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... CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, NEW YORK

Cornell University Library

Studies in gardening,

Cornell University

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The original of this book is in
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http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002832081

STUDIES IN GARDENING

STUDIES
IN GARDENING

BY
A. CLUTTON-BROCK

WITH PREFACE AND NOTES

BY

MRS. FRANCIS KING

AUTHOR OF “THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN”

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1916

Coprricut, 1916, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Published November, 1916

(22193 ¢%

Publication in the United States
authorized by the London Times

PREFACE

Tue title of this book does not belie its contents.
Within these covers lies matter for the consideration
of those who think about gardening as well as for those
who see and practice it. Unlike other gardening books
in its light-hearted choice of topics it is also unlike them
in its high charm of manner, in a certain urbanity to
which we confess ourselves unaccustomed. Never was
a lighter pen than this, never such a pen so well-di-
rected. For gardening, and more especially the appre-
ciation of the art of garden design, are matters upon
which much light needs to be thrown for the amateur in
this country. Certain chapters of “Studies in Garden-
ing” should be read before every progressive garden
club in America; the two on “The Theory of Garden
Design,” “Common Sense in Gardening,” “The Right
Use of Annuals,” “The Problem of the Herbaceous
Border,” “The House and the Garden,” and that
portion of the Introduction entitled “The Planning
of the Garden.” And what delectable learning is
stored in these pages!

The tribute of tributes is most surely paid to a
book one has been asked to annotate when the would-
be critical reader becomes so absorbed in its pages as
to forget the critical attitude. So entirely is “Studies
in Gardening” what a book on gardening should be,

Vv

vi PREFACE

so entirely is it what no other has yet been, that to
keep from overpraise is difficult. There may be, there
will be those to whom a few matters of individual
taste in these pages may not commend themselves.
This would be always so, whoever wrote, whoever
read. The point to be noticed is this: the taste of
the author of “Studies in Gardening” is with rare
exceptions based on principles and, therefore, cannot
but be sound.

When one reflects upon the lack of knowledge of
the principles of gardening among our own amateurs
one feels more keenly the need of such a leaven as
this book affords. General enlightenment on the great
subject is our instant want; more study of the broader
aspects of the gardening art, enlivening this of course
by constant excursions into the lovely realm of flower,
shrub, and tree, matters of garden enclosure and gar-
den decoration.

It will be noticed that among the plant subjects
considered in the present volume there are some not
to be recommended for our Northern States for reasons
of soil and climate. It has seemed wise to leave these
names unchanged, adding on occasion an explanatory
note. Many of these plants flourish in our Northern
Pacific States as in England, and of certain parts of
the South and Southwest the same may be said. The
difference in climate with regard to time of bloom
of plants dealt with here makes the suggestion fitting
that the reader allow a date one month later for the
latitude of Boston. This opinion is based upon care-

PREFACE vii

ful notes, kept for many years and constantly com-
pared with like notes in English journals. I wish
we might impress upon the American gardener (and
by gardener I mean of course the amateur) the fact
that the good English book carries as much value
for him as for the Englishman. It is easy to learn
the distinctions between English climate, English
soils and the soils and climate of this country; and
while good sense compels us to believe in the use of
those subjects known to be suited to our country, our
own estates or bits of ground, we must still look across
seas for most of our finer garden books, and in so
looking, we invariably find fresh and excellent ma-
terial for our beds and borders.

Many unfamiliar names occur in the course of the
book. It chances that nineteen varieties of Dianthus
are brought into the dissertation on Pinks. I ven-
ture to think most of these unknown to the average
gardener, but why should he not add them to his
present knowledge of the genus? Bailey lists twenty-
six! Nurserymen will respond to calls for these
things. Here is a little foot-hill of horticulture which
any one may climb if he will. Let us not level it by
means of notes, but rather urge the ambitious gar-
dener to ascend the slope and there achieve a view so
fair, so satisfying, that he will wonder that he thought
the climb a heavy or laborious thing.

And how accustomed are we in America, those of
us who garden, to being written down to! How sel-
dom in our young literature of gardening may we

vili PREFACE

gather the grateful inference of a little practical knowl-
edge on our part and a bit of taste to boot! We need
books to lift us, not to continually presuppose our
ignorance. We need books to stimulate our search
for garden learning, to send us hunting meanings of
names new to us. America is passing from her gar-
dening infancy to her gardening youth. This youth,
filled with the romance and beauty of the newly dis-
covered art, is ready for the best in garden writing.
Wherefore a book like this is thrice welcome. Its
writer has that wide outlook upon the subject denied
to all but few. The book has a virility seldom en-
countered in writings of this character. It shows a
large practical and personal acquaintance with plants,
and an equally wide knowledge of the principles of
fine gardening. Joined to these qualities a love of
beauty shines through every page, a charming humour
will out upon occasion, and an entirely delightful
English style enwraps the whole. American gar-
dening cannot but be richer, finer, for every reader
of this book. “It is” exclaims a correspondent lately,
“the Englishman at his highest and best. Hear these
words: ‘But a single flowering shrub rightly placed
in front of a dark barrier of greenery has your eye
to itself and satisfies it, like an altar piece in a quiet
church.’ Can we forget a sentence like that? I have
seldom read a book with an intenser pleasure.”

The chapters of this book appeared in the form of
letters to the Times (London). The subjects seem to
have been taken at random, for in three instances

PREFACE ix

only are the articles explicitly related to each other.
It has seemed well therefore to allow the order of
chapters to stand as in the English edition.

Grateful acknowledgment is here made for val-
uable help given by Mr. Hubert M. Canning and Mr.
Wilbur F. Dubois; also by Dr. Alfred Rehder of
the Arnold Arboretum to whom I owe the note on
Cytisus.

Louisa Yeomans Kine.

CONTENTS

InrropucTION . . . . we eee ee
BANKS AND SLOPES IN GARDENS . . . . ... - 3
THE NAMES OF FLOWERS. . . . . .....-. &O1
GARDENING IN HEAVY SOILS. . . . . ee eee oS
CaMPANULAS . , . . es ew we ew we tl ew we) (8B
THE CULTIVATION OF ALPINE PLANTS . . . . . . . 48
COMUMBINES . « 2 4 6 6 ww & w 2 & 2 «2 60
APRIL NOTES IN THE GARDEN . ..... .. . 70
PINKS’ Gis! tg) 1a, 7d, te ae SO SLI) SP. at ae oh Ie? Ge oe! SL
THE IMPROVEMENT OF GARDEN FLOWERS . . .. . . 92
CHEAP GARDENING D ogeh exes Ge Hla Shem atte Seep cs ae car LOZ
CoMMON SENSE IN GARDENING . . . . . ... . 118
Perris) acy oy. Sh. OP RP te? A BA SL Sh Se we a RS

THE THEORY OF GARDEN DESIGN. IT . ..... . 139

“e ity ce ce “ IT

Gr Sp oer cae Ve: CRY as (ATE

SoME DETAILS OF SUMMER GARDENING. . . . . . . 1856
THE RIGHT USE OF ANNUAIS . .. . . « . . « 165
Latr SUMMER AND AUTUMN IN THE ROCK GARDEN . . . 174

x1

xii CONTENTS

THE PROBLEM OF THE HERBACEOUS BORDER
THE TREATMENT OF BULBS . . . . .
ENGLISH IDEALS OF GARDENING. . . .-
THE NORTH SIDE CF THE ROCK GARDEN .
GARDENERS. . . . 1 ee ees
THE HOUSE AND THE GARDEN . . . .
THE RIGHT USE OF FLOWERING SHRUBS .
THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOwERS. I. . .
We = *s - TT...
BULBS FOR SPRING PLANTING . .. .
RaisING PERENNIALS TROM SEED...
THE BEAUTY AND CHARACTER OF FLOWERS
SAXIPRAGHS . 40 60 a eo et me
THE FIFTY BEST HARDY PERENNIALS . .

THE FIFTY BEST ROCK PLANTS . . . .

INDEX. ge ke we

PAGE

183

192

201

211

220

229

237

246

255

264

273

283

293

304

315

827

INTRODUCTION

Tuts book contains articles upon both the theory
and the practice of gardening. There is no need to
speak of the practical articles in this introduction;
but it may be as well to say something about the
general principles upon which the theoretical articles
are based. ‘Those principles are concerned mainly
with the planning of gardens and with the character
of the flowers that should be planted in them. The
writer is in favour of the formal planning of gardens,
and in this introduction he proposes to give some
general reasons for his preference. But he cannot
deny himself the pleasure of a rock garden, although
he knows that a rock garden cannot well be worked
into any formal design. In this matter he sins with
many excellent gardeners, who are not likely to give
up their rock gardens from any artistic scruple. Rock
gardens exist, and more of them are made every year.
In some respects they have had a good effect upon
other kinds of gardening. We must therefore make
the best of them. This introduction, then, will deal
with rock gardens, and will attempt to show, first,
what is the secret of their delight, and, secondly, how
they can best be placed and planned so as to spoil

the design of a formal garden as little as possible.

xiv INTRODUCTION

The third matter to be dealt with is the character of
garden flowers; and this is more controversial even
than the first two. The writer’s remarks on this sub-
ject have already provoked some controversy and met
with more agreement. He repeats them here because
they are based upon the general principles which he
has tried to express in all his theoretical articles, and
because they still seem to him as true as when he
first wrote them. But we will begin first with the
most important matter, and that is —

Tut PLANNING OF GARDENS

Nothing in gardening is so difficult as the planning
of a garden; and it ispeculiarly difficult now, because
we are still in the‘midst of a revolution, a return to
nature, which has upset all the old ideas and conven-
tions of garden design both good and bad. This re-
turn to nature has done much good in destroying
some of the worst fashions of fifty years ago. It has
taught us to love plants for their natural beauty and
to grow them so that their natural beauty may be
shown to the best advantage. It has, indeed, revived
the whole art of horticulture, which in the gardens of
the rich had shrunk, a generation or two ago, into the
cultivation of a few dull bedding plants under the
most unnatural conditions. But it has not taught us,
nor can it teach us, the art of garden design. For a
garden is, and always must be, something quite dif-
ferent from a wild paradise of flowers, and no art can
turn it into one. Flower borders are artificial things,

INTRODUCTION XV

and so are lawns and gravel paths. If we are to follow
nature in the design of our gardens we must do with-
out these, and even the wildest of wild gardeners will
scarcely go so far as that. We should remember that
the discredited landscape gardening of the last cen-
tury, with its “specimen” conifers, its irrelevant
shrubberies, and its aimlessly circuitous paths, was
itself an attempt to imitate nature. We are sick of
it now, not, as many suppose, because it was un-
natural, but because it was ugly; and it is an interest-
ing fact that William Morris, writing so far back as
the end of the seventies, attacked landscape garden-
ing, not for its artificiality, but for its lack of order
and design. He, with all his love of wild beauty, of
woods and meadows, said that a garden should “by
no means imitate either the wilfulness or the wildness
of nature, but should look like a thing never to be seen
except near a house.” He knew that no work of art
should put on the airs of nature; that, as houses ought
not to be built to look like caves, so gardens ought
not to be designed to look like flowery meadows or
stretches of woodland. The beauty of nature is one
thing; the beauty of art another. Each has its own
romance, its own peculiar appeal to our memories
and affections; and these different appeals cannot be
combined in one.

The love of gardens has always been so deep in
Englishmen that it survived even when their love of
all other beautiful things seemed for a while to be
dead; and, when they built the ugliest houses, they

xvi INTRODUCTION

wished to forget the ugliness of them in their gardens.
Thus it was that landscape gardening came into fash-
ion. It was an attempt to ignore the existence of the
house. Shrubberies were grown to hide it as best they
could, and paths twisted about in a vain reluctance
to approach it. But when men built beautiful houses
they had no desire for landscape or for any kind of
wild gardening. They were proud of their handiwork,
and did not look to nature or any pretence of nature
to conceal it from them. .The garden was as much a
part of their conquest of nature as the house itself;
and, like the house, they designed it to be expressive
of the will and the purposes of man. So the house
and the garden were all part of one design, of which
the house was the centre, giving a purpose and mean-
ing to the whole; and this idea that the house shall
dominate and explain the garden is the principle upon
which all formal gardening is based, whereas all wild
gardening is based upon a despair of the house and
a desire to ignore it.

Now that we are beginning to build beautiful houses
again, we are beginning also to design formal gardens
to suit them; but even those of us who must needs
live in ugly houses will do well to make the best of
them, as Morris advised. For, after all, even the
ugliest house cannot be ignored by those who live in
it; and no skill can really make a garden look like a
flowery Alpine meadow or a stretch of woodland. In-
deed, the uglier the house the more incongruous must
be the most plausible imitation of nature, whereas a

INTRODUCTION xvii

garden of ordered beauty will do much to mitigate
the ugliness of any house.

But, if we make up our minds for a formal garden,
we must understand clearly what are the proper limits
of its formality; and, in the first place, we must know
that a formal garden does not mean formal flowers.
The landscape gardeners tried to imitate nature in
their design, and to depart from nature as far as they
could in their horticulture. The good formal gar-
dener will forget nature altogether when he plans,
but when he comes to choose his flowers he will re-
member that nature is a better designer of plants
than any gardener, though gardeners may sometimes
improve upon nature’s designs in detail, and to suit
their own purposes. The English idea of a pleasure
garden has always been a garden of flowers. We love
flowers by instinct, and the return to nature in gar-
dening got all its force, not from our desire for a new
kind of design, but from our desire to see once more
a natural abundance and variety of flowers in our
gardens. It is therefore the task of the designer to
provide this abundance and variety within the limits
of his design. In this respect he will try to outdo
nature rather than to ignore her, and he will be eager
to learn any lessons that she can teach him. He will
place his beds and borders according to a pattern in
his own mind, about which nature can teach him
little or nothing; but, when he comes to plant them,
he will know that nature can teach him a great deal;
for wild flowers, in the course of the struggle for life,

xvill INTRODUCTION

have acquired a natural fitness of combination and
arrangement, which art may improve with its greater
variety of material, but should not ignore. It used
to be the delight of gardeners to ignore this natural
fitness. As Ruskin remarked, they would tear house-
leeks from their roofs and plant them round their
beds. It was their practice to seize on the abnormal-
ities of nature and make them the rule in the garden,
although such abnormalities are usually the result of
adaptation to peculiar conditions and look utterly
out of place except in those conditions. Most Cacti,
for instance, are desert plants, and may have a beauty
of their own when they grow among rocks and sand.
They have none at all in a flower-bed. The return to
nature has taught us to see the absurdity of carpet
bedding and all such misuses of natural materials.
It has quickened our sense of the fitness of things,
so that the best gardeners now delight in growing
plants in conditions that will show off their beauty to
the best advantage. It is the business of formal gar-
dening, as of every other art, to do this; to make its
own design, and at the same time to obey the laws of
its material — that is to say, to use its material so
that its characteristic beauty may be displayed to the
best advantage.

To combine these two things, formal beauty of de-
sign and a right use of material, is the main difficulty
of every art, and it is peculiarly difficult in gardening.
There is always a strong naturalistic tendency in the
gardener who loves his plants, as in the landscape

INTRODUCTION xix

painter who loves the country, or the dramatist who
loves men and women. The mention of this nat-
uralistic tendency makes one think at once of

Tue Rock GARDEN,

which is the most signal instance of it in modern gar-
dening. It must be confessed at once that rock gar-
dening, as we all practise it, is inconsistent with all
the ideas that have produced formal gardening, and
aims at a different kind of pleasure from that which
the formal garden gives. A formal garden is a place
to live in, whenever our climate allows; but no one
would think of living in a rock garden. There are no
flat spaces of lawn in it or shady retreats. It is all
up and down, and, except for a few narrow and wind-
ing paths, all made up of rocks and flowers and shrubs.
No one except the rock gardener himself ever stays
in it for long. For others it is a sight to be seen, per-
haps with interest, perhaps with a polite show of in-
terest. If it is very large, very boldly built, and very
skilfully cultivated it may possibly have some slight
resemblance to an Alpine hollow or slope; but usually
it has none at all, and betrays itself at once as a con-
trivance for the cultivation of certain plants that will
not thrive or will not display their full beauty except
in certain special conditions. It is, in fact, a place
made for the sake of the plants which are grown in
it, whereas the plants in a formal garden are but orna-
ments to the general design of the garden.

So, if you are a formal gardener on principle, you

XX INTRODUCTION

cannot defend the rock garden on the same principle;
and we may say at once that, if it were possible to
have only one kind of garden, the formal garden would
be the kind to choose. But luckily that is not so; many
different kinds of gardening are possible, and many
different kinds of pleasure are to be got from them.
The pleasure of the formal garden is the most uni-
versal, the most sure, and the most lasting. Any one
who knows nothing at all of plants or horticulture
can enjoy a formal garden; and if it changes hands
its beauty can be easily maintained, since there is a
routine of formal gardening which most professional
gardeners understand. On the other hand, you must
have a peculiar interest and delight in plants for their
own sake if you are to take a real pleasure in a rock
garden; while the knowledge necessary for the proper
cultivation of a rock garden is not usually possessed
by professional gardeners, so that when a rock garden
changes hands and loses the care and skill of its orig-
inal possessor it is apt to run wild and become a mere
confusion of coarse-growing plants. But these objec-
tions to the rock garden are the very reasons why the
true rock gardener takes a peculiar delight in it; and
it is a curious fact that every gardener with a real
love of his art tends sooner or later to become a rock
gardener and to take a greater pleasure in his rock
plants than in any others. This may seem both wrong
and incomprehensible to those who are not gardeners;
but they must remember that the gardener not only
takes a pleasure in his flowers when they are grown,

INTRODUCTION Xxl

he also takes a pleasure in growing them; and there is
more pleasure to be got from growing Alpine plants
than any others. This is not merely because they are
difficult, although in every kind of art and craft there
is always a pleasure in overcoming difficulties; it is
also because Alpine plants have a peculiar kind of
beauty which appeals to the lover of flowers more
than the beauty of any other kind of plants.

Alpine plants, as every one knows, have adapted
‘themselves to certain abnormal circumstances. They
grow in high wind-swept places, often in deep fissures
of rock with but little soil, where they enjoy but a
short spring and summer, and where they endure for
a great part of the year the most extreme cold. In
one way they are the hardiest of all plants; but in
another they are the most delicate. For in adapting
themselves to their life among the snows they have
lost much of the power which other plants possess of
adaptation to other conditions. And this applies not
only to their health, but also to their beauty. If it
were possible to grow the higher and more difficult
Alpine plants in an ordinary border, they would look
quite insignificant among the coarser plants of the
lowlands. Even those easier rock plants which will
grow readily enough in the border lose a great part
of their beauty there, for their home is the rocks, and
they seem to have been designed by nature as orna-
ments for the rocks alone. Still, we are used to seeing
many of them in the border and find them beautiful
enough there. No one, however, could think of the

XXxil INTRODUCTION

higher Alpines, the Androsaces, the smaller Pinks and
Primulas, the little encrusted Saxifrages, or the most
delicate Campanulas as anything except mountain
plants; so much do they seem made for their moun-
tain home that one could almost believe they would
bring a vision of it to any one who knew them only in
captivity; and yet a great part of their beauty comes
from the contrast between its delicacy “so still and
faint and fearing to be looked upon” and the wild,
fierce places in which they grow by nature. But that
delicacy is very far from the hectic delicacy of tropical
flowers. The higher Alpine plants grow and flower
for but a short time of the year, but in that time their
life is eager and quick in proportion to its shortness.
When the warm spring wind blows and the snows
melt they turn from brown to green in a week. Their
buds swell so that you can almost see them swelling;
and their flowers have a peculiar brightness that seems
to tell of the abundance of life packed into so small
a compass and enjoyed for so short a season. There is
nothing in nature so full of wonder and delight as an
Alpine spring. It is the very symbol of all sudden
happy changes, the chief theme of mountain folk-
song and mountain music; and it is not strange that,
as we go to hear the songs of Grieg in a London con-
cert-room, so we should wish to see some of the magic
of that spring in our lowland gardens. Therefore the
rock gardener contrives his little makebelieve. He
cannot hope that his small rocks and slopes and val-
leys will in themselves have any look of the Alps; but

INTRODUCTION XXill

they will at any rate serve as a frame not incongruous
to the beauty of his Alpine flowers. And his pleasure
in rock gardening is enhanced by the fact that the
nearer he gets to a natural arrangement of his rocks
the more likely are his plants to thrive among them.
This kind of natural arrangement is not easy to
contrive, and will never come by chance. When peo-
ple first began to make rockeries they seem to have
had some dim idea of imitating chaos. They bought
loads of clinkers, certainly the most chaotic objects
ever produced either by nature or art, and they shot
them down in confused heaps in parts of the garden
most unfavourable to plant life. Among these heaps
they planted Ferns and Stonecrops and London
pride. Some of these perhaps contrived to live, and
did in time conceal some of the desolation of the
clinkers; but their survival was a credit to them-
selves rather than to those who put them there. When,
however, rockeries: first began to be thought of as
places for the cultivation of rock plants, there was a
violent reaction from this imitation of chaos. Every
plant was provided with a square enclosure of stones
and a large zinc label, so that even if the plant died,
which it often did, it might not lack a monument.
This was formal gardening reduced to an absurdity;
and those who really loved the beauty of Alpine plants
and were eager to grow them soon began to see that
the mere proximity of a rock would not cure an Al-
pine plant of its home sickness. They set to work to
discover what benefit the plant got from its native

XXIV INTRODUCTION

rocks, and they saw that it was protected by those
rocks from extremes both of heat and cold, of drought
and moisture. They saw, too, that it could get that
protection only from rocks arranged in certain natural
ways; and therefore they set to work to imitate such
arrangements in their own rock gardens. So the
building of rocks became an art and also one of the
chief pleasures of rock gardening. It is difficult to
convey to any one who has never tried it how great
that pleasure can be, and how it increases with experi-
ence. There is no one fixed principle of rock build-
ing, since natural arrangements of rocks are infinitely
diverse, and different plants have adapted them-
selves to their diversities. But this fact is what makes
the pleasure of the game. The beginner, if he is wise,
will build upon a fixed principle. He will arrange
most of his rocks so that they run into the ground at
an angle of about 45 deg. with the earth’s surface, and
so protect the roots of the plants below them from
both heat and cold. But as his knowledge increases
he will get more of the variety of nature into his build-
ing, and put his rocks together so that they provide
homes exactly suitable for the more difficult plants
which he wishes to grow. He will come to look upon
his rockwork as a kind of puzzle to be fitted together
so that every interstice will have some peculiar charm
for some particular plant; and it will be his delight
to find a plant perfectly suited to each interstice.
Needless to say, this is not a game that can be played
in the ordinary flower border, where there is not much

INTRODUCTION XXV

variety of condition and where the plants are all con-
tented, in reason, with what they get. Those who
are quite ignorant of gardening may think a fine
flower border more beautiful than any rockwork, and
may wonder why any one should be at so much pains
to produce an inferior kind of beauty. In answer to
them it must be confessed that rock gardening is a
kind of game which makes its own difficulties and
gets its own pleasures out of them; yet the rock gar-
dener will not admit that it produces an inferior kind
of beauty, but rather a beauty more subtle and to be
appreciated only by those who love plants and study
their ways of growth. Plants, he will say, like all
other kinds of life, get a great part of their beauty
from their adaption to their surroundings, and the
more exactly and narrowly they are adapted to their
surroundings the greater that beauty will be; while
plants that thrive anywhere can have but little of
that kind of beauty. Their good nature makes them
lose character. They are like men with whom you can
do what you choose — useful but uninteresting. Of
all plants the higher Alpines are most narrowly adapted
to their surroundings; and of all plants they have
the most character. Nature seems to have designed
them more exactly than other flowers with a more
unrelenting pressure of circumstances, so that they
have a beauty of proportion not often found in the
lowland plants that will adapt their growth to con-
ditions so various. There is, we may suppose, an
ideal proportion for every plant in all its parts. This

XXVi INTRODUCTION

ideal proportion is continually forced upon the higher
Alpines by the severities of nature, but not upon plants
that have a wider range and an easier life. But the
peculiar beauty of Alpine plants must explain itself,
if it is to be appreciated. You must be able to see
from its surroundings how it has come to be what it
is; and the rock gardener’s art or game is to contrive
those surroundings so that they shall tell their own
story. He cannot do this so far as the elements are
concerned. He cannot provide winds or snows, but
he can provide rocks naturally disposed; and he must
do all he can to provide sunshine and fresh air. It is
all a game, perhaps; but it is one of the pleasantest
and most innocent in the world; and since it is a
game played with living things and against the caprices
of the weather, there is no end to it, nor is there ever
likely to be one. Some plants are easily enough grown
to-day that were thought almost impossible twenty
years ago; but still there are many, not only from the
Alps, but from the Himalayas, the Pyrenees, and the
Caucasus, that have not yet been tamed by any skill.
Some of these may in time yield up their secret or
grow content with our climate. Perhaps some day
the blue glory of the Fairy Forget-me-not! will come
down from its mountain heights to shine on suburban
rockeries. But that will not be in our time. For
many years to come lonely triumphs will be possible
to every rock gardener; and, indeed, one often sees
some difficult plant better grown on a small rockery
1 Myosotis palustris. L. Y. K.

INTRODUCTION XXVil

than in the most sumptuous rock gardens. Rock gar-
dens are to be found everywhere now. They are a
part of the return to nature in gardening, and, like
other things in that movement, they are sometimes
carried to absurd lengths. But, in spite of this, with
their ceaseless experiments and with the new sense
they bring of the characteristic beauty of plants, they
have done much good, not only to the craft of horti-
culture, but, in an indirect way, to the art of flower
arrangement. They are teaching gardeners not to play
tricks with their plants, not to use them like chips in
a mosaic. They have, at any rate, put an end to car-
pet bedding except in certain public gardens where it
is practised as an interesting survival. In the rock
garden nature itself forces upon the gardener some con-
gruity of arrangement. You cannot mix Hollyhocks
with Androsaces; at least, if you do the Androsaces
are pretty sure to die. And the gardener who gets
a sense of congruity from his rockwork will carry it
into other parts of his garden. It is not in the least
inconsistent with formal design. Indeed, formal de-
sign is quickly spoilt by any incongruity in the ar-
rangement of plants; and the best formal borders have
a natural look, with all their regularity.

Still, with all that can be said for it, rock garden-
ing remains a game for the true gardener, and no one
should have a rock garden who does not intend to
spend time and labour upon it himself. Professional
gardeners are an excellent race of men; but most of
them are made gardeners, not born, and rock gardens

XXViil INTRODUCTION

are usually incomprehensible whims to them. They
can take a pride in a regiment of calceolarias, but not
in a plant that dies if you pull it up by mistake for a
weed and makes no show even when it thrives. There
is some danger that rock gardens will become fashion-
able; and already you will sometimes find strange ac-
cumulations of stone in pretentious gardens which
are, no doubt, meant to be rock gardens. Indeed,
there is a story of a millionaire who built a rock gar-
den all of concrete blocks so well fixed together that
there was no room at all for plants to grow between
them. But, if rock gardening does become fashion-
able, it is not likely to remain so for long. A rock
garden cannot be bought outright, like a diamond
necklace, and kept without further trouble. It is
nothing unless its owner loves it and understands it;
but, if he does, then he can get as much pleasure out
of it as out of any amusement provided by the bounty
of nature and the ingenuity of man.

This difficulty of the rock garden is only an extreme
instance of the difficulties that must be always crop-
ping up for every gardener who loves his plants and
seeks to provide them with natural conditions, and
who also aims at a formal beauty of design. At every
point he will have to make some kind of sacrifice or
compromise. But that is no reason why he should
forgo formal beauty altogether. It is rather a reason
why he should try to understand its principles clearly,
so that he may know what is the best sacrifice or com-
promise to make in each particular case. Unless he

INTRODUCTION xxix

accepts and understands the principles of formal
beauty, he will have no principles to go on except
principles of horticulture, which, however excellent
they may be, will not help him to solve many of his
most difficult problems, will not, for instance, tell
him when to leave nature alone and when to subdue
it to his own purposes. It is a main principle of formal
gardening that a gardener may do anything he chooses
with his materials to increase their use or beauty,
but that he must not play tricks upon them merely
to show how far he can pervert them from the course
of nature. Thus, where a tree or shrub is grown for
its own sake, to clip it is to spoil its natural beauty
for no reason. But, when trees or shrubs are used to
make a hedge, clipping increases their beauty as it
increases their use. A hedge, properly used, is only
a kind of living wall, and you can see at a glance that
it is grown not for its own sake, but to serve as a wall.
So, whatever treatment makes a better wall of it is
justified; and the formal gardener will not try to con-
ceal his living walls, but will make them play a part
in the beauty of his design. He will see that they
are of the finest materials—of yew, or box, or holly,
not of privet or laurel; and he will clip them care-
fully, so that they grow solid and even. Hedges of
this kind, well grown and well placed, will serve as
divisions of different parts of the garden, as shelters
for the flowers, and also as frames to set off their
beauty. Every one must feel the charm of well-kept
yew hedges in an old garden, and the secret of that

RAY INTRODUCTION

charm is that in them nature is subdued to the happy
purposes of man. She is always quiet within their en-
closure, as the sea is quiet in a harbour; and they
are a sign, wherever they are to be found, that order
and peace and a delight in beautiful things have
been long established there. This is the secret of the
charm of formal gardens, and it is a charm that we
cannot find in any flowery wilderness, still less in the
most cunning imitation of one.

So much for the planning of gardens. There re-
mains to be considered.

THe CHARACTER OF GARDEN FLOWERS,

and in particular the principles upon which one should
aim at their improvement.

The art of improving or changing garden flowers is
probably as old as the art of gardening itself. So
soon as plants are cultivated many of them become
liable to changes and developments of a kind which
they seldom experience in a state of nature, because
such changes and developments are of little or no use
to them in the struggle for life. The gardener’s pur-
poses, however, are apt to be different from those of
nature, and he makes a different use of that tendency
to variation which exists in all plants. Wild plants
in favourable conditions, for instance, often show a
tendency to double their flowers; but that tendency
seldom goes very far, since doubling is rather a hin-
drance than a help to plants in the propagation of
their species. It is a kind of excess that comes with

INTRODUCTION XXxi

prosperity, and is apt to be soon checked by the severe
laws of life. To the gardener, however, it often seems
an excess to be encouraged, and he encourages it by
selection on a different principle from that of nature.
He may also encourage an increase in the size of the
flowers and a greater brightness or variety in their
colour by the same means. Such changes or improve-
ments have been practised from time immemorial,
particularly in the East, so that the origin of some
garden flowers, as, for instance, of several kinds of
roses, is unknown to us. In the seventeenth century
there was a great variety of florists’ flowers, and partic-
ularly of carnations, as we can tell from the illustra-
tions to Parkinson’s Paradisus. The Dutchmen had
then developed Tulips and Hyacinths and Crocuses
pretty much as we have them now; and most of
them were far removed from the original natural
species. But all these developments were produced
by simple selection and cultivation. The principles
of hybridization were not understood, and the process
therefore could not be practised artificially. Now
that these principles are understood and can be prac-
tised, however empirically and imperfectly, our florists
have an enormous advantage over their forefathers;
and as their knowledge increases of the conditions
most favourable to hybridization, that advantage will
grow still greater. Already changes are being worked
upon certain plants with wonderful speed. The Pansy,
as we have it now, has been developed out of the little
wild Pansy (Viola tricolor). The process began about

XXXii INTRODUCTION

1813, and by 1830 many varieties approaching the
modern Pansy in size and colour and shade were al-
ready in existence. But the Viola of gardens, or
tufted Pansy, is a creation almost of our own time
and a hybrid between the Pansy proper and the Al-
pine Viola cornuta. Not much more than a genera-
tion ago the Begonia was a plant with insignificant
flowers and grown chiefly for its leaves. Now we
have Begonias with flowers almost as large as Roses
in a great variety of colours. Dahlias have changed
the character of their flowers under our eyes. Won-
derful things have been done, and are being done, with
Larkspurs and Phloxes. There are innumerable new
Daffodils, and they increase about every year in size
and in brightness and diversity of colour; while there
seems to be a promise of new races of Roses utterly
surpassing any that we have now both in beauty and
in vigour of habit.1

But this new power will be attended with new
dangers if it is not exercised with discretion; and
already we can see what these dangers are. It is a
delightful game to make new flowers, but it is not
one that should be played wantonly or blindly. It
is unfortunate that hybridization should be first prac-
tised systematically in an age of very uncertain taste;
for there is a danger lest irreparable harm may be done

1 Certain species of roses recently discovered in China by E. H. Wilson
have never been hybridized. When one considers that all the roses we now
have are descended from four or five species it is not easy even to imagine

the number we may have after bringing in fifteen or twenty new species,
crossing those with each other and with those we already know. L. Y. K.

