rules can be laid down for the latter, except those which apply to any design in which the total effect depends on the way in which the details are distributed.”

It is a pleasure to put such useful thoughts into a more permanent form than that afforded by a journal. The lake in the Royal Gardens, Kew, is one of the most beautiful spots in this beautiful place, and nowhere have I seen such perfect grouping of tree, shrub, and flowers. There are plants such as the herbaceous phlox, which will give the richest effect by the water side, without coming into actual contact with the water, and a group I once saw of Phlox Etna was in greater vigour than I ever remember this rich crimson flower. The phlox is never happier than in a moist soil, and excellent effects are possible with the many varieties that may now be obtained. But the colours must be pure and telling ; against the lake margin the softer shades are wholly lost. Looking last autumn from the lower end of the lake at Kew, I saw in the distance a cloud of purple, and not until I approached this flower cloud more closely was I able to see that the finest variety of our loosestrife (Lythrum Salicaria roseum superbum) was in the full flush of its blossoming—that is the kind of picture

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one desires. The double white arrow-head, the arum lily, where the climate is mild, as in the South of England and in Ireland, the noble spearwort (Ranunculus lingua), the willow-herb (Epilobium), irises, globe-flowers, or T'rollius, and for bold effect, the great-leaved gunneras (G. manicata and G. scabra) are a few families without which the lake or pond side is bereft of interest and beauty.

But perhaps the garden affords no means of growing water plants, then an opportunity is offered by what is called “the bog-garden,” wherein a host of beautiful flowers may be grown. There is such a little flower haunt in the rock-garden at Kew, where the trilliums, orchises, Primula rosea, and other gems are quite at home in the moist soil. In the springtime of the year those who contemplate forming such a feature should seek the moist woodland, and take a lesson from Dame Nature, who scatters the golden flowers of the kingcup over the damp earth, and by many a murmuring brook.

IX

SPRING IN THE GARDEN

Ix

SPRING IN THE GARDEN

I am writing these notes in early spring and have just returned by the path through the copse where is the one handmaiden that April—fickle though she be—never forgets to summon to her bidding. The “rathe primrose” waits—impatient —all through the stress and storm peeping out half-defiant, half-afraid, from the sheltering moss and crisp brown coverlet of withered leaves, until April's beckoning finger gives the signal and she is free at last to weave her dainty carpet where and how she will.

We call her “prime-rose” for no particular reason. In Chaucer's day her name was “ prime- role "—the firstling of the spring—but the change slipped gradually into common diction, and prim- rose she will remain as long as our English tongue

is spoken. Who has not felt the glad surprise 135

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of the beautiful primrose-time that comes to us with the return of many a familiar sight or sound or scent, like the soaring song of the earliest nestling lark, the unexpected sigh of the wind in the pine-tops on a still day, the fragrant breathing of sweetbriar after a passing summer shower ?

No matter where we live on British soil—on chalk or clay or deep-red sandstone—the primroses of our own countryside are ever to us the fairest and the best. We look back through the vista of Time perhaps, and see again the pale primrose stars clustering over the dripping clay banks of some well-loved lane hallowed by sacred memories. As we used to wander through the wood at Kastertide and looked into its cool depths, the primroses seemed to be playing at hide-and-seek amongst the mossy stubs of the nut bushes, peep- ing out, now here, now there, from broken stump or knotted root, joining hand in hand in a frolic of joy and mirth. Or it may be that memory brings back some rocky dens where a dimpling brook ran purling between shelving banks, and the pale gleam of the primroses in fitful April days shone out from beneath the grey gloom of overhanging boulders.

THE DUTCH GARDEN, MOOR PARK

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Few of us, indeed, but can conjure up some such remembrance, and though every spring they still crowd in myriads round our steps in copse and moor and hedgerow, none seem to us quite so fair as the primroses of the days that are gone. Only on the coal-measures, sometimes, April brings no primroses, and though we may try to coax them against their will to stay with us, as often as not it is a forlorn hope. Better to forego them altogether than to see them sicken and pine. Naturally enough the gardener’s art has tried to better Nature, and we have hybrids of bright and beautiful colouring, but their place is in the garden proper. As in the coppice and the land, so in the borderland which comes between the garden and the wild; no tone accords so well with the light- some green of tender leafage as the rare pale tint of the common primrose.

But the primrose, winsome as the flower is in the copse and wayside bank, is in a sense over- shadowed by the beautiful variations that we treasure as good garden plants. Several groups are in existence, the richly coloured varieties which were first raised I believe by Mr. Anthony Waterer, and the “Bunch primroses” that we

associate with Miss Jekyll’s. garden at Munstead. 18

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This race is the result of years of patient labour in bringing to perfection a type of plant which has now the love of all who care for the flowers of the early year. The bunch primroses are of great garden value; they bloom later than the true primroses, and revel in the half-shade of the woodland. Such a group as that raised by Miss Jekyll has flowers in profusion and kept exclusively to whites and yellows. The true type develops flowers in clusters or bunches, and the individual bloom is large, without any suggestion of coarseness, and beautiful in colouring. The individual blooms of the Munstead strain are one and a half inches across, but a number have reached two inches. Size, however, in this group has not been so much considered as an all-round garden plant—a beautiful thing in the garden.

The primrose fills one’s heart with the thoughts of spring; it is the flower that greets the opening buds on tree and shrub. Its companions are the cowslip, the oxslip, and the auricula, and I hope it will interest readers of these gardening thoughts - to know something of the history of the flowers one loves so well. Mr. P. R. Brotherston, who has given his leisure hours to the study of these and other flowers, wrote to me some time ago

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about these heralds of spring, or summer, for the primrose lingers even to the time of the opening of the first rose. Here are a few thoughts. The auricula was first introduced into English gardens, according to Gerard, as beares eares or mountain cowslips, and was cultivated in London gardens towards the end of the sixteenth century. The first writer who distinguished this plant as the auricula was Evelyn in his Kalendarium Hortense (1664), and in the following year Rea mentions it in a way that shows the name to have been in common use long before that time.

The polyanthus is a still later flower. It is first referred to by Parkinson in his Paradisus, and is described by Ray and other botanists later, but the name itself (sometimes polyanthos and polyanthous) does not occur until the beginning of the eighteenth century.

The cowslip is first described as a garden plant by Turner in his interesting 4 New Herbal. «There are,” he remarks, “some grene cowislipped and some dubbel, tripel, quadrupel, that grow in gardines.” Double, it may be remarked, is equiva- lent to two rows of petals, triple to three, and quad- ruple to four rows. Cowslips are not mentioned in either The Gardiner’s Labyrinth, or The Proffitable

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Arte of Gardening, but a year or two later in Lyte’s Herball (1578) they occur as garden flowers. By Gerard we are introduced to the double paigle, “so commonly knowne that it needeth no descrip- tion” and “cowslips two-in-hose” appear for the first time. In the Paradisus nine sorts of cowslips are described, of which the primrose cowslip is not improbably a polyanthus, and here occur names which recall pleasant memories of the old-fashioned flowers of childhood days. We may mention the “curl’d cowslips” or “ Gallegaskins, in which the calyx was crumpled and frilled like the garment of that name then worn, Hose-in-hose; the Franticke and Foolish cowslip, or Jack-an-apes on horsebacke,” which had the calyx developed into leaf-like forms (the Jack- an-apes of Gerard is noted in his Herbal as an oxlip), also “the Greene Rose cowslips or double greene feathered cowslip.” From the description the “flower” of this was simply the calyx of an abnormal size and shape, divided into many narrow leaves. Rea notes a great variety in the colours of the cowslip, of which one was a hose-in-hose. By the beginning of the eighteenth century cowslips appear to have gone out of fashion as garden flowers, or rather perhaps they were superseded by the poly- anthus. The primrose is in several respects a finer

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garden plant than the cowslip, and the early gar- deners, as well as the ladies who in medieval England did as much for the progress of gardening as the ladies of to-day, seem to have taken kindly to the garden forms of the primrose. The earliest date, however, it is possible to assign to the primrose in the garden is 1578, when Lyte mentions it as “fayre and dubbel.” A _ special paragraph is devoted also to the green primrose. Tusser catalogues the primrose among the herbs for the kitchen, while cowslips and _pagyles (oxlips) appear among “flowers for windows and pots.”