INTRODUCTION XXXIil

to some of our finest flowers while every one is exult-
ing over the improvement worked upon them. At
present the florists seem to be working upon no sys-
tem, because there is no general standard of taste to
impose a system upon them. They believe that every
increase in the size of a flower, every change in its
colour, is an improvement; and they are often con-
firmed in this belief by the awards of flower shows,
which, in the provinces at least, are still inclined to
favour flowers as little like nature as they can be.
Flower shows, indeed, have not had a good effect upon
the development of plants, however much they may
have improved their culture, since their tendency
has been to encourage gardeners to grow plants for
their flowers alone. Now a plant intended to be an
ornament to a garden ought to be considered as a
whole. Its flowers are only a part of its beauty, and
it should also have a beauty of leafage, of habit, and
of proportion. The flowers of wild plants are often
too small, at least to the gardener’s taste, in propor-
tion to their leafage and stature; but the flowers of
garden plants may easily be too large; and in some
cases the florists have already made them so. The
modern Begonia, particularly the double Begonia,
is an instance in point. The flowers are so enormous
that all proportion is lost between them and the plant
itself. It seems to be overburdened with them like
a woman laden with heavy jewelry. There are other
plants of a habit less prostrate by nature which bear
the weight of huge flowers still more awkwardly.

XXXIV INTRODUCTION

There are Carnations and Dahlias and Roses that
look like weary Titans unless every flower head is
supported with sticks. This defect is not seen in
separate blossoms exhibited at a flower show; but it
is glaring in a garden, and ought to banish them from
all gardens. It is important that we should cultivate
in ourselves and in our florists a nice sense of propor-
tion in all the parts of a plant. No one can say ex-
actly what is the limit of size beyond which the flowers
of a particular plant ought not to be developed; but
it is easy to see that every plant ought to carry its
flowers with ease; and, besides this, the size of the
plant itself, the nature of its habit, and the character
of its leafage should be considered. A small creeping
plant may usually have larger flowers than an erect
plant of the same size, because it can carry them
more easily; and indeed among mountain plants
there are many with flowers very large for their size.
Also, a plant with large leaves can endure larger
flowers than a plant with small ones; and obviously
a large plant can endure larger flowers than a small
one. Yet this plain fact is often ignored by florists,
who will dwarf a plant without decreasing the size
of its flowers and so destroy the greater part of its
beauty. The dwarf Snapdragon is a case in point,
which looks as much a deformity as a human dwarf;
and the dwarf Sweet-pea is not much better.

The doubling of flowers is a part of the same ten-
dency to grow plants for their flowers alone, which
is often carried to excess. Most flowers are more

INTRODUCTION XXXV

beautiful single than double. But there are excep-
tions; and a good many double flowers are, at any
rate, more durable and stronger in colour than single
ones of the same kind. It would be absurd to object
to all double flowers on principle, as, for instance, to
double Pinks or Roses or Dahlias; but even these
may be easily made too double, so that they look
stiff or puddingy; while there are other flowers of
great natural beauty of form which are entirely spoilt
by being doubled. Among these are nearly all bell-
shaped flowers. Yet the florists are always producing
double varieties of the beautiful Campanula persici-
folia, in which all its grace of form is destroyed with-
out any improvement in force of colour. To take
other instances, the double Begonia looks as if it had
been made by some one who had never seen a real
flower. The extra petals of the double Day and
Tiger Lilies look like mere growths of disease, and
even the double China Asters are usually inferior in
beauty to the single flowers of the old Aster sinensis,
which has only lately come into our gardens again.
It is almost safe to say that we have enough double
flowers already, and it is quite certain that florists
could do much more useful work in other ways than
in doubling any more of them.

The colour of flowers is more a matter of individual
taste than their proportion or form; but even with
regard to colour one cannot doubt that the florists
sometimes make mistakes. There is the case of the
perennial Larkspur, for instance. The glory of the

XXXVI INTRODUCTION

Larkspur is its blue colour. In no other genus of
easily-grown garden plants is there such a range of
blues combined with such purity; and the hybridists
have already shown us what a race of Larkspurs might
be produced if only they would give all their efforts
to combining purity of colour with beauty of form.
Unfortunately, it is very easy to obtain double Lark-
spurs in which the form of the flowers is spoilt; and
also to obtain Larkspurs tinged or freaked with mauve
or plum colour. Now mauve is a good enough colour
in its way; but we have plenty of mauve flowers.
Also the combination of mauve with blue may have
a sort of curious discordant beauty; but it is a beauty
that one soon tires of; whereas pure blue, deep or
pale, is a rare colour in our gardens and one that
could never weary any one. No garden flower in
existence is more beautiful than the Belladonna Lark-
spur with its flowers of a silvery pale blue and no
less perfect in form than in colour. But the Bella-
donna is smaller and more weakly in constitution
than the great hybrid Larkspurs. Already some of
these almost rival it in colour, and they might in time
surpass it. Already, too, there are some hybrids of
a deeper blue almost as fierce as the colour of the
Gentians, and these might be common soon, if the
florists would set to work to produce only pure blue
Larkspurs. But they have now produced so many
with mixed colours that it becomes more difficult
every year to raise pure blue Larkspurs from seed.
The taint of mauve is deep in their blood, and it would

INTRODUCTION XXXVil

take some time to get rid of it even if every one tried.
The Larkspur is a plant of so stately a habit that it
would not be easy to make its flowers too large so
long as they keep their purity of form. They have
already been greatly enlarged, but the largest are
often half double and parti-coloured, so that their
size is only a thing to wonder at, not to admire.

The Larkspur is the worst case that could be found
of colour perversion in plants. Most other cases are
more disputable. But many people who love strong
wholesome colours cannot but think that our Roses
are suffering in their colour from the popularity of
Tea Roses and hybrid Teas. The colours of most
Tea Roses are rather faint and exotic. Their delicacy
is pleasing to a timid eye, and there is so much bad
colour in our art now that most people’s eyes have
grown timid. But there is no need to have a timid
eye for flowers. They are not dyed with cheap dyes,
or woven of dull shoddy stuff. The brighter they are
the better, particularly when they have the texture
of Roses. We need more pure pink and deep crimson
in our Roses, and not those pinks washed with yellow
or those yellows dulled with brown that are so com-
mon among the Teas.

Roses are not plants of which the ordinary amateur
can usually raise new varieties for himself. But there
are some plants easily raised from seed and very va-
riable, such as Larkspurs and Columbines and Ori-
ental Poppies, upon which any amateur with room
enough in his garden might try his hand. He can

XXXVIil INTRODUCTION

hybridize for himself if he will take the trouble, and
with the plants just mentioned it is quite easy to do;
but in many cases nature will hybridize only too
readily for him, so that he has but to save the seed
of any variety that pleases him and to go on raising
seedlings and pulling up all inferior ones until he gets
plants that seem to approach his standard of perfec-
tion. If this were done intelligently and systemat-
ically by amateurs all over the country, there would
soon be a vast improvement in our garden flowers;
and no doubt the vagaries of the florists would be
checked. They provide novelties because novelties
are popular; and they work more or less at random
because there is no certain taste to direct them. The
remedy is in the hands of amateurs who in some cases
can show what they want by producing it for them-
selves, and in other cases can enforce a right standard
by buying only plants which conform to that stand-
ard.

We are all too ready to think that every flower
must be beautiful, whether produced by nature or
by the florist; and we are ready to think that every
kind of garden must be beautiful, if only it contains
an abundance of flowers. The gardener should grow
his flowers well — that goes without saying. But he
should choose them upon clear and rational principles
of taste, and he should plan the garden, of which
they are to be the ornaments, upon the same prin-
ciples.

STUDIES IN GARDENING

BANKS AND SLOPES IN GARDENS

EW people who have banks or steep slopes in

their gardens know what to do with them. They
cannot be turned into ordinary flower beds or borders,
because with their sharp drainage they do not afford
enough moisture to most plants in the summer; and,
if they are covered with grass, the grass is difficult
to mow. The usual plan is to plant them anyhow,
with shrubs such as laurels, snowberry, or Berberis
aquifolia, with a carpeting of ivy or the Rose of Sharon,
and having planted them thus to leave them alone.
Now, whatever may be said in favour of wild gar-
dening in places where the garden can hardly be dis-
tinguished from surrounding woodland or meadow,
there is nothing to be said for it where it is merely
the result of ignorance or indifference. Neglected
banks of this kind are constantly to be found in hill-
side gardens right in front of the house; and they
have scarcely more wild beauty than a disorderly
rubbish heap. In such places neglect and untidiness
are as discomforting as about the house itself. Yet
one often sees a house, neat and trim enough, with
all its neatness and trimness spoilt by one of these
unkempt wildernesses in front of it. Sometimes there
will be an ailing pine or fir tree here and there on the

bank, underneath which not even ivy will grow, and
3

4 STUDIES IN GARDENING

beyond the shadow of these desolate conifers a stunted
thicket of snowberry suckers and sometimes a straggling
bush of gorse! or laurustinus; while the ground, if
not entirely covered with ivy or Rose of Sharon, will
be ornamented here and there with sickly clumps
of heather or stray seedlings of the coarsest plants
from other parts of the garden. A spectacle of this
kind is so common, that, like the ugliness of most
houses, it only fills us with a vague kind of discomfort.
We, no more than the owners of the neglected bank,
attempt to analyse what is wrong. We only feel
that we should not like to live in a house with that
kind of ugliness about it.

Now it is unjust to condemn any system of gar-
dening wholesale because of its worst examples; but
it is fair to point out that banks treated in this way
are the result of the misapplication of the principles
of landscape gardening to small gardens. For it is
such landscape gardening that has made people in-
different to trimness and neatness, or rather has
given them an excuse for evading the trouble which
is necessary to keep a garden neat and trim. The
owners of such banks can always console themselves
with the thought that there is no formality about
them. But in most cases, no doubt, they make no
conscious excuse for their neglect. Bad landscape
gardening, the kind of gardening practised by the

1 For Gorse the American gardener may read Forsythia or Spiraea: the
Laurustinus is not hardy in the United States except on the Pacific
Coast. L. Y. K.

BANKS AND SLOPES IN GARDENS 5

speculative builder, which naturally always follows
the line of least resistance, is so universal in most
suburbs, and even in many country places, that peo-
ple take it as a matter of course, and never even
ask themselves how their gardens could be bettered.
Their eyes have been spoilt, as the eye is spoilt by
machine-made ornament; and, even if they always
feel a slight melancholy whenever they come in at
the garden gate, they do not ask themselves the reason
of it. If not actually contented, they are resigned
to things as they are, just as they are resigned to the
stamped iron ornaments on their fireplaces or the
gouty legs of their billiard tables.

And, yet, it is worth some trouble and thought to
make a garden wear a smiling face, so that it will
give pleasure, not only to its owner, but to every
passer-by who gets a glimpse of it from the road;
and we are all inclined to think well of the owner of
a garden which does this, and to thank him for that
pleasure. Nor are much trouble and thought, in
most cases, necessary. It is very easy to make a steep
bank beautiful with flowers and suitable shrubs, espe-
cially if it slopes towards the south; and, being so
easy, it is strange how seldom it is done, even by
people who are ready to spend much labour and
money upon other parts of their gardens. Indeed,
one often sees the worst examples of neglected banks
in gardens with large greenhouses and with gaudy
displays of spring and summer bedding. But these
are a matter of routine and custom. A steep bank is

6 STUDIES IN GARDENING

not supposed to be looked at, however conspicuous
it may be. It is regarded as a mere nuisance in the
garden; and, consequently, a nuisance and an eye-
sore it remains.

There are, of course, many people who will not have
untidiness of any kind in their gardens, and whose
banks are at least tidy. But they usually take a
great deal of unnecessary trouble in keeping them
so. Either they cover them with grass, or else they
hide them with shrubs, probably laurels, which are
carefully clipped quite level. Now, this is just as
troublesome as grass, and much more irrational.
There is no purpose or meaning whatever in a clipped
shrubbery, particularly on a steep bank. It does not
explain itself, like a hedge; and its only effect is to
make the bank look a few feet higher. Laurels suffer
more than most shrubs from being clipped, since
their leaves are too large to make a close even texture
like that of a clipped yew, and they are beautiful
only when allowed to blossom and grow tall. There-
fore, a clipped bank of laurel is an example of the
worst kind of formal gardening, of formality in the
treatment of plants, and not in design. There is no
such formality in the proper treatment of a steep
bank, and much less labour is required for it.

No doubt the common neglect or misuse of steep
banks and slopes has been caused by the belief that
no plants of any value will grow upon them; and
this belief arose at a time when our gardens were
filled only with bedding plants, few of which, it must

BANKS AND SLOPES IN GARDENS 7

be admitted, will flourish upon a steep bank. But
we are no longer dependent on bedding plants; and,
as a matter of fact, there are many plants of extreme
beauty, both in flower and in growth, which ask for
nothing better than a steep bank, even with the
lightest and sandiest soil, to grow upon. There are
so many, indeed, that the gardener can exercise some
choice among them; and he will be wise to cover his
bank for the most part with plants or shrubs that are
evergreen and of a creeping or lowly habit. A bank
clothed thus will be interesting, and even beautiful,
in the depth of winter, far more so than any border,
and it will be full of blossom both in the spring and
for a great part of the summer. The plants should
be low growing, because steep banks are naturally
suited to low-growing plants. Tall shrubs or plants
look awkward and out of scale upon them, and find it
difficult to get enough root hold to keep them firm
against the wind or the wash of the rain. A bank
that is to be planted should always be well dug, so
that the roots of the plants may be able to strike deep
with as little resistance as possible; and, if small
rocks can be embedded here and there, they will be
of great service to the plants in protecting them from
drought, and also to the bank itself, in preventing the
soil from washing away from it. If rocks are used,
they should be driven downwards into the bank, as
in ordinary rockwork, and a plant should be placed
just below every rock, so that its roots may have
the shelter of the rock. Of course the more rocks

8 STUDIES IN GARDENING

that are used on a bank, and the larger, the better.
But elaborate rockwork means trouble and expense,
and we are proposing to make a bank beautiful with-
out much of either. Luckily there are many plants
that will flourish upon a bank without any protection
of rockwork, provided they do not suffer from drought
when first planted. Planting, therefore, should be
done in wet weather in early autumn, especially if
the soil is very light. It should not be done, in any
case, later than October, as many of the most suitable
plants are apt to rot off in the winter if disturbed too
late.

There are no plants which thrive or look better on
a bank than the stronger species of wild Pinks. They
are evergreen and of a creeping habit. They will
endure any amount of drought when once deeply
rooted, and, though their flowering period is not very
long, their leaves are beautiful at all seasons. The
strongest of all is the common Dianthus plumarius,
a species of which there are an infinite number of
varieties, and which has produced many hybrids
with other pinks, particularly with the Cheddar pink
(Dianthus caesius). This is much smaller and slower
in its growth and rather more delicate in constitution,
but it will usually grow on a steep slope looking to
the south without much trouble. Other very easily
grown pinks in the driest places are D. arenarius and
D. petraeus, the English D. deltoides (the maiden
pink), D. fragrans (or the plant which usually goes
by that name in gardens), and D. monspessulanus.

BANKS AND SLOPES IN GARDENS _ 9

All of these may be easily raised from seed, and that
is far the best way of getting a large stock. Almost
as valuable as the pinks is Aubrietia, of which there
are many varieties, and which can be just as easily
raised from seed. Aubrietia should always be planted
or divided in early autumn, about the beginning of
October, as, although one of the easiest of plants, it
is apt to resent disturbance at other times. It is
scarcely necessary to mention Arabis except to say
that the double form lasts much longer than the single
in flower and is even more vigorous. A taller growing
plant, which combines beautifully with the purple
of Aubrietia and the white of Arabis, is the yellow
Alyssum saxatile. There is a dwarf form of this,
very useful on banks, and also a dwarf variety with
pale yellow flowers called A. saxatile citrinum. All
of these can be raised from seed, and usually come
true. Arenaria montana is a beautiful plant of the
pink tribe which flowers soon after Aubrietia. It
has white flowers, rather like those of the larger stitch-
wort, and the same creeping habit. Of the same
family, and a little later in flower, is Gypsophila repens,
with its larger variety G. repens monstrosum; plants
which will endure any amount of drought. The species
is easily raised from seed, but the variety must be
propagated by cuttings. Also of the pink family are
Saponaria ocymoides and Silene maritima flore pleno;
the Saponaria smothered in May with small pink
flowers, and for many months afterwards; the Silene
flowering rather later with large white blossoms that

10 STUDIES IN GARDENING
remind one of those of the pink, Mrs. Sinkins. The

Saponaria can be raised from seed. The Silene, being
double, cannot, but must be increased by division in
early autumn or by cuttings.

There are two kinds of thyme that are invaluable
for the driest, steepest places — namely, the white
and woolly varieties of the wild thyme (Thymus
serpyllum albus and T. lanuginosus). A little native
plant as low in its growth is Astragalus hypoglottis,
with its more beautiful white variety. This is the
smallest of all the vetches. It is unfortunately not
evergreen, like the Gypsophilas and Silene maritima,
but otherwise is admirably suited for steep banks.
A plant with beautiful silvery leaves and delicate white
flowers which will endure any amount of drought is
Tanacetum argenteum (formerly called Achillea), and
this looks very well mixed with clumps of thrift, Ar-
meria maritima, and especially with the richer coloured
thrift known as A. laucheana. Both of these grow
about 8 in. high and will afford a little variety to
the perfectly prostrate plants. The Helianthemums
(sun roses) are little low-growing bushes covered with
white, pink, yellow, or red flowers. A variety with
golden yellow flowers and glaucous leaves, some-
times called H. croceum, makes a beautiful mixture
with the common blue flowered Veronica teucrium;
and this may also be mixed with the fine yellow vetch
(Coronilla cappadocica), which should be carefully
planted and not disturbed. Another Veronica less
brilliant, but more delicate in its beauty, is V. pec-
tinata, with both blue and pink flowers and downy

BANKS AND SLOPES IN GARDENS 11

leaves. The creeping Phloxes are not so patient of
drought as the other plants here mentioned, but they
will grow well on a bank if the soil is fairly rich, or if
they are protected by a rock above them; ‘and they
are among the most brilliant and beautiful of our
spring flowers. Nothing, in fact, can exceed the
beauty of large tufts of Phlox Vivid and Phlox Nel-
soni, with their mossy habit of growth and their sheets
of pink and white flowers.

There are some southern plants that do not thrive
in the ordinary border, but flourish amazingly on
very hot sandy banks looking full south. Among
these are Calandrinia umbellata, a little plant of the
purslane tribe, with flowers of the most brilliant crim-
son magenta colour. This should be raised from seed,
and it will usually seed itself freely every year. Cal-
lirhoe involucrata is another plant of the same habits;
it can be raised from seed to flower the same year,
and is of rapid growth, spreading over a great space
of ground. It flowers for a long time, and often dies
after flowering; but this matters little, as it can be
so easily reproduced. Several of the Aethionemas
also will grow well on dry sunny banks, particularly
A. grandiflorum, A. pulchellum, and A. coridifolium.
These are true rock plants, near to candytuft, but
with glaucous leaves and delicate pink flowers, and
they are the better for a few small rocks about them.
They should be planted in spring, or, if raised from
spring-sown seed, as soon in the summer as they are
fit to move.

Many bulbs will thrive on a steep dry slope, partic-

12 STUDIES IN GARDENING

ularly the Squills and Chionodoxas, if planted deep,
and there is no reason why there should not also be
Crocuses, and even the dwarfer Tulips. Bulbs when
they die down leave a bare space for most of the
summer, and therefore it is well to carpet them with
creeping plants that will not interfere with their
growth. Nothing is so suitable for the purpose as
several species of Stonecrop, in particular Sedum
album, which will grow anywhere, and is beautiful
in and out of flower.

The surface of the bank may also be varied here
and there with low-growing shrubs, and these are
much better for the purpose than tall plants, as they
do not look out of scale with the creeping plants
about them. But the shrubs should be chosen with
some care, and none of them should be of a straggling
habit of growth, or of a kind likely to suffer from
drought; for nothing is uglier in any part of the gar-
den than a sickly shrub. Luckily there are a good
many shrubs suitable for the purpose. The lowest
growing of all are some of the prostrate Artemisias
and brooms. Of the Artemisias, A. sericea is the best,
covering the ground with a carpet of beautiful sil-
very leaves and growing at a great pace. It is far
more robust than most of the other creeping species.
Among the brooms are Cytisus Ardoini, a very dwarf
plant with yellow flowers, C. Kewensis, a hybrid also
prostrate with paler flowers and rather larger in all
its parts, C. Schipkaensis, a small and beautiful white
flowered broom, the double form of the native Genista

BANKS AND SLOPES IN GARDENS | 13

tinctoria, and also the native Genista pilosa. These
are all very small shrubs growing naturally in the
driest places. Most of the Cistuses are rather large
for planting on banks; but Cistus florentinus, C.
lusitanicus, and C. formosus are small enough and
may be kept compact by cutting back. Olearia stel-
lata (Eurybria gunniana) is the smallest of the Olearias
and also may be cut back after flowering with ad-
vantage. This and the Cistuses are flowering shrubs
of the greatest beauty. There is also a dwarf form
of Lavender very suitable for banks, and a prostrate
form of the common Rosemary, a most beautiful and
valuable shrub. Santolina incana and its smaller
variety, incana nana, look their best on banks of the
poorest soil, and should be cut down every two years
or so in spring.’

All the plants and shrubs which we have mentioned
will endure any amount of drought when established,

10f the several species of Cytisus mentioned here C. Schipkaensis may
be found in Bailey’s new Cyclopedia under Cytisus No. 2, C. leucanthus
Schipkaensis. Cytisus florentinus is possibly a mistake for Genista florida,
see under Genista No. 12; there is no Cytisus florentinus known in botan-
ical literature. C. lusitanicus is apparently Genista lusitanica, see Genista,
suppl. list. C. formosus is possibly Genista formosa which is Cytisus
racemosus, see No. 16. C. pilosa is Genista pilosa, see No. 15. Only one
of these species is offered in American trade catalogues, C. Schipkaensis.
This and Genista pilosa are hardy in the latitude of Boston. The others
could probably be grown only in California and the South. The same is
true of Olearia stellata which is apparently not sold in the United States.

The following may be suggested as American substitutes for the shrubs
mentioned above: Cotoneasters in their evergreen dwarf forms, Berberis
aquifolia, Ceanothus, Daphne, Evonymus radicans, especially var. vegeta,
Rhododendron Wilsonianum punctatum, Andromeda, Leucothoe, Hyperi-
cum calycimum, Kalmia angustifolia, Lonicera halliana, Rosa wichuriana,
and Xanthoriza. L. Y. K.

14 STUDIES IN GARDENING

and they all establish themselves very quickly. Many
others might be named that are only a little more
impatient of drought, and will grow well enough on
a bank of good soil. But we have given enough to
show that any bank may be made beautiful, however
unpromising it may look, if once it is cleared of rub-
bish. It is useless, however, to attempt to grow any-
thing on a bank shaded with pine-trees or filled with
straggling hungry shrubs. All these must be cleared
away before anything can be done with it; and,
when it is ready to be planted, the planting should
be done with some taste and judgment, the plants
being arranged in drifts or masses, each drift at its
extremities being interwoven with a drift of another
species. The shrubs also should be massed here and
there in places where they will seem to grow most
naturally, and not aimlessly dotted about. By these
means many a bank which is now a mere eyesore
might be made the most interesting and beautiful
part of the garden, with very little trouble or ex-
pense.

THE NAMES OF FLOWERS

EOPLE who are not gardeners often complain
that the names of unfamiliar flowers are apt to

be ugly, inappropriate, and difficult to remember.
A beautiful pink trumpet-shaped blossom catches
their eye and they ask you the name of it. When
you tell them Incarvillea Delavayi, they are not
satisfied.1. They demand an English name, a name
appropriate to its beauties, and one that will call
them to mind by its mere look and sound; a name,
in fact, like daffodil or honeysuckle. They forget,
or they do not know, that all flowers, even those
which have the prettiest fancy names, have also
business names for purposes of identification, which
are often no prettier and no more significant than
Incarvillea Delavayi itself. Honeysuckle, for in-
stance, when botanists talk about it, becomes Loni-
cera. The buttercup is Ranunculus acris and the
daisy Bellis perennis. Now honeysuckle was prob-
ably called honeysuckle in England long before it
got the name of Lonicera; but newly discovered
plants do not carry pretty names on collars round
their necks. Names have to be invented for them for
purposes of identification; names, too, that will serve
1 A new fern at the Holland House Show (London), July, 1916, is thus chris-

tened: Polystichum angulare divisilobum plumosum Perry’s No.1. L. Y.K.
15

16 STUDIES IN GARDENING

for every language; and so the person who christens
a new plant, whether the discoverer or another, does
not usually tax his fancy much in doing so. Some-
- times he does supply it with a compound descriptive
word from the Greek, as in the case of the Chionodoxa,
which may, perhaps, in time come to be known as
Glory of the Snow or Snow-glory. But he is apt in
naming it to pay a compliment to some botanical
friend or to commemorate his own achievement;
and thus we get names like Brugmansia and Bou-
gainvillea, and Tschichatchewia, names which seem
to hang like millstones round the necks of their un-
fortunate owners. But even these seem worse than
they are to our insular prejudice. No doubt Tschi-
chatchewia sounds quite simple and pretty to a Pole;
and we cannot expect all new plants to bear English-
sounding names, unless Englishmen discover them all.
Besides, the remedy is in our own hands. Our fathers
invented English names for the flowers they knew,
and we must do the same for the flowers that were
unknown to them, if we dislike the names the botan-
ists give them. Until we have done that, we must
be content to call a Brugmansia a Brugmansia (or
rather a Datura, for that is its present title), however
difficult we find it to “tongue” the word. In fact it
would be well, perhaps, if all new flowers were named
after Poles, so that the difficulty of remembering,
spelling, and pronouncing them might act as a spur
to the vernacular invention. But, unfortunately, the
vernacular invention seems nowadays to be so slug-

THE NAMES OF FLOWERS 17

gish that nothing will stimulate it. Eschscholtzia is a
word that no one surely would use if he could
help it; and yet Eschscholtzias have been known so
long that they seem quite old-fashioned flowers; and
no one, so far as we know, has even attempted to
find a name for them with less than six consonants in
a row. The Fuchsia, the Dahlia, and the Wistaria
are even more familiar, but they remain still com-
memorative of Messrs. Fuchs, Dahl, and Wistar;
and the nearest we have got towards Anglicizing them
is to mispronounce them.

No doubt the chief reason why we do not find Eng-
lish names for our new flowers is that we are under
no absolute compulsion to do so. They have their
botanical names when we first know them, and so
we put up with them as a stopgap. Then by use and
wont we come to forget that they are stopgaps; and
in time Dahlia seems just as fit and proper a name
for one plant as Daffodil for another. But, even if
English names are invented for new plants, the com-
petition of the botanical name makes it difficult for
them to get currency. For it must be remembered
that the botanical name is universal, and in most
cases puts the identity of a plant beyond all doubt,
whereas some even of our oldest popular names, such
as Gillyflower, Fair Maids of France, and Bachelor’s
Buttons, are applied to two or more quite different
plants. Also the botanical name identifies the species,
which the popular name often fails to do. Thus, if
you order a certain plant from a nurseryman, and in

18 STUDIES IN GARDENING

doing so call it Zauschneria Californica, the nursery-
man will know at once what you mean; whereas, if
you call it California Fuchsia, or humming-bird flower,
two praiseworthy attempts at an English name, he
is pretty sure not to take your meaning. The object
of botanical names is scientific precision, which they
certainly provide; and so where scientific precision is
needed they are usually indispensable. But, for all
that, the want of beautiful English names to many
beautiful flowers seems a reproach to their beauty,
and to stamp them as aliens and not true citizens of
our gardens. And the question is, How are we to find
beautiful English names for them? The multitude
of modern discoveries would make it difficult to keep
pace with them, even if we tried; and we certainly
do not try very hard. But it must be remembered
that the beautiful old names probably took hundreds
of years to grow, like other words. They were some-
times corruptions of French and Latin names, the
corruption no doubt maintaining itself because of
some appropriate beauty in its sound or some sug-
gestion of a new meaning. Gillyflower, for instance,
is said to have been derived from Caryophyllus,
Dianthus caryophyllus being the specific name of
the carnation, or rather of the pink, from which the
carnation has been developed. Gillyflower is a pretty-
sounding word, but it has no particular meaning.
In the seventeenth century, however, an attempt
was made to corrupt the name further into July-
flower because the carnation flowers in July. But

THE NAMES OF FLOWERS 19

this corruption, for some reason or other, did not
stick. The modern name carnation is said to have
been originally only an adjective applied to certain
Gillyflowers, although Parkinson uses it as an alter-
native to Gillyflowers, or, as he calls them, gillo-
flowers. No doubt it has ousted Gillyflower because
that name was applied to other plants, as, for instance,
Wallflowers (which still keep it), Stocks, Rockets,
and African Marigolds. The most beautiful names
of flowers have grown like folk-songs or ballad poetry;
and there is a kind of natural and unconscious poetry
in them full of the delight which generations of men
have taken in the flowers themselves. But sometimes
the same flower will have two different names, one
poetic and one expressing the Anglo-Saxon liking for
nicknames. Thus Love in a Mist has also the name
of Devil in a Bush, and Bleeding Heart (Dicentra)
‘is, or used to be, called Dutchman’s Breeches.

We cannot expect to make beautiful names for
new flowers off-hand; in such matters the invention
of individuals will never equal the invention of genera-
tions, nor can it hope to get an immediate currency,
especially with the competition of botanical names.
Still, it is desirable that some effort_should be made
to find English names for our newer flowers, and to
use them when found; for there is a danger that we
shall grow too content with the botanical names,
and apply them even to flowers which have beautiful
and well-established English names of their own.
Already many good old names have fallen out of use

20 STUDIES IN GARDENING

and others seem to be going. There is, for instance,
a growing tendency to call perennial Larkspurs Delphi-
niums; and the name Columbine, beautiful alike in
sound and sense, and one that can be used without
any fear of ambiguity, is giving way to Aquilegia.
Most people now say Sedum instead of Stonecrop,
even in the case of the species to which the English
name can be given with perfect propriety, and many
call Snapdragons Antirrhinums. Often, of course, a
particular species can be indicated only by the bo-
tanical name; but that is no reason for using the
botanical name where the English name can be used
without fear of error. If one wished, for instance, to
speak of Antirrhinum asarina, one would have to
call it by that name; but Snapdragon will serve for
Antirrhinum majus, indeed, it is a more exact term
than the generic name of Antirrhinum.

The rage for Latin names has gone so far that you
will now sometimes see Lilies called Liliums by people
who write about them in the gardening papers. Their
defence, no doubt, would be that some plants which
do not belong to the lily genus are also called lilies;
but since we have Primrose and the Rose of Sharon,
this would be a reason for calling Roses Rosas; and
it is to be hoped that we shall never come to that.
But, since there is such a strong tendency towards
the unnecessary use of botanical terms, it can be
checked only by a conscious effort, and that effort
ought to be made. A great deal could be done by
writers both of gardening books and in the garden-

THE NAMES OF FLOWERS 21

ing papers if they would use English names as much
as possible, giving the botanical name where there
is any fear of ambiguity, and, even when the bo-
tanical name is the one in general use, adding the
English name, if one exists. By this means English
names in common use might be maintained, some
that have fallen out of use might be revived, and some
newly invented for new flowers might gain currency.
The nurserymen also might help, by always adding
English names, where they exist, to the botanical
names in their catalogues. Some of them already
do this, and in some gardening books a praiseworthy
effort is made to keep up the old English names, and
even to introduce new ones. Mr. Robinson, for in-
stance, in his “English Flower Garden,” always
gives an English name when he can, even to newly
introduced plants and to different species; sometimes
by the mere process of translation, which is often the
only one possible. For instance, he calls Sempervivum
arenarium the Sand Houseleek; and there is no reason
whatever why it should not be generally known by
that name, or why Arenaria montana should not be
called Mountain Sandwort, or Tigridia the Tiger
Flower. When entirely new names have to be in-
vented, it is a more difficult matter. People are apt
to be shy of using sentimental names, however pretty,
unless they are quite familiar, like Forget-me-not;
and it is difficult to find a descriptive name for a pretty
flower without making it a little sentimental. Noth-
ing could be prettier than the name “ Angels’ tears”

a2 STUDIES IN GARDENING

for Narcissus triandrus albus, but it has not come
into general use, although some writers have per-
severed with it. No doubt it is too sentimental.
Then there is Foam Flower for Tiarella cordifolia, an-
other pretty name and quite appropriate, but again,
perhaps, rather too sentimental. At any rate, it has
not taken root. On the other hand, Rockspray for
Cotoneaster is a name so descriptive and so well sound-
ing that every one ought to use it; yet it is not used.
Other descriptive or half-descriptive names fail from
being too cumbrous. Thus we cannot expect that the
name “twin-leaved lily of the valley” will stick to
Maianthemum bifolium, even though the alternative
is no less cumbrous. But it is no use being discouraged
by the failure either of good names or of names less
good. Only persistency in the use of them will give
them a chance, and only by such persistency can it be
proved whether or not they deserve to survive. Even
a name too sentimental is better than a mere botan-
ical term; and, if there is a general tendency to use
English names, invention may be quickened, and in
some cases alternative names may have to struggle
for the mastery. In such a case we should have some
approach to natural selection, the best possible means
of obtaining good names.

In many cases, however, what is required is not
invention, but merely revival, and this ought to be
far easier; for there are many old names now fallen
out of use that ought to take the fancy of any one
who hears them, as, for instance, Virgin’s Bower and

THE NAMES OF FLOWERS 23

Lady’s Bower for Clematis flammula and C. montana,
Cardinal’s Flower for Lobelia cardinalis, Goldilocks
for Helichrysum, Lady’s Laces for variegated grass,
Pearls of Spain for the white Grape Hyacinth, and
Rosaruby for the red Adonis. Many of these names
should serve as models for new inventions, partic-
ularly in the richness and appropriateness of their
sound; for it is sound probably that keeps a name in
common speech more than any other quality; and
it is only through too much reading that people grow
indifferent to the sound of words. Goldilocks and
Rosaruby are a delight to the ear. They can only
have fallen out of use because they belonged to flowers
not much grown nowadays. As for Pearls of Spain,
it is a delight both to the ear and to the mind, and
worthy of one of the most exquisite of all spring
flowers.

Even in the naming of florists’ varieties some fancy
used to be exercised in the seventeenth century,
particularly in the case of carnations. There were
red Hulos, and Chrystallines, and Striped Savages,
and Cambersines, and Lusty Gallants, and Pale
Pageants, and Infantas, and Feathered Tawnies.
And there is no reason why florists now should not
show a little more spirit and invention in giving names
to their novelties. Florists’ varieties do not have
botanical names; therefore, the florist has a free
choice, and no excuse if his names are meaningless or
ugly. Yet they are usually both. What is to be said
for the name Blairii 2, given to an excellent old rose,

24 STUDIES IN GARDENING

or Gruss an Teplitz, given to an excellent new one?
The habit of calling flowers after people is a very dull
one and ought to be discouraged. All that can be said
for it is that the names of people do not need to be
translated. But this would apply also to classical
names, which are far less used than they might be.
Indeed, they are used scarcely at all. But, even if a
pretty florists’ name had to be translated it would
not matter much, provided it was short and descrip-
tive. Daffodils in this respect are better treated than
roses; for instance, Lucifer is a good name for the
glowing flower to which it is given; and Sunset is
another. But there are some pretty names even
among roses, as, for instance, Irish Glory and Irish
Modesty for the beautiful Single Teas which have
lately come from Ireland. Even humorous names
are better than dull ones, and the gardener is to be
commended who christened a new cucumber “Ten-
der and True,” when he might have called it Lord
Kitchener or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.

GARDENING IN HEAVY SOILS

HE problems of gardening in heavy soils are
naturally quite different from those of gar-
dening in light soils; for whereas the chief enemy of
plants in light soils is drought and heat in summer,
their chief enemy in heavy soils is damp and cold in
winter. Climate is not the only condition which af-
fects the hardiness of plants; soil has also to be con-
sidered; and many plants that are hardy on a light
sandy soil are not hardy on a stiff clay, although the
climate may be no colder. The chief reason of this
is that moisture on a stiff clay does not drain away
quickly, but remains about the roots and even about
the crowns of plants, so that the ground is very cold
when it is frozen and, even when it is not frozen, is
all through the winter so charged with damp that
many plants are liable to rot off in it. It follows from
this that drainage is the chief essential to success in
a stiff soil; and it is necessary not merely to protect
the plants from damp and cold, but also to make the
ground fertile, for if the upper layer of the soil is
charged with water, air cannot get into it, and with-
out air those processes of decomposition which make
soil fertile are impossible.
No one, therefore, whose garden consists of stiff

clay can hope to grow any but the coarsest and strong-
25

26 STUDIES IN GARDENING

est plants in it without good drainage. And drainage
is not a matter merely of carrying the water away,
as it is carried away from the roof of a house; but
rather of carrying it down far enough below the plants
to prevent their suffering from it in cold and wet
winters; for there may come a time, in hot and dry
summers, when even in a stiff clay the plants will
need all the moisture they can get. Indeed, plants
suffer from a prolonged drought in a stiff clay as much
as in light sandy soil, or even more, for the clay, if
it is in a crude natural state, bakes and cracks, in
some places pressing tightly round the roots of the
plants, in others exposing them to the full heat of the
sun. It follows, therefore, that it is not enough to
drain the moisture away from the soil by means of
pipes, even if that could be done in a soil which can
be deprived of moisture only by the heat of the sun.
What is needed is to change the nature of the soil it-
self, so that moisture will have a free passage through
it. Without such a change, even the use of drainage
in the shape of broken bricks, rubble, &c., some feet
below the surface is not a complete remedy, for the
soil above will still hold a great deal of moisture if
its consistency is not altered. The first step towards
doing this is to break it up thoroughly by means of
deep digging. Deep digging is necessary on a light
soil, but it is even more necessary on a heavy one,
for it is one of the chief means of introducing air into
the ground and thus of making it fertile, and also of
enabling the water to find a free passage through it.

GARDENING IN HEAVY SOILS 27

But the effects of deep digging upon a stiff clay are
only transient, unless the clay is mixed with other
matter which will prevent it from clogging with the
damp and caking with the heat. It must be made
porous by the addition of other more porous sub-
stances which will both relieve it of moisture and
add to its fertility. Of these the most valuable are
tubble and humus — that is to say, soil consisting
of decayed vegetable matter and, in particular, leaf
mould. There are, of course, many kinds of rubble,
but the best of all is mortar rubble, for not only is it
very gritty, but it is also full of lime, which in itself
is a most valuable form of plant food. Many people
use cinders, and these certainly increase the porosity
of the soil, but unfortunately they also impoverish
it, as they contain no kind of nourishment whatever.
Mortar rubble, therefore, should be used, if possible;
and it may be very plentifully mixed with a stiff clay
soil with the best results for all except the few plants,
such as Rhododendrons and Azaleas, and Kalmias,
to which lime is poison. Humus does not, of course,
increase the porosity of the soil so much as rubble,
but it does make it more porous and also warmer,
and it is a most valuable and in a stiff clay an almost
essential plant food. The rubble and the humus
should be mixed together and dug well into the clay,
so that the soil for 2 ft. at least is permeated with
them. If further drainage is necessary it should con-
sist of a foot or so of broken bricks, &c., the larger
the better, about 214 ft. below the surface of the

28 STUDIES IN GARDENING

soil. To prepare a border in this way entails a good
deal of trouble and some expense, but when once it
is done the border will need but little attention for
some years and the plants will not need to be renewed
constantly.

It is only in a border so prepared that a great num-
ber of plants can be satisfactorily grown on a stiff
clay soil, and, further, it is only in such a border that
farmyard manure can be employed so as to give the
best results. Manure, of course, adds to the fertility
of a heavy soil and also, to some extent, increases its
porosity; but it is also apt to rot the roots of plants
that come in contact with it in cold, wet weather,
and to turn sour and breed noxious gases, while its
juices can only be thoroughly distributed through
clay when it is made porous.

Of course, many people will not be at the trouble
of preparing a border thus; but even so they may
protect their plants from some of the dangers of damp
and cold by thorough deep digging, and also by plac-
ing some drainage below the roots of particular plants
and surrounding these roots with humus and rubble.
Thus they will be protected during the winter from
the immediate contact of the clay. Many plants will
thrive on a stiff clay, which would otherwise damp
off in the winter, if they are planted in a border raised
half a foot or a foot above the general level of the
soil. Such a border is particularly useful for the
culture of bulbs, such as Tulips and Daffodils, and of
those low-growing plants which thrive by nature

GARDENING IN HEAVY SOILS 29

among rocks, such as Aubretia, the creeping Phloxes,
and many kinds of Pinks, including Carnations.
Such a border is not difficult to make, especially if it
is enclosed by fairly large rocks shaped like tiles and
driven firmly into the ground; and it is one of the
easiest means of providing drainage, especially for
shallow-rooting plants. In a light soil it is well to
plant, if possible, in the autumn, so that the plants
may be thoroughly established before the summer
droughts; but in a stiff clay many plants should be
planted in the spring, since winter damp is a greater
danger to them than summer drought. This applies,
perhaps, even to Roses, unless the soil can be thor-
oughly prepared for them beforehand, and to all ex-
cept the hardiest shrubs. It is true, of course, that
with a favourable winter Roses will survive even in
the stiffest clay, and that in such a case they will do
much better their first summer than if they are planted
in the spring; but if the winter is very severe they
are likely to go off wholesale. If the gardener likes to
take that risk, he can plant in the autumn, but not
later than the beginning of November; if he prefers
safety, he will plant in early spring, as soon as all
danger of severe frosts seems to be over. Most her-
baceous plants can be safely planted in the spring,
and some, in a stiff clay, can only then be safely
planted. Larkspurs and phloxes, for instance, are very
apt to go off if planted in autumn.' Even plants

1 Exception must be taken to the application of this statement to American
gardens; Phloxes do well in the United States when autumn-planted,
Larkspurs also when on well-drained soil. L. Y. K.

30 STUDIES IN GARDENING

like Paonies and German Irises, which usually will
not flower well the same year if planted in spring,
are best so planted in a very stiff clay. As in the
case of Roses, they may do nothing the first year,
but they are well established before the winter comes.
In any case, if autumn planting is done at all with
herbaceous plants, it should be done as early as pos-
sible, and it can be done earlier in heavy than in light
soils, because there is less danger of drought. Speak-
ing generally, deep-rooting plants are better moved
in autumn and shallow-rooting in spring, as the shal-
low-rooters recover most quickly from disturbance.
But in a light soil many shallow-rooting plants are
best moved in the autumn, as there is no fear of their
perishing from winter cold and damp, whereas if
moved in spring they may not recover before a long
drought begins. Such plants can usually be moved
in spring with perfect safety in a stiff soil; whereas
a good many deep-rooting plants in such a soil will
succumb to winter cold and damp if moved in au-
tumn.

Speaking generally, again, deep-rooting plants are
most suitable to light soils, in which their roots protect
them from drought, while shallow-rooting plants do
best in heavy soils, where there is usually enough
moisture on the surface even in summer to keep their
roots cool. But this is only a general rule. Some deep-
rooting plants, such as Peeonies, are never so fine as
in a stiff soil, and many shallow-rooting plants will
not endure the cold and damp of a stiff clay.

GARDENING IN HEAVY SOILS 31

Most bulbs, of course, must be planted in the au-
tumn even in the stiffest soils, and they should be
planted as early as possible, so that they may be able
to start into growth before the winter cold begins.
This applies particularly to Daffodils, all kinds of
Squills, Chionodoxas, Snowdrops, all Lilies that are
planted in autumn, and even to Crocuses. It is less
important in the case of Tulips, as most of these start
into growth later. It is, as a rule, more difficult to
grow bulbs well in a heavy than in a light soil, as they
are particularly apt to rot off from damp. It is well,
therefore, to put some drainage under them, and to
surround them with leaf-mould and grit. Particular
care should be taken that the soil is pressed close
round them, as, if it is not, water will get into the
empty spaces and rot them in the winter. This is
more difficult to ensure in stiff clay than in a light soil,
as the clay after being dug remains in lumps, whereas
the light soil crumbles away. Bulbs in a stiff soil
should not be planted so deep as in a light one. As
bulbs differ very much as to the depth at which they
like to be planted, it is impossible to give general
rules in this matter; but four inches is quite deep
enough for the base of Tulip, Daffodil, or Snowdrop
bulbs, while Crocuses can be placed not more than
an inch below the surface.

There are many plants which thrive in half-shade
with a north aspect on light soils but which prefer
full sun and a southern aspect on heavy ones. This
applies to Ponies, Pansies of all kinds, Phloxes,

32 STUDIES IN GARDENING

Michaelmas Daisies, Madonna Lilies, and, indeed,
all the Lilies which will do well in stiff soils — Day
Lilies (Hemerocallis), Columbines, many species of
Campanula, Lilies of the Valley, Violets, Coreopsis,
the hardy Cyclamen, Larkspurs, Foxgloves, Doroni-
cum, Alstrcemeria, Funkia, Cranesbills, Christmas
roses, Rose of Sharon, all the German Irises (though
these, indeed, prefer full sun with any soil), Lupins,
Mimulus, Bergamot, Forget-me-nots, Anemone japon-
ica, Solomon’s seal, Dicentra spectabilis, Polyanthuses,
and even Primroses, Spirzeas of all kinds, Meadow Rue,
Spiderwort, and Trollius. All these plants will do well
in a stiff soil, provided they get plenty of sun and do
not suffer too much from stagnant moisture. «In very
hot places Anemone coronaria will do better than in
light soils, and even Anemone fulgens will thrive if
some leaf-mould and lime are mixed with the clay.
Hollyhocks also must have a warm place on a stiff
soil, and should always be planted in spring. Lark-
spurs and Phloxes are never so magnificent as in a
stiff soil properly prepared. Pansies, Polyanthuses,
Trollius, Day Lilies, and Lilies of the Valley all grow
well in a stiff soil if it is also fertile. The Madonna
Lily is often at its best in clay if it is protected from
stagnant moisture and in the fullest sun. It also
likes lime mixed with soil. Of other Lilies, the Tiger
Lily, the Orange Lily, Lilium umbellatum, L. elegans,
L. Martagon, and L. Pyrenaicum will all grow well
in clay; while L. Chalcedonicum, though a capricious
plant, is sometimes seen at its best in clay in a hot

GARDENING IN HEAVY SOILS 33

place where the soil is impregnated with lime. The
magnificent Lilium Szovitzianum is also said to grow
well in clay, but it, like L. Chalcedonicum, needs to
be thoroughly protected from stagnant moisture.!
Among the Narcissi some do much better in clay than
others. Speaking generally, the pheasant-eye Nar-
cissus (H. poeticus) and those hybrids which are
nearest to it do better in a stiff soil than the Trumpet
Daffodils. For these latter the soil should be pre-
pared with grit and humus. The double form of
Narcissus poeticus thrives better in a clay soil than
in any other. It is commonly supposed that all roses
do best in a clay soil, but this is not the case. Nothing
suits most roses so well as a rich loam; and many
of the more delicate teas and Chinas are apt to die
off in a stiff clay unless it is very carefully prepared.
Of all roses hybrid perpetuals do best in a clay soil,
and of these the hardier and more vigorous should
be chosen. It is certainly true, however, that clay
is better suited to roses than to most plants; but
the common idea that any rose will thrive in a clay
soil, if planted anyhow, often leads to disappointment.
The more rich and porous the soil is made the better,
and this applies, not only to roses, but to all kinds cf
shrubs. Indeed, it is useless to attempt to grow any
except the most robust and long-suffering shrubs in

1Some gardeners recommend planting Lilies on the sides instead of up-
right, in order to drain the water from their crowns. This is a practical
method but in any case the lily should be set on a bed of silver sand for
drainage. L. Y. K.

34 STUDIES IN GARDENING

a stiff clay without a thorough and deep preparation
of the soil.

The soil also should be carefully prepared where
any annuals are to be sown, for a stiff clay is by nature
too hard and rough and uneven, even when thoroughly
broken up, for seeds to germinate well in it. Indeed,
on clay one seldom sees those self-sown seedlings which
are so common in a sandy soil; and even trees repro-
duce themselves from seed much more rarely, which
is, no doubt, the reason why light soils are apt to
be more wooded than heavy ones. Therefore, when
seeds are sown out of doors on clay the surface of the
soil should not only be very thoroughly broken up,
but should be enriched and softened with leaf-mould
and grit. It is seldom much use to sow annuals in
autumn on clay, though it is the best way of growing
many kinds on a light soil. Indeed, all annuals should
be sown, even in the spring, some weeks later on clay
than on sand. In the case of biennials and perennials
many kinds which can be sown in the open ground
when it is sandy should be sown in boxes of prepared
soil where the natural soil is clay, since not only are
they apt to fail to germinate, but they are also liable
to be eaten off by slugs while still in a young and
tender state. Slugs and snails are perhaps the worst
pests of a heavy soil, and there is no means of extir-
pating them. They can only be dealt with in detail
by killing all that are encountered and by surround-
ing the plants for which they have a particular fancy
‘with soot or ashes. Not only is the voracity of slugs,

GARDENING IN HEAVY SOILS 35

though vegetarian, comparable with that of sharks
and crocodiles when the difference of size is considered,
but they have also a horrible epicurism of taste which
will not be satisfied by an innocent meal off the leaves
of vigorous and full-grown plants. They make for
whatever is young and tender, and are happy only
when they can kill where they dine. Where they
abound, therefore, seedlings should not be exposed to
them until they have outgrown their first delicacy.!
All these matters make gardening on clay a difficult
and troublesome business; and the stiffer the clay
the stiffer is the gardener’s task. But we cannot all
live on a rich loam of the right consistency. We must
take gardening as a game, with different rules in dif-
ferent places. Sometimes the rules are easy and
sometimes difficult. On a stiff clay they are certainly
very difficult. But some people find the most difficult
games the most interesting, and the born gardener
reveals his genius most when he has to deal with stiff
clay or pure sand.

1In the United States snails and slugs are not common. Their counter-

part may be said to be the cutworm, whose ravages many American gar-
deners know too well. L. Y. K.

CAMPANULAS

HERE are some flowers which in the most formal

garden never lose their wildness or that air of
romance which most wild flowers possess. Every
Daffodil looks like a meadow flower, and all cam-
panulas seem to belong to the mountain-side or the
woodland. There is a mysterious charm about all
bell-shaped flowers, as if they really had some secret
musical purpose; and there seems to be a further
mystery in the dim-blue colour of campanula bells.
The wild beauty of these plants has been but little
touched or altered by the florists, and the reason, no
doubt, is that Nature herself has already done nearly
all that can be done with them. There are some plants,
such as Pansies or Begonias, in which she seems to
produce merely possibilities for the gardener to realize.
There are others which she herself perfects for the
garden, enlarging their flowers until they can scarcely
be further enlarged without loss of symmetry, and
developing innumerable species infinitely varied in
habit and form. This is the case with campanulas.
There are some that grow as tall as a man, and some
that grow scarcely higher than moss. The flowers
of some are bell-shaped, others starry, and others al-
most flat like plates. Only in colour do they vary

little, being nearly all of a soft-grey blue or purple,
36

CAMPANULAS 37

although there are soft-pink Canterbury-bells and
white varieties, either natural or garden, of many
species. In some cases the florists have enlarged their
flowers, in one or two they have doubled them; they
have also produced a certain number of hybrids, but
even among the hybrids as many have come by ac-
cident as by design. But alJ these are only exceptions;
most campanulas are as Nature has made them; and
she has produced few flowers with more character and
beauty. For garden purposes it is convenient to
divide campanulas into classes, the tall kinds of the
lowland and the low-growing mountain species, while
there are a certain number of intermediate kinds, such
as our own English harebells and Campanula car-
patica. The taller kinds, naturally, are best suited
for the border, and the mountain species for the rock-
garden; although several of the latter are so easily
grown that they make excellent plants for the front
of the border. Most of the border campanulas are
woodland or half woodland plants, and, therefore,
they like a cool or a shady place, except in a very stiff
soil. They are nearly all easily grown, but they pre-
fer a rich soil, and many of them will not reveal their
full beauty without it. The best known of all cam-
panulas is the Canterbury-bell (C. medium), of which
it is scarcely necessary to speak except to say that
the double and cup and saucer varieties are not nearly
so beautiful as those with flowers of a natural and
simple form. ‘Two other species are almost as com-
mon and, being perennials, are even more useful than

38 STUDIES IN GARDENING

the Canterbury-bell — namely, C. latiloba (or grandis)
and C. persicifolia. C. latiloba is the easiest grown
of the campanulas, thriving in poor soil, provided it
is not too hot, and increasing like a weed. It has
soft-blue flowers shaped like a plate or a shallow
saucer, and there is a white variety which grows
stronger than the type. C. persicifolia is, perhaps,
the most beautiful of all border campanulas, and one
of the few that have been improved by the florists.
The type is naturalized in some parts of England,
and has bell-shaped flowers of the ordinary cam-
panula blue. There is a natural white variety of it,
also naturalized. C. p. grandiflora is a variety with
much larger flowers and a most beautiful and vigorous
plant. It can be obtained with dark-blue, pale-blue,
and white flowers. C. persicifolia, like most cam-
panulas, can be raised very easily from seed, and the
best way to obtain fine forms is to raise a number of
seedlings from a good strain of the grandiflora variety
and to keep only the finest of these, raising seedlings
from them again in due course. C. persicifolia is not
a very long-lived plant, and is apt to dwindle and
deteriorate after two years or so, so that the stock
should be constantly renewed. Several double varie-
ties have lately been produced, but in all of them a
great part of the peculiar grace of the flower is lost,
and there seems to be no reason whatever for their
existence. C. latifolia is a fine British species with
pale-blue flowers. In rich soil and a cool situation it
will grow 5 ft. or more high and seeds itself freely.

CAMPANULAS 39

There is a beautiful white variety and a variety called
macrantha, a fine plant, but not so stately in habit
as the type. C. van Houttei and C. Burghalti are
probably hybrids between C. latifolia and some other
parent unknown. They are both very beautiful,
having large bells much paler in the latter than in
the former. They grow only about 2 ft. high.

C. lactiflora is another stately bell-flower, growing
often 6 ft. in height. Its flowers are small, but very
numerous, and of a very pale-blue colour. There is a
variety with deeper blue flowers. C. celtidifolia ap-
pears to be only a rather inferior variety of the same
species. C. lactiflora seeds itself freely, and should
be left in the same place for years, as it shows its full
beauty only when undisturbed.

Campanula pyramidalis is a well-known plant,
often grown in pots in greenhouses. It is, however,
.. perfectly hardy, though it is apt to deteriorate quickly
after the first year’s flowering. It also often grows
6 ft. high and remains in flower for a long time. Al-
though such a tall plant, chance seedlings of it will
thrive in the fissures of walls, and in such places it
often seeds itself profusely. It is best renewed from
seed about every two years, and, if the seed is sown
early in spring and the plants are well treated, they
will flower the next year. There is also a fine white
variety and a shorter variety called compacta. C.
pyramidalis likes more sun than most of the taller
campanulas.

Campanula alliariefolia is a handsome plant grow-

40 STUDIES IN GARDENING

ing less than 2 ft. high. It has large drooping white
bells, and can be easily raised from seed. Campanula
urticifolia is usually seen in the white double-flowered
variety. This is one of the few cases in which doub-
ling improves a campanula, and it is a very pretty
plant. C. glomerata is a British species and very
easily grown. It is only about a foot high, and the
flowers, of a rich violet colour, are crowded together
at the top of the stalk. The white variety is very
beautiful, but not so vigorous as the type. There is
also a new very dwarf form called acaulis, a good
plant for the rock garden. C. punctata is another
low-growing border plant, with white spotted flowers.
It often takes a year or two to establish itself, and
then is apt to become a weed. Besides these are two
fine hybrids, C. Hendersonii and C. Fergussonii, both
of them, perhaps, being crosses between C. carpatica
and C. pyramidalis. They are both valuable and
distinct border plants growing about 18 in. high.

We will pass now to the campanulas of inter-
mediate growth, most of them inhabitants of hill
countries or Alpine pastures, but most of them also
easily grown in the border. The English Harebell,
C. rotundifolia, is, of course, both a lowland and a
highland plant; and only its commonness prevents
it from being a favourite flower in our gardens. The
white form is rather rare, though often seen in Derby-
shire. It is less vigorous than the type, and often
dies if divided. C. Hostii is a variety of C. rotundifolia,
and scarcely to be distinguished from it except by

CAMPANULAS 41

the eye of the botanist. It is chiefly valuable for its
white form, which is much more vigorous than the
white harebell proper, and can be divided without
fear. There is also a curious and beautiful double
variety of C. rotundifolia called C. soldanelloides.
This should be grown in some cool part of the rock
garden, as it is far less vigorous than C. rotundifolia.
Campanula carpatica is a well-known and beautiful
plant with large, open, bell-shaped flowers, growing
about 9 in. high. There is a white variety, and
several other varieties, of which pelviformis is partic-
ularly beautiful. C. carpatica is best raised from
seed, and the seedlings are apt to vary a good deal
in the size of their flowers and also in the depth
of their colour. Campanula turbinata is a dwarf
variety with flowers very large in proportion to its
size, and one of the finest of campanulas for the rock
garden. It will not often come true from seed, and
therefore should be increased by division in early
spring. Campanula mirabilis is a plant from the
Caucasus, of which a great deal was made when it
first appeared some ten years ago. It is certainly
beautiful, being like a very delicate Canterbury-
bell, but, as it often takes years before it flowers and
appears always to die after flowering, it is not a very
valuable garden plant. It can be easily raised from
seed, and should be grown in rather poor, stony soil,
on the lower slopes of the rock garden. Campanula
rhomboidalis is a pretty harebell growing about a
foot high and thriving in any border of ordinary soil.

42 STUDIES IN GARDENING

It can be easily raised from seed. C. barbata is no
doubt the most beautiful of all these intermediate
campanulas, perhaps, the most beautiful of all cam-
panulas. Unfortunately, it is rather capricious, grow-
ing freely and increasing by self-sown seedlings in
some places and dwindling away without flowering
in others. In Switzerland it is a plant of the Alpine
pastures, and more often than not a biennial. It
seems to do best in light, rich soil, in a fairly sunny,
well-drained place, where the ground is carpeted with
other low-growing plants. It can be easily raised
from seed, and its beauty is such that no pains should
be spared to make it thrive.

There are a great many mountain campanulas,
some very easy to grow and some difficult, but nearly
all both interesting and beautiful plants for the rock
garden. The best known of these are C. caespitosa and
C. pusilla (or pumila) which may for garden purposes
be regarded as the same plant. C. caespitosa is a
little harebell only a few inches high, which will
grow in a border in light, rich, well-drained soil, but
which looks its best and lives longest in long, deep,
and narrow pockets in the rock garden. In such
places it will thrive in full sun and poor soil, throw-
ing out runners wherever it can find space and grow-
ing into a plant a foot or more long. The blue flowers
vary a good deal in the depth of their colour, and
there is a white variety. C. caespitosa can, like all
or nearly all the rock campanulas, be increased by
cuttings taken when they are just starting into growth

CAMPANULAS 43

in the spring. These cuttings will make good flowering
plants the same year, if they are stuck in cold frames.
But the simpler plan is to raise seedlings, and these,
if seed is sown in March or April in a cold frame, will
also flower the same year. Hundreds of plants can
be quickly raised in this way at the cost of a few pence,
and plants raised from seed are the most vigorous.
The white variety often comes true from seed. C.
caespitosa makes a particularly beautiful contrast
with Sedum album, which flowers at the same time.

Scarcely less well known, and quite as beautiful,
is Campanula muralis (also called Portenschlagiana).
This plant, although it will grow in the smallest fis-
sures of rock in the hottest sun, will also thrive in
rich soil in cool and half shady places. There are
two varieties and their naming is rather uncertain.
The type appears to be the smaller plant with pale
blue flowers, while the variety Bayarica is larger and
has deeper and more purple flowers. Both are most
valuable plants for the rock garden, particularly for
the north side, where they may be mixed with Silene
alpestris with beautiful effect. They are very deep-
rooting plants and should be left undisturbed as long
as possible. They can be increased either by division
or by cuttings treated like the cuttings of C. caespitosa.
Seed is not very common, and there is, unfortunately,
no white variety known.

Campanula pulla is a plant with much the same
habit of growth as C. caespitosa, but even smaller,
and with deeper blue, or rather purple, flowers. It is

44 STUDIES IN GARDENING

also rather more delicate, though easily grown in long,
narrow pockets of the rock garden and in light rubbly
soil where its runners have room to increase. It will
thrive either on the north or south side, but should
always have a cool root run. It is best moved and
divided every two or three years. It can be increased
by seed, though this is rather uncertain in germina-
tion unless sown as soon as ripe; by cuttings, as in
the case of C. caespitosa; or by division.

C. Wilsoni is a pretty hybrid between C. pulla and
C. carpatica and more vigorous than C. pulla, though
of the same habit of growth. There appears also to
be one or two other hybrids of C. pulla, such as C.
haylodgensis, though these are of uncertain parentage.
C. Tommasiniana is another small Bluebell, with long
and very narrow pale blue flowers. It has a very
delicate beauty, but is quite easy to grow in chinks
of the rocks, thriving best in full sun. It must be
increased by division or cuttings.

Campanula garganica is a small campanula with
leaves very like those of C. muralis, but with star-
shaped flowers. There appears to be some doubt as
to which of two varieties is the type. One of these
is more tufted than the other, has shiny green leaves,
and blue flowers. The other has leaves more bronze
or brown in colour, a more spreading habit of growth,
and flowers nearer to purple in their hue. Of this
form, which is perhaps the type, there is also a white
or almost white variety. Both are very beautiful,
and easily grown in narrow chinks of rock or even

CAMPANULAS 45

fissures of the wall in full sun. They can be easily
raised from seed or cuttings, and should be left un-
disturbed when once planted, as they root very deeply.
The variety called hirsuta, with downy leaves, is a
larger and more vigorous plant altogether, and will
thrive on the north or south side of the rock garden.
It should be increased by cuttings or division. All
the forms of C. garganica are very beautiful, and pecu-
liarly well-fitted to the rock garden.

C. Waldsteiniana is a very small campanula rather
like C. garganica in its flowers, though more upright
in growth. It is rather rare, but quite easy to grow
in sunny chinks between the rocks. It must be in-
creased by cuttings or very careful division.

Campanula abietina is a beautiful plant quite easy
to grow, but rather a shy bloomer. It is best grown
in rather poor light soil and in full sun among the
rocks, and should have a top dressing of leaf-mould
every spring. It can be readily increased by division,
and, indeed, thrives best if divided and given fresh
soil every two years or so. Otherwise it is apt to die
out. C. abietina is rather taller than most of the
rock campanulas, throwing up stalks about 8 in. in
height. ;

Campanula isophylla and C. fragilis are two beau-
tiful prostrate campanulas usually grown in pots;
and, indeed, they are too tender to thrive out of doors
except in warm places. It is worth while, however,
to try them in the warmest part of the rock garden
closely packed among the rocks. C. isophylla likes

46 STUDIES IN GARDENING

fairly rich soil consisting chiefly of mortar rubble and
humus, and it must be watered in hot dry weather.
C. fragilis will do best in the narrowest chinks between
the rocks in a soil mainly made up of rubble. It can
be raised very easily from seed. C. isophylla is best
increased by cuttings taken in spring. Both should
be protected in winter if they are left out of doors.