As the green primrose is the earliest recorded variety, it may be worth remarking that along with the green cowslip and oxlip it continued in both its single and double forms to be the favourite flower until at least the end of the seven- teenth century. Bacon in Sylva Sylvarwm refers to it, but is driven to prove his contention that there was no such thing as a green flower. ‘There is” he remarks, “a greenish Prime-Rose, but it is pale and scarce a green.” Among the Elizabethan poets who may be said to have popularised the primrose Spenser is the only one who refers to the green variety—

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Upon her head a cremosin coronet

With Damaske roses and Daffodillies set, Bay leaves betweene, And primroses greene,

Embellish the sweete violet.

The primrose in Drayton’s Garland, though sweet, was not the green one. A course of cowslips then Pll stick, And here and there (though sparely),

The pleasant Primrose down I'll prick, Like pearls which will show rarely.

Gerard mentions and figures a double white primrose, but one is left to conjecture if he had the plant at all. It is certainly suspicious that it is not mentioned in the catalogue of 1599, nor do we hear of it elsewhere. Parkinson refers to the common double only, and remarks that, though better known in the west parts of the kingdom and in the north, primroses were uncommon in the vicinity of London.

A quarter of a century later Rea introduces us to a great variety of sorts, “there being about twenty diversities of reds some deeper and others lighter, from blood red to pale Pink colour, some Dove colour, others of the colour of an old Buff coat, some fair red.” ‘The Scarlet and the Red hose-in-hose and the double red,” “the rarest of all

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kinds,” but not known to Rea himself. His son-in- law, the Rev. Samuel Gilbert, describes it as a “dull Horseflesh hue ” and of no value.

Like the cowslip, the primrose would seem to have lost repute amongst florists, and very little is to be found regarding it all through the eighteenth century. Miller (1783) mentions, along with the common double, the paper white, pale flesh, and double paper white, and distinguished them as primroses of Constantinople. Later, the latter name was withdrawn. An Edinburgh nurseryman in 1774 mentions three double sorts, viz. double yellow, double red, and double velvet, which he described as “a great beauty, being almost of a crimson colour with a bright gold coloured stamina.”

Martyn in Flora Rustica figured a dingy coloured variety which he called “Scotch Prim- rose,” and asserted that the plant grew wild in Scotland. In his dictionary he further remarks that it partakes to some extent of the nature of a polyanthus. The pink or lilac double primrose was figured by Curtis in The Botanical Magazine, and for a long time, or until about the third decade of the last century, the primrose remained in almost a stationary condition. Since then many double and fine single varieties have been produced.

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I thought this brief history of the sweetest of spring flowers would be interesting, for at no period has the plant in one or other of its forms played a greater part in the garden and in the park. This is due to the many beautiful strains, as the nurseryman describes certain groups of flowers, strains having the most refined and intense colours, some a full rich crimson, as rich as the double crimson primrose itself. It is in large beds such as I remember in the Hampton Court Gardens, that the primroses should be planted, and the bewildering variety of shades is a source of keen delight, but it must be re- membered that the plants are raised from seed saved from the finest types.

But one may have primroses in the woodland, a primrose garden perhaps, such as Miss Jekyll has at Munstead Wood. ‘There, in a clearing from the wood are gathered together those bunch primroses of which I have already written, and in the cool light of a spring evening there seems a mysterious beauty in the bold massing of flowers of white and yellow shades. <A subtle scent is wafted from this flower-covered clearing in the wood, and we feel the joy of spring, its fragrance, colour, and sunshine.

* TULIPS IN “THE GARDEN OF PEACE”

The garden of Mrs. Caldwell Crofton (Helen Milman), described by her in her book “The Garden of Peace.”

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Some of the primroses are for the rock- garden, where they may be companions to the alpine species which are the gems of the spring months. I am thinking now of the blue primroses which had their origin in the late Mr. G. F. Wilson’s garden at Wisley, in Surrey. The colour is not strictly blue, not the blue of the gentian, but when the tufts are planted in a shady moist corner of the rock-garden, the shade of purple is not unpleasant. In Mr. Wilson's garden the primroses were planted against moss- covered stones for the sake of the contrast in colour, and they have not been disturbed since this garden came into the hands—I am thankful to say—of the Royal Horticultural Society, through the generosity of the late Sir Thomas Hanbury.

The garden in spring has of recent years re- flected the copse and the woodland. It is as beautiful and interesting as in summer or in autumn, and I think much of this is due to the influence of the late Mr. Ingram, who had charge of the beautiful gardens of the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle. Spring gardening was, and is, under the direction of Mr. Divers, represented in a way to show the possibilities of beautiful

associations of colour lasting until the threshold 19

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of summer. The plants that have given the most welcome results are the following, and I give the list, as it may be useful to the reader of these “Thoughts on Gardening” : Aubrietia greca, A. g. Leichtlini, A. g. variegata, A. Hendersoni; Arabis albida, A. a. variegata, alpine auriculas, Variegated Crown Imperial ; Carex (sedge) riparia variegata ; double white and pink daisies; Daisy Rob Roy, which is scarlet ; Doronicum austriacum, D. planta- gineum excelsum, the lovely winter heath (Erica carnea); Golden Feather, Heuchera hispida, also known as H. Richardsoni; Hemerocallis (day lily) fulva variegata, Helleborus feetidus, the variegated Gladwin (Iris fectidissima variegata) ; the Forget- me-nots, Myosotis dissitiflora, d. alba, M. alpestris, Queen Victoria; Phalaris Arundinacea variegata, Phlox amena, P. divaricata, P. subulata, P. s. Nelsoni, P. s. Newry Seedling, yellow, white, and more richly coloured polyanthuses; Gilbert’s Harbinger primrose, Wilson’s Blue, Primula ciliata superba; Saxifraga cordifolia purpurea, S. purpurascens, S. igulata, S. Composi (Wallacei), S. muscoides purpurea, S. hypnoides; pansies, Ardwell Gem, Admiration, Bullion, Countess of Kintore, Blue Ring, Duchess of Fife, Duchess of Sutherland ; violets, Lady Hume Campbell, single

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Russian, the variegated periwinkle (Vinca major variegata); Belvoir Castle wallflower, and dark- red varieties ; and, of course, tulips and hyacinths, which are dotted amongst the dwarfer plants to give grace and variety of colour to the beds.

In such a garden as this it is possible to create imposing effects, but spring in the small garden should be a home of flowers. That delightful, almost modern feature of gardening, the wall garden, should be a place of many spring flowers. An exquisite garden I shall never forget—a garden in a riverside village—was surrounded by an old wall in which wallflower, snapdragon, and foxglove had become established. In the garden itself were several terraces, and the terrace walls were con- structed to provide opportunities for the growth of flowers without lessening their strength as supports. Here, in the spring, were fountains of white Arabis, the blue Aubrietia, pansies, saxi- frages and stonecrops, and the tiny sandwort o the Balearic Islands (Avenaria balearica) ran over the cool stones, a thick little moss starred over in spring and summer with white flowers.

Spring in the garden should be as full of beauty as in summer and autumn. The Gesner’s tulip then opens its big crimson chalice to the sun, and

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a host of species, hybrids, and varieties, and the “Darwins” are in the throng to welcome the time of the primrose and daffodil. There in the cool meadows the poet’s narcissus has been established, colonies of white flowers gleaming in the moonlight; in meadow and woodland the daffodil has become almost naturalised, the snow- flakes cluster near the stems of the apple-trees in the orchard, and there are flowers everywhere, soon to give place to the richer beauty of summer and autumn.

x SUMMER IN THE GARDEN

x SUMMER IN THE GARDEN

It is impossible, I think, to lay down any definite rules concerning “Summer gardening,” especially when the so-called “bedding-out” is in our thoughts. Most of the owners of gardens— whether the gardens are large or small — think of the exotics in connexion with summer, not perhaps of the zonal pelargonium or “geranium” as I prefer to call it, the blue lobelia or the yellow calceolaria, but of the many other beautiful flowers which contribute their brightness to the summer months in this country. Here are a few practical thoughts sent me some time ago from one of the most accomplished of flower gardeners. Summer gardening, he truly says, is a complex affair in these days, and much thought is necessary before one can decide upon the “exact combinations of plants

that will best fit in with their environment. No 151

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mere routine will satisfy the taste of the present generation, for, happily, we are being educated every day in garden matters into more simple agreement with Nature’s methods, and in a certain ordered measure to follow in her footsteps. The death-blow was given to the old bedding-out system, not by the plants which were used, for in themselves they were beautiful, but by the commingling of crude colours entirely antagonistic. and intolerably dull in their perpetual reiteration. But bedding-out must, and always will remain an essential part of a certain type of garden, if not of all.

“In artificial gardening, the great difficulty which often arises is to maintain the effect for a given length of time. Perhaps it would be better if we were sometimes content to let one bed pass out of highest beauty while another comes on, especially in the smaller sort of home-garden, where a ‘blaze of colour’ is not necessary. Neither is it indispensable in all cases that beds should be emptied of their occupants every season. Here are some plants, indeed, that will not only go on blooming for months, but will long remain our fast friends. Now and then, for example, one sees a mass of purple clematis pegged down and

THE ROUND GARDEN, DRAKELOWE (BANKS OF THE TRENT)

Seat of Sir Robert Gresley, Bt. The Gresleys have owned this estate since the Conquest. The portion of the garden here depicted is very old, but has been much improved by the present baronet, who placed. the present fountain there.

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grown practically as a bedding plant, and what a fine bit of colour it gives, flowering abundantly and with- out a break from July until October, and increasing in strength year by year. In Perthshire years ago the flame nasturtium (Zvropeolum speciosum) might sometimes be seen used in somewhat similar fashion. Planted amongst dwarf yew bushes, over which the slender branches clambered and trailed their wreaths of vivid carmine, the effect was remarkable. All that they needed was to be left alone, except for an occasional mulching. With a well-prepared root-run this fine plant would succeed in a damp, cool aspect, where other things might refuse to grow, and once thoroughly at home would give little trouble though it might ask for time. To have a few beds of unusual character such as this well established would make any garden famous.

* Probably we attempt too much. Let us take simplicity as the keynote of our garden arrange- ments and we may succeed where now, too often, we fail. Nothing can be more charming, yet more simple, than beds of the common monthly rose pegged down and flowering profusely at a height of about two feet from the ground level. What

is there to prevent such delightful everyday things 20

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doing equally well and being longer lived in our cooler, moister climate, and yet how seldom are they seen in masses in our gardens ?

“Colour we may have and enjoy to the full. It is the juxtaposition of incongruous colour from which we pray deliverance. When, therefore, we have to depend chiefly on bright-hued annuals, it becomes a matter of serious consideration which to choose, and contrasts must be arranged with the eye of an artist. We cannot go far wrong in making use in some association of such annual plants as African marigold, nasturtium and coreopsis, which give flowers of many shades of yellow, orange, and brown. But annuals may sometimes be better used as additions to more permanent plants. For tones of crimson, shading off through pink to pure white, no better flower can be found than the large-flowered single Indian pinks. A good bed can be made into a groundwork of the ordinary white or rosy double pink which will give a mass of pure colour in June, with strong plants of the Dianthus worked in between. The latter will flower without ceasing until late autumn and contrast well with the grey tufts of the double pinks. Another combination of this sort may be made with the winter heath (Erica carnea), arranged thinly enough to admit

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of tufted pansies being planted between, and serves the double purpose of a winter as well as a summer bed. It is also one of which we should not soon grow weary, for the winter heath is always charm- ing, and tufted pansies offer many variations of colour which might be renewed or changed at pleasure.

“We may think out for ourselves many com- binations such as these, which would serve to make our summer bedding more simple and easy to carry out, but none the less effective.”

These thoughts remind me of a small garden— less than three acres—which is flooded with flowers from the days of the daffodil until the first buds open on the pale lilac winter-flowering iris or Iris stylosa in a warm comer where rosemary offers this sweetest of winter blossom friendly shelter. The mixed border has its usual occupants—big groups of Delphiniwm belladonna, blue as the summer sky; drifts of white pinks and a variety of carnations, the feathery gypsophila, alstroe- merias, Michaelmas daisies, or starworts, as I prefer to call them; bell flowers, the big white Chrys- anthemum maximum, Coreopsis lanceolata grandi- flora, fraxinella, larkspurs, Echinops Ritro, the glorious Eremuri, Erigeron speciosus superbus,

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one of the most useful of hardy plants, and smothered with soft purple-coloured flowers for many weeks ; the sea hollies (Hryngiums), the quite hardy Geranium armenum, the goat’s rue (Galega officinalis), which is purplish in tone, and its pure white variety Alba; the scarlet geum, perennial sun- flowers, Helenium pumilun; hollyhocks, German irises, the flame-flowers (Zritoma or Kniphofia), the scarlet lychnis (ZL. chalcedonica), the bee balm (Monarda didyma), one of the most scarlet of flowers ; pzeonies, montbretias, poppies, especially the great Eastern poppy (Papaver orientale) ; herbaceous phloxes, and here and there the large- leaved saxifragas, which are better known as megaseas. Where blanks occur the soil is covered with half-hardy annuals, and the greatest favourites are the lavender and white forms of the ostrich- plume China aster. I have no great affection for the more formal type of the China aster, but the “ostrich - plume” is strongly reminiscent of the Japanese chrysanthemum ; it is a flower of beautiful colouring and dainty grace, and as welcome in the border as it is in the house.

Brilliant as this border was last summer and into the autumn, it was the marriage of pansy and rose that gave the greatest pleasure, and as my

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correspondent writes the tufted pansy is a power in the garden. The older types of this flower were never so welcome as the newer forms. There is a quaint charm in the heartsease, the cottage flower that seems to smile in the summer sunshine, but it has not the same freedom as the tufted pansy.