There are a few campanulas from the high Alps
which are difficult to grow. Among them C. Allioni,
C. cenisia, C. excisa, C. Elatines, C. lanata, and C.
Zoyzii. They are all purely rock plants and should
be grown in very narrow chinks of the rocks, in a
soil consisting mainly of sand and rubble, with a very
little leaf-mould. They are best grown from seed
when it can be obtained. C. Allioni spreads by means
of runners throwing up little tufts, and should be
given some space to increase in. C. cenisia and C.
Zoyzii are tiny tufted plants. C. cenisia grows in its
native home in masses of broken shale. C. Zoyzii
likes a narrow fissure and does well in some gardens.
C. excisa is worth attempting, since it has a flower
both curious and beautiful and can be readily raised
from seed. C. lanata has a yellow flower, and very
little appears to be known about its culture in Eng-
land. It comes from the Balkans.

All the rock campanulas are best disturbed or
divided in spring, as some even of the most vigorous
of them are apt to die in the winter if they are dis-
turbed in autumn. Although most of them like a
good deal of sun, they also like a cool place for their

CAMPANULAS 47

roots, and, therefore, should be placed so that their
roots can run under rocks. The kinds, such as caespi-
tosa, pulla, and Allioni, which run under the soil,
should be given plenty of room for increase, as other-
wise they quickly deteriorate. The more difficult
species all like a south-west aspect, but many of the
more vigorous kinds, such as caespitosa, garganica
hirsuta, turbinata, Wilsonii, and pulla do well on the
north side if unshaded, and are most useful plants
for this purpose. Muralis, as we have said, will thrive
also in half shade. With the Pinks and Saxifrages,
Campanulas are the most valuable of all families of
plants for the rock garden.

THE CULTIVATION OF ALPINE PLANTS

HERE is some vagueness in the use of the term

Alpine as applied to plants. It never means
merely the plants of the Alps. Indeed, the epithet
Alpinus is applied botanically to mountain plants
from other continents besides Europe. But besides
this geographical looseness there is also some uncer-
tainty about the character which is implied by the
word Alpine. Some people apply it generally to all
plants which grow on mountains, however readily
they may adapt themselves to the lowlands. Others
confine it to those high mountain plants which can
only be grown in our gardens in special conditions
and with some care and skill. This seems the best
use of the word for any one who considers Alpine
plants from the point of view of their cultivation,
since it is only the more difficult among them that
need to be cultivated in a peculiar way.

But, even if one confines the term to mountain
plants that need special conditions, there still remains
the difficulty that such plants vary a good deal in the
conditions which they require; and ignorance of this
fact causes many failures. Not only do Alpine plants
come from many different climates, but even the
same range of mountains will usually afford a great
diversity of conditions, resulting in an equal diversity

in the character and requirements of the plants which
48

CULTIVATION OF ALPINE PLANTS 49

grow upon it. Thus, even in the Swiss Alps, there
are some plants that are purely saxatile growing in
very narrow and deep fissures or chinks between the
rocks, needing hardly any soil for their nourishment
and getting all the food and protection they require
from the rocks which surround their roots. Plants
of this kind are apt to be very deep-rooting, and,
when once they have thrust their roots down among
the rocks deeply embedded in the soil, they are usually
safe against any amount of drought and heat in the
summer or moisture and cold in the winter. The
more difficult among them need scarcely any soil
at all, merely a little grit and rubble to fill up the
spaces between the rocks. They will usually thrive
on a steep, sloping bank; and there is no need to ar-
range the rocks where they grow so as to catch and
hold the water on the surface of the soil, as they get
all the moisture they need from the rocks about their
deeper roots. Most of them like all the sun they can
get, and should, therefore, be grown on rock-work
facing to the south. Many plants of this kind which
can be successfully grown in English rock gardens
come from mountains in Asia Minor and other hot
countries, so that they sometimes suffer from very
sharp frosts, especially if accompanied by cutting
winds. They should therefore be grown in sheltered
places, and in very hard winters should be protected
with a mat or cut heather. Among plants of this
deep-rooting purely saxatile character may be men-

1For “cut heather” Americans may read “pine boughs.” L. Y. K.

50 STUDIES IN GARDENING

tioned the Aethionemas, some of the more difficult
Campanulas, the Acantholimons, the Wahlenbergias
(also called Edraianthus), Armeria caespitosa, some
of the smaller and more delicate Pinks such as Dian-
thus neglectus and D. freynii, Geranium argenteum
and G. cinereum, Hypericum repens, H. reptans, and
H. coris, Iberis saxatilis, Lychnis lagascae, Phyteuma
comosum, Potentilla nitida, Saxifraga longifolia, 5.
pyramidalis, and many other saxifrages of the same
class, Silene Elizabethae, Antirrhinum asarina, Ero-
dium guttatum, and E. chrysanthum. These plants
are not all difficult to grow; a good many of them, in-
deed, are quite easy; but they all do best, and are
safest against the caprices of our climate, when grown
in deep and narrow chinks between rocks; and they
will all thrive with very little soil. The problem of
the cultivation of plants of this kind is, therefore,
fairly simple. The main thing is to induce them to
root deeply. Until they have done that, they must
be protected from drought as a rule; but, when they
have done it, they will protect themselves. Most of
them will thrust their roots several feet down. The
rocks about them, therefore, should be equally deeply
embedded in the ground, and the soil should be thor-
oughly well drained as far as their roots are likely
to descend. It is no use to attempt to grow such
plants upon a heavy or damp subsoil with a foot or
so of rocks and grit above it. They will thrive until
they reach the subsoil, and then their roots will rot
away the first winter after they have reached it.

CULTIVATION OF ALPINE PLANTS 51

But there are other high mountain plants — and
these are often the most difficult to grow — which
are not content merely with deep and narrow chinks
between the rocks. They are plants which, in their
native homes, obtain a continual supply of moisture
from the melting snows during their growing and
flowering season; and they need, therefore, a supply
of moisture, when they are grown in a rock garden,
in all hot and dry weather. They also usually need
as much sun as they can get; and, since in their native
mountains they are at rest and frozen hard for many
months of the year, they are apt to suffer very much
from the damp of an English (or American) winter,
and often require as sharp a drainage as the purely
saxatile plants. Plants of this kind often root deeply,
but they often also increase by means of runners which
travel below the surface of the soil and throw up
tufts in all directions. In this case they cannot be
grown in very narrow chinks, like the purely saxatile
plants, but must be given room enough for increase;
and this also makes it difficult to protect them from
drought. Gentiana verna is a plant of this kind;
and it has got the reputation of being difficult to grow,
because many people have treated it as if it were a
purely saxatile plant, stuffing it into some narrow
chink between the rocks in a place where no moisture
will stay on the surface. Gentiana verna is really
rather a plant of the Alpine pastures than of the
rocks; and it is usually seen on grassy slopes which
are watered by the melting snows during its flowering

52 STUDIES IN GARDENING

period, and where it can throw out its tufts in all direc-
tions. If it is grown on a slope in England (or Amer-
ica), however, it is difficult to protect from drought,
especially as it needs all the sun it can get. It is best
grown, therefore, in a little hollow of the rock garden,
which will catch all the rain that falls into it, and
where the plant will have plenty of room for increase.
Gentiana verna is not difficult to grow when once its
needs are understood, because it is not very impatient
of moisture in the winter. There must be good drain-
age below it; but, if such drainage exists, it can and
should be grown in rich soil—a mixture of turfy
loam and leaf-mould, for instance, suits it well.

But there are other plants which need as much
moisture in the summer, but which are so impatient
of damp in the winter that they must be provided
with a much lighter and poorer soil. It is plants such
as these that are particularly difficult to grow; and
yet a good many of them can be grown successfully
if only the rocks are arranged so as to protect them
both from drought in the summer and from damp in
the winter. Like Gentiana verna, they must be grown
in little hollows among the rocks, but in hollows where
the drainage is very sharp. The pockets in which
they are planted should not themselves be sloping,
but slightly depressed in the middle like a saucer, so
as to catch the rain. They should be planted close
to a rock arranged so that their roots can run under
it and be kept cool by it, but the other rocks should
come closer together downwards like the sides of a

CULTIVATION OF ALPINE PLANTS 53

pot, so that the earth enclosed by them may remain
firm, and so that all rain may run down by the roots
of the plant.

Alpine plants which increase by underground run-
ners, and which are liable to suffer from drought, are
much benefited by a top-dressing of silver-sand and
leaf-mould when they are just starting into growth
in the spring. This top-dressing is peculiarly val-
uable — and indeed essential —to all delicate sur-
face-rooting plants, as it protects them from drought
and gives them just the nourishment they require.
It should be applied very carefully and worked in
among the growths with the fingers, and may be re-
peated later on in the summer if the earlier dressing
has washed away. A top-dressing of this kind is a
natural remedy, since Alpine plants in their native
homes are often subject during all the warm part of
the year to a perpetual wash of sand and grit and
vegetable matter; and some of them, such as the smaller
primulas, have a habit of growing out of the ground,
which is no doubt a natural device to protect them
from being smothered by the wash of earth. Such
plants will soon die if they are not top-dressed. Al-
pine plants with very woolly leaves are also the better
for a top-dressing of pure grit in the autumn as this
absorbs the moisture and prevents their suffering from
it. The Fairy Forget-me-not (Eritrichium nanum)
is an extreme instance of the plants which need the
kind of culture described above. It and a few other
plants of the high Alps have never yet, we believe,

54 STUDIES IN GARDENING

been successfully cultivated for any length of time in
England, and are never likely to be until some new
secrets of acclimatization are discovered.

But there are other plants with the same kind of
requirements, but less exacting, which often fail in
English gardens because they are usually treated like
the purely saxatile plants and so are apt to suffer from
drought in the summer. Among such plants, some of
which can be grown easily enough in the manner we
have described, are Androsace carmea, A. ciliata, A.
villosa, and A. vitaliana (also called Douglasia),
Dianthus alpinus, and D. callizonus, Draba Mawii,
and D. pyrenaica (also called Petrocallis), Globularia
nana, Myosotis rupicola (this plant will thrive in a
narrow chink, but needs protection from drought),
Polemonium confertum, Omphalodes luciliae (a very
capricious plant, which will often thrive on a north
slope), Rhododendron chamaecistus (which likes some
shade), Saxifraga burseriana, S. apiculata, 8. Gries-
bachi, S$. Boydii, 8. squarrosa and S. caesia, and Silene
acaulis. Some of these plants are quite easy to grow,
as, for instance, Androsace carnea and A. villosa,
Polemonium confertum, and the white form P. c.
mellitum, Saxifraga apiculata and S. caesia and Silene
acaulis. But they are all the better for surface mois-
ture, and are apt to perish from drought if grown as
purely saxatile plants. There are also many plants
which come between the two classes. Many of the
Alpine primulas, for instance, are purely saxatile
plants in their native mountains, yet are apt to suffer

CULTIVATION OF ALPINE PLANTS 55

from drought in England if grown on the south side
of the rockery, and tightly packed among the rocks;
while, if they are placed on the north side, they often
refuse to flower. The best plan with them is to grow
them in little hollows on the south side where the rain
will not all run away off the surface, and where they
can be watered with some effect and get a little shade
from the rocks about them. This applies also to
Morisia hypogaea, a pretty little tufted cruciferous
plant, with yellow flowers that often appear at the
end of February and continue for months; also in a
less degree to Erodium Reichardii (or Chamaedrioides),
a very minute prostrate plant with delicate white
flowers, which sometimes suffers from drought if
placed on a dry slope; also to Aquilegia pyrenaica,
the smallest of the Columbines, and a plant which
often suffers from drought in English rock gardens.
There are also some larger'plants which need the same
kind of treatment such as Daphne Blagayana and
Atragene (clematis) alpina. These also like a good
deal of sun, and yet will not often endure the dryness
of steep slopes in the rock garden.

It is easy in most rock gardens that are properly
planned and constructed to protect plants from ex-
cessive moisture. The real difficulty usually is to
protect them from drought and to know how much
drought they will endure. On this point only experi-
ence can bring certain knowledge; but the gardener
can often guess a good deal from the nature of their
roots and of their growth. Shallow-rooting plants,

56 STUDIES IN GARDENING

for instance, are always likely to suffer from drought,
and also plants whose roots are very fine and delicate.
The roots of some of the more delicate Alpines are
like silk, whereas the roots of plants like the Aethione-
mas, which will endure any amount of drought, are
thick and strong. Further, it is easy to see that a
plant which grows like a tree from a single trunk or
crown will need a much smaller surface of soil in which
to grow to its full size than a plant which spreads in
a mossy tuft or by means of runners under the soil.
Some of the plants which increase by means of runners
need only a very narrow crevice or pocket between
the rocks in which to spread, but it must be long as
well as narrow. Such a plant, for instance, as Cam-
panula pulla will thrive in a long slit full of leaf-mould
and rubble, but if confined by rocks on all sides it
will soon die out. All Alpine plants must be kept
quite free from drip, and, therefore, no rocks must
overhang them. The plants of the higher Swiss Alps
usually prefer a south-west or a south-east aspect,
those which suffer from drought or which flower very
early doing best when they look towards the south-
west. The Alpines from hot climates, such as the
Aethionemas, the Wahlenbergias (except W. hedera-
cea, which needs moisture and half shade), and the
Onosmas should be placed on a slope looking full
south. All Alpines when planted should be pressed
very tightly into the ground. There is no detail in
their culture more important than this; and after a
sharp frost they should be examined to see whether

CULTIVATION OF ALPINE PLANTS 57

the frost has lifted them at all out of the ground. If
it has, they should be pressed back into their places.
The best time of planting for most of the more dif-
ficult Alpines is the early spring, or, if they are raised
from seed, as soon in the summer as they are large
enough to plant out. It is risky, of course, to plant
out small seedlings in May or June; but, if they can
be protected from drought, they will be strong plants
by the autumn; and, though a few may succumb to
the winter, the survivors will be much more healthy
than if they had been enervated by the protection of
a cold frame. For the higher Alpines all naturally
like as much fresh air as they can get, and a winter
in a cold frame will often undermine their constitu-
tions.

Whenever it can be done, the best as well as the
cheapest way of obtaining Alpine plants is to raise
them from seed. Most of them come readily from
seed if it is sown as soon as ripe, and this should al-
ways be done, if possible. When the seed cannot be
obtained as soon as it is ripe, it should be sown about
the end of March. The seed of the rarer and more
delicate plants is best sown in shallow earthenware
pans with, of course, a hole for drainage at the bot-
tom. The soil should consist of a mixture of sand or
grit and fine vegetable soil. The pans should be
very sharply drained with a mixture of crocks or
rubble filling about half the pan. The most impor-
tant point in the raising of seedlings is to keep the
soil always fairly moist; and it is a great help towards

58 STUDIES IN GARDENING

this to cover the pan with a sheet of glass to prevent
evaporation. This sheet must be removed as soon
as there is any danger of its drawing the seedlings.
Watering must always be done with a very fine rose,
and care must be taken not to wash the seed all to
the edges of the pan. To avoid this, and to keep the
pans in an even state of moisture, some gardeners
place them in troughs or basins with about two inches
of water in them. Then the water gets into the pans
through the hole at the bottom and keeps the soil
always fairly moist. Where seed is sown of very
rare or delicate plants, it is well to follow this plan.
The seed of some Alpines, as, for instance, of the
Saxifrages and some Campanulas, is almost as fine
as dust. When such very small seed is sown it should
be mixed with silver sand so that it may not be sown
too thick, and should be covered only with the slight-
est possible layer of the same silver sand. When the
seedlings are up they must be protected from the hot
sun, but must have plenty of light and air.

It is impossible to give precise general directions
as to the best soil for Alpines, as they vary a good
deal in their requirements. Some, for instance, need
lime, and to some it is poison. It is much to be de-
sired that some one should make a trustworthy test
of the lime haters and lime lovers, based upon ob-
servation and experiment in an English garden. The
lists which have hitherto been made are usually im-
perfect and often erroneous. Most Alpine plants,
however, do not dislike lime, and a great many are

CULTIVATION OF ALPINE PLANTS 59

the better for it. The best form in which it can be
given to them by those whose rockwork does not
consist of limestone is mortar rubble; and a mixture
of one part mortar rubble, both grit and lumps, with
one part leaf mould or other thoroughly decayed
vegetable matter, and one part fibrous loam will suit
the great majority of Alpine plants thoroughly. In
the case of those which dislike lime, lumps and grit
of sandstone should be substituted for the mortar
tubble. Speaking generally, one may say that the
more difficult an Alpine plant is to grow the poorer
should be the soil in which it is planted. But such
plants, if planted in fine sand, would suffer much
from drought. They need a soil consisting more than
half of small lumps of rubble or rock, the rest being
mainly grit, with a very little leaf mould. The spe-
cially prepared soil should not be less than a foot, or,
in the case of deep-rooting plants, two feet deep,
and little pieces of rock or rubble should be placed
here and there on the surface. All these precautions
sound very elaborate and troublesome; but the gar-
dener who has learned to take a delight in Alpine
plants delights also in taking pains with them. Al-
pine gardening is a game, and all good games are
difficult to excel in.

COLUMBINES

HE Columbine is a very old English flower;

indeed, Aquilegia vulgaris, the common colum-
bine, with short-spurred flowers of a dull blue or pur-
ple colour, grows wild in parts of England, and may
be indigenous. This common columbine has always
been a favourite with painters, because of its beauty
of form. There are columbines in Titian’s ‘‘Bacchus
and Ariadne,” and Diirer drew them with obvious
delight. They are a favourite flower in Italian em-
broideries; and Parkinson, in the seventeenth cen-
tury says that there are many sorts, “‘as well differing
in form as colour of the flowers, and of them both
single and double carefully noursed up in our gardens
for the delight both of their forme and colours.” Some,
he says, “are wholly white, some of a blue or violet
colour, others of a blush or flesh colour, or deep or
pale red, or of a dead purple, or dead murrey colour,
as nature listeth to shew itself.” Among the double
columbines, some he says, are “party-coloured blue
and white and spotted very variably.” He enumerates
five varieties, one being the common single columbine
and the others merely double forms of it. One of
them, which he calls the rose or star columbine, and
which has no spurs at all, but all its petals arranged

“like unto a small thick double rose laid open or a
60

COLUMBINES 61

spread marigold,” has been lately revived as a novelty,
and is certainly both a curious and a pretty flower.
But the columbine in its finer forms is a modern
plant, and one which may still be much improved.
The beautiful long-spurred species from North Amer-
ica and Siberia were unknown to Parkinson, and
most of them were introduced into our gardens in the
nineteenth century. They excel the common colum-
bine both in beauty of form and in variety and purity
of colour. They are inferior to it only in vigour;
and, luckily, this defect has been lessened and may
in time be entirely removed by hybridization; for
there is no plant which hybridizes more readily than
the columbine. Indeed, it hybridizes too readily,
so that, unless a particular species is kept far apart
from others, there is no telling what its offspring will
be like. But this is a fault on the right side; for,
although one may be disappointed with many seed~-
ling columbines. grossly inferior to a beautiful parent,
yet there is always a good chance that some will be
superior; and the ordinary amateur, by merely saving
seed from the best varieties and without any skill
in hybridization, may in a few years obtain a splendid
strain of columbines. Indeed, he may, if he cares to
give up a good-sized plot of ground to their culture
and if he selects his seed judiciously, obtain a race of
plants surpassing most of those sold by the florists.
For the beautiful long-spurred hybrids now on the
market are too apt to have the rather delicate con-
stitution of Aquilegia coerulea, and others of their

62 STUDIES IN GARDENING

North American parents. The amateur should aim
at obtaining plants with the vigour of growth of
Aquilegia vulgaris and the beauty of flower of the
long-spurred species. The best way of doing this is
to plant some of the better forms of Aquilegia vul-
garis among the long-spurred species. The result
will be, no doubt, that many inferior seedlings will
be obtained, which should be destroyed as soon as
they betray their inferiority; but there will also
probably be some splendid plants with the virtues
both of Aquilegia vulgaris and of the long-spurred
species, plants growing 3 ft. or more high and with
multitudes of large blossoms, blue and white, pink and
white, pink and cream, purple and white, purple and
cream, and red and yellow. From these alone should
seed be saved, and they should, if possible, be isolated
from inferior varieties. This kind of selection may be
carried on indefinitely, and, if so carried on, ought to
produce results beyond any yet obtained.

There are now a good many species of columbine
which can be cultivated in our gardens, and an infinite
number of varieties of these species and of hybrids.
The varieties, for instance, of Aquilegia vulgaris are
quite numerous. There is a fine white variety with
larger flowers than the type, which is, perhaps, the
most vigorous and easily grown of all columbines.
It is, however, a dangerous plant for those who wish
to obtain a fine strain of long-spurred hybrids, since
it intermarries profusely with all columbines grown
anywhere near it, and the offspring are apt to be an

COLUMBINES 63

exact likeness of the white parent, no matter what
the form or the colours of the other parent may have
been. There is also a very pretty marbled blue and
white variety of Aquilegia vulgaris, no doubt that
which Parkinson speaks of as party-coloured blue
and white and spotted very variably. There is a
dwarf form with dark blue double flowers, a variety
with leaves mottled with yellow, and one called Witt-
manniana with purple and white flowers. The double
varieties are sometimes neat and curious, but not
so beautiful in form as the single.

The species which has been most valuable in hybrid-
izing is Aquilegia caerulea, a most beautiful plant from
the Rocky Mountains, with large blue and white
flowers and very long spurs. It only grows about a
foot high, and is more delicate both in appearance
and in constitution than most columbines. It does
not usually flourish for very long in our gardens, and
often begins to dwindle away after flowering well
for two years. Luckily, it can be raised very easily
from seed, although it is sometimes rather difficult
to obtain a strain of seed that comes true. It is said,
indeed, that seed always should come from its native
home, and some seedsmen sell seed directly imported.
The seed should be sown in spring, so that the plants
may be strong enough to plant out in their permanent
homes in early autumn. If they are planted out late,
they often succumb to our winters. Where the soil
is heavy and cold, they should be planted out in
spring. Aquilegia caerulea likes a light, rich soil with

64 STUDIES IN GARDENING

plenty of vegetable matter in it, and a fairly cool
place. It is an excellent plant for the north side of a
large rock garden. There is a rare white form, and
also a yellow one which often appears in a batch of
seedlings, but is inferior to the type.

Aquilegia canadensis has light scarlet and yellow
flowers, long-spurred, but smaller than those of A.
caerulea. It has also a stronger constitution, and
will flower well in our gardens for some years. Aqui-
legia chrysantha is another long-spurred species from
North America, with soft yellow flowers. It is a very
vigorous species, almost as vigorous as A. vulgaris;
and there are several varieties of it, including a double
one. It deserves a place in every garden. Aquilegia
californica is yellow and orange, and also a vigorous
tall-growing plant. It has produced several hybrids,
some superior to both species. Aquilegia Skinneri,
a species from Central America, is also red and yellow,
and a very bright-coloured flower. It has been used
a good deal in hybridization; the hybrids with A.
vulgaris are more vigorous than the species, and very
various in colour and form. A. Skinneri itself, coming
from a hot climate, is not very vigorous in our gar-
dens, particularly in a heavy or cold soil. Aquilegia
Jaeschkanii is a hybrid, also with yellow and red
flowers.

There are several species of columbines from Si-
beria; but the only one well known is Aquilegia glan-
dulosa. This resembles Aquilegia caerulea in colour
and in the delicacy of its beauty; but it is more com-

COLUMBINES 65

pact and upright in growth, its spurs are rather shorter
and its flowers not so widely opened. Its leaves are
even more delicately cut, and it flowers some weeks
earlier. Besides being one of the most beautiful of
all columbines, it is unfortunately one of the few that
are difficult to grow, often dying out quickly in Eng-
lish! gardens, and sometimes refusing to flower at
all. It must never be disturbed while at rest, but
should be moved, if at all, after it has flowered. It
is best grown from seed sown as soon as ripe or in
spring; and the seedlings should be placed in their
permanent homes as soon as they are large enough
to be moved; or, if they are not large enough till late
in the year, they should be left till the spring, and
wintered in a cold frame. There is still a good deal of
uncertainty about the conditions which suit Aquilegia
glandulosa best, as it is a most capricious plant. But
it seems to prefer a light soil enriched with humus
and a rather cool situation. Drought will often kill
it off quickly. It should have a westerly or north-
westerly aspect, as the flower-buds form very early
and are apt to be withered up by the morning sun,
when it follows a sharp frost. It is a plant well worth
trying on sheltered north-westerly slopes of the rock
garden; and it may be that a dash of lime in the soil
will assist its growth. Some people say that it likes
a heavily manured soil; but manure is probably more

1May and June in the United States. A. glandulosa, according to
Bailey, is likely to flower only two or three years, and should be treated
asan annual. L. Y. K.

66 STUDIES IN GARDENING

useful to it as a protection against drought than a
nourishment, and should be placed well below the
roots, or used as a top-dressing in hot weather, if ap-
plied at all. At any rate, a plant so beautiful is worth
some trouble. Aquilegia Stuartii is a hybrid between
A. glandulosa and A. vulgaris Wittmanniana. It is,
perhaps, the most beautiful of all columbines, being
in appearance simply a finer variety of A. glandulosa.
It is also capricious. It appears to do better in Scot-
land than in England; and the late Dr. Stuart, who
raised it, seems to have had little difficulty with it.
It should be cultivated in the same way as A. glan-
dulosa, but should be increased by division, as seed-
lings seldom come true; and division should be done
very carefully with a sharp knife after the plants have
flowered. A. Stuartii is a plant which appeared to be
almost extinct a few years ago; but in the last year or
so some very fine forms of it have been raised, forms
surpassing in beauty any other columbines; and it
would be well if further experiments were made in
hybridizing A. glandulosa with other varieties of A.
vulgaris. In the case of A. Stuartii, we believe, the
pollen of A. glandulosa was used. There seems to
be no reason why plants should not in time be pro-
duced with the delicate beauty of A. glandulosa and
the vigour of A. vulgaris, and also with some variety
of colour. Aquilegia alpina is a plant which is very
seldom seen true in English gardens, and which ap-
pears to lose a great deal of its beauty in captivity.
The true species has large blue flowers and grows less

COLUMBINES 67

than a foot high, and there is a variety with white
and blue flowers more beautiful even than this type.
Aquilegia pyrenaica is the smallest of all columbines
and a beautiful plant for the rock garden. It grows
about half a foot high, and has soft blue flowers with
bright golden anthers. The foliage is almost as delicate
as that of a maidenhair fern. This, again, is a plant
which is seldom seen true in English gardens. Most
nurserymen sell for it a fine dwarf variety of A. vulgaris
flowering very early, whereas A. pyrenaica is a per-
fectly distinct plant and the latest flowering of all
columbines. It seems to be difficult to raise from
seed, unless the seed is sown when just ripe; but it
is not difficult to grow in a cool part of the rock gar-
den in light soil with a good deal of leaf-mould. It
does not always ripen seed in England.

There are a good many other species of columbines;
but we have mentioned most of those which are most
distinct and beautiful. Columbines, but for a few
exceptions, are easily grown in most English gardens;
and the North American species, which do not last
many years, are probably not true perennials in their
own country. Indeed, all columbines are usually at
their best in the first or second year of flowering,
and should be frequently renewed from seed. Luckily
they are among the easiest of plants to raise from seed,
and many kinds will reproduce themselves freely,
especially in light soil. The seed may be sown as soon
as ripe, in which case many of the seedlings will flower
the next year; or else in May, when if well treated

68 STUDIES IN GARDENING

the seedlings are sure to flower the next year. The
safest plan is to sow the seed in boxes in a soil made
light and rich with leaf-mould. The seed usually
takes some weeks to germinate; and the seedlings
should be kept moist and lightly shaded, and planted
out as soon as they are large enough. If plants are
bought, they can be planted in early autumn or in
spring. In a light soil they are best planted in autumn.
Columbines can also be increased by division, but
this must be carefully done with a sharp knife; and
divided plants are seldom so vigorous as seedlings.
The short-lived North American species, such as
Aquilegia caerulea, are not worth dividing and should
always be raised from seed. Columbines like a cool
place, particularly in a light soil, and many of the
more vigorous kinds grow well under the shade of
trees. They are seen at their best, however, in a cool
half-shaded border well enriched with manure and
humus. In such conditions some of the most vigorous
hybrids will grow to a great size and bear hundreds
of blossoms for several years. These hybrids, though
they may not have all the delicate beauty of Aquilegia
glandulosa or Stuartii or caerulea, are better worth
growing for the ordinary gardener, as there is no
difficulty in their culture, and they are infinitely
varied in the colour and form of their flowers and in
their foliage. They are, indeed, among the most
beautiful of all garden plants; and, as we have said,
there seems to be no reason why they should not be
made still more beautiful. Nor is there any reason

COLUMBINES 69

to fear lest their flowers should be made too large; for
the best hybrids have a growth and leafage vigorous
in proportion to the size of their flowers, and double
columbines, luckily, are quite out of fashion, being
found usually only among the varieties of Aquilegia
vulgaris. In fact the columbine is a flower of the
future even more than of the present.

APRIL NOTES IN THE GARDEN?

HIS year we have had some of the wild capri-
cious glories of a mountain spring; no weeks

of dull east wind to keep the colour out of the sky
and the early flowers; but first of all continuous sun-
shine all day with hoar frosts at night, and then tor-
rents of rain, and one night a fierce snowstorm fol-
lowed by a day of showers and warm sunlight. That
was a day, indeed, that reminded one of a Swiss April,
and one almost expected to see the gentians shining
blue through the melting snow on the hillsides. Snow
showers of this kind do little harm if unaccompanied
by frost, and if no spell of east wind follows them.
More harm was done by the earlier alternations of
bright sunlight and frost; but even these came too
early to be really disastrous. They caused the blue
flowers of spring, the Chionodoxas and the first Squills,
to fade quickly, and they injured the flowers of the
early Daffodils and Irises. They also stunted the stalks
1 The reader should remember that for gardens in the latitude of Boston,
at least one month’s difference must be allowed for blooming-period of
most of the subjects named in this chapter. Tulip Kaufmanniana for in-
stance, in the more northern parts of the United States seldom appears
before early April; and the “early April tulips” (presumably the single and
double florists’ varieties) need not be looked for here until late April or
early May. ‘This chapter therefore is somewhat inapplicable to the Amer-

ican climate. For its general interest and beauty it could not, however,
be left out. L. Y. K.

70

APRIL NOTES IN THE GARDEN 71

of the April Tulips; but these are now lengthening
rapidly with the rain, and everything promises well,
if only we can now have some sunshine to warm the
sodden ground. The winter was unusually trying for
delicate plants, since the warmth of the earlier months
forced them into growth, and then, when they had
forgotten that there was such a thing as winter, there
came a bitter spell in February, with not only frost,
but cutting north-east winds. These do more harm
than the frosts themselves, particularly to shrubs
that are not quite hardy, and even to shrubs that will
endure any amount of frost at the roots. Of twelve
plants of Lithospermum prostratum, planted on the
north-western slope of a rock garden, seven that were
sheltered by rocks from the north-east wind are scath-
less; the other five, unsheltered, had nearly all their
branches killed and are now only just beginning to
sprout from the stock. The shelter was only slight, a
rock rising a few inches above the soil, on the north-
east side of the plants, but it was sufficient to protect
them, and they will be covered with blossom in a few
weeks, while the others will take months to recover.
Thus it is that the gardener learns hard lessons from
adversity. Lithospermum prostratum is often said
to be a capricious plant. What it needs is protection
from north-east winds, rocks to keep its roots cool if it
is in a hot soil or situation, and a light rich soil quite
free from lime. Then it will flourish and prove itself
to be the finest of all rock plants.

The rock garden is already full of things to see.

72 STUDIES IN GARDENING

The first irises are over; but Iris orchioides is out,
rather late perhaps, since it was planted only last
year; and so is its cousin, Iris sindjarensis, and the yet
more beautiful Iris Willmottiana. Narcissus nanus is
in full blossom on a northern slope, making a vivid
contrast with the blue Scilla sibirica. This is the
most useful of all, perhaps, of the small rock narcissi.
It is larger than Narcissus minimus and flowers later,
but it has a more graceful habit of growth, and it is
not too large for the smallest rockery. It has not the
delicate beauty of Narcissus triandus albus, but it is
far easier to grow; and in a light sandy soil on a north-
ern slope it increases in numbers and in beauty from
year to year. Unfortunately it is rather scarce, and
many nurserymen sell N. lobularis under its name.
N. lobularis is a pretty daffodil, but much larger,
almost as large, indeed, as the English wild daffodil,
and it is better suited to the grass than to a small
rock garden. Narcissus cyclamineus, another rock
daffodil of great beauty, is going over. It likes more
shade than N. nanus, and, provided it is in shade, will
thrive even on a dry rooty bank. It does not die out,
like some small daffodils, but endures as well as N.
nanus. N. minor is said to be superior to N. nanus,
but there is not much difference between them, and
N. minor is more expensive.