I have just finished reading Miss Jekyll’s instruc- tive and delightful recent book on Colour in the Garden. Many happy hours has the writer spent at Munstead Wood, gaining knowledge of contrasts and associations of colour from a mistress of the art of flower-gardening. This book, with its plans and illustrations, embodies the thoughts of years of garden practice, and I shall ever remember the big flower border, “about two hundred feet long and fourteen feet wide.” This, when I first saw it, was a revelation to me of the possibilities of producing startling effects in the hardy flower border. Miss Jekyll mentions in her book that the border “is sheltered from the north by a solid sandstone wall about eleven feet high clothed for the most part with evergreen shrubs—bay and _laurustinus, choisya, cistus and loquat. These show as a hand- some background to the flowering plants. They are in a three-foot-wide border at the foot of the wall; then there is a narrow alley, not seen from

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the front, but convenient for access to the wall shrubs and for working the back of the border. “As it is impossible to keep any one flower border fully dressed for the whole summer, and as it suits me that it should be at its best in the late summer, there is no attempt to have it full of flowers as early as June. Another region belongs to June, so that at that time the big border has only some incidents of good bloom, though the ground is rapidly covering with the strong patches, some of them from three to five years old, of the winter- flowering perennials. But early in the month there are some clumps of the beautiful Iris pallida dalmatica in the regions of grey foliage, and of the splendid blue-purple bloom of Geranium ibericum platyphyllum, the best of the large cranesbills, and the slow-growing Dictamnus Frazinella (the white variety), and meadowsweets white and pink, fox- gloves and Canterbury bells, and to the front some long-established sheets of Iberis sempervirens that have grown right on to the path. The large yuccas, Y. gloriosa and Y. recurva, are showing up their massive spikes, though it will be July before they actually flower, and the blooms on some bushes of the great Euphorbia Wulfeniu, although they were flowers of May and their almost yellow colour is

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turning greener, are still conspicuous and orna- mental. Then the plants in the middle of the wall, Choisya ternata and Clematis montana, are still full of white bloom, and the Guelder rose is hanging out its great white bells. I like to plant the Guelder rose and Clematis montana together. Nothing does better on north or east walls, and it is pleasant to see the way the clematis flings its graceful garlands over and through the stiff branches of the viburnum.

“The more brilliant patches of colour in the big border in June are of Oriental poppies inter- grouped with gypsophila, which will cover their space when they have died down, and the earlier forms of Lilium croceum of that dark orange colour that about approaches scarlet.

“ During the first week of June any bare spaces of the border are filled up with half-hardy annuals, and some of what we are accustomed to call bedding-plants—such as geranium, salvia, calceo- laria, begonia, gazania, and verbena. The half- hardy annuals are African marigold, deep orange and pale sulphur, pure white single petunia, tall Ageratum, tall striped maize, white cosmos, sulphur sunflower, Phlox Drummondi, nasturtiums, and Trachelium coeruleum. Dahlias were planted

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out in May, and earlier still the hollyhocks, quite young plants that are to bloom in August and September ; the autumn-planted flowering earlier. The ground was well cleaned of weeds before these were planted, and, soon after, the whole border had a mulch of a mixture of half-rotted leaves and old hotbed stuff. This serves the double purpose of keeping the soil cool and of affording gradual nutriment when water is given.”

The colour scheme of this border is remarkable. I have never seen a more gorgeous or harmonious picture, and Miss Jekyll points out that the planting is designed to show a distinct scheme of colour-arrangement. ‘“ At the two ends there is a groundwork of grey and glaucous foliage— Stachys, Santolina, Cineraria maritima, sea kale and lyme grass, with darker foliage, also of grey quality of yucca, Clematis recta, and rue. With this, at the near or western end, there are flowers of pure blue, grey-blue, white, palest yellow and palest pink ; each colour partly in distinct masses and partly intergrouped. The colouring then passes through stronger yellows to orange and red. By the time the middle space of the border is reached the colour is strong and gorgeous, but as it is in good harmonies, it is never garish. Then

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the colour-strength recedes in an inverse sequence through orange and deep yellow to pale yellow, white and palest pink, with the blue-grey foliage. But at this, the eastern end, instead of the pure blues, we have purples and lilacs.

“Looked at from a little way forward, for a wide space of grass allows this point of view, the whole border can be seen as one picture, the cool colouring of the ends enhancing the brilliant warmth of the middle. Then, passing along the wide path next the border, the value of the colour- arrangement is still more strongly felt. Each portion now becomes a picture in itself, and every one is of such a colouring that it best prepares the eye, in accordance with natural law, for what is to follow. Standing for a few moments before the endmost region of grey and blue, and saturating the eye to its utmost capacity with these colours, it passes with extraordinary avidity to the succeed- ing yellows. These intermingle in a pleasant harmony with the reds and scarlets, blood-reds and clarets, and these lead again to yellows. Now the eye has again become saturated, this time with the rich colouring, and has therefore, by the law of complementary colour, acquired a strong appetite

for the greys and purples. These therefore assume 21

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an appearance of brilliancy that they would not have had without the preparation provided by their recently received complementary colour.”

Several of the accompanying illustrations are of borders in which the flowers of summer make dashing groups of colour. In front of the “Herbaceous Borders, Dingley Park,” the lark- spurs or perennial delphiniums are strikingly handsome, and at the “Entrance to the Gardens (Ayscough),” one is greeted with a narrow border of the white Japanese anemone. I often think how much beauty is lost to the garden by not filling in odd corners with flowers or some little border such as is represented in the illustration. Here is shown the anemone in full flower, just the right position for the plant, which gains by the foliage-covered wall in the background. “The Lily Walk, Dingley Park,” shows the most beautiful of all lilies, Lzlam candidum, or the Madonna lily. There are two forms of this, one with narrow, and the other with broad segments, composing a flower of fine proportion and strength. Always ask for this when ordering bulbs of it. There is no more exquisite family of bulbous plants than the lily, and I fervently hope that in the near future the disease will be less troublesome. It seems to

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affect the Madonna lily less severely than many of the lilies, and I attribute the unsatisfactory condition of the foliage to late frosts. Whatever the origin of the mischief, there is some comfort in the fact that the flowers themselves are not upset. A glance at the illustration will ‘reveal this—leaves certainly tainted, but the snow-white flowers crowd the strong thick stems.

Writing of the white lily reminds me of a delightful contrast —the wild delphinium, with flowers of the bluest of blue colouring, and the former. I have such an association in my cottage garden ; the bulbs are planted between the posts of the pergola, and I have never seen, I think, a happier association of these two pure colours.

Other gardening thoughts than those of the borders occur to mind in the summer days, and surely one thinks now of the wealth of beautiful trees and shrubs covered with the flowers one looks forward to year by year. Before spring has flown the cherries are huge snowdrifts of blossom, and then the thorns, the golden rain of the laburnum, the mock oranges, the fuchsias, the tulip tree, the wistarias, and many other beautiful trees and shrubs are in beauty. Our love is not too strong for the rarer species and

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varieties from over the seas, but, perhaps, this apparent neglect is due to a want of knowledge of even their existence.

But one shrub in the summer-time should be in every garden worthy of the name in richer variety, and that is the lilac. A visit to the Royal Gardens, Kew, in early summer should be full of interest and instruction, and the collection of lilacs near the entrance from Kew Green repre- sents many charming varieties of which little is known. Lilac-time in this paradise of flowers filled with enthusiam Mr. Noyes, who contributed the following bright little poem to the Cape Times. I thought it sufficiently interesting to reproduce. Go down to Kew in Lilac-time, in Lilac-time, in Lilac-time,

Go down to Kew in Lilac-time (it isn’t far from London), And you shall wander hand in hand with love in Summer's

wonderland ; Go down to Kew in Lilac-time (it isn’t far from London).

The cherry trees are seas of bloom and sweet perfume, and sweet perfume ;

The cherry trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London !)

And there they say when dawn is nigh, and all the world’s a blaze of sky,

The cuckoo, though he’s very shy, will sing a song for London.

The nightingale is rather rare, and yet they say you'll hear him there, At Kew, at Kew in Lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)

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The linnet and the throstle, too, and after dark the long halloo, And golden-eyed tu-whit, tu-whoo of owls that ogle London.

For Noah hardly knew a bird of any kind that isn’t heard

At Kew, at Kew in Lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!) ;

And when the rose begins to pout, and all the chestnut spires are out,

You'll hear the rest without a doubt all chorussing for London.

The ordinary lilac is not overshadowed by any of its varieties. ‘There is a tenderness of colouring in the flowers and a sweetness of scent that make this still one of the best shrubs for town and country gardens. Here is a list of the best lilacs which I thought may be useful. Of the single sorts possessing very fragrant flowers: Marie Legraye, white ; Mathieu de Dombasle, iilac-blue, the spike very large; Charles X., deep-red ; Mme. Kreuter, red; La Tour d'Auvergne, deep lilac; Mlle. Fernande Viger, white; Delphine, deep purple-blue; Lovaniensis, flesh colour; Souv. de Louis Spath, deep red, one of the darkest of the better known lilacs ; and Camille de Rohan, deep red. Of the double lilacs: Francois Morel, lilac ; Mme. Jules Finger, of a lilac shade also; Alphonse Lavallee, Mme. Abel Chatenay, white.

XI AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN

THE LILY WALK, DINGLEY PARK

- Lady Downe designed this beautiful walk with a reminiscence of Mrs, Eden’s well-known Venetian garden, where the lilies grow under vine-pergolas. Lady Downe made a pergola of English fruit-trees. The tall white lily much prefers partial shade to full sun, and I have seen it growing most successfully in the Duchess of Bedford’s little wood at Chenies.

XI AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN

WINTER, spring, and summer have their respective charms, but it is in autumn that one is enabled to create brilliant effects from the starworts or perennial asters, known perhaps more familiarly as Michaelmas daisies, perennial sun-flowers, the flame - flowers, as the kniphofias or tritomas are popularly called, cannas, dahlias, and other plants as sumptuous in their flower colouring.

The starwort in its more recent form has certainly given a fresh beauty and interest to the autumn months, and I think I am correct in attributing much of its present-day popularity to Mr. William Robinson, who in his garden at Gravetye Manor, East Grinstead, some years ago, planted the starworts in the woodland, amongst rhododendrons, and in many other beautiful ways

to show the true character of the plant. I well 169 22

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remember a group of asters, Amellus bessarabicus, and Acris near some fir trees, and shall never forget the wonderful association of colour, the blues of the asters and the deep foliage of the pines, a picture to fill the true artist with joy. It is such pictures as these that make English gardening a pure delight ; the flowers of the woodland are made to play their rightful part in the landscape—dashes of colour which the commonplace bedding-out cannot impart.

I well remember a bright October day—it was the first day of the month—pushing one’s way through the starwort groups—pblues of every shade—and listening to the music of the bees. What a contrast to the conventional planting of this graceful flower—bunched up as it often is in the border, as if one were dealing with a stack of corn. Looking across the valley from the other side of this woodland of starworts the flowers seemed as a blue mist, and this kind of planting has not been sufficiently indulged in to become monotonous.

Then there is the border set apart entirely to the finer varieties, and my first acquaintance with such a feature was at Munstead, when at the time Mr. Elgood was painting the wonderful sea of

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colour. In Wood and Garden there is a descrip- tion of this border of Michaelmas daisies, which I here quote. “The early days of October bring with them the best bloom of the Michaelmas daisies, the many beautiful garden kinds of the perennial asters. They have, as they well deserve to have, a garden to themselves. Passing along the wide path in front of the big flower border, and through the pergola that forms its continuation, with eye and brain full of rich, warm colouring of flower and leaf, it is a delightful surprise to pass through the pergola’s last right-hand opening and to come suddenly upon the Michaelmas daisy garden in full beauty. Its clean, fresh, pure colouring, of pale and dark lilac, strong purple, and pure white, among masses of pale-green foliage, forms a con- trast almost startling after the warm colouring of nearly everything else; and the sight of a region where the flowers are fresh and newly opened, and in glad spring-like profusion, when all else is on the verge of death and decay, gives an impression of satisfying refreshment that is hardly to be equalled throughout the year. Their special garden is a wide border on each side of a path, its length bounded on one side by a tall hedge of filberts, and on the other side by clumps of yew,

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holly, and other shrubs. It is so well sheltered that the strongest wind has its destructive power broken and only reaches it as a refreshing tree- filtered breeze. The Michaelmas daisies are re- planted every year as soon as their bloom is over, the ground having been newly dug and manured. The old roots, which will have increased about fourfold, are pulled or chopped to pieces, nice bits with about five crowns being chosen for replanting ; these are put in groups of three to five together. Tall-growing kinds, like Novi Belgi, Robert Parker, are kept rather towards the back, while those of delicate and graceful habit, such as Cordifolius elegans, and its good variety Diana, are allowed to come forward. The fine dwarf aster Amellus is used in rather large quantity, coming quite to the front in some places, and running in and out between the clumps of other kinds.”

The kniphofias or tritomas, as they are also called, have added splendour to the autumn months. The popular names of this species suggest the brilliancy of their flower - colouring — torch-lily, flame-flower, and, as children love to call it, red-hot poker. Big groups by water side have an im- posing effect, and though many of the hybrids possess unusual beauty, the old species, K. Uvaria,

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is still one of the most striking, and is a brilliant picture by lake side, though it does not want its roots actually in water. Noble varieties are Grandis maxima and Glaucescens; the former is one of the most striking of the family, the stems under suitable conditions rising to a height of eight feet. But it is only in groups at certain points of vantage that the full beauty of the kniphofia is revealed. The starworts, flame-flowers, perennial sun- flowers, early-flowering chrysanthemums, and the moon daisy (Pyrethrum uliginoswm) are, when in masses, able to fill the garden with colour. I have written of the beauty of the tea-rose in autumn when the colours seem stronger and the scent richer than in the high days of summer, but certain plants I should like to see more used. There is, for example, the moon daisy, the flower of the moon, a tall, graceful, daisy-like plant with a wealth of pale white flowers on tall stems which bend before the slightest breeze. I once planted a large group of this in a ditch, not of course filled with water, and the effect of the flowers in the soft moonlight of an autumn evening was peculiarly charming. It is one of the most picturesque of autumn-flowering perennials, not so much in the conventional mixed border as in such a position as I have indicated.

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Perennial sun-flowers waving in the autumn wind tossing their sheafs of yellow blossom above the ever- green shrubs with which I like to see them associated, form another beautiful group of autumn flowers, and of late years, many fine varieties have been raised. The perennials are characterised by extreme vigour of growth, but I have noticed that in many soils they fail after a few years, the plants requiring to be constantly divided, at least once in every three years. Some varieties have an unfortunate disposition to run away, so to say, from the parent stock— Miss Mellish, a tall, stately plant in strong ground in particular. This can be avoided by, as I have said, constant transplanting. As in the case of the Golden Rods, it is only where large effects are desired that the perennial sun-flowers appear to the best advantage, but grouped by themselves on the fringe of woodlands they reveal a beauty of growth that one does not think possible from their aspect in the border, unless that border is planted with the most exquisite taste. It may be useful to indicate a few of the finer kinds. One of the most charm- ing is Helianthus decapetalus, which is the best to choose for the shrubbery margin ; this is a stream- side plant in Canada, and its natural habitat sug- gests the places to which it is most appropriate

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in the English garden. One of the most graceful is H. giganteus, which will often reach a height of ten feet ; the flowers are rich yellow and appear very late in the year, but are none the less welcome on that account. It may be described as one of the most willowy of its race, the tapering leaves and slender stems creating a wild and beautiful result when the plant is amongst shrubs.