This spring of Alpine weather has favoured the
rapid growth of Alpine plants, which is often checked
and stunted by our March and April east winds.
No amount of experience can abate one’s wonder at

APRIL NOTES IN THE GARDEN 73

the swiftness with which plants that seem to be dead
one week are in full leaf and even in bud a fortnight
later. The Aethionemas, for instance, were all cut
back by the bitter wind of February, after keeping
their leaves fresh and green until then. Their branches
seemed to be quite dead, and one could not but fear
lest their roots were dead too. But then, one day,
all those withered branches were covered with little
green tufts, and a few days later with little green
leaves, and then, as the tufts opened, there were pink
buds in the heart of them; and now, if we have warm
weather and sunshine, Aethionema coridifolium and
A. pulchellum will begin to flower in a few weeks.
No plant is more rapid in throwing up its flowering
stalks than the little biennial Androsace coronopifolia.
It is best to sow this plant where it is to flower; and
even then it often seems to pine through our winters.
But with the first warm weather slender stalks rise
from the tufts as they change from bronze to green,
and now these stalks have a starry crown of white
flowers that will continue for several months. An-
drosace lactea is a perennial with much the same
habit of growth and with flowers of even more delicate
beauty, which is now in full bud after seeming to
resent the freaks of an English winter as much as A.
coronopifolia. Androsace carnea is in flower with
blossoms of delicate pink, and is sending out green
shoots in all directions among the leaf-mould with
which it has been dressed. Nearly all delicate Alpines
need to be dressed with leaf-mould when they start

74 STUDIES IN GARDENING

into growth in the spring, and many will shrivel up
and die when the east winds blow for want of it. Gen-
tiana verna and Dianthus alpinus are now throwing
out little shoots, just like Androsace verna, and but
for the leaf-mould they would probably have made
no growth at all.

Primula nivalis is in full bloom, and is certainly
the best of the Alpine primulas, flowering more freely
than any others, and surpassing them all in the beauty
of its milk white blossoms. Though it looks to be
the most Alpine of flowers, it is really a garden plant,
being, we believe, a white form of Primula pubescens.
It likes a westerly or north-westerly aspect, and is
quite easy to grow even on level ground in light rich
soil, but it shows its true beauty only among the
rocks. It does not seem to suffer at all from our win-
ters, and may be safely planted in early autumn.
The mountain Tulips are, some of them, in flower,
some in full bud, and some already over. Tulipa
Kaufmanniana is really large enough for a border
plant; but most people grow it on the rockery because
it probably needs sharp drainage. It was introduced
only a few years ago, and is almost the earliest to
flower and the most beautiful of all Tulips. It is
now over, but in the middle of March its blossoms
began to open, at first creamy white and then flushed
with pink on the outside, while the inside has a golden
centre like that of a water-lily. It suffers little from
any caprices of the weather, and its great blossoms,
in their last glory, looked strange as they opened above

APRIL NOTES IN THE GARDEN 75

the snow-covered ground last Sunday morning. Tulipa
biflora, a beautiful little species, with several white
blossoms on a stalk, is also in flower now. There ap-
pears to be a dwarfer variety of this, called Afghanica,
which is an excellent plant for the rock garden and
very easy to grow, increasing in ordinary well-drained
soil. Tulipa lownei, a dwarf Tulip with delicate pink
blossoms, is passing over, and so is T. pulchella, a
pretty red Tulip marked inside like a Calochortus.
These are apt to suffer and even to die under severe
frosts in March, unless grown in a warm protected
situation. Tulipa Batalinii and T. linifolia come late
enough to be safe usually from such dangers — they
will not flower for some weeks yet — and they are the
most beautiful, perhaps, of all the small mountain
Tulips, the first having creamy yellow flowers edged
with a thread of crimson, the second being all of a
scarlet that seems to glow with its own fire. Both
have leaves that spread out prostrate on the ground,
and are curiously crinkled. T. linifolia is supposed
to be capricious; but it is fairly sure to succeed on a
southern bank in arubbly soil. T. batalinii is as easily
grown as most Tulips. They both look their best
rising through a carpet of some close-growing stone-
crop such as Sedum glaucum, whose roots are too
shallow to interfere with the bulbs, and whose leaves
are not thick enough to prevent them from ripening
well in the summer.

The Aubrietias are fast coming into full flower.
Such excellent strains of seed are now sold that it is

76 STUDIES IN GARDENING

scarcely worth while to buy the named varieties, many
of which differ but little from each other. A packet
of seed selected from the newer sorts will usually pro-
duce plants of all sorts of colours, from deep purple
through pale purple to pink and almost deep crim-
son. The plants vary in quality of course from seed,
some having small and washy-coloured flowers; but
these can be dug up if the seedlings are planted fairly
close the first year, and the better plants will soon
cover the blank spaces. No plant is more easily raised
from seed than Aubrietia. If it is sown in boxes in
April, hundreds of good-sized plants will be ready to
plant out in the autumn. When the plants grow
straggly they should be cut back, and they will spring
up with renewed vigour. The spring Phloxes are just
coming into bloom. These beautiful plants are still
much less grown than they should be, although they
are most of them very easy to manage. Of Phlox
subulata there are now many varieties, some with
long trailing branches, some closely tufted. These
latter are apt to be a little more difficult than the
former. Phlox Nelsoni, for instance, should be dis-
turbed as little as possible, and grows best on a flat
piece of ground in full sun. Its white flowers make a
beautiful contrast with the bright pink ones of Phlox
Vivid. The Trailing Phloxes, of which Phlox G. F.
Wilson with very pale lavender flowers is one of the
best, are very easy to propagate, as long-rooted trailers
can be detached in the autumn and all quickly grow
into strong plants. The tufted kinds are a little more

APRIL NOTES IN THE GARDEN 77

difficult. Cuttings often fail to strike, and the best
plan is to put some leaf-mould round the plants in
spring. The shoots will root in this, and they can
be detached in early autumn, and, if protected from
drought when planted, will stand the winter in the
open ground. Phlox amoena is not so pretty in growth
as the different varieties of Phlox subulata; but it
flowers very early, and its pink blossoms are beautiful.
It grows at a great pace, and can be propagated by
simply breaking off pieces close to the ground and
planting them in the open in early autumn. Phlox
divaricata and P. ovata are fine species which flower
later.

The rock garden at this time of year is more in-
teresting than the border, since Alpine plants are
more rapid in their spring growth than the plants
of the lowlands that have a longer season of activity;
but borders are, or ought to be, rapidly putting on
their beauty. Pansies and Forget-me-nots are com-
ing out—the early Myosotis dissitiflora is in full
bloom — the April Tulips are beginning to flower,
and the Wallflowers are in bud. Wallflowers this
year are poorer than usual, since many gardeners
were unable to shift their seedlings in the drought
of last summer. This shifting of seedlings as soon as
they are about three inches high is one of the most
important details in the culture of Wallflowers, and
the neglect of it is the chief reason why they are often
poorly grown even in pretentious gardens. Indeed,
there are some gardeners who can grow Orchids better

78 STUDIES IN GARDENING

than Wallflowers, for the Wallflower, though a hum-
ble plant, requires a certain treatment a little out
of the ordinary routine. The seed should be sown
very thinly in the open border and in poor soil, about
the beginning of May. The seedlings should never
be allowed to get crowded. When they are about
three inches high they should be shifted, so that they
may not make long tap roots and be difficult to move
later on. They should have their crowns pinched out
a little later, so that they may break into compact
bushy plants, and in early October they should be
moved into their quarters for the next spring, and
planted very firmly in the ground. If by this time
they have made long tap roots and grown leggy and
straggling, they will resent moving, and very likely
die off in the winter.

Daffodils in the grass are now within a few weeks
of their prime. Some of the earlier kinds, such as the
Tenby daffodil and pallidus praecox are going over;
and Princeps is now in full bloom. Pallidus praecox,
the most beautiful of the earlier kinds, is rather capri-
cious. It usually dies out soon in a border, but will
often last for years in the grass on a northerly half-
shaded slope. Even the Tenby Daffodil thrives better
in the grass, though it is supposed to be a vigorous
variety anywhere. Princeps is one of the easiest of
Daffodils. Its flowers look rather commonplace when
picked or in the border, but they have a peculiar
beauty in the grass. There is no Daffodil, however,
to equal the Queen of Spain as a grass flower. Bulbs

APRIL NOTES IN THE GARDEN 79

planted last autumn are now in full blossom. Since
they are all imported from Portugal, they flower
some weeks earlier than bulbs that have been some
years in English ground. The Queen of Spain often
dies out quickly in a border, particularly if the soil
is rich. In the grass, in a northerly half-shaded slope
full of the roots of trees, it flourishes as well as in its
native home, and it surpasses nearly all the most
costly new varieties in beauty. There is still a good
deal of uncertainty about the question what bulbs
will thrive in the grass and what will not. Tulipa
silvestris, for instance, is supposed to be an excellent
grass plant; but the present writer finds that it ceases
to flower and dwindles away in the grass after a year
or two. Tulips in this respect are peculiarly uncertain.
It is probable that those which require great summer
heat to ripen them off are kept too cool by a covering
of grass; but this scarcely applies to T. silvestris,
which is a native species. It is to be desired that some
one should make large experiments with Tulips in the
grass and should publish the results; but few gardeners
would care to sacrifice a great number of bulbs for
the public good. Grape Hyacinths of all kinds seem
to thrive even in coarse grass, so do Ornithogalum
umbellatum, O. nutans, and O. pyramidale. Scilla
sibirica is apt to dwindle in coarse grass, and so are
the Chionodoxas and Pushkinia libanotica. The more
vigorous Alliums will thrive in grass not too coarse
and in full sun. A. neapolitanum will soon be in
flower. Fritillaria Meleagris, of course, is at home

80 STUDIES IN GARDENING

in the grass. There appears to be a common idea
that it will grow only in the Thames valley and other
particular localities; but it is quite an easy plant in
most places, where the soil is not too hot and poor.
The Crown Imperial (F. imperialis) will grow in the
grass only where the soil is rich and rather heavy.
It dwindles after a year or two in a light soil and re-
fuses to flower. It would be an interesting experi-
ment to sow a patch of ground with some short moun-
tain grass and plant several tufts of Gentiana acaulis
in it. They might thrive; and then, again, they might
not. This plant is one of the most capricious in exis-
tence. Last year it flowered profusely even in poor
soils. This year it is more flowerless than usual. It
will prosper like a weed in some places, and in others,
with apparently the same conditions, it will do nothing.
The old idea was that it ought to be left alone; but
this treatment is of no avail where the crowns grow
smaller and smaller. The best plan in such a case is
to dig it up in wet weather, in spring, and to plant
each separate crown with plenty of space to itself.
It ought to be coming into flower now, and with some
lucky gardeners perhaps it is. With the present writer
it is not.

PINKS

INKS are common enough in our gardens, yet
they are not grown so much or so well as they
might be, and the florists are so taken up with carna-
tions that they have rather neglected the possibilities
of the pink. No doubt carnations are worthy of all
the pains that have been spent upon them; no pinks
can compare with them in variety of colour, and few
in duration of flowering period. But carnations ex-
act much care and skill if they are to be grown really
well, and need to be constantly renewed; whereas
many pinks ask for nothing but a sunny place and a
well-drained soil to thrive for years without attention.
Carnations, too, often need to be carefully staked;
and this is a grave defect in a plant of so low a stature,
and one from which most pinks, especially the natural
species, are entirely free. The chief beauty of the
best pinks is their habit of growth. They are beauti-
ful in winter as well as in summer, and they bear their
flowers as if they were a joy and not a burden to them.
Most of them will endure any amount of drought and
can be propagated most easily by seed, cuttings, or
division. All that they need to make them perfect
garden plants is a longer flowering period, a greater va-
riety of colour, and in some cases rather larger flowers.

Now, different species or varieties have all these vir-
81

82 STUDIES IN GARDENING

tues. What is needed is to combine them all in one
plant; and, since most species hybridize very readily,
there seems to be no reason why this should not be
done. Already there are some new pinks appearing
with large, single, and bright-coloured flowers; and
there are others with double flowers that blossom al-
most as long as carnations. What we want is a new
race of single flowering pinks, of compact habit, vigorous
constitution, large brilliant flowers, and a long period
of bloom. Vigour of constitution is a most important
point, and one too often overlooked in the development
of the carnation. Unfortunately, the pink which
flowers longest and has the largest and most brilliant
flowers, Dianthus sinensis, and its fine variety, D.
Heddewigii, is not a true perennial; and varieties
which have a strain of its blood in them are apt to
be delicate. It has been conjectured that there is a
strain of D. sinensis in the carnation, which may be
the reason for its comparative delicacy, and also in
some of the mule pinks, which are beautiful plants
but need to be constantly renewed by cuttings. In
time, however, the better qualities of D. Heddewigii
might be combined with the virtues of the most vigor-
ous natural species.

There are already, of course, many beautiful garden
pinks; but most of them have double flowers and
bloom for only a short season. The florists of the
past took great pains to produce pinks very precisely
laced or edged. They were dominated by the rules
and standards of flower-shows; but, now that the

PINKS 83

pink has ceased to be a fashionable show flower, there
is some chance of its more rational development.
The material out of which it can be developed is very
varied. There is a great number of wild species of
pinks, many of them most valuable garden plants,
and most of them quite easy to grow. It is of these
that we propose to speak in some detail, since they
are less known to the ordinary gardener than they
ought to be, and since the florist makes less use of
them than he should. Unfortunately there is a great
deal of confusion about their names, due, no doubt,
to the extreme readiness with which they hybridize.
It is difficult to distinguish species from varieties,
and the same pink has often different names in different
nurserymen’s catalogues.

Dianthus plumarius is the best known of all the
natural species and the parent of most garden pinks.
It is very variable and hybridizes readily with other
species. If a number of plants are raised from seed,
very probably not two will be exactly alike in their
flowers or in their habit. The type has fringed flowers
of a pink colour slightly tinged with mauve. The
best plan is to raise it from seed and to keep only the
best plants. Seedlings are sometimes neat and com-
pact in growth, sometimes straggling. Their flowers
vary in size, colour, and shape. The amateur who
will persevere in raising seed year after year from his
best specimens may in time come to have some very
fine plants. D. plumarius will thrive anywhere in
full sun and well-drained soil, and is particularly use-

84 STUDIES IN GARDENING

ful for covering dry, sunny banks. It can be raised
from seed, sown either when ripe or in spring, with
the greatest ease, and will usually seed itself pro-
fusely. For this reason, and because of its rapid
growth, it is not a plant for the small rockery, but it
can be grown just as easily in the border as the ordi-
nary garden pinks.

Dianthus cesius (the Cheddar pink) is also variable
and hybridizes very readily with D. plumarius and
other pinks. The type is very tufted and low grow-
ing. The leaves are glaucous green, the flowers of a
bright pink, and irregularly indented. It is a lime-
stone plant and thrives best among rocks in a rubbly
soil or in a wall. It is apt to die in the winter on the
level, but lives long and often grows to a considerable
size in chinks of a rough stone wall. It is an excellent
rock garden plant, as it does not spread too quickly.
All it needs is a high and dry place in full sun. It
can be raised very easily from seed; but seedlings
usually vary a good deal, and, if the seed is bought,
they often bear little resemblance to the type. In-
deed, the species hybridizes so readily that it is not
likely to come true from seed unless the seed is saved
from plants isolated from other pinks. Some of the
hybrids, however, are very beautiful, having the
close tufted habit of the species and larger and even
brighter flowers. With this plant, too, it should be
easy to get some fine varieties by saving seed year
after year from the best specimens.

Dianthus deltoides, the Maiden Pink, is a pretty

PINKS 85

plant and a native of England. It has leaves that are
not glaucous like those of most pinks, but bright
green, and pink flowers with darker spots. There is a
very pretty white variety, one with brighter flowers,
and one with glaucous leaves. D. deltoides is very
easily grown in any light soil, and seeds itself pro-
fusely. The white variety comes fairly true from
seed. It should be grown in great masses in a large
space to itself, where it can seed freely. In a small
rock garden the seedlings encroach too much. The
plant commonly called Dianthus fragrans is really
a variety of D. plumarius with white, very sweet-
scented, flowers. The double variety has a scent of
overpowering sweetness, and is a very beautiful plant.
The true D. fragrans is very rare. Dianthus mons-
pessulanus is a closely tufted pink with dark glaucous
foliage. It has large fringed pink flowers, very fragrant.
It is easily grown among rocks in light soil with some
leaf mould in it, and prefers limestone.

Dianthus arenarius and D. petraeus are plants
about the names of which there seems to be some
uncertainty, at least among nurserymen. The plants
usually sold under these names have very narrow
grassy leaves, a very tufted habit, and white fringed
flowers. According to M. Correvon the species both
have pink flowers, but the plants usually sold may be
merely white varieties. In any case they are charm-
ing, and will grow in the driest and hottest places.
In fact, they are suitable for the very top of the rockery,
where they will spread into carpets as thick and even

86 STUDIES IN GARDENING

as turf. The poorer the soil the better they flower.
In a rich soil they are apt to run all to leaf and to
damp off in the winter.

D. noeanus is a new and very pretty plant, growing
in close tufts which do not spread to any great size.
It has elaborately fringed white flowers, and is, per-
haps, the only pink with a disagreeable scent. It
should be raised from seed and grown among rocks
in poor soil.

Dianthus alpestris is a pretty little pink, easily
grown among rocks, with bright pink fringed flow-
ers, not more than 6 in. high. The true Dianthus
suavis appears to be a variety of D. plumarius, but a
beautiful pink with very delicate white flowers is
sometimes sold under this name, and also under the
name of D. gallicus. The writer does not know its
true name, but it appears to be a species, as both in
growth and in flower it is very distinct from all other
pinks. The true Dianthus gallicus has pink spotted
flowers, and is usually not perennial in our climate.

Dianthus sylvestris is a fine pink, which, in spite of
its name, likes full sun. It does not spread much
like other pinks, but grows in a single close tuft of
thin dark green leaves. The flowers are bright pink,
and the stems are rather weak and apt to lie about
on the ground. This is the only defect of the plant,
which is easily grown in dry, hot gardens. Dianthus
superbus has flowers unlike those of any other pink.
They are pale flesh colour, with greenish-yellow spots,
and most elaborately fringed and curled. The leaves

PINKS 87

are rather broader than those of most pinks. D.
superbus is not a true perennial, but is worth grow-
ing, as it can be raised very easily from seed, and will
thrive on the north side of a rockery in a dry place.
Unlike most pinks, it seems to like a certain amount
of shade and grows in woody places in its native
land.

There are several pinks with their flowers in clusters
like those of the Sweet William, and some of them
are well worth growing. Dianthus atrorubens and
D. cruentus, both with small flowers of a very deep
crimson, are among the best. They will thrive in any
sunny place, and are rather border than rock garden
plants. D. carthusianorum has paler flowers, and is
not so pretty, though pretty enough. D. giganteus,
the tallest of pinks, will grow more than a yard high,
but the flowers are small in proportion to the height.
It is scarcely worth growing except as a curiosity.
D. Knappii is a pretty clustered pink with pale yellow
flowers. It should be grown on the rockery, where
its culture is easy. All of these are easily raised from
seed, which can be obtained without difficulty. D.
cinnabarinus, however, which has clustered flowers
of a curious cinnabar red colour, is one of the rarest
of all pinks, and at times goes out of cultivation al-
together. It comes from Greece and is not very
perennial in England. This fact, since it often fails
to ripen seed, accounts partly for its rarity. Other-
wise it is easily grown, and worth growing for its
curious beauty.

88 STUDIES IN GARDENING

None of the pinks which we have mentioned are at
all difficult to grow. There are, however, one or two
high Alpine species which require some care, and one,
D. glacialis, which is so difficult as to be scarcely
worth attempting in England.

The most beautiful of the higher Alpine species is,
perhaps, D. neglectus. It can be distinguished from
all other pinks by the pale yellow colour of the under-
side of its petals, which are otherwise of an extraor-
dinarily brilliant pink. The leaves are grassy and
short and grow in close tufts; they also are not quite
evergreen, like those of most pinks, but almost wither
up in the winter. D. neglectus is not really difficult
to grow. It should be planted tight in chinks between
the rocks, in a soil consisting mainly of mortar rubble,
with a little leaf-mould and sandy loam. It roots
deeply, and when established does not suffer from
drought, if rocks are all round the roots. It can be
easily raised from seed, and this is the best way to
grow it, as the plants become enervated if they are
kept too long in frames. The seed should be sown
when ripe or in spring in pans of light, gritty soil,
and the seedlings planted out into their permanent
homes as soon as possible. D. neglectus likes the
fullest sun, and is the most brilliant coloured of all
wild pinks, and one of the most brilliant coloured of
all Alpines. It appears to hybridize pretty readily,
and one sometimes sees seedling forms with all the
beauty of the type, but more vigorous and larger in
all respects. There seems to be no reason why a very

PINKS 89

brilliant race of pinks should not be obtained by
crossing it with other and stronger species.

Dianthus alpinus is a very distinct pink, perfectly
prostrate, with green leaves rather broad for their
size and more like those of D. deltoides than of any
other pink. The flowers, which rise only about 2 in.
above the ground, are bright pink, spotted in the
centre, and very large for the plant. D. alpinus
is more difficult to grow than D. neglectus, as it is
impatient of drought in summer and also of damp in
winter. It cannot be grown in a very narrow chink
of the rocks, as it throws out runners and requires
room to increase in. This makes it the more difficult
to protect from drought. It should be planted on flat
pockets rather low down in the rockery, with a south-
west or south-east aspect and surrounded with small
rocks half sunk in the soil, with a larger rock on the
north side of it for its roots to run under. The smaller
rocks around it will give it a certain amount of shade.
The soil should be deep and should consist of one-
third mortar rubble, one-third leaf mould, and one-
third fibrous loam, all well mixed up together. It
must be watered in hot weather, and top-dressed with
leaf mould when first starting into growth in the
spring. With these conditions it is not difficult to
grow, though it is not a very long-lived plant. It can,
however, be very easily raised from seed, which usually
ripens in England, and should be sown as soon as
ripe or in early spring. It can also be increased by
cuttings. When plants appear to be failing they

90 STUDIES IN GARDENING

will often recover if moved; and this should be done
in spring. There is a pretty white variety, and the
type appears to hybridize readily, but no valuable
hybrids have been obtained yet.

Dianthus callizonus is, perhaps, only a local variety
of D. alpinus, but it is a distinct and even more beau-
tiful plant, with glaucous leaves and brilliant pink
speckled flowers. It should be treated like D. alpinus
and does not seem to be any more difficult. It is still
very rare. Dianthus glacialis is too difficult, perhaps,
to be worth growing in England. At any rate, it is
scarcely ever seen in English gardens. It needs the
same culture as D. alpinus, except that it will not
endure lime, and must be even more carefully pro-
tected from drought in the summer. The true plant
is seldom to be obtained in England; and hybrids or
other species are usually sold for it.

D. Freynii is the smallest of all pinks, with little
pink flowers. It should be grown like D. neglectus,
and is not more difficult. There is a very beautiful
minute mountain pink with large white fringed flowers,
which is sometimes sold as D. squarrosus. The true
D. squarrosus, however, is a much larger plant, of
no particular beauty or interest. The present writer
is ignorant of the true name of the white pink in ques-
tion, and it is seldom seen in English gardens. It has
very minute grassy leaves, and the flowers are borne
about 24 in. abeve them. It requires the same cul-
ture as D. neglectus, but is easier to grow. There are
many more species of pinks, but many of them are

PINKS ot

much alike and probably only varieties. The whole
genus requires to be thoroughly overhauled by a com-
petent authority.

THE IMPROVEMENT OF GARDEN
FLOWERS

HE first article upon this subject provoked

some controversy, but it also elicited more ex-
pressions of agreement than the writer had expected.
It seems to be clear that the taste in flowers is chang-
ing; that a great many gardeners are no longer con-
tented merely with large blossoms; that we are
learning to look at a plant as a whole, and not to
think of it only as a flower-producing machine. A
writer in one paper, disagreeing violently with the
article in question, said that it was worse than use-
less to set up principles of taste, since they were sure
to be wrong or else to be misapplied. It did not ap-
parently occur to him that all selection or improve-
ment of flowers must be based upon some principle
of taste or other. Otherwise it would be quite random
and objectless. The issue is not between principles
of taste and no principles, but between one principle
and another. Now, the development of a great many
garden flowers has been controlled by the principle
that a plant is a flower-producing machine and that
every part of it except the flower is mere surplusage.
The ideal of this development would be reached in
a plant that came up like a mushroom, leafless, and

92

IMPROVEMENT OF GARDEN FLOWERS 93

with a little stalk, and a huge flower at the top of it,
and which continued to do this through all the flower-
ing months of the year. This ideal has almost been
reached in some double Begonias and in the dwarfest
Snapdragons, and if you wish to have your garden
all flowers these are the kinds of plants you should
grow. Now, there certainly are a good many people
who wish to have their gardens all flowers; and the
idea that a garden plant should be grown only for
its flowers is very deep-rooted. The present writer
has heard of a rich man whose orders to his gardener
were that his beds and borders should never contain
any plants not in flower. A vast army of plants in
pots was kept in the background, and these were bedded
out just as they were coming into blossom and re-
moved as soon as their blossom was over.

Now, it is obvious that this kind of gardening is
very expensive, and, further, that it prevents the
growing of many beautiful plants which cannot be
treated in this way, or which, if treated in this way,
never show their true beauty. But that is not the
point which we wish to make for the moment. Very
expensive gardening may be beautiful, and there are
plenty of fine plants which can be turned out of pots
when about to bloom without spoiling their beauty.
Our point is that a garden all flowers is not so beautiful
as one in which there is plenty of greenery to contrast
with the flowers. Most people agree with this up to
a point, but they do not carry the principle far enough.
Even the gardener who likes his beds to be all flowers

94 STUDIES IN GARDENING

likes them to blaze against a foil of green turf. But
he does not understand that the contrast of greenery
is most beautiful when it is most closely interwoven
with the flowers themselves, both by means of the
intermixture of flowering plants with plants out of
flower, and also by means of the leafage of a plant
that is in flower. For it is only such a closely inter-
woven contrast that displays the full beauty of in-
dividual flowers and also of individual plants. In a
bed of Geraniums or Begonias, grown for their blaze
of colour, it is the colour alone that we see and think
of. The individual plants, the individual flowers,
are nothing. The beauty of the arrangement may
be considerable — it is absurd to pretend that all bed-
ding out is ugly — but it is a beauty only of masses
of strong colour, without form and, above all, without
character. Now no beauty interests us for long un-
less it has character. We cannot in pictures produce
a beauty that satisfies by means of mere abstractions.
The purely decorative picture, the picture that con-
sists merely of an arrangement of forms and colours,
as nearly abstract as the painter can make them and
put together to make an agreeable pattern — a pic-
ture of this kind pleases at the first glance very likely;
but our interest in it is quickly exhausted, because
there is no character in its component parts. So
there is no character in the individual plants of a
flower-bed that is intended merely to produce a blaze
of colour; and in the same way our interest in such
a bed is exhausted after the first glance. A great

IMPROVEMENT OF GARDEN FLOWERS 95

picture is full of splendid harmonies and contrasts;
but the objects harmonized and contrasted are not
mere abstractions. They are people and things which
the painter has seen, and they are woven together
into a pattern, without losing their own individuality,
by the controlling emotion of the artist who uses
them, not merely as pieces in a decorative game,
but as a means of expressing that emotion. Now,
gardening is, no doubt, a trivial art compared with
painting, but still it is an art, or may be made one;
and the same principles apply to it. The true art of
gardening is based upon a profound interest and de-
light in plants, just as the art of the great painter is
based upon a profound interest and delight in the
things which he represents. The true gardener is
concerned with the character of his plants as the
great painter is concerned with the character of what
he paints; and it is by growing his plants so that
they display their character as freely and completely
as possible that the gardener makes the most beau-
tiful and interesting kind of garden.

Now it is obvious that this cannot be done by a
gardener who regards a plant as a mere flower-pro-
ducing machine; for the flowers are only part of the
character of a plant, and they may be so developed
as to obscure the plant’s natural character altogether.
Flowers may be, and in most gardens plants are, the
most important element of beauty; but their beauty
is not independent of the plant, and cannot be con-
sidered apart from it until they are picked. The gar-

96 STUDIES IN GARDENING

dener who grows his plants only for their flowers
thinks always of the flowers as if they were picked,
and of his beds and borders as huge nosegays; and
the kind of gardening which removes a plant as soon
as it goes out of bloom is more like the arranging of
flowers for the dinner table than like true gardening.
It is a purely decorative art without the deep and
satisfying beauty of character. This kind of beauty
is what delights us so much in nature and what often
seems to be utterly beyond the gardener’s attainment.
Wild plants, we should remember, do not grow for
their flowers alone. They have to fight for their lives,
and every part of the plant bears a part in the struggle.
We are not suggesting that plants in a garden ought
to fight for their lives. It is the gardener’s first duty
to eliminate the struggle for existence; but he must
never forget that the character of plants has been
produced by that struggle, and that their beauty is
always dependent upon their character. He can often
improve upon that beauty, because he has eliminated
the struggle for existence. He can often, to begin with,
grow his plants much better than nature grows them.
He can in many cases enlarge their flowers with ad-
vantage, and brighten their colour. But while he
does this he should always think of every plant as a
whole, of its natural character, and of the right pro-
portion between its leaves and its flowers.

At once, of course, there arises the question how
are we to decide upon the right proportion between
leaves and flowers; and here comes in the question

IMPROVEMENT OF GARDEN FLOWERS 97

of principles of taste. If we are to grow plants for
their flowers alone, the flowers should be as large as
we can make them and the leaves as small. If the
leaves are not to be seen for the flowers so much the
better. But if we are to consider the natural char-
acter of each individual plant, then we should take care
that the flowers are not so large as to obscure that nat-
ural character, and in particular to interfere with the
plant’s natural habit of growth. I a wild plant bears
its flowers on strong upright stalks, we should not make
these flowers so heavy that the stalks cannot support
them without being staked. If a wild plant bears
large flowers and has a compact habit of growth, we
should not dwarf it till it looks like a hunchback. If
the flowers naturally have great beauty of form, we
should not double them so as to destroy that beauty
on the chance of obtaining another beauty of colour.
To object to all double flowers would be pedantic.
There are many plants that depend for their flowering
beauty upon a mass of blossom, and it may often be
increased and prolonged by doubling as in the case
of the double Arabis, the double Genista tinctoria,
and the double Silene maritima. In other cases the
beauty of the flower is in colour rather than in form;
and the colour may often be intensified by doubling
as with the Dahlia, the Carnation, many Roses, and
most Chrysanthemums. There are certain forms of
flowers that are obviously unsuited to doubling; others
that can often be improved by it. Thus bell-shaped
flowers, such as those of most Campanulas, or trumpet-

98 STUDIES IN GARDENING

shaped flowers, such as those of most Lilies, are pretty
sure to be spoilt by doubling — and, indeed, doubling,
in the case of these, seems to be against nature. There
is no reason in the nature of things why the bell of
Campanula persicifolia should be stuffed up with
inner layers of petals. On the other hand, the outer
ring of florets of most composite flowers is often in-
creased when they grow wild in favourable conditions,
and such an increase does no violence to the whole
structure of the plant. So a good many composite
flowers have been doubled without spoiling their
beauty. But, even in the case of composite flowers,
the doubling has been carried too far. Thus double
Daisies have a pleasant, precise, old-fashioned kind
of beauty; we have all loved them in our childhood
and, therefore, we continue to love them still. But
in a batch of seedling Daisies, all intended to be double,
there will often occur single forms more beautiful than
any double ones. These are usually plucked up and
thrown away, since the gardener regards the single
Daisy as a weed and the double alone as a garden
flower. But there is no reason whatever why the
single Daisy should not be developed into one of the
most beautiful of all spring flowers, with large white
or pink or crimson florets and with a shining golden
centre. Even then it would not probably be more
beautiful than the wild Daisy, but it would be more
conspicuous.