It has the suggestion of the starwort, a misty, dreamy colouring that no other flower of autumn possesses. ‘The beautiful H. lcetiflorus, the tall H. orgyalis, and the familiar H. multiflorus and the double form comprise the most important of this family, except such varieties as Miss Mellish, which I have already described, and that raised by the land- scape painter, the late H. G. Moon, and called after himself. This has not the same tendency as some of the others to ramble; it is a noble perennial, with immense flowers of the clearest yellow.

Among the flowers of autumn that have hitherto not received their due meed of praise I must place the early-flowering chrysanthemums. The green- house varieties are familiar enough, but the out- door are clouded over with flowers through the autumn and even far into November. ‘These are capable of making the richest beds of colour, and

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even the older varieties have a charm which the cottager appreciates, but not to the same extent as those who have extensive gardens under their charge. How beautiful the old cottage pink is in many an English village, the flowers of that soft quiet pink, which has a certain brightness without any tendency to garishness, and stands the drenching rains of autumn and early winter with equanimity. The reason is the reflected character of the petals, which are able to throw off moisture. Jules Lagra- vere is an old garden flower, and there seems a glow of crimson in the little blossoms unusual in autumn in the open garden.

I am writing now of the older forms of hardy, or, as they are more commonly called, outdoor chrysanthemums, but thanks to those who have taken an unusual interest in this race, a new series has arisen comprising flowers that are of the utmost value in the decoration of the mixed borders. It was surprising last autumn to see the brightness of the newer varieties in groups. A bed of the well- known Mme. Desgranges was not only pleasant to the eye, but effective in the garden; and among others were Mme. Marie Masse, mauve-lilac ; the crimson and gold of Harvest Home; the warm orange of Comtesse Foucher de Careil, and the pure

AUGUST AT HOLYROOD HOUSE, SPALDING An old fifteenth-century house, once belonging to

the guild of the Holy Rood—but the garden is of more recent design.

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whiteness of Mychett white; Ryecroft glory, orange; Notaire groz, pink ; the crimson Roi des Precocés, and the bronzy red of Ambroise Thomas are amongst the most acceptable colours in this newer race.

But autumn is the season for colour in the woodland, and though this is the herald of wintry days which are more fascinating, more invigorating, and more interesting to many than even the scented gardens of summer, there is in October and early November a glow of hues from the trees in garden and forest. And in these gardening thoughts I may perhaps reiterate the opinion I have before expressed that in these autumn colours there is a certain mystery. We have never exactly determined the conditions that produce the richest colours. Probably, as I mentioned in my work on Trees and Shrubs, the conditions most favourable generally are provided by a good growing season—that is, a warm, moist summer—followed by a dry, sunny autumn, But it frequently happens after what one would regard as favourable seasons, that species usually quite trustworthy in this matter fail to colour well. Probably one set of conditions does not suit all trees and shrubs in this respect. To produce the colouration of the leaf just before it falls certain

chemical changes in its composition take place. To 23

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bring about these changes certain conditions in regard to sunlight, temperature, and moisture are necessary, but in a climate such as that of Britain, where the seasons are never alike two years to- gether, we can never hope to obtain the same regularity of autumnal colouring that characterises the vegetation, for instance, of the Eastern United States. But we have in our gardens many trees and shrubs which put on an exquisite livery of crimson, purple or gold, yet it is curious that every season we may notice species not usually conspicuous for their autumn tints, beautifully coloured.

An over-vigorous, sappy growth, often the result of a wet, warm autumn, or too rich a soil, is certainly detrimental to autumn colouring, but the few trees and shrubs I mention are fairly constant. One of the most beautiful of trees for its autumn colouring, which lasts into the winter, is the variety of the American oak named splendens. Then there is the warm golden colouring of one of the rarer hickories, Carya tomentosa, and the common elm is one of the most beautiful of all its golden- leaved race. It is beautiful not only for its foliage in autumn but its outline in winter—a picturesque tree, though unfortunately dangerous when it approaches

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a certain age. Few of the more popular trees for their autumn colouring contribute more to the gaiety of the landscape in autumn than the Liguid- ambar styraciflua; and a triumph of colouring comes from the yellowing leaves of the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), and the birches, one of which appeals most to me being Betula corylifolia, of which the foliage is more of an orange colouring than the birch of the woodland. But many other trees conspicuous for their autumn colouring occur to mind—the horse-chestnut, wild cherry, black and Lombardy poplars, the maples—the Japanese species and varieties in particular—amelanchier, the soft golden Ginkgo biloba, and the Parrotia persica, which is one of the first trees I remember as possessing a wonderful autumn colouring. This was several years ago, and the tree was in the Royal Gardens, Kew; every leaf was a study in colour, an association of brilliant tints.

These notes on the autumn colouring of trees and shrubs may be to some wearisome, but without the wonderful transition from the green leaf of summer to the glorious hues of autumn, our country would lose much of its charm. Spring without its budding leaves, its wild-flowers, summer without the honeysuckle and wild rose scenting the

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hedgerows, and winter without the green of the mosses and the grey trunks of forest and woodland trees—this would be a sorry land. One season may appeal more to one than another, but autumn is the season of colour. There is the scarlet of the ampelopsis, the startling crimson of the Japanese vines, and the intense vermilion, one may almost call it, of Berberis Thunbergi, which possesses so rich an autumn beauty that on some estates it has been largely planted, partly for covert, but also for the wondrous colouring of the foliage. Berberis A quifolium, the taller American vacciniums, Spirea Thunbergi, the witch-hazels—their beautiful autumn colouring soon to be followed by flowers which seem to bring winter to the lap of spring—the hazel, and native Guelder rose (Viburnum Opulus). The native’Guelder rose appears to be to many a shrub of small importance, perhaps from the fact that it is a “native,” but no shrub imparts greater splendour in autumn to lake or river side than this species of viburnum. Its leaves turn a glorious crimson, but the fruits are red too, a mingling of colours in perfect harmony and creating effects undreamed of by those who only know it as a wilding, and the berries are not eaten by birds—at least that is my experience, but birds are fickle.

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A garden without the richest colouring in autumn is unworthy of the name, but, alas! some- times before September has said “good-bye” to us the beauty of the flowers has gone; and this reminds me, in writing of the autumn garden, of some words of “E. V. B.”—the Hon. Mrs. Boyle, with whom a few years ago I spent some pleasant hours at Hestercombe—in her charming book, 4 Garden of Pleasure: “How surely does autumn give a tinge of melancholy to a garden reverie! and how the feeling grows with age! But it is not like the ideal sorrowfulness of youth, that dwells so marvellous sweet in our remembrance. It is simply that we listen now to the shortened step of the years to come; it is only that now we feel and we know how for us the days are numbered that will bring back the flowers in their season. Even the lilac bunches of autumn crocus, both double and single, which arise here and there on the bare earth without any green about them, do not make much cheer. My pleasant paths are all forlorn; the singing-birds are flown or dead, and unbroken silence reigns in the unleaved thickets they once loved so well. There are no delightful surprises now ; quite plainly and bare of all disguise we see the empty nest in the fork of many a leafless

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branch—nests, to discover which in the green June days we used to peep about and part the leaves or peer into the heart of the yew hedge, so very successfully !”

The autumn garden after a sharp frost is indeed dreary and evil-smelling where the exotics have reigned during the summer months.

XII

WINTER IN THE GARDEN

ENTRANCE TO THE GARDENS, AYSCOUGH FEE HALL

The peculiar architectural treatment of the yew- trees should be noted.

XII WINTER IN THE GARDEN

THOUGH winter is a dreary season, lacking spring’s unfolding blossoms, April clouds, and the pure notes of countless bird-choristers ; lacking summer’s rippling corn-fields and wealth of foliage, and autumn’s mellow atmosphere and radiant colouring, it has a charm of its own that no portion of the year may rival. The hoar-frost and the snow weave their argent magic over the garden, creating a vision that never stales. Under the low sunshine the trees are silver, and every leaf is edged with diamonds and pearls. Winter is, indeed, a wonder- worker, an enchanter, for there is not a grass-blade or spray that is not transfigured out of knowledge. Those lowly-growing things that have no beauty in budding spring, prodigal summer, or glowing autumn, awake to their first season of loveliness

besprent with jewels unnumbered. The summer- 185 24

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leafing trees have shed their foliage, and reveal themselves in the infinite beauty and elegance of their gracious structure. Despoiled of their green vestments they stand unveiled, these trees that summer clothes with emerald, while the dark ever- greens, holly, yew, and cedar, remain shrouded in their sombre raiment, closely guarding their secrets. The beech, most beautiful of all trees when the setting sun shines through the diaphanous green of its young leaves margined with silky floss, is almost equally lovely when, bare of foliage, the intricate tracery of its countless branchlets, edged with silver, gleams against a primrose sky ; the tall poplar’s delicate framework towers aspiringly aloft ; the oaks, in their bare branches, show forth the inflexible strength of their slow growth and firm grain; and the ash, with blunt-tipped shoots, spreads wide its naked arms. Portugal laurel, holly, and ivy shrouding the branches of a dying tree, with their grace of form and delicate outline, have their beauty intensified by the erystal edging of their leaves which gleams in the ‘sun’s clear gold.

In the winter, flowers of the open air are so few and so far between that any which brighten that inclement season with their blossoms are doubly

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welcome, and are greeted with a delight that they would not inspire if they appeared at a time when spring breezes and summer sunshine had filled the borders with colour. Chimonanthus fragrans, the winter-sweet, blooms in the darkest days of the year, coming into flower in the south-west at Christmas-tide and remaining in blossom through the whole of January. It is a hardy shrub, though it is generally recommended that it should be grown against a south wall, preferably one with a chimney behind it that may impart heat to its surface. Where the above advice is followed the pale-yellow, brown-centred flowers are practically inconspicuous against a stone wall, and the shrub is quite unattractive. In the south-west it is generally grown in bush form in the open, and several specimens are of large size. In one case a bushy shrub is about eight feet in height, almost as much in diameter, and is standing on a sheltered lawn backed by a large yew. Here the pale-yellow flowers thickly studding the branches, which are bare of leaves, are thrown into high relief by their dark background and form an attractive picture in January. In the same garden is another still larger example. This was originally planted against a wall about six feet in height. When it

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overtopped this it was allowed to grow unchecked, and is now a bushy-headed tree about fifteen feet in height. When this plant is trained against a wall annual pruning is advised, and is, indeed, neces- sary, in order that the shoots may be kept near the surface ; but that pruning is not requisite in order to procure flowers is proved by the fact that the two shrubs’ referred to, though never touched by the knife, have bloomed profusely for many years. The flowers of the Chimonanthus will en- dure a few degrees of frost without damage, for the foliage of a large bush of the scented verbena (Aloysia citriodora), growing hard by one of these shrubs, was badly damaged by the frost, while the flowers of the winter-sweet were uninjured. The perfume of the blossoms of this plant is exquisite, and a few blooms brought indoors will scent a whole room. Where it is not wished to cut the sprays, the individual flowers may be removed from the shoots and placed in a shallow saucer filled with damp sand, when they will exhale their fragrance for days. The tree witch-hazel (Hamamelis arborea) is another winter flower, and is very attractive when its leafless branches are covered with the quaint petals and look like rolls of bright yellow ribbon, while when

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fully open they resemble twisted strips of gold leaf about three-quarters of an inch in length, each flower being composed of four petals, which contrast effectively with the crimson sepals. A good-sized specimen, with every shoot crowded with blossom, seen against a dark evergreen background, such as yew, affords a striking picture towards the end of January. The flowers will endure ten degrees of frost without injury. In its native land it is said to attain a height of twenty feet. All who appreciate sweet-scented flowers should grow the Chinese bush honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima), which in mid-January is covered with small, drooping, ivory-white blossoms that emit a delightful odour. As a bush it will grow in the open to a height of from six to eight feet, and higher if trained against a wall. Its blossoms are of great substance and are little harmed by bad weather. The flowering shoots when cut are very acceptable in the house. It is classed as an evergreen, but often loses its leaves during the winter. Closely allied to this species is L. Standishi, also a Chinese plant, but of the two L. fragrantissima is to be preferred. The Algerian Iris (I. stylosa or unguicularis), is one of the loveliest of winter-flowering plants, its scented lavender blossoms being as beautiful as any orchid.

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It is not satisfactory in the colder portions of the kingdom, where it requires a position at the base of a warm wall, but in the south-west it is perfectly at home and flowers profusely throughout the entire winter, beginning at the end of October or the beginning of November and continuing until April, without needing wall protection. Two plants growing in South Devon have done remark- ably well. They are situated on each side and at the top of a flight of steps, in pockets two feet in length and eighteen inches in breadth, which they now completely fill. Last year they produced 631 blossoms, the largest daily gathering being on December 31, when 54 blooms were cut. This Iris increases with remarkable rapidity, six small roots given to a nursery firm about ten years ago having now more than filled a bed fifteen yards in length and three yards across, while several hundreds of plants have been sold. The white variety is a pretty contrast, but its flowers are smaller and the petals narrower than the type. Other varieties are speciosa, with purple flowers; atroviolacea, pavonia ; superba, purpurea, magnifica, marginata, llacina, and Kaiserin Elizabeth. In a large collection many shades are to be seen in the flowers, but it is doubtful if any exceed the beauty of the lavender

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type. All the varieties are deliciously fragrant, which adds greatly to their value. The Christmas rose is queen of winter flowers, its snowy blossoms expanding during the darkest days of the year. There are many varieties, of which the best known are Helleborus altifolius or maximus, the most vigorous grower of the whole family. It comes into bloom early, beginning to expand its flowers about mid-October. Vigorous clumps are often four feet or more across and bear flowers five inches in diameter on stems nearly two feet in height. The flower stems are mottled with red and the backs of the petals are rosy. Juvernis, St. Brigid’s Christmas rose, is a very beautiful form, the blossoms being of an absolutely pure white and more cupped in shape than those of the last-named variety, while the flower-stems are of a clear, pale green. Of angustifolius there are two forms, the Manchester and the Scotch varieties. The flowers are smaller than those of altifolus, and the leaves are narrower. Riverstoni, an Irish form, is an exceptionally free-blooming variety. Its flower- stems are apple-green and the leaf-stalks are red spotted, the leaves being of a rather pale green. The Brockhurst variety bears a strong resemblance to Juvernis, the flower-stems and leaf-stalks being

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of a similar pale-green tint. The blooms are, however, flatter when fully expanded. The Bath variety is the form which produces the bulk of the Christmas flowers. It is larger than the type, Helleborus niger, and exceptionally free-flowering. Madame Fourcade is not unlike altfolus but is smaller, with more cup-shaped flowers, and is fully a month later in blooming. Ruber or apple- blossom bears flowers of a pale rose colour. Christmas roses are partial to a deep, rich soil and a sheltered and somewhat shaded position. The winter aconite (EHranthis hyemalis) is a charming plant, opening its bright yellow flowers in the early days of the year. In cloudy weather the golden globular blooms set in their Elizabethan ruffs of green are very beautiful, perhaps even more so than when fully expanded in the sunshine. For its value in the landscape to be realised the winter aconite should be seen gleaming afar in countless thousands beneath the leafless trees. In short grass, under large deciduous monarchs of the glade, the flowers are seen at their best, for, where the ground is open, the sheet of gold glows from a distance, but in shrubberies, on sloping banks, and by woodland walks it will also flourish. In some places the plants seed and increase freely, while in

A JANUARY MOONRISE, GOLDERS HILL, HAMPSTEAD

A garden laid out by Mr. W. Robinson, the author of “The English Flower Garden.”