Thus in the case of doubling there are principles
that could be applied pretty easily in most cases.

IMPROVEMENT OF GARDEN FLOWERS 99

In some, of course, it would be difficult to say whether
a plant would be the better or the worse for being
doubled. Wherever there is a doubt it would be wise
not to double it. There are so many other ways in
which plants can be developed with a certainty of
improvement. They can usually be made more vigor-
ous; their colour can often be made brighter and
purer. In some cases their habit is the better for being
more compact. Thus some of the hybrid Larkspurs
are finer plants in all respects than any of the species.
The new garden varieties of Phlox decussata are in-
finitely superior in colour to any of the older ones;
some of the hybrid Pentstemons have a beauty and
variety of colour and a vigour of growth far beyond
any to be found in the species from which they have
been produced; and the Tufted Pansies or Violas as
they are commonly called, have both combined and
improved out of all knowledge all the good qualities of
Viola tricolor and Viola cornuta, which were their far
distant wild ancestors. But in all these cases there has
been no attempt to pervert or to conceal the natural
character of the plants. The flowers may have been
enlarged, but not so that their stalks cannot support
them. The habit may have been made more compact,
but it has not, except, perhaps, in a few Phloxes, been
dwarfed into deformity.

The eye may be trained in its appreciation of flowers,
as of most other beautiful things; but it must be
trained on a principle; and the only sure principle is
that every plant be always considered as a whole, and

100 STUDIES IN GARDENING

that its natural character be always borne in mind.
It is a significant fact that the monstrous flowers have
usually been produced in those plants which are
treated in gardens in the least natural way — that is
to say, in bedding plants, especially Begonias. On the
other hand, in the case of plants which are usually
grown naturally development has in most cases meant
improvement. The florists have produced more new
varieties of the Daffodil of late years than of any other
flower. But their changes have been nearly all im-
provements, and the Daffodil is a plant that nearly
every one grows in a natural way, except when it is
forced or in the case of very expensive new varieties.
Thus the improvers of Daffodils usually have the
whole plant in their minds, whereas the improvers of
Begonias think only of their flowers. There can be
no doubt that the practice of rock gardening has im-
proved the general taste in flowers, for tricks cannot
be played upon Alpine plants; they have to be grown
as far as possible in their natural conditions, and their
beauty is peculiarly the beauty of character, a beauty
produced by the strange conditions in which they
maintain their struggle for life. The gardener who
once learns to love this beauty gets a keener apprecia-
tion of the character of all other plants. He likes to
see them growing as if they were self-sown seedlings,
and he is impatient of any florist’s development or of
any system of culture which deprives them of char-
acter. Character, in plants as in men, is produced
by struggle and by adaptation. In the garden both

IMPROVEMENT OF GARDEN FLOWERS 101

the struggle and the need for adaptation are much
lessened, the result of which is that astonishing changes
can be worked upon many plants since they are re-
lieved from the continuous even pressure of necessity.
But if these plants are transformed so that they lose
the character stamped upon them by their adaptation
to natural circumstances, then they lose also the most
significant part of their beauty, and look like manu-
factured rather than living things. There are some
people, of course, who like a flower to look manufac-
tured, and in its artificiality see a proof of their own
power over nature. This desire to make a thing look
different from what it is, just for the sake of showing
the maker’s skill, is the cause of much bad art of all
kinds. It is the cause of nearly all bad art in the
garden.

CHEAP GARDENING

HEAPNESS is a relative term in everything, and

particularly in gardening, since a Daffodil bulb
may cost anything from a farthing to fifty guineas.
There is no doubt that gardening can be a very ex-
pensive amusement, now that it has become fashion-
able and millionaires have their rock gardens as well
as their motor-cars. Luckily, however, the expensive
gardens are not always the best. Indeed, very often
they are the worst. In gardening it is not the plant
that counts so much as the gardener; and very often
the plant that costs a guinea is no more beautiful than
the plant that costs nothing. Gardening may be
cheaper as well as more expensive than it has ever
been, provided the gardener is ready to take a little
trouble and to exercise a little self-denial.

Mr. W. P. Wright has lately published a book
(“Beautiful Gardens”) in which he makes it his ob-
ject to show how a beautiful garden may be cheaply
made and maintained, and in his preface he deplores
the expensiveness of modern gardening. But, after
all, it does not matter very much to the true gardener.
He can console himself with the thought that all the
costly novelties, if they are good for anything, will
probably be cheap some day; and if it were not that

there are people ready to give large sums for them,
102

CHEAP GARDENING 103

these novelties would never, perhaps, be produced.
Mr. Wright complains, too, that the writers of most
gardening books assume the costliness of gardening.
He will not assume it; and yet he mentions a good many
costly plants in his book, or at least plants that will
seem costly to the man who really wishes to garden
cheaply on a fairly large scale. Mr. Wright may urge
that he only mentions such plants in case his readers
may wish for a few luxuries. But the gardener who
wants an abundance of flowers, and wants them cheap,
will not be able to afford even a few luxuries. Those
who have only a slip of garden with one small border
and one bit of rockwork on it may afford, now and
again, to pay half-a-crown for a Lily or Daffodil bulb.
But those who have two or three acres of garden and
wish to make them all flowery at a small cost cannot
do this even once in a way. Their first problem will
be to get cheap plants. Their next to economize in
labour and manure. There are plants which need a
great deal of manure in most soils, and others which
need careful watering in hot weather, even though
they may in some cases be cheap to buy. There are
bulbs which need to be lifted and dried off, and others
which, however well treated, soon die out in most.
English gardens. There are shrubs, too, which must
be protected in hard winters. There are carnations
that must be constantly renewed by means of layers.
There are bedding plants that need a greenhouse in
the winter, and exact all the labour of shifting them
into the greenhouse and out of it again. All of these

104 STUDIES IN GARDENING

will have to be avoided, or very sparingly used, by
the man who wishes to garden cheaply and who is
not prepared to spend a great deal of his own time
upon his garden. For him the labour problem will
be more difficult, perhaps, than even the problem of
stocking his garden; and yet both may be solved by
means of a little knowledge and discretion.

In the first place, the man who wishes to have a
cheap garden must take the line of least resistance.
He must find out what plants grow well in his garden
naturally; and he must confine himself mainly to
these. If he lives on a light, sandy soil, he must not
grow plants that need much moisture and nourish-
ment, for it will cost him money to supply them.
If he lives on a stiff clay, he must avoid plants that
will only flourish in clay if it is lightened and made
porous with grit and leaf-mould. Directly he tries
to fight with nature he will find that his bill for labour
and for manure goes up. He must make it his object
to humour nature; and, if he is a true gardener, he
will find a peculiar pleasure and interest in doing
that. The rich man or the man who has plenty of
leisure may delight in overcoming nature; yet just as
much skill may be exercised by the gardener who is
busy and not rich in obeying her. But he must exer-
cise some self-denial; and in particular he must cure
himself of that itch for novelties which attacks all
keen gardeners at some time in their career, and from
which many never recover. Mr. Wright is inclined
to think that the love of novelties is a vulgar passion;

CHEAP GARDENING 105

that the rich man buys a costly new plant only to
show that he can afford it. But good gardeners are
not apt to be vulgarians, and nearly all of them love
novelties and, if they can, pursue them in spite of a
hundred disappointments. And yet this passion can
be tamed by philosophy, as the present writer has
discovered; and other and, perhaps, manlier passions
can be nourished to take its place. Philosophy, based
upon experience, admonishes the gardener that some
novelties are not novelties at all and that others
have nothing but their newness and costliness to
recommend them. It also comforts him with the
thought that, as we have said, most novelties, if they
are worth having, will soon grow cheap. There are,
it is true, some bulbs which have to be collected
in their native homes every year, and which, being
rare even then, never become very cheap. But there
is always a chance that some year the collector will
find a multitude of them, and that they will suddenly
drop in price. Very likely they will soon rise again;
but it is chances of this kind that make catalogues
more exciting to read than any novel, and catalogues
cost nothing. Anyhow the pursuit of novelties is
sure to cause as much disappointment as delight;
for the writers of catalogues have sanguine imagina-
tions that take fire at a hint. They are ready to be-
lieve all that the collectors tell them; and they do
not spoil a tale in repeating it. Thus many novelties
that flower so amazingly in the catalogues make but
a poor show in the garden, and after one year’s trial

106 STUDIES IN GARDENING

are described as “‘suitable only for botanical collec-
tions’; which means that the ordinary gardener
throws them on the rubbish heap if he cannot give
them away to a friend.

It is by considerations of this kind that the hunger
for novelties may be tamed. But even the poor gar-
dener is not cut off from them altogether, for he can
often buy their seeds cheaply enough; and then, if
they turn out to be rubbish, he can throw them away
with the consolation that he has spent little upon
them except the labour of raising them. Seeds, in-
deed, are the mainstay of the poor gardener. If he
will only raise his plants from seed, he can soon stock
a large garden with beautiful flowers at the cost of a
few shillings; and if he has a piece of spare ground
which he can use for the trial of seedlings, in a few
years by judicious selection he will be able to raise for
himself specimens of many plants as fine as the finest
florists’ varieties, and even finer, for he will be able
to consult his own taste in the development of them.
It is strange, indeed, how few people raise perennial
plants from seed; and the only explanation can be
that it never occurs to them to do so. They are ready
to spend time and trouble in raising annuals and
biennials, because it is the custom; but they are in
the habit of buying perennial plants, and they con-
tinue to do so, although many of them can be raised
from seed just as easily as any biennial, and will flower
just as soon after the seeds are sown. One could make
a long list of perennial plants that every one ought

CHEAP GARDENING 107

to grow from seed. But a few of them will suffice for
examples. Larkspurs, Columbines, Hollyhocks, Pan-
sies, Campanula persicifolia, C. carpatica, C. lacti-
flora, nearly all the perennial Flaxes, Catananche,
Lychnis Haageana, Oenothera macrocarpa, Anchusa
italica, Coreopsis lanceolata, Geranium grandiflorum
and other Cranesbills, Gypsophila paniculata, Pent-
stemons and Scabiosa Caucasica. Many of these, if
sown as soon as the seed is ripe, will flower the next
year like biennials. All or nearly all will flower the
next year, if sown in spring; and all can be raised
from seed without any difficulty. But even those
gardeners who do raise perennials from seed often take
more trouble than they need, and with worse results
than a simpler method would produce. It is common,
for instance, for Hollyhocks to be raised from seed
in frames and to be moved at least twice before they
find their permanent quarters. The finest plants of
Hollyhocks are those which have never been dis-
turbed since the seed was sown in the ground. The
best and easiest way of growing them, therefore, is
to sow two or three seeds where the plant is wanted to
grow, and when they are well up to pull up all but one
of them. It is not easy to treat Snapdragons thus,
because their seed is much smaller than that of Holly-
hocks. But there is no need to raise them in boxes
or frames. The best plan is to sow them out of doors
towards the end of April. They will come up in hun-
dreds, and can be shifted to their permanent quarters
any time after a good downpour of rain. Pentstemons,

108 STUDIES IN GARDENING

again, may be sown in boxes out of doors in May.
They can be pricked out as soon as they are large
enough into a reserve bed, and planted into their
permanent quarters the next spring. Young plants
that have not flowered will not usually suffer even
from hard winters in fairly light soils, and, in any
case, it is not difficult to give them a little protection.
Of course, it takes more time to raise plants in this
way than to start them in heat in early spring. Pent-
stemons, for instance, will flower the same year if
raised in heat, and so will Hollyhocks and Snapdragons.
But the open-air method produces healthier plants,
and costs nothing except the price of the seeds. All
the perennials mentioned above can be raised from
seed sown in the open border; but the safest plan with
most of them, especially where the soil is heavy, is to
sow the seed in boxes and to place the boxes in a cold
frame until the seedlings are strong enough to resist
all caprices of the weather. If this is done it is best
to sow the seed in April, so that the plants may be
a good size before the hot weather comes. They
should be moved into the open air, however, as soon
as possible, and then put into their permanent quar-
ters in the autumn, where they will flower the next
year. When one considers that a single plant of
Oenothera macrocarpa costs sixpence, whereas fifty
plants may be raised from a penny packet of seed so
as to flower the year after sowing, the advantages of
raising plants from seed are obvious.

There are some plants, of course, that do not come

CHEAP GARDENING 109

true from seed, so that if the gardener wants a par-
ticular variety he must buy a plant and propagate
from it by other means to increase his stock. But
this is usually the case only with plants that have
been developed by the florists, such as Larkspurs,
Carnations, and garden Pinks, and Violas or Tufted
Pansies; and this variableness adds a new interest
to the raising of plants from seed, if the gardener has
some spare ground which he can use for trial beds for
his seedlings. If he does this and selects his seed
judiciously year by year, he will probably obtain some
very fine varieties of any plants to which he may give
particular attention. The trouble of an annual sowing
of Larkspurs or Columbines or Violas will be very
small, especially if the seed is sown in the open ground
when ripe, and the expense will be nil. The gardener
who saves his own seed will probably have so much
of it that he will be able to afford the risk of a sowing
in the open border if his soil is not too heavy; and if
he sows there, he will be able to leave the plants alone
until they flower.

There are some plants that can be so easily in-
creased by other means that it is scarcely worth while
to sow seed of them when once a few have been ob-
tained; and there are also plants, as, for instance,
most bulbs, which, if raised from seed, take years
before they flower. But all means of propagation,
even in the case of plants most easily increased, are
strangely neglected by many gardeners. Nothing is
easier, for instance, than to get a large stock from a

110 STUDIES IN GARDENING

few plants of Tufted Pansies by simply taking off
little rooted pieces and planting them in a cool place
in light soil, keeping them well watered until they are
established. If this is done as early as possible, and
when the ground is thoroughly wet with rain, the
offsets will soon make good roots and be strong plants
ready to plant out in the autumn. This method may
be employed with most plants that increase by means
of rooted tufts or offsets, and it is often better than
division, since it leaves the parent plant undisturbed.
The main point for a gardener who cannot give much
time to watering is to choose his opportunity when the
ground is thoroughly soaked, and to plant his offsets
where they are not liable to be shrivelled up by too
hot a sun. The time for taking such offsets must
vary, of course, with the habit of growth and the
flowering season of different plants. Thus, if Tufted
Pansies are cut back after their first flush of bloom they
will throw up a number of fresh shoots which can be
readily detached. Michaelmas Daisies, on the other
hand, since they flower in autumn, and since most of
them throw out rooted tufts of the greatest vigour in
all directions, can be simply pulled to pieces and re-
planted in spring. If this is done every tuft will be
a strong flowering plant by the autumn. In every
case the gardener should observe the habits of the
plant he wishes to increase, and should treat it ac-
cording to these habits.

Bulbs, as we have said, usually take a long time
to flower from seed, often about six years, but many

CHEAP GARDENING 111

of them increase rapidly by means of offsets; and this
means of increase also is often neglected, so that the
bulbs become crowded and deteriorate. Bulbs that
are to be increased in this way should be dug up when
they die down, and the offsets separated from them.
The main bulbs and the offsets may then be either
dried off until the autumn or replanted at once. Some
bulbs — as, for instance, many kinds of Tulips — are
the better for being dried off every year; others,
such as English and Spanish Irises and many Nar-
cissi, like to be dried off occasionally. English gar-
deners, even those who do not care to spend much
on their gardens, are apt to be very wasteful with
bulbs, especially with Tulips used for spring bedding.
There is a common idea that they will not last in Eng-
lish gardens. But if they are lifted when they die
down and then dried off, they will not only last well,
especially in light soils, but will often increase rapidly.
The gardener who does not wish to spend much money
on his bulbs can yet have a fine show of them, at least
if his soil is fairly light, provided he is prepared to
take a little care of them and to buy very cheap kinds;
and luckily there is an abundance of cheap bulbs often
as beautiful as the dearest. You can give ten shillings
for a single Tulip bulb, but no Tulips are more beau-
tiful than Picotee, which costs six shillings a hundred,
or than Cottage Maid, which costs about four. You
can give fifty guineas sometimes for a single Daffodil
bulb; but Barri conspicuus, or Princeps, or John
Bain, or the Tenby Daffodil cost about five shillings

112 STUDIES IN GARDENING

a hundred, and they ought to be good enough for most
people; while you can get a thousand of the old Pheas-
ant-eye for fifteen shillings. You can get a thousand
Spanish Irises or Crocuses for even less, and Squills
of many kinds, Chionodoxas, Fritillaries, Allium,
Dogtooth Violets, Galtonia, many kinds of Gladioli,
Snowflakes, and of course Snowdrops, Muscari, and
many less-known bulbs can be bought very cheap.
There remain Lilies, and most of them are not cheap
or easy to grow. The poor gardener must do without
many kinds of Lilies; but he can grow the Madonna
Lily, the Orange Lily (L. croceum), L. Pyrenaicum,
yellow and red, L. Davuricum, L. elegans, the Marta-
gon, the Tiger Lily, and, if he has a moist place in his
garden, L. pardalinum, L. superbum, and L. Canadense.
He can also get L. auratum, L. speciosum, and L.
longiflorum quite cheap at sales; but he will probably
have to renew them often, and this means labour as
well as money.

We have said nothing about Roses or shrubs in
general. Many can be bought very cheap; but if
they are to prosper, the ground must be deeply dug
and manured beforehand. This costs money, of course;
but a little preliminary outlay in deep digging and
manuring, though many people are apt to grudge it,
will always save money in the end. Have your bor-
ders thoroughly well prepared before you put a plant
in them, and you will have to spend less afterwards
on plants and on labour.

COMMON SENSE IN GARDENING

ARDENING to the beginner seems to be all

an arbitrary mystery. Some plants want this,

he is told, and some that; and he can see no more
reason for the diversity of their wants than for the
diversity of their colours. He regards the expert
gardener as a kind of magician, as one who can make
all plants thrive by the very way in which he handles
them, and who knows by instinct what they want.
Now, it is quite true that the best gardeners do seem
to have a way of their own with plants, and that they
will often succeed with a plant they know nothing
about where an inferior gardener, less ignorant, would
fail. But they are not born with this gift. They are
only born with the qualities and interests that en-
able them to acquire it. The best gardeners are those
who love plants and who, therefore, are for ever look-
ing at them; who never pass a cottage garden with-
out peering into it, who are always learning some-
thing without effort or design in woods and meadows,
on moors and mountain sides. In this they are like
the born painter or like the poet in “How it Strikes
a Contemporary,” who watched men for the love of
watching them. Without this kind of love there can
be no profound knowledge of anything. Taking notes

with an object is a useful practice, but it is not the
113

114 STUDIES IN GARDENING

best kind of observation, any more than cramming
for an examination is the best kind of learning. One
forgets the notes as soon as one has used them; but
the knowledge got by loving observation stays in the
mind and makes pictures there. It is because chil-
dren observe disinterestedly that they have such
long memories; and so disinterested observation is
the secret of the gardener’s, no less than of the poet’s
or painter’s, magic.

But there is reason and method in the magic of all
arts; and the great gardener’s love of plants only
makes him a great gardener because he turns it into
science. The passion of observation is what con-
nects all excellent works of science and art. It makes
the great artist something of a man of science, and
the great man of science something of an artist; and
gardening, in its humble way, is both an art and a
science, and can only be practised well by the man
who will learn it as an art and a science. He must
not only be always observing, but also always experi-
menting; and it is experiment alone that can make
his observation profitable just as it is only observation
that can teach him how to experiment. And the
more he does of both the more he will be able to use
his common sense in gardening and to see the reason
and the system of things. The great defect of most
professional gardeners is that, however well they
have been taught a right routine, they do not know
the reason of it, and therefore cannot apply it to
things outside their experience. They have learnt

COMMON SENSE IN GARDENING 115

what they know as arbitrary and isolated facts, just
as children learn a number of dates from bad teachers
of history; and these facts do not help them to learn
anything new. The best gardeners are those who
cannot endure that any fact they learn should re-
main arbitrary and isolated. Every plant is to them
a living and a reasonable being, and they wish to
understand it as the poet wishes to understand men.
They like to know the conditions of its native home
and to see how those conditions have made its char-
acter. They like to see how far it is adaptable to the
ordinary routine of the English garden, and whether
cultivation will improve it or injure it.

Now, plants seem to differ in their adaptability in
the most arbitrary way. Speaking generally, one
may say that plants which have adapted themselves
to very abnormal conditions have usually exhausted
most of their power of adaptation in the process.
Plants which have learnt to grow among snow and
ice cannot endure the prosperity of a rich border.
What is meat to a Rose or a Peony is poison to them.
But this is not always so. Some plants that have
learnt to thrive in adversity will also thrive in a pros-
perity not too gross; and in the same way there are
plants which, preferring prosperity, will also put up
with a good deal of adversity, while there are others
that will not endure adversity at all. The reasons for
these differences in adaptability are usually unknown.
One can only lay down a general rule, that the more
normal the natural conditions of a plant the greater

116 STUDIES IN GARDENING

is its adaptability; and this is a rule of much value
in practice, although it is broken by many exceptions
that can be learnt only by experience.

Every good gardener likes to know the natural
conditions in which all his plants grow. But he learns
from experience that he will not always succeed by
imitating those natural conditions as closely as pos-
sible, for very often he will not be able to imitate the
most essential of all, and for lack of that, it may be
that all his other imitations will be merely mischie-
vous. There is, for instance, a little creeping plant
called Nierembergia rivularis, whose native home is
in marshy places in South America. Most books on
gardening, therefore, say that it should be treated as
a bog plant; some that it should be planted in shady
places. Now it is a plant that comes from a much
hotter climate than ours, where, no doubt, it likes
all the moisture it can get. But in England it likes
all the sun it can get, and has not the same need of
moisture. In England, according to the present writer’s
experience, it will thrive in fairly rich soil, in a dry
level place, provided it is watered in the hottest weather;
but will not endure the cold of a damp place in winter.
This is an instance of a plant with a considerable
power of adaptation, which, since we cannot give it
all its native conditions, would rather have none of
them complete, but prefers that an average should
be struck among them; and there are many plants
like it.

We have always to remember that gardening is

COMMON SENSE IN GARDENING 117

not a natural process. There are very few plants that
in most gardens can be supplied with exactly the
conditions of their natural homes; and the aim of
horticulture is to compensate for the lack of these
conditions by artificial means. The skilful gardener,
when he has observed the natural conditions of a
plant, will always translate them, so to speak, into
garden terms, when he proceeds to make use of his
observations. He knows that most plants, fortunately,
have a considerable power of adaptation to artificial
conditions; but he knows, also, what are usually the
limits of that power, and what artificial conditions are
necessary to compensate for the lack of natural ones.
Take, for instance, the case of manure, which is mainly
an artificial aid to the growth of plants, and which,
therefore, is used as a substitute for natural con-
ditions and often as an improvement on them. Farm-
yard or stable manure has more than one use. It is
both a plant-food and a means of protection against
drought. Now, there are many plants that like man-
ure as a food; but there are also many, particularly
among bulbs, that do not need it as a food but like
it as a protection against drought. For such plants
manure will be unnecessary where they are in no danger
of suffering from drought. In a garden that lies low
or has a heavy soil few bulbs need manure; in a gar-
den that is high and dry many are the better for it.
But manure, where it is used only as a protection
against drought, must be applied much more cau-
tiously than where it is used as a plant food, partic-

118 STUDIES IN GARDENING

ularly in the case of bulbs. Most bulbous plants are
apt to rot if manure touches the bulb itself, and to
many of them manure is poisonous as a food. It
should not, therefore, be mixed with the soil about
the bulb, as it may be mixed with the soil abbut the
roots of many gross feeding plants, such as Pansies
or Ponies, but should be placed well below the bulb,
so that the roots will either never reach it or will only
reach it when they have grown strong and when the
manure has lost its rankness. There are many plants,
usually supposed to dislike manure, which are the
better for it applied thus in light, hot soils. It is a
common belief, for instance, that all Lilies dislike
manure, and so the most of them do anywhere near
the bulb. But in light soils the Madonna Lily, Lilium
testaceum, L. Chalcedonicum, L. Szovitzianum, L.
auratum, L. speciosum, L. pardalinum, and L. super-
bum are all the better for a good layer of well-rotted
manure placed well below their bulbs, to say nothing
of easy Lilies like L. tigrinum and L. croceum. The
manure benefits them not so much as a plant food,
though some of them are even the better for this.
nourishment in moderation, but as an artificial pro-
tection against drought, since it holds moisture, which
is drawn upwards towards their roots and bulbs by
the heat of the sun just when they need it most. Ma-
nure can be used in this way as a protection against
drought for many surface-rooting plants which may
not need it as a food. But the gardener, if he does
not know for certain whether or not it may be poison-

COMMON SENSE IN GARDENING | 119

ous to a plant, should be very cautious in his use of
it. It is quite likely that many Alpine plants would
be the better for a dose of manure underneath them
as a protection against drought, if any one could be
sure that their roots would not reach it. But un-
fortunately they are apt to root very deeply, partic-
ularly in search of moisture, and some of them, if
their roots got down to a layer of manure, would
quickly die of indigestion; for in their native homes
they get very little nourishment, and so have come
to need very little.

There are many surface-rooting plants, however,
that like manure both as a food and as a protection
from drought, and they can be fed with it from above
as well as from below. Mulching is particularly good
for surface-rooting plants, since the juices of the
manure quickly reach their roots and since the manure
itself on the surface protects them from drought.
Most surface-rooting plants are the better for some
kind of nourishment applied from above, especially
if they are plants that resent being moved into fresh
soil. Thus Eremuri, which throw out thick roots in
all directions just under the surface of the soil, will
often thrive wonderfully where they would otherwise
seldom flower if they are top-dressed in autumn or
early spring with rich loam or leaf-mould, or with
old manure off a hot bed. And in the same way the
hardy Cypripediums, particularly C. spectabile, the
roots of which run like a network of whipcord over
the surface of the soil, should be dressed with rich

120 STUDIES IN GARDENING

loam and leaf-mould once a year. With them this
is a natural treatment, for in their native homes they
get a covering of fallen leaves every autumn, which
no doubt, is the reason why their roots come above
ground. Gardeners are too apt to think that plants
which do not like manure do not need to be fed in
any way; and shrubs like Rhododendrons and Aza-
leas often fail to do well in gardens because their soil
is never enriched. In their native homes they too
get an autumn mulch of fallen leaves, and they should
have it in captivity. A good dressing of leaf-mould
once a year will feed them and protect them from
drought. Gardeners, for the sake of neatness, will
often sweep all shrubberies clear of leaves and never
remember that they are thereby robbing them of
their natural nourishment. If the fallen leaves are
removed they should always be replaced in the form
of leaf-mould later on.

This is but common sense in gardening; and the
whole business of feeding plants should be governed
by common sense, that is to say, by an understanding
of every plant’s requirements. One of the first things
that a good gardener seeks to know about a new plant
is the nature of its roots, and when he knows this he
can at least conjecture something about its treat-
ment. He knows, for instance, that a surface-root-
ing plant is more likely to suffer from drought than
one that roots deeply. He knows that a plant with a
single crown and a thick fleshy root is more difficult
to divide than one with a number of crowns and a

COMMON SENSE IN GARDENING § 121

network of small fibrous roots. The character of a
plant’s roots will also tell him something about when
it should be planted, a matter in which many gar-
deners are curiously unintelligent. As a general rule,
deep-rooting plants are best moved or divided in the
autumn, because then their roots have time to re-
cover and strike down as soon as growth begins in
the spring. Such plants cannot usually be moved
without much damage to their roots, and before their
roots have recovered they are apt to suffer much from
drought. If they are moved in the spring and if a
drought follows upon their moving, they will not re-
cover before the summer heats, and then they will
live but a miserable life until the next year. Yet one
finds that many gardeners are just as ready to move
Oriental Poppies in April as Pansies; and if the Pop-
pies remain miserable, stunted, and half withered
tufts all the summer, the gardener regards it as an
“act of God,” not as the result of his own stupidity.
Of course, if a deep-rooting plant is not very hardy
it should be planted in the spring, and if it is but a
a small plant that can be moved with little or no in-
jury to its roots spring planting will not check its
growth. On the other hand, surface-rooting plants
can usually be moved in spring without checking
their growth at all, and in heavy soils the spring is
often the best time for planting them, so that they
may be strong and well-established before they have
to endure a winter. There are no arbitrary rules about
the time for planting or dividing. Most plants can be

122 STUDIES IN GARDENING

moved at any time of year if only they can be pro-
tected against drought or cold until they have estab-
lished themselves. But since it is difficult to do this
in summer and in winter, the spring and autumn are
the favourite seasons for planting and division. There
is a common idea that plants cannot be moved when
in flower; but this is not always so. It is far better
to move Gentiana verna or even G. acaulis in full
flower than in late autumn, because they flower in
spring, when they can be fairly easily protected from
drought, and if they are well watered during the
summer they will be well established before the winter
comes again. But summer flowering plants suffer
much if subjected to the double strain of flowering
and moving in hot weather, especially if they have long
roots. There are some plants that are best moved
as soon as possible after they have flowered, so that
they make good growth before the next year’s flower-
ing. This is the case with German and other Irises
of the same class, which will usually flower well the
year after moving if they are moved about a month
after they have flowered and are well protected from
drought until they have recovered. The reason of
this is that they begin to make their growth for next
year soon after they have flowered, and that this
growth is interrupted by a move in autumn. Bulbs,
of course, should be moved when they are at rest;
but some of them are only at rest for a very short
time. The Madonna Lily, for instance, begins to make
new growth in a few weeks after it has died down.

COMMON SENSE IN GARDENING 123

Therefore, if it is to be moved at all, it should be moved
as soon as it has died down; otherwise it will receive
a check from which it may never recover.

There are some plants which need to be moved
pretty often if they are not to deteriorate, and the
reason for this can generally be found in their habit
of growth and rooting. Plants which have deep roots
can often be left for years undisturbed, and often
suffer for a time even from the most careful shifting.
On the other hand, plants will increase rapidly with
a network of surface-rooting runners or suckers, such
as Sidalcea or most Michaelmas Daisies, are apt to
exhaust the soil in which they grow, and often need
to be moved every two years at least. Again, plants
such as Primroses and Polyanthuses, and many other
Primulas, which start with a single crown and in a
year or two break up into several crowns, are usually
the better for frequent division, as the different crowns
are really different plants, and crowd each other. A
plant like Primula denticulata needs to be divided
every year when it grows strongly, otherwise it will
soon produce only poor flowers; and this division
should be done as soon as possible when it has more
than one crown, so that the plant may recover in time
to form its flowers for the next year. We have chosen,
almost at haphazard, a few instances of the applica-
tion of common sense in gardening, with the object
of showing that there are obvious reasons for all the
diversities of treatment which seem so arbitrary to
the beginner. If he tries to understand the reason of

124 STUDIES IN GARDENING

everything that he does, and if he also has a natural
love of plants, he will in time acquire that habit of
treating plants rightly which is called the gardener’s
instinct.

LILIES

ILIES are perhaps the most capricious of all garden
plants. Some are familiar to our gardens and
easy enough to grow; but even the most familiar
of all, the Madonna Lily, fails unaccountably some-
times. Others will thrive in one place, but not in
another quite near it which seems to offer exactly
the same conditions. Others, again, will do well
enough for a year or two, but then are pretty sure to
dwindle away or die off suddenly; while a few have
hitherto baffled all the skill of experts. Writers upon
lilies are apt to make them out to be less difficult than
they are, and to suggest that we have a more certain
knowledge of their requirements than we really have.
The consequence is that enthusiasts are often tempted
into experiments that can only end in disappointment.
The object of this article is to state what lilies can be
grown in certain conditions with a fair certainty of
permanent success, what lilies will do well for a year
or two in English gardens, and what lilies still baffle
all efforts to establish them. It is not possible, in the
present state of our knowledge, to write with any
certainty about the cultivation of the more difficult
lilies, and, therefore, we shall not pretend to any cer-
tainty about them. There are some difficult plants

that are difficult for obvious reasons. There are Irises
125

126 STUDIES IN GARDENING

that need more sun than our summers usually provide.
There are high mountain plants that suffer from our
wet winters. We know what these want, even if we
cannot supply it. But we do not know with any
precision what it is that a good many lilies want, or
what kills them off so quickly in our climate. Many
experiments have been made with lilies, such as Lilium
Krameri, L. Washingtonianum, and L. Philadelphicum,
and these experiments, whether failures or successes,
have not led to any certainty. It is likely that most
of the hardy lilies which annually fail in our gardens
are very impatient of disturbance and never recover
from it when they are imported to England from dis-
tant countries. We have heard it said that some of
the North American lilies, like some of the hardy
Cypripediums, never flourish in captivity even in
gardens close to their native homes. They are not
likely, therefore, to recover from the shock of dis-
turbance when they have made a voyage across the
Atlantic. Sometimes, very likely, these lilies are
moved more carefully and at more favourable seasons
than at others, and this would account for occasional
successes. But the ordinary gardener cannot count
upon such precautions. He must take what bulbs
he can get of the rarer kinds of lilies, and he must ex-
pect to fail with them. The only chance of success
with lilies that are very impatient of removal would
seem to be to grow them from seed in England; and
this has been done in some cases with excellent re-
sults, though not yet, perhaps, with any of the most

LILIES 127

difficult lilies. Some of the finest plants of Lilium
Szovitzianum at the Royal Horticultural Gardens at
Wisley were raised from seed by the late Mr. G. F.
Wilson, and were either not moved at all from the
seed-bed or were moved with practically no distur-
bance. Lilium Szovitzianum is not a difficult lily, as
lilies go; but there are very few probably in Eng-
land to equal those at Wisley. This experiment of
raising lilies from seed would be too slow, and per-
haps too difficult a business for most amateurs, but
it might be tried on a large scale by lily specialists
and might result in the acclimatization of some of
the most difficult lilies. Unfortunately, many of the
most difficult lilies are abundant in their native homes,
and so are imported in large numbers and sold fairly
cheap in England, with the probability, and in some
cases almost the certainty, that they will disappoint
those who buy them.

Before we proceed to speak of particular lilies, it
will be well to say something about the culture of lilies
in general. It has been said that no two kinds of lilies
should be grown exactly alike, and certainly lilies
vary more than most genera of plants in their wants.
But one or two general rules may be safely laid down
about them, and the first of these is that they all
like a soil full of the roots of trees or shrubs. The
reason of this is not quite clear. It cannot be merely
that they like sharp drainage, since drainage supplied
by other means will not make up for the want of a
rooty soil. Some lilies will do well enough without

128 STUDIES IN GARDENING

a rooty soil; but those who fail with any particular
kind should try it in a rooty place, and they will often
meet with immediate and inexplicable success. Lilies
also all like good drainage, even if they need plenty
of moisture. Their bulbs, with their loose scales, are
more apt to rot in stagnant moisture than bulbs which
are better protected, and it is well, in the case of bulbs,
such as those of L. Leichtlini or L. Krameri, which
are very sensitive to damp, to plant them sideways,
so that the wet will not settle into their crowns and
the interstices between their scales. Lilies vary as
to the depth at which they should be planted, because
some of them throw out roots from the stalk, and,
therefore, must be planted deep enough for these roots
to form, whereas others throw out roots only from the
base of the bulb. L. candidum, L. testaceum, L.
giganteum, and most of the Martagon division of
lilies, except L. Hansoni and L. Leichtlini, root only
from the base of the bulb. L. auratum, L. speciosum,
L. Browni, L. longiflorum, L. croceum, L. elegans, L.
Henryi, L. Krameri, L. tigrmum, L. Hansoni, and L.
Leichtlini all root from the stalk. The beginner should
ascertain in each particular case whether the lilies he
wishes to plant are stalk or only bulb rooting. There
are no lilies that like a very hot place, although some,
such as L. Chalcedonicum and L. pomponium, need
a good deal of sun; nor yet will any flourish in very
heavy shade. The greater number do well among
low-growing shrubs which will protect them from
late frosts and also from the extreme heat of the sum-

LILIES 129

mer sun. A great many lilies suffer very much from
late frosts, and lilies such as L. auratum, L. specio-
sum, L. Leichtlini, L. giganteum, and in particular
the early L. Hansoni, should be protected from them
with heather or other branches placed lightly about
their young shoots. Lilies differ so much in the soil
they require that no general rules can be laid down on
this point. None, however, like a very stiff clay un-
less it is well drained and lightened with grit and
leaf-mould. They differ also as to the time at which
they should be planted; some are best planted in
early spring, others in early autumn or late summer.

The lilies that will usually do well in the ordinary
herbaceous border and are of such easy culture that
even the beginner may attempt them with confidence
are the following: —

L. candidum, the Madonna Lily. The chief enemy
of this is the notorious lily disease, and it can be best
prevented by a right system of culture. In heavy
soils the Madonna Lily should be planted in a sunny,
sheitered place; and the soil should be lightened
with mortar-rubble. It has been said that this lily
objects to chalk, but we have seen it growing magnif-
icently in a very chalky soil, and in our experience
it likes lime in all forms. It also likes a very rooty
soil; and in light soils it may be planted in a north
border sheltered by shrubs, but not shaded by them.
In light soils also it likes a good layer of well rotted
cow manure well under the bulbs. In all cases the top
of the bulb should be only an inch or two under the

130 STUDIES IN GARDENING

surface of the soil. The Madonna Lily starts into
growth again a few weeks after it has died down, and
it is always injured by disturbance when in growth.
It should, therefore, be planted as early in autumn
or late summer as possible, and should only be dis-
turbed, if at all, as soon as it has died down. When
it is doing well, it should be left alone; and gardeners
should not be allowed to disturb the soil anywhere
near it. The forking and hoeing of gardeners is a
frequent cause of failure with all lilies. When the
Madonna Lily suffers badly from the disease the safest
plan is to dig all the bulbs up at once and burn them,
taking care not to plant new bulbs in the same place.
They sometimes recover if they are dug up as soon
as they have died down, and if the bulbs are well
dusted with sulphur and placed in full sun on a shelf
in the greenhouse to bake for some weeks. It is well
always to dust the bulbs in sulphur when they are
planted. When the disease first appears, it may some-
times be cured if the leaves of the plant are sprayed
with Bordeaux mixture. This should be done at
intervals of a week or so, several times. Lilium tes-
taceum is said to be a natural hybrid between the
Madonna Lily and L. Chalcedonicum. It is, after the
Madonna Lily, perhaps the finest of all garden lilies,
and it is easier to grow, although it also suffers some-
times from the lily disease. It grows very tall and
has beautiful flowers of an apricot yellow with bright
scarlet anthers. It should be treated like the Ma-
donna Lily, but does not suffer so much from distur-

LILIES 131

bance and remains dormant for a longer period. In-
deed in most gardens it is best moved into fresh soil
every three years or so. It should be planted in early
autumn. In some soils it increases rapidly.

L. croceum, L. Davuricum, and L. elegans are all
good easy lilies and can be grown in the same way;
L. elegans, a dwarf lily with many varieties, needing
rather more sun, perhaps, than the others. They
are all plants for the ordinary border, liking a good
dose of manure well under the bulbs in light and
poor soils, and some protection from surrounding
plants in very hot places. They are best planted in
the autumn and should all be at least half a foot deep,
as they make stem roots.

L. tigrinum, of which there are several good varie-
ties, is equally easy and needs much the same culture.
It sometimes suffers if too much crowded or over-
shadowed by other plants, and also if it is grown in
too exposed places, or where the summer sun strikes
full upon it. Splendens is, perhaps, the best variety.

L. Hansoni is a fine lily of the Martagon division
with stout yellow spotted flowers. It will grow in
any good border soil, but the flower buds are often
killed by late frosts and should be protected from
them. It does very well among low-growing shrubs,
provided they do not overshadow it.

L. Batemanniae is a beautiful lily sometimes classed
as a variety of L. elegans. It flowers later, how-
ever, than the other forms of L. elegans, and the
flowers are of a glowing but soft orange scarlet colour.

132 STUDIES IN GARDENING

It is a little more delicate than L. elegans, and likes
a warm sheltered place and light rich soil. L. Pyrenai-
cum, a yellow lily of the Martagon division, and its
scarlet variety are both easy lilies that should be
planted in the ordinary border in early autumn and
then left alone. They like manure under the bulbs
in a light or poor soil, and will do well both in sun and
in half shade. L. Martagon is a little more capricious
perhaps, and prefers half shade. It should not be
disturbed when well established. The variety Dal-
maticum is a much finer plant, and not more difficult
to grow. The beautiful white variety is certainly
more capricious. It likes a slight slope with a northerly
aspect, and a rooty, stony soil. It must also be shel-
tered both from strong winds and from the extreme
heat of the sun. It is, unfortunately, rare and rather
expensive, although an old plant. It sometimes thrives
wonderfully in old cottage gardens without any atten-
tion whatever, and fails when it is given every lux-
ury.

We have now to speak of lilies which need more
care and more or less peculiar conditions, and of these
we will deal first with those which can usually be
permanently established in English gardens without
much difficulty. Lilium Chalcedonicum is a fine lily
with bright scarlet flowers and a near relation of the
Martagon or Turk’s-cap lilies. It comes from the
south of Europe and Asia Minor, and therefore re-
quires a good deal of sun to ripen the bulbs. It should
be grown in a warm place very well drained, and sel-

LILIES 133

dom thrives without a strong dose of lime in the soil.
In stiff soils this should be given in the form of mortar-
rubble about the bulbs. It is supposed to be a capri-
cious lily, and often suffers from disease; but this
usually happens when it does not get enough sun or
when it is injured by late frosts or stagnant moisture
about the roots. It suffers less than most lilies from
drought. It likes a rich soil, even a stiff loam if well
drained and mixed with mortar-rubble, but it should
be sheltered from cold winds. Such shelter may be
given by Lavender or Rosemary bushes placed so that
they will not overshadow it too much or screen it
from the south. It looks its best growing among
these southern shrubs, and it likes a soil filled with
their roots. It should never be disturbed when thriv-
ing, and is best planted in early autumn. It flowers
towards the end of July.

Lilium pomponium, a smaller lily, but very like
it, should be treated in the same way, but is easier to
grow and less subject to disease. It also likes mortar-
rubble, especially in heavy soils, but lime is not es-
sential to it. The red variety of L. Pyrenaicum is
sometimes sold for it, but is an inferior plant. Neither
L. pomponium nor L. Chalcedonicum should be planted
deep, as they do not make any stem roots. The soil
should be stamped hard about the bulbs, and should
never be forked or disturbed when they are grow-
ing.

Lilium Szovitzianum is a splendid lily, tall and
robust. The flowers are pale yellow with dark spots.

134 STUDIES IN GARDENING

Well-grown plants are 4 or 5 ft. high and bear a
dozen or more flowers. It likes a good loamy soil
mixed with leaf-mould, but is said to thrive in stiff
clay if well drained. It suffers from drought if ex-
posed to the full heat of the sun, and should be grown
among low shrubs or herbaceous plants. It will sel-
dom thrive on a bare patch of ground. It is best
planted in early autumn and takes some years to reach
its full beauty; so it should not be disturbed when
once well established. It grows very well in the grass
in half shade at Wisley, and can be raised from seed,
though this is a slow process. It is often called also
L. monadelphum, but this is really a distinct species
with flowers of a darker yellow.

Three North American lilies —L. Canadense, L.
pardalinum, and L. superbum — grow well and in-
crease in a moist soil rich in humus, if they are
protected both from cold winds and from the full
heat of the sun. They like peat well enough, but
prefer it enriched with loam and humus. L. par-
dalinum and L. superbum will grow also in fairly
dry shady places if they are well watered in dry weather.
They do well among shrubs, such as azaleas, rhododen-
drons, kalmias, &c., but they must not be smothered
by them. When the soil is not naturally moist it is
well to plant them in a slight hollow where the water
will be collected and drain down to their roots. Their
chief enemy is drought, and they will not usually
thrive in the ordinary border. They should not be
disturbed when established, and if grown in a suit-

-LILIES 135

able place will increase in beauty and also in num-
bers year after year. L. Canadense grows about three
feet high, and has usually orange yellow flowers.
L. pardalinum and L. superbum will grow 6 ft. high
or more, and their flowers are bright orange scarlet.
L. Grayi is a beautiful lily with crimson drooping
flowers which is said to be a variety of L. Canadense
and also to be not much more difficult to grow.

Lilium giganteum, the tallest of lilies, grows over 10
ft. high. Its flowers are relatively small and not partic-
ularly beautiful in themselves, though the whole effect
of a plant in flower is very fine. It should be planted
in April in a deep soil half loam and half humus, with
the top of the bulb uncovered by soil, and it must
be protected from late frosts and from drought. When
this lily flowers the flowering bulb dies and throws
offsets, which should be taken up and replanted sep-
arately, and which will then flower in a year or two.
It is best to start with small bulbs and not to expect
flowers for a year or two. L. giganteum is a lily for
woodland glades or the wild garden rather than for
the herbaceous border.

Lilium Henryi was only introduced a few years
ago, and is a most valuable lily, perhaps no more
difficult than L. tigrinum. In the shape of its flowers
and in its growth it is like L. speciosum, but the flowers
are deep orange yellow, and it grows to a great height.
It is not particular about soil, but does best perhaps
in deep loam and leaf-mould in a half-shaded place
among low shrubs. It will stand sun, however, much

136 STUDIES IN GARDENING

better than L. speciosum. The bulbs have a remark-
able habit of travelling underground.

Lilium Brownii is a magnificent lily, close to L.
longiflorum, but with white flowers stained on the
outside with brown. It is also much more lasting
than L. longiflorum in our climate, and will often
live for years in a soil of light sandy loam and leaf-
mould and in a sheltered half-shaded place. It will
not do well in cold soils or climates, and cannot endure
stagnant moisture. It may be grown with care in
the border, but is always a little capricious. There
are several varieties of it.

We will pass now to lilies that are usually short-
lived in our climate, though some of them can be
easily grown for a year or two. Of these L. speciosum
is the easiest, and in some places will thrive for a
good many years. It likes a deep soil of leaf-mould,
peat, and loam, and a sheltered situation among low-
growing shrubs. It should be protected from late
frosts, from the extreme heat of the sun, and from
drought. There are a good many varieties of L. specio-
sum, of which Kraetzeri, with pure white flowers, is
one of the best. L. speciosum flowers late in the year,
and should be planted, if possible, with a southerly
aspect, as otherwise the flowers may be spoilt by early
autumn frosts.

L. auratum requires the same culture, but is apt
to die out sooner than L. speciosum. Its variety
platyphyllum is more robust, and will sometimes
last for years in English gardens. The chief reason
why L. auratum and L. speciosum die out is probably

LILIES 137

that our summers are not warm enough for them;
and, since they cannot be exposed to the full heat of
the sun, it is difficult to give them enough warmth.
They do best in warm, sheltered half-shady places,
and should never be planted with a north aspect,
except in very warm parts of the country. They re-
quire a good drainage, and in dry soils it is a good
plan to sink drain-pipes vertically into the ground
among the bulbs to such a depth that water poured
down them will come immediately to the roots at the
base of the bulbs. As they make large stem roots,
they should be planted deep.

Lilium longiflorum, of which there are several
varieties, seldom does well for more than a year or
so in the open. The flowers also suffer much from
heavy rains. It should be treated like L. auratum,
but endures sun better. The variety Takesima is
perhaps the best for outdoor culture. Lilium Krameri
is a magnificent lily with flowers like those of L. longi-
florum, only pink. It is very delicate and should be
grown in a warm, half-shaded place in a soil consist-
ing mainly of rubble, sand, and leaf-mould. The
drainage should be as sharp as possible, and it is well
to surround the bulbs entirely with rubble and sand.
It will sometimes endure for several years if very
carefully grown. L. rubellum, a very small pink lily,
requires the same kind of treatment, but is perhaps
more robust. It does best on a dry, rooty bank, half-
shaded.

Lilium concolor and L. coridion are also small
lilies that often die out in our gardens. They do best

138 STUDIES IN GARDENING

in loam and peat or leaf-mould in a sheltered and
half-shaded place. LL. Leichtlini is a pretty yellow-
spotted lily that should be grown like L. speciosum,
but is very impatient of stagnant moisture. L. tenui-
folium is a most beautiful little lily with scarlet flowers
somewhat like those of L. pomponium, but more
delicate. It is easy enough to grow for one year in
a well-drained, half-shaded place, and in a soil of
loam and leaf-mould. Unfortunately it almost al-
ways dies out after it has flowered once. It is prob-
ably short-lived by nature, but it can be raised quicker
than most lilies from seed; and, since it is one of the
most beautiful of all, this is worth attempting.

A good many North American lilies, though oc-
casionally cultivated in English gardens, are either
very capricious or apparently impossible to grow.
Thus L. Humboldtii and L. Parryi occasionally do
well for a time at least, but they are plants only for
experts. L. Humboldtii appears to thrive in loam
sometimes in the milder and damper parts of the
country, L. Parryi seems to do best in a rather dry,
half-shady place. Other North American lilies, such
as L. Washingtonianum, L. Philadelphicum, and L.
maritimum, have not yet, we believe, been grown
with permanent success anywhere in England, even
by Mr. Wilson at Wisley. It is well to surround the
bulbs of all the more delicate lilies with silver sand
and to place a lump of peat under them so as to en-
courage root action.

THE THEORY OF GARDEN DESIGN
I

HE fact that a third edition of Mr. T. H. Maw-

son’s “Art and Craft of Garden Making” has
lately appeared is a sign that the old naturalistic
ideas of garden design are losing their hold upon the
public; for Mr. Mawson, both in precept and ex-
ample, is altogether against naturalism in gardening.
This does not mean that he is altogether against
nature. His advice, put shortly, is— Never imitate
nature with intent to deceive; but, where there is
natural beauty already in a garden, make use of it.
It is mere pedantry, he says, to condemn all com-
binations of nature and art. “Even in prosaic manu-
factures many successes depend upon nature’s as-
sistance and supplies wisely applied by man, notably
in dyeing and fermentation and many others. An
illustration of frequent occurrence is to be found in
the combination of terrace walls built on the natural
rock which crops out of the ground; a combination
which is most effective when skilfully done. As-
sisting or touching up nature is more a question of
the spirit in which it is done, rather than the prin-
ciple which calls forth criticism.’ This is not ‘very

well expressed, but the meaning is clear and the il-
139

140 STUDIES IN GARDENING

lustration apt. Both naturalists and formalists are
apt to be pedantic in the application of their prin-
ciples. The naturalist forgets that in ninety-nine
gardens out of a hundred nature cannot be plausibly
imitated, even if such imitation were the right aim of
gardening. The formalist forgets that the material
of a garden is for the most part living material and
that there is no necessary incongruity between it and
the living things of nature. A great part of the beauty
of good formal gardening comes from the contrast
between the limited and unchanging forms of things
that are made by man and the variety and unceasing
changes of plant life. The most familiar example
of such a contrast is to be found in ivy or any other
creeper growing up a house or a church or a bridge.
But the beauty is lost or much diminished when the
contrast disappears with any overgrowth of the plant.
If a building is beautiful in itself, it should not be
smothered in creepers; and, even if it is not beautiful,
it has an air of desolation and neglect when so smoth-
ered. There is, of course, a modern fancy for desola-
tion and neglect, which is, no doubt, a reaction against
extreme artificiality of life and the result of a disgust
for the ugliness of most modern things made by man.
It is, in fact, a kind of Byronism of taste; and, as
Byronism was the result of unhealthy living, so this
is the result of unhealthy art. In great ages of art
men have never wished to make their gardens look
like wildernesses or their houses like overgrown ruins.
They have been pleased with their own handiwork,

THE THEORY OF GARDEN DESIGN 141

and confident of their power to improve nature in
subduing her to their own purposes.

In a garden man subdues nature to his own pur-
poses, and to pretend that he is not doing so is mere
affectation. But, at the same time, there is no reason
why he should make an arrogant display of his con-
quest, why he should not use all beautiful accidents
of nature that will not conflict with the aims of his
art. There are some formal gardeners who want all
their plants to look like architectural ornaments,
mere vegetable repetitions of stonework conventions;
and it is an unfortunate piece of luck for them that
nature has produced some trees and plants that look
as if man and not she had made them, and others
that can be easily cut into any shape that takes the
designer’s fancy. The use of these, or the misuse of
them, deprives formal gardening of one of its chief
beauties, that contrast between the forms of architec-
ture and the forms of natural growth of which we
have already spoken. It is just as absurd to attempt
to make plants look like architectural ornaments as
to attempt to make a garden look like a piece of wild
nature, and in each case the absurdity comes from
the same desire to make things seem what they are
not, the desire that produces so many modern kinds
of ugliness. A garden is not a piece of wild nature,
and a plant is not an architectural ornament. All
make-believes of this kind do violence to the essential
character of the material which they use; and, whether
they run into excess of naturalism or excess of formal-

a

142 STUDIES IN GARDENING

ism, they are wrong, because they are unnatural.
But this is not to say that trees or shrubs should never
be clipped. Their treatment must depend upon the
uses to which they are put; and this is the funda-
mental principle of all good garden design. If a plant
is used as an ornament in the garden, then it should
be allowed to grow to its fullest natural beauty. But,
if it is grown for use, then it should be treated in any
way that will make it more useful. Thus, if May-
trees are grown for ornament, they should be allowed
to grow freely, and not be clipped into any artificial
shape, since no artificial shape can be so beautiful
as the natural form of the tree. But, if they are used
as a hedge, they should be clipped to make them serve
their purpose. There is no make-believe in a hedge.
It is, what it professes to be, a vegetable wall or en-
closure, and there is no reason whatever why living
vegetables should not be used for such a purpose as
much as dead vegetables or as minerals. Also, there
is no reason, of course, why trees of all kinds should
not be cut back to enhance the beauty of their natural
growth and blossom, or to prevent them from grow-
ing where they are not wanted. The only rule about
clipping trees or shrubs is that it should always be
done not as unnatural ornament, but for some good
practical reason, and when the reason is obvious the
clipped tree very seldom looks ugly, and often has a
peculiar charm of its own, because it gives evidence
of human care and pains intelligently applied. Thus
a clipped yew pleases us in a narrow cottage garden,

THE THEORY OF GARDEN DESIGN 143

because it is clipped to give space, and even topiary
work in such places is often pleasant enough, since
the clipping is necessary, and the elaborate forms
which it takes are merely expressions of the cottager’s
fancy and of his delight in his work. But there is
no such reason for clipping a yew on a wide expanse
of lawn, and topiary work there is not an expression
of the gardener’s delight in his work, but a mere task
to which he is set by the whim of his employer. There-
fore, we think only of the labour that has been wasted
on it, and take no pleasure in it. The principles thus
applied to the treatment of trees and shrubs should
be applied to all matters of garden design. In laying
out a garden we should consider not what are the rules
of formalism or naturalism, but what is our object
in making a garden and each particular part of it,
and also whether our object is the best possible. The
object of many modern gardeners is purely horti-
cultural, and often it is not even to grow beautiful
flowers, but merely curious or difficult ones. When
that is so, the garden cannot be beautiful, for, if the
gardener does not aim at beauty, he may be sure
that he will not attain it. But, assuming that the
gardener wishes to grow beautiful flowers, we may
further assume, if he has any intelligence, that he
wishes to display their beauty to the best advantage,
and he cannot do this without some grasp of the prin-
ciples of garden design. If he thinks that he has only
to imitate nature, let him remember that nature pro-
duces her own beauty in conditions quite different

144 STUDIES IN GARDENING

from those of any garden. One condition which the
garden eliminates is the struggle for life, with all its
reckless profusion. The gardener is not content that
a plant, when it has flowered and seeded, should take
its chance of being smothered by other plants that
flower later; and all that conflict and smothering,
which delight him at their most beautiful moments
in woodland and meadow as evidences of the prodigal-
ity of nature, would vex him in a garden, as mere
signs of idleness and neglect. Also, the plants in a
garden are not, like wild plants, all natives of one
country and harmonious either by association or by
some natural law. They come from many different
countries and natural conditions, and, unless arranged
with care, often look incongruous together. There-
fore, even if the gardener’s one desire is to grow beau-
tiful plants and to display their beauty to the best
advantage, he must, at any rate, design his arrange-
ment of them on some principle both horticultural
and esthetic, and he will often find it difficult to draw
a sharp line between the horticultural and the esthetic
problem. Both the health and the beauty of a plant
are spoilt if it is smothered; and a plant which grows
naturally in some peculiar conditions will often neither
thrive nor look well in ordinary conditions and among
plants that grow naturally in such conditions.
Directly the gardener begins to consider not merely
the beauty of the plant in itself, but the question of
its environment as affecting that beauty, he is drawn
into the whole question of garden design, at least in

THE THEORY OF GARDEN DESIGN 145

so far as it concerns the arrangement of plants, and
then at once he finds that the naturalistic theory fails
him. He cannot imitate nature in the arrangement
of plants that have their native homes in different
continents and may never have made each other’s
acquaintance until they meet in his garden, and, if
he attempts no arrangement at all, he will find that
he has produced a chaos far uglier than the worst
failures of nature, which are often ugly enough —
the kind of chaos which is found in the ordinary mixed
shrubbery of a suburban garden. It is plain, there-
fore, that even the gardener who cares for nothing
but his flowers, and thinks of his garden only as a
place to grow flowers in, must yet consider design, if
he is to display them to the best advantage. The
original and true meaning of design is merely pur-
pose. The gardener who designs his garden has an
zsthetic purpose, and therefore goes further than
nature, which, in the arrangement of plants, so far
as we can tell, has no esthetic purpose at all. But
directly he begins to consider the design, even if he
consider it only from the point of view of his flowers,
he will find that he can have no design without some
degree of formality. He wishes, for instance, for some
contrast between two plants of very different char-
acter, so that the beauty of both may be enhanced.
That contrast will probably be insignificant in only
one example. He must either, therefore, repeat it
at intervals along a border, or else emphasize it by
the use of a good many plants of the two contrasting

146 STUDIES IN GARDENING

kinds, arranged together in one place. In either case
there will be some formality in his arrangement.
Some of the most eloquent advocates of natural gar-
dening have devised the most elaborate and often
excellent schemes for the planting of borders, and,
the better their schemes are, the more formality there
is in them. They protest against the word formality,
because it makes them think of carpet bedding and
ribbon borders; but these are only coarse and art-
less examples of formality. A fine formal design does
not catch the eye and drag it along a long line of dis-
cordant colours. It has its splendours and its quiet
places, its multitudinous and solitary beauties, its
contrasts and its harmonies both of form and of colour,
like a picture by Titian. It may not look formal,
but, if it is both restful and exciting to the eye, rais-
ing expectations only to gratify them, we may be
sure, and we shall discover by a little analysis, that
it has a formal basis, like a great piece of music that at
a first hearing may seem to be a wilderness of beauti-
ful sound. The present writer has always found that
any arrangement of plants which has struck him by
its beauty has been based upon the repetition of cer-
tain dominant features, and such a basis is formal,
although it is also found in the best effects of nature.
Nature supplies motives for design as she supplics
material, but because they are accidental in her we
are not to suppose that they will come by accident
in the garden. So far we have spoken only of design
in the arrangement of flowers, on the assumption

THE THEORY OF GARDEN DESIGN 147

that the garden is to be considered only as a place
for plants. In another article we will speak of design
on the assumption that the garden is also a place for
human beings, an assumption which must, of course,
have a considerable influence on the treatment of
flowers in it.

II

It is only in modern times that the garden has
come to be thought of as a home for flowers and not
for human beings. Mr. Mawson in his “Art and
Craft of Garden Making” says that the medieval
and Renaissance gardeners regarded the garden as
a “becoming setting to the mansion.” The landscape
gardeners, beginning with Capability Brown, ignored
the home altogether in their designs, and also its
inhabitants. Civilized human beings were anachro-
nisms in their gardens, though Adam and Eve, in fine
summer weather, might have harmonized with them.
They were realists, Mr. Mawson says, and the older
designers were idealists. But in this case, as in many
others, common sense was with the idealists, since
their idealism was based upon plain facts. Gardens,
they knew, were meant to be inhabited, so far as our
climate would allow, by civilized human beings; and
they tried to make them as convenient as possible
for that purpose. The landscape gardeners, forget-
ting this fact, made their gardens as unhomely as
they could. They also had far less interest in horti-
culture than the earlier designers. They were in-

148 STUDIES IN GARDENING

clined to leave that, like everything else, to nature.
But, in spite of them, the deep-rooted English delight
in flowers persisted and increased all through the
nineteenth century; and since it was no longer con-
trolled by the old principles of garden design, the
cultivation of flowers became the chief purpose of
pleasure gardening, until at the present day most
people would stare if it were suggested to them that
pleasure gardening ought to have any other purpose.
And yet it is plain enough that a pleasure garden is
meant to give pleasure to human beings and should
be designed with that object. Let it be as beautiful
as it can be made, since beauty is one of the main
elements of pleasure, but let its beauty, like that of
a living room, be controlled by use. Have as many
flowers as you like, but think of them, not as the
reason for the garden’s existence, but as its ornaments,
as you would think of the ornaments of a living room.
A museum may be interesting, but it is not a place
to live in; nor yet is a garden that is a mere museum
of plants. If garden designers would forget the quarrel
about formal and realistic gardens and design only
for pleasure and comfort they would avoid many
of the errors into which they commonly fall. If pleasure
and comfort were their main objects they would al-
ways make the best of existing conditions. They
would not try to turn a suburban slip of ground into
a wilderness or a wild hillside into a tea garden. Their
problem would be simplified, because it would become
concrete instead of abstract, just as the painter’s

THE THEORY OF GARDEN DESIGN 149

problem is simplified when he has to decorate a given
space instead of painting pictures at large.

sthetic problems are always most successfully
solved when they are not purely esthetic; and it is be-
cause the problem of garden designs has become purely
esthetic that it now seems so difficult. If the designer,
instead of asking himself where he should place his
herbaceous border and where his rock-garden or his
rosary or his plantations of flowering shrubs, were to
consider how best he could contrive places of coolness
and shade for the summer and sheltered sunny walks
for the winter, he would find that his ssthetic and
horticultural problems were beginning to solve them-
selves. Flowers he would use as decoration and,
using them so, he would soon discover a principle
for their arrangement. Trees and shrubs he would
employ mainly for use, to give shelter and shade;
and therefore he would avoid the random planting
of them now so common. He would also avoid ex-
cesses of formalism, since he would not clip those
trees or shrubs that were planted for shade, but only
those which needed clipping that they might grow
close for shelter. He would be very sparing in his
use of what are called ‘ornamental conifers,’ now
so often misused by formalists and naturalists alike.
He would not plant a row of Thujas in front of a yew
hedge because he wished to advertise the fact that he
was a formalist; nor would he dot them anyhow about
a lawn for no reason whatever. Monkey Puzzles he
would leave for gardens where there are monkeys to

150 STUDIES IN GARDENING

puzzle. It is in the treatment of trees and shrubs
that naturalistic gardening has failed most com-
pletely, since it has forgotten their uses and treated
them as mere instruments of illusion. As Mr. Maw-
son says, they should be employed for use, and there
should be no concealment of the fact that they are so
employed. “The various flower gardens or tennis lawns
. . would have their divisions, whether hedges or
other arrangement, so treated as to express at once
their use. To get shade, instead of creating it entirely
by means of loose masses or clumps of trees, he (the
designer) would obtain it by means of alleys, covered
bowers, pergolas, or avenues, each of which would
show at once the designer’s intention.” The ordinary
mixed shrubbery certainly does not show at once
the designer’s intention, since as a rule he has no in-
tention whatever, except to find a place for shrubs;
nor does it usually serve any useful purpose, since it
provides neither shelter nor shade. Its purpose, in
fact, is purely esthetic, and in ninety-nine cases out
of a hundred it fails entirely in that purpose, as a mere
hotch-potch of decorative objects must usually fail.
Mr. Mawson insists that the main lines of a gar-
den should usually be straight, or as straight as they
can be made; and this is a safe rule to follow, pro-
vided the designer does not make a fetish of it. They
should be straight, not because we are growing tired
of the fashion of curving lines, but so that they may
express the designer’s purpose as simply and plainly
as possible. A path, for instance, if it is a means of

THE THEORY OF GARDEN DESIGN 151

providing a dry passage from one part of the garden
to another, should be straight so that it may be short.
But when a garden is designed to be a mere assemblage
of decorative features, flower-beds and shrubberies
and rosaries and rock gardens, then naturally the
paths will wind about from one feature to another,
expressing by their wanderings the designer’s lack
of purpose. In the same way a hedge will be straight
if it is meant to provide a sheltered, sunny aspect,
and trees will be planted in an avenue or an alley if
they are meant to provide shade. But if they have
no such definite purpose they will be arranged ac-
cording to the whim of the designer or the fashion.
which happens to be in favour with him. Straight
walks, straight hedges, and straight avenues may be
ugly enough, and are always ugly when they are de-
signed without any purpose or coherence; and it is
certainly true that a want of purpose can be better
concealed with curving lines, which is, perhaps, the
true reason why they have become so popular. But
the use of straight lines is a wholesome discipline to
the designer, since, if he lacks purpose, they will never
conceal the fact from him or from any one else, and his
design will look silly, if it is silly; whereas, we are
now all so used to naturalistic designs without use or
purpose that we never even ask ourselves what their
meaning may be. We are inured to misplaced shrub-
beries, but we are not inured to misplaced hedges or
avenues, and can still apply some principle of criti-
cism to them.

152 STUDIES IN GARDENING

To design with purpose, therefore, and to express
your purpose clearly in your design, is in one way
much more difficult than to make an arbitrary arrange-
ment of flowers, grass, trees, and shrubs; but in an-
other it is much easier. It is more difficult because
the main lines of the design must be clearly thought
out and fixed before a sod is turned, and because there
must be a good reason for all of them. It is easier
because, when once these main lines are determined,
the details of decoration will be more or less clearly
suggested by them, and so the problem of flower and
shrub arrangement will be very much simplified. In
a garden well planned for use and pleasure there will
be room for flowers of all kinds arranged in many
different ways. If, for instance, there is a nut walk
for shade or any kind of alley made by deciduous
trees, there may be Bluebells or Solomon’s Seal, or
any other suitable flowers, planted naturally under
the trees. There will be no incongruity in them merely
because the trees are regularly arranged.

When there is a straight path leading to a summer-
house it will be natural to have a border on each side
of it, since it is one of the pleasures of a garden to
walk between flowers. According to the principles
of naturalistic gardening, summer-houses were de-
signed to be homes for earwigs rather than for human
beings, and, considering their ugliness and incon-
venience, it was only right that they should be hidden
away, as they usually were, where no one could see
them. But if a garden is to contain a summer-house

THE THEORY OF GARDEN DESIGN 153

at all, that summer-house should surely be both use-
ful and beautiful, and should be placed where its use
and beauty will be greatest. There is something
prosaic and superfluous about a summer-house close
to a house. It should, if possible, be at the other end
of the garden and where it will command a good view
of the garden. Then the path connecting it with the
house will be one of the main features of the design.
Perhaps there may be a border on each side of this
path for its whole distance, so that there shall be a
vista of flowers all the way from the drawing-room
window to the summer-house. The summer-house
itself, also, should have its front, at least, thickset
with flowers, just as there should be flowers close
round the house. It is a common defect of purely
horticultural and naturalistic gardens that flowers
are seldom placed in them where they can be most
easily enjoyed by the inhabitants of the house. Flowers
should be concentrated, if possible, where they can be
seen and smelt from the drawing-room windows, and
in places arranged for the comfort of human beings.
Sunk Dutch gardens are such places; and their formal-
ity is the result, not of mere fashion, but of the desire
to make a pleasant outdoor home both for flowers
and for human beings who wish to enjoy them. Their
clipped yew hedges give shelter to both, and the fact
that they sink in regular stages ensures different con-
ditions to suit different plants. It provides sharp
drainage above and moisture below. In fact a sunk
Dutch garden is only a kind of formalized sunk rockery;

154 STUDIES IN GARDENING

and it is formalized because it considers human beings
as well as plants. A great many rock plants may be
grown in it so that their beauty will show to the great-
est advantage. In fact, now that we have so many
rock plants, unknown to our ancestors or neglected
by them, Dutch gardens may be made more beau-
tiful than ever before, with sheets of Lithospermum
prostratum interspersed with Arenaria montana, with
contrasts of Silene alpestris and Campanula muralis
or of Veronica prostrata and the yellow Helianthemum.
All these will harmonize with the blind bow-boy or
the dancing fountain just as well as the customary
duller plants; and their flowers will shine as much
against smooth masonry as against rough-hewn rocks.
A Dutch garden is intended for the display of flowers
in detail, and no better place has ever been contrived
for that purpose.

There is one great advantage which the modern
designer has over his predecessors, and that is in the
use which he can make of steep banks and slopes.
These, since they are obviously inconvenient resting-
places for human beings, should be treated by the
designer as spaces to be decorated. The older de-
signers, apparently, despaired of decorating them
with flowers, and therefore built them up, when they
had the money, with walls —a very costly process.
The naturalists usually covered them with turf or
with the few varieties of shrubs, usually ugly and
uninteresting, that would thrive on them. But now,
luckily, we know of many beautiful flowers that will

THE THEORY OF GARDEN DESIGN 155

thrive on them; and therefore it is only right and
natural to cover them with such flowers, using rocks
where they are needed, to protect the plants from
drought and to prevent the soil from washing away.
The rock garden is always a difficult problem in gar-
den design, and many people who cannot do without
the beauty of Alpine flowers make no attempt to
solve it. They place their rock garden in any place
horticulturally convenient without considering whether
it has any congruity with the rest of their design.
In some cases this cannot be helped. If your garden
is all flat, and if you must have a rock garden, no
art will make it agree with formal surroundings. But
if there are any steep slopes in your garden, some
wildness in the planting of them will appear natural
even if everything else is formal; and, even if they
seem suitable to the growth only of the easier rock
plants, they can usually by a little contrivance be
arranged so as to provide homes for the more delicate
Alpines. Yet this obvious use of natural slopes is
often neglected where there are rock gardens placed
in the most unnatural and incongruous positions.
Garden designers, in spite of the naturalistic move-
ment, are still unwilling to take the line of least re-
sistance, and would rather do violence to nature,
even when professing to imitate her, than adapt her
to their own purposes and coax her into the service
of man.

SOME DETAILS OF SUMMER GARDENING

T the end of June the garden is in its prime,
and the gardener is supposed to enjoy the fruit

of his labours. Yet there is plenty for him to do if
he cares to do it, and he can find for himself a hun-
dred little tasks besides weeding and watering, the
performance of which will make all the difference to
the future beauty and even well-being of his plants.
This is the time, for instance, for attending to spring
flowers that have now gone out of bloom. The gar-
dener should seize the opportunity of wet weather to di-
vide all spring flowering plants which need dividing, for
it is much better to do this now when the plants have
the whole summer to recover in than in the autumn,
when they have no time to make new growth. There
are a great many Primulas, such as P. denticulata,
P. rosea, P. Sikkimensis, P. Japonica, and even Prim-
roses and Polyanthuses, which deteriorate quickly
unless they are divided when their crowns begin to
multiply; and it is only safe to divide the more deli-
cate of these soon after they have flowered. Auric-
ulas, too, and many kinds of Alpine Primulas are the
better for occasional division and replanting, and
this is the time to do it, provided they can be pro-
tected from drought afterwards. This applies also

to many spring-flowering plants which flower best
156

DETAILS OF SUMMER GARDENING 157

from a single crown, as, for instance, to the double
Daisies, which need to be divided and replanted every
year, especially in light soils, if they are not to de-
teriorate quickly, and to the delicate little Morisia
hypogzea, one of the best early-flowering plants for
the rock garden, and one which many gardeners com-
plain that they cannot keep long in health. The
reason usually is that they are afraid to disturb it,
since it is a deep-rooting plant. They therefore allow
it to form a number of crowns, which it does very
quickly, and which crowd each other in a narrow in-
terstice between the rocks, with the result that it
grows feebler every year. It should be taken up as
soon as it has gone out of flower, and after all the
crowns have been carefully divided they should be
planted separately in cool places between the rocks
and in fresh deep compost of loam and leaf mould.
There are many spring flowering plants which need
the same treatment especially in light or poor soil,
and the gardener can usually discover which they
are by observation. When he sees that a plant breaks
up into a number of crowns after a year or two and
begins to flower poorly, then he may be pretty sure
that the only possible remedy for its deterioration is
division. Division, of course, may kill the plant,
but it is always worth trying when the only alter-
native is deterioration. Aquilegia glandulosa and its
beautiful hybrid A. Stuartii are plants which often
die out or cease to flower after a year or two in the
south of England, and the only remedy for this is

158 STUDIES IN GARDENING

careful division as soon as they have gone out of
flower. By this means they may often be perpetuated
and a good stock of plants may be obtained; but
division or any kind of disturbance in the autumn
usually results in their death. It may seem strange
that plants should need such artificial means to keep
them in health in gardens, when they flourish in a state
of nature without any help except from nature; but
it must be remembered that they grow wild only in
conditions naturally most favourable to them, and
that many of them have very short lives and never
reach that perfection which we demand of them in
gardens. Nature’s chief object is that they should
reproduce themselves, and, provided they do this,
she is careless what becomes of them afterwards.
But in the garden we do not always wish them to re-
produce themselves. We may have enough of a par-
ticular plant, or we may have a particular variety
which will not come true from seed, and we may there-
fore wish it to spend its energy in making new growth
rather than in ripening seed. The ripening of seed
is the most exhausting process that a plant undergoes,
and there are many plants that kill or permanently
weaken themselves by profuse seed-bearing. Such
plants may often be saved from death by the removal
of their flowers as soon as they wither; and even true
perennials are often much benefited by such removal.
There are a great many evergreen plants that soon
grow straggling and unkempt if they are never cut
back, and the time to cut them back is when they

DETAILS OF SUMMER GARDENING 159

have just gone out of flower, so that they may be
freed from the strain of seed-bearing. If this is done,
they will usually soon make a vigorous new growth
and look fresh and green again by early autumn;
some of them, too, will flower a second time. Among
such plants are Aubrietia, Saponaria ocymoides,
Veronica prostrata, the Helianthemums, many kinds
of pinks, the smaller Achilleas, Alyssum saxatile, the
Cerastiums, the Creeping Phloxes, and Iberis sem-
pervirens and its varieties. Cutting back is not neces-
sary for any of these plants, as they are all fairly vigor-
ous perennials; but they are greatly improved in
vigour and appearance by it, and some of them, such
as the Helianthemums, will live much longer for it.
Pansies and Violas, too, are the better for cutting
back as soon as they grow leggy. If they do not
suffer from drought after the operation they will soon
make vigorous new growth, which will prolong the
life of the pansies; and, in the case of the Violas, will
provide an abundance of cuttings.

But there are no plants that benefit more by cut-
ting back than profuse flowering shrubs, and many of
them often suffer much in our gardens from the want
of it. This is particularly the case with shrubs which
are not very hardy, such as the Cistuses. These will
often survive a hard winter if they are cut back as
soon as they have flowered and never allowed to grow
straggly. The cutting back not only saves them from
the exhaustion of bearing seed, but also seems to con-
centrate their vigour. There are many shrubs, too,

160 STUDIES IN GARDENING

like most of the brooms, that are not very long-lived
by nature, but live much longer if they are cut back
after flowering. Cutting back is particularly useful
in a poor soil, when shrubs are always apt to get
straggly, especially if it is accompanied by a mulching
of manure or leaf-mould to encourage new growth.
When a shrub seems to be doing badly, it will often
take a new turn if it is cut back and mulched in early
summer, and this is particularly the case with Rhodo-
dendrons and Azaleas. If they are cut back at all
hard they will probably not flower the next year,
but they may be transformed into sturdy compact
plants, and one year’s blossom is a small price to pay
for that. Roses, too, especially in a light soil, may
often be much benefited if they are cut back after
their first flush of bloom, but the gardener must not
hack at his Roses, or, indeed, at any shrubs or plants,
blindly. He must always be quite clear in his mind
before he does anything as to the reason why he pro-
poses to do it. His object in trimming a shrub may
be merely to prevent it from seeding, in which case
he will only cut away all the heads of the flowers.
Or it may be also to promote a vigorous new growth
by the removal of shoots which have done the duty
for the year by bearing flowers, in which case he will
cut away not only the flower heads, but also the shoots
which bear them, so far as they seem to be exhausted
by the process. Or he may wish to thin a shrub that
is getting crowded by the removal of the older and
weaker wood. The first of these operations may be

DETAILS OF SUMMER GARDENING 161

performed on all roses after their early summer bloom;
the second on roses, such as the dwarf polyanthus,
which throw up shoots bearing crowded heads of
bloom; the third on the many roses that flower only
once in the summer. These roses should not be pruned
at all except when they are first planted, or if they
seem not to be thriving; but all roses that are not
pruned at all, or are pruned but little, need to have
their older wood cut away at intervals. Those who
grow roses as flowering shrubs and not as mere flower-
producing machines will naturally prune them as little
as possible, since a rose that is cut hard back every
spring will never have time to grow into a shapely
plant, unless it is a very vigorous variety in a very
rich soil. Luckily, most roses will flower well enough
for garden purposes without very severe pruning.
But when roses are little pruned there is the more
need to trim and to thin them, and judicious trim-
ming and thinning, done not only in the spring or au-
tumn, but also after their first flush of bloom, is one
of the chief secrets of success with them and with
many other flowering shrubs. There is no routine
about such trimming and thinning. In each case the
gardener must exercise his common sense and be
guided by observation and experiment. It is always
safe to cut out old wood that seems to have lost its
vitality, or even younger shoots that seem exhausted
by an excess of blossom. But some roses throw up
new growth much quicker than others; and some
throw up shoots bearing only masses of bloom which,

162 STUDIES IN GARDENING

as soon as the bloom is over, seem to have fulfilled
their use. Such shoots may be treated like the flower-
ing shoots of herbaceous plants and cut down as soon
as their flowers are all withered, to encourage the pro-
duction of new flowering shoots. Other roses make
new wood more slowly and their wood is more en-
during, bearing several crops of blossom in the same
year, or year after year. But in nearly all roses the
~ wood deteriorates in time and should be cut away to
encourage new growth; and this operation is best
done after the blossom is over.

There is some difference of opinion about the cut-
ting back of herbaceous plants and the extent to which
it should be carried. No one, of course, would cut a
shrub back hard except in the early spring or late
autumn, since the spring is the time at which it makes
its new growth, and if it is cut back hard in the sum-
mer it may make no new growth and suffer for want
of leaves to absorb food from the air. Whatever
cutting back is done in the summer must leave enough
growth to perform this function. This precaution
must also be taken to some extent with herbaceous
plants. But most of them throw up new growth much
more quickly than most shrubs; some, indeed, such
as Oriental Poppies, throw it up so quickly that they
suffer very little if they are cut back very hard after
flowering. Others, however, are slower in growing
afresh and are weakened if they are cut down to the
ground, especially if all their growth has been thrown
into flowering stems, so that few or no leaves remain

DETAILS OF SUMMER GARDENING 163

when these are removed. Such plants as, for instance,
Larkspurs should only be cut down to within about a
foot of the ground, so as to leave them with some
leafage to absorb food from the air, just as bulbous
plants ought not to be cut down until the bulbs are
matured for the next year. Many herbaceous plants,
if they are thus carefully cut down, will throw up
new shoots and flower again in the autumn, since the
cutting down relieves them of the strain of seed bear-
ing. But this second bloom puts a yet greater strain
on them, and they must be well fed if they are not
to suffer from it. It is, therefore, a good plan to give
a mulch of some rich material, such as manure or
vegetable matter, to all plants of which a second crop
of bloom is expected after the first crop of bloom is
over. Such a mulch will also protect them from
drought through July and August. Mulches, espe-
cially of manure, are often applied at the wrong time.
Thus in a light soil all the nourishment of a mulch
applied in autumn often drains away before it can
benefit the plants; while a mulch of manure applied
in early spring, especially on heavy soils, often does
more harm than good if the weather is cold and damp,
since it holds the moisture and cripples the young
spring growth of the plants, and also harbours slugs
and snails. The best time for a mulch, therefore, is
when the plants most need immediate nourishment
and protection from drought — that is to say, in
the height of summer and during or just after their
blooming time. Such a mulch, especially on light

164 STUDIES IN GARDENING

soils, is better than liquid manure, since it gives pro-
tection from drought as well as nourishment; and,
if it consists of spent manure from a hotbed, it will
not be disagreeable either to the nose or to the eyes.

THE RIGHT USE OF ANNUALS

NNUALS are always apt to be a difficulty in
the garden, especially for those who attempt

to solve the real problems of gardening. Many of
them, such as Nemophila, Shirley Poppies, and Love-
in-a-Mist, are so beautiful that one cannot do with-
out them; yet they flower but a short time, occupy
a good deal of space, and leave an unsightly blank
when they cease to flower. They are not like some
perennial plants, such as the Pinks, which are beau-
tiful even after their short flowering season is over.
They have their little period of beauty, and then they
give themselves up to business, the business of seed-
ing. They seem to know that their lives must be
short, and, therefore, to be utterly taken up with
the task of the moment. When the time comes for
them to think of posterity, they think of nothing else.
They are like poor young mothers who grow haggard
quickly in the nursery; and in the garden one has
no room for haggard things. One does not wish to
be reminded of autumn and the shadow of death in
full summer, and therefore one is inclined to clear
annuals away as soon as they go out of flower. But
if a great bed of Poppies is rooted up in August, what
is to take their place? Blank spaces at that time of

year are a reproach to the gardener, a proof that he
165

166 STUDIES IN GARDENING

has failed in the chief problem of his craft. They do
not matter so much in a very large garden, where you
can have a series of displays for different seasons of
the year; but in a small one, where they cannot be
ignored, they matter a great deal. In a small garden
the problem of annuals may well seem insoluble, and,
indeed, it is insoluble if they are grown in the ordinary
way. ‘The great mistake which most people make
with annuals is that they treat them too seriously,
as seriously as Roses or Carnations, or any of the main
and permanent ornaments of a garden. There has
lately appeared an excellent book upon the culture
of annuals; indeed, one of the best gardening books
of our time.! The author of it, Mr. C. M. A. Peake,
has obviously a great knowledge of his subject, which
he imparts very clearly and concisely. There is no
fault whatever to be found with his book except that
he takes annuals too seriously. True, in his preface
he says that the main use of annuals, at least of hardy
annuals, is to fill a garden quickly with bloom, where
for some reason or other the gardener cannot wait
for the slower glories of perennials; and in such a
case, no doubt, it is right to take annuals very seriously.
But there are some annuals that one cannot do without
even in permanent gardens, and yet few can give
them either the space or the labour which would
be necessary on Mr. Peake’s system of cultivation.
He advises that a bed be prepared by deep digging

1“A Concise Handbook of Garden Annual and Biennial Plants.” By
C. M. A. Peake.

THE RIGHT USE OF ANNUALS 167

and manuring in autumn, that if the soil is sour it
be dug out to a depth of 3 ft., and that a 6 in. layer
of stones be put in for drainage, with better soil to
fill up, and so on. Now, all his advice is very good,
and, if it is followed, the result, no doubt, will be
very fine flowers. But there are few gardeners who
will be ready to take all these pains over annuals.
If they prepare a bed thus elaborately, they will look
for some permanent reward for their preparations.
And yet Mr. Peake is right when he says that an-
nuals need kind treatment, and that without it many
of them are not worth growing. The problem, there-
fore, is to give them kind treatment and yet not to
waste all that treatment upon a display of a few weeks
in the summer; and this problem is not insoluble.
To solve it we should observe the manner in which
annuals grow naturally. Nature does not sow them
in spring and in masses all by themselves. Their seed
falls as soon as it is ripe, in summer or autumn, and it
is scattered about among other and perennial plants.
Now we must not attempt to imitate the recklessness
and uncalculating profusion of nature in our garden-
ing; we must not, like her, sow seed in stony places
or where thorns will spring up and choke it; our an-
nuals should be sown, as all our plants should be
planted, in borders properly prepared, so that we
may have as little waste and failure as possible. But
the gardener’s business is to imitate the successes of
nature as well as to avoid her failures. There is no
reason whatever why, with a little calculation and

168 STUDIES IN GARDENING

contrivance, we should not grow our annuals among
other plants as nature grows them, why they should
not fill up blank spaces just when they are needed,
and why they should not be overgrown as soon as
their flowering time is over. It is true that by grow-
ing them on this plan we cannot have the great masses
of one single kind of flower which the present taste
approves. But the present taste is a little too timid
about mixtures and contrasts of colour. Few of those
who advise upon the colour arrangement of flowers
seem to be aware that nearly all colours go well to-
gether in a garden, if only they are thoroughly mixed
up. It is the half-hearted contrasts, where only two
or three colours are employed, and those the wrong
ones, that are really ugly. The Orientals know more
about colour than we do, and in their colouring they
imitate the audacity and profusion of nature. It is
true, also, that if we mix up annuals with other plants,
some of the annuals will probably be smothered.
But this cannot be helped. Annuals are cheap, and
the gardeners who take them most seriously thin
them out most relentlessly. If we can leave it to
nature to do the thinning, so much the better.

Now nature will do the thinning for us thoroughly’
enough, sometimes too thoroughly, if we sow our
annuals as she does, in the late summer or autumn.
There is always a risk in doing this — a risk so great
as to be scarcely worth running on very heavy soils.
But on fairly light ones it is worth taking, since an-
nuals are cheap. Gardeners are curiously timorous

THE RIGHT USE OF ANNUALS 169

about sowing in the autumn, and it is commonly sup-
posed that only a few kinds will survive the winter
if this is done. Yet the present writer has found that
even Phacelia campanularia, commonly supposed to
be a rather delicate annual, will often live through
the winter, if it is sown early enough, on a fairly light
soil and in a light place. Indeed, it will flourish in
a garden year after year from self-sown seedlings;
and so will Love-in-a-Mist and Collomia coccinea,
an excellent and little known annual, and Linaria
Maroccana, to say nothing of Nemophila and Bar-
tonia aurea, and Eschscholtzia and Cornflowers, and
other annuals which are often left to seed themselves
in our gardens.

It is always risky, however, to trust to self-sown
seedlings. They may not come up when you want
them, and you do not know where they are until
they germinate. Yet many people who observe that
self-sown seedlings always do better than seed which
they have sown will not make the obvious deduction
from that fact. They think that there is some mys-
tery in the process of natural sowing; whereas the
fact is merely that nature sows at the right season,
and that her seedlings, thinned out by her winter
severities, have time to grow strong and root deeply
before the summer heats.

It is worth while, therefore, to experiment largely
with autumn or late summer sowing, especially on
light soils, since the experiments will be cheap in any
case, and failures can be easily remedied in the spring.

170 STUDIES IN GARDENING

There are some annuals, such as Nemophila, which
become spring flowers of the greatest value if they
are sown in autumn.! There are others, such as Corn-
flowers, Sweet Sultan, Eschscholtzia, Poppies, and
the annual Saponarias and Silenes, which very sel-
dom do so well from a spring as from an autumn sow-
ing. But the sowing must not be too late. The plants
must have time to get some strength before the winter
comes, and, therefore, most of them should be sown
in September as early as possible. It is, of course,
but little use to sow them when the weather is hot
and dry, unless they can be thoroughly and frequently
watered. Therefore, when there is a September
drought, it is best to wait until it breaks up. Then
sow annuals, not in great masses where they will leave
a blank space when they die, but in any vacant patch
in the border, and particularly in places occupied
by dormant bulbs, such as Tulips, Daffodils, Spanish
and English Irises. The lower growing annuals will
do no harm to these, and, if the bulbs in their spring
growth overshadow them a little, it will not matter
much. Then, again, those annuals which are best
sown in spring, such as Nasturtiums, can also be sown
among bulbs, and the bulbs will often give them pro-
tection from late frosts, while afterwards their flowers

1 Autumn sowing of annuals is not generally to be advised in the United
States. In an interesting experiment, however, near Chicago in the spring
of 1916, seeds of the following autumn-planted annuals were highly suc-
cessful; Delphinium, Hunnemannia fumariefolia, Calendula, Calliopsis
Drummondi, Antirrhinum, Brachycome iberidifolia, Candytuft, Erysimum
Perofskianum. L. Y. K.

THE RIGHT USE OF ANNUALS 171

will take the place of those of the bulbs. Or these
spring-sown annuals may be placed among autumn
Crocuses if the Crocuses are not too thickly planted,
and then their season will be over and they can be
cleared away just when the Crocuses begin to throw
up their bloom. When annuals, such as Nemophila,
Silene, and Saponaria, are sown so as to flower in
spring, their places can be taken in turn by the more
delicate half-hardy annuals or bedding plants that are
put out at the beginning of June. It seems to the
present writer that these half-hardy things are often
unjustly decried, because they are nearly always mis-
used. The common practice is to plant them in masses,
so that large spaces of the garden have to undergo vio-
lent changes and the ugliness that must result from
such changes, often when the garden ought to be in
its prime. The real use of half-hardy things, whether
perennials or annuals, is to fill up blank spaces in the
border, caused by the dying down of spring bulbs or by
any mischance. There is no reason whatever why you
should always plant fifty Cannas, or ivy-leaved Gera-
niums, or Tobacco plants, where you plant one, or why
one part of the garden should be filled only with hardy
and another with half-hardy plants. There is no neces-
sary incongruity between plants that are hardy and
plants that are tender. It is merely convention that
keeps them apart, as we may see from the Dahlia and
the Gladiolus, which are half-hardy plants usually
treated in a rational way and placed among hardy
plants in the border. If we treat other half-hardy

172 STUDIES IN GARDENING

plants thus, especially the best half-hardy annuals,
we shall find them most useful, and we shall avoid
the awkward intervals of ugliness inevitable with the
ordinary bedding system. There are gardeners who
have a nervous fear of growing anything near their
Roses, even if they do not grow Roses for show. There-
fore, they keep the soil about their Roses bare, with
the consequence that their Rose beds look ugly for
most of the year. But Rose beds can be covered with
low-growing plants without injury to the Roses, if
the soil is well fed; and annuals, especially half-hardy
annuals, are particularly suited to this purpose, because
the soil can be thoroughly enriched before they are
planted out and after they are removed, and also be-
cause their roots usually have not time to grow deep
and thick and to impoverish the ground seriously.
Half-hardy annuals can be combined with spring bulbs,
such as Tulips, and in such a case bedding, both
spring and summer, has a very good reason for its ex-
istence. But annuals bedded out in this way must not
be too tall or strong-growing, lest they keep light and
air from the Roses. Excellent ones for the purpose,
both because they are low-growing and because their
colours can usually be arranged to harmonize with
those of the Roses, are Ageratum, Dianthus Heddewigii,
Nemesia in pink and white shades, Phlox Drummondii,
and Verbena. No doubt the gardener who shows his
Roses is right to grow nothing else near them; he re-
gards the Rose, not as a beautiful flowering shrub, but
as a flower producing machine. Those for whom the

THE RIGHT USE OF ANNUALS 173

Rose is the chief of our flowering shrubs should grow
it in beautiful surroundings, and they can do this only
if they cover the ground about it with other beautiful
plants.

We have given a few suggestions for the use and
treatment of annuals, and they are all based upon the
idea that the annual should be employed as a stop-
gap, not as a main feature of the garden. Since it
is a transitory thing, it should not be treated as if it
were permanent. It has its peculiar advantages, and
it should be employed so as to make the most of these,
and also so as to make the least of its peculiar disad-
vantages. It is quick to come and also. quick to go.
Therefore, use it for emergencies. It takes some skill
and experience to do this cleverly, but the gardener
who can learn how to do it will add a new pleasure to
gardening and a new beauty to his garden.

LATE SUMMER AND AUTUMN IN THE ROCK
GARDEN

OST mountain plants flower in spring and early

summer. In the higher altitudes, of course,
they begin late, as “the spring comes slowly up that
way,” and last well into August. But our rock gar-
dens are not in the higher altitudes, and Alpine plants
in them usually flower earlier than in their native
homes. A rock garden may have many flowers in
March, and its greatest profusion of bloom will prob-
ably come about the middle of June with the flower-
ing of the Pinks. Then a decline will set in, gradual
at first, but rapid in July; and in August many rock
gardens contain but few flowers except the last of the
Campanulas, especially if the summer is hot and dry.
This is certainly a defect; and it is one which cannot
be altogether overcome, though it may be lessened
with a little contrivance. It is in the later months
of the summer that one begins to appreciate the value
of those plants and shrubs which do not lose their
fresh colour and compact habit after flowering. There
are many rock plants which spend all their energy
and beauty for the year in blooming, and when their
bloom is over look weedy and dishevelled. A rock
garden filled with these is a dull sight by August,

however splendid it may be in June. Such plants
174

THE ROCK GARDEN 175

are often the better both in health and in appear-
ance for being cut back; but even then they have
an ugly cropped look for some time; and one wants
a rock garden to look always both neat and natural.

There are luckily a good many plants, often not
very conspicuous in their flowers, and some of them
apt not to flower at all, which look both neat and
fresh all the year round. One may, perhaps, grudge
them the space which they occupy in the prime of
the year and when all the plants are at their best;
but afterwards they more than pay for their places.
Every large rock garden should contain a good many
of such plants, and particularly of the smaller and more
prostrate shrubs, such as the prostrate Juniper, the
Prostrate Rosemary, Cotoneaster congesta and Coto-
neaster thymifolia, Santolina incana, and its dwarfer
variety, Berberis dulcis nana, the dwarf Lavender,
and the creeping Artemisias, especially A. sericea,
which is the most vigorous and easily grown, and the
more upright Artemisia argentea. There are also
shrubs which have brilliant flowers in their season
and yet never lose their beauty of foliage and habit,
such as the Alpine rhododendrons, Helianthemum
formosum (usually called Cistus); the varieties of
the perennial Candytuft (Iberis sempervirens), espe-
cially “Little Gem,” and the large flowered Iberis
correefolia; and several species of broom such as the
prostrate Genista pilosa, the double variety of Genista
tinctoria, and the beautiful Cytisus purpureus.! Some

1 Not hardy in northeastern United States. L. Y. K.

176 STUDIES IN GARDENING

of these are too large for a small rock garden, but
others are not out of scale even in the smallest; and
besides these shrubs there are many little plants that
never deteriorate after flowering. Among these there
is no need to do more than mention the Mossy Saxi-
frages, the different varieties of Thymus serpyllum,
especially albus and lanuginosus, the dwarf Alyssum
saxatile, Lithospermum prostratum, which often flowers
intermittently in the late summer and autumn, Veron-
ica repens, Veronica pectinata, Arenaria tetraquetra,
several species of Draba, Achillea rupestris and A.
huteri, Tanacetum argenteum, and Saxifraga apiculata.
All of these are beautiful in their habit of growth for
long after they have ceased to flower, and most of
them remain beautiful all through the winter, keep-
ing the rock garden fresh and green when borders are
all desolate.

But still there remains the problem of flowers; for
greenery is well enough, but we want something be-
sides greenery in August and September, and in many
rock gardens we do not get it. Yet there are a good
many rock plants that bloom well up into the autumn,
and a few which, if not rock plants, are yet well suited
by their habit to grow among them and which are
autumn blooming by nature. Most of the Pinks
flower in June, though some of them continue to
throw up blossoms intermittently until the frosts;
but Dianthus noeanus, a little-known species from
Asia Minor, flowers in August. It has a very neat
tufted habit, and pretty white and curiously fringed

THE ROCK GARDEN 177

flowers, and may be easily raised from seed and grown
in any dry sunny place among rocks. Another late
flowering plant of the pink tribe is Silene schafta,
which also blossoms in August and September. It is
not one of the most beautiful of the silenes, but easy
to raise from seed and to grow; and its pink flowers
are very useful, if a little dull in colour. Sedum Ewersii
and §S. Sieboldii are both late flowering plants with
pink flowers and neat grey leaves. They thrive in
any dry place, but sometimes suffer from severe frosts.
Their foliage dies down in the winter. Polygonum
vaccinifolium is a most valuable late-flowering plant
for the rock garden. It has a creeping habit and soon
covers a good deal of space. It is deciduous, and its
leaves appear rather late; but they remain fresh and
bright until the autumn, and it bears its delicate pink
flowers up to the frosts. It does well on the north
side of the rock garden in rather poor soil if it gets
plenty of light and air. In rich soil and shady places
it often refuses to bloom. The beautiful Polemonium
confertum mellitum flowers both in spring and in au-
tumn; in fact, it is apt to flower itself to death. But
it is easily raised from seed, and does well with a north-
west or west aspect in sandy loam and leaf mould.
Erodium reichardi, the smallest of the Erodiums,
flowers