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other localities they disappear after the first season or two. The plant dies down very early in the year, and bulbs should be procured as soon as possible after they become dormant. In sowing an endeavour should be made to obtain freshly ripened seed, as that which has been laid by for any length of time often fails to germinate.

Some of the bulbous Irises are winter bloomers, I, alata often expanding the first of its lilac-blue blossoms with a yellow blotch on the falls before the New Year. It is not, however, a very depend- able species, since it frequently fails to flower. I. Histrio is more reliable, and generally flowers in January. Its pretty blooms have white falls, margined with bright lilac-blue, the central band of white being delicately veined with the same colour. J. histrioides somewhat resembles the preceding in colouring, the falls being marked by bright blue spots and blotches. Its flowers are larger, often measuring five inches across. I. Heldreiché or stenophylla is a lovely little flower, blooming in mid-January. It is one of the handsomest and most easily cultivated of all the smaller, bulbous Irises. There is considerable variation in the colouring of the flowers, one of

the handsomest forms having violet - purple falls, 25

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sparsely reticulated with white around the central yellow band. The flowers are very fragrant and last fresh a long time. J. rosenbachiana is another charming flower. This also shows much variation in tint, some of the blooms being of a rich crimson maroon, with a golden blotch on the falls, others lavender spotted with purple. Some are white and violet, and some are yellow veined with purple. Where a dozen or more blossoms are expanded at the same time the assortment of colour shown is very pleasing.

One of the Almond family blooms in winter. This is Prunus davidiana, named after the Abbé David, who introduced it from China. In the south-west it often opens its first blossoms in January. There are two varieties bearing respec- tively white and rose-coloured flowers. Of these the white is to be preferred, being a freer bloomer and more effective when seen against a dark back- ground. A standard tree, growing in a sheltered nook, surrounded by sombre foliage, such as that of fir or yew, makes a pretty picture when its: long shoots are studded through their entire length with pure white blossoms, each an inch across. The pink-flowered form, known as rubra, provides a welcome note of colour when it can be induced

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to bloom freely. The winter is not daffodil time, but there is one member of the family that will delight us with its flowers even in that inclement season. This is the tiny Narcissus minimus, which is often at its best before January is out. A clump of a couple of dozen or so in a sheltered nook in the rock garden makes a pretty picture. Consider- able variation occurs in the size of the flowers of this daffodil, but, in the smallest and most desir- able form, when expanded they scarcely exceed half an inch in diameter and are borne on stems about three inches in height.

One of the most charming of winter flowers is Cyclamen coum and its varieties, for at a time when blossoms of the open air are conspicuous by their absence, they spread their countless flowers, crimson, pink, and white, in close mats of colour over rocky banks and around the boles of trees, affording a lovely picture in the dark days of the year. When once established they reproduce themselves freely from seed and multiply amazingly, often spreading to a distance of many yards from their original site. The best known species is C. coum. This has rounded leaves, dark green above and purple beneath. C. zbericum is a larger and finer form of C. coum, with white-zoned leaves,

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and C. Atkinsi is a hybrid between the two already named. The winter jasmine (J. nudiflorum) de- lights the eye with the clear yellow of its count- less flowers from early in December onwards. Whether on wall, trellis, fence, or arch, it is never out of place at this season of the year, and is a beautiful sight when viewed veiling a low cliff-face with its pendent, flower-laden shoots. When associated with Cotoneaster microphylla, whose red berries are carried through the winter, it is very effective, and a certain thatched Devonshire cottage, whose front was entirely covered by the two plants, presented a vision of crimson and gold in the dull January days that will be long remembered. One of the most satisfactory winter-flowering plants in the south is Erica lusitanica or codonodes, the most beautiful of the tree heaths. Before the old year has departed its earliest buds begin to show white, and by mid-January, in the south-west, it is in full flower. Great bushes then present a lovely sight, appearing at a little distance pyramids of white six feet or more in height. The character of this heath is erect, and the upright sprays, covered with a profusion of drooping, white, elongated bells, have the appearance of white plumes. In Devon and Cornwall it propagates

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itself extensively by self-sown seedlings, which often attain a height of eight feet or more.

Cornus mas., the Cornelian cherry, is a pretty little tree often in bloom by the end of February. Every branchlet and twig is covered with small yellow blossoms, which are produced while the boughs are yet bare of leaves and the tree at a little distance appears like a cloud of pale yellow. The individual flowers are fashioned of thin petals radiating like the spokes of a wheel. It is seen to best advantage when planted in front of some large, dark-leaved evergreen, whose sombre background will render the flowers more conspicuous. The Californian Garrya elliptica is a handsome shrub during the winter months, when covered with a profusion of its long greyish-white catkins, some of which are fully a foot in length. Notwithstanding its habitat, the Garrya has proved hardy in this country, flourishing even as far north as Edinburgh.

Crocus Imperati is a delightful winter flower, generally expanding its first blossoms before Christ- mas. Its blooms, lilac-purple within and buff streaked with dark purple on the exterior of the petals, are very sweet, and particularly welcome in the depth of winter. There are also white and rose-coloured forms of this flower. Much of our

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winter beauty depends upon berry-bearing trees and shrubs. In the countryside the great hollies are alight with thousands of vermilion-red berry clusters, gleaming amid the dark, shining leaves ; the spindle tree is lovely with its crowded coral fruits, and the hedges glow crimson with their myriad haws. In the gardens Arbutus Unedo bears its globular, rough - coated fruits of crimson hue. In Devon and Cornwall Cornus capitata, formerly called Benthamia fragifera, and also known by the title of strawberry tree, is often loaded with its red fruits well into the winter. A large example of Cotoneaster frigida, thirty-five feet in height and forty feet through, so crowded with berries that it appears a cloud of crimson from a little distance, is a glorious sight, and C. horizontalis and C. Simoni are attractive berry - bearers. Crategus Pyracantha, sometimes known as the fire thorn, and its variety Lelandi, are commonly trained on house fronts and are handsome objects when smothered in their orange-scarlet berries. Sym- phoricarpus racemosus, the snowberry, with its rounded fruits of glistening white, is an excellent foil to other berry-bearing shrubs, such as Skimmia japonica, with its scarlet clusters; and nothing is more ornamental than the common passion-flower

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covering the front of a house with its dark leaves lighted up with hundreds of egg-shaped orange fruits gleaming like fairy lamps among its foliage— a sight that may be witnessed any day in the south- west. One of the handsomest of our winter plants is the gladwin (Iris feetidissima). In the dark days of the year it makes a pretty picture, the plants spreading out into dense tufts, with arching leaves of dark green, and, surmounting the leaves, the dried flower stems, whose capsules have split apart, disclosing the brilliant orange berries within. In an open wood where the clumps stand thickly, the ground beneath the leafless branches will gleam brightly with the berries exposed by the thousands of expanded seed-pods. There is no more effective indoor decoration for the winter months than the berry-bearing stems of the gladwin arranged with dried grasses—a decoration that will last until the spring brings fresh flowers again to fill their place.

THE END

e Printed by R. & R. Crark, Limitep, Edinburgh.

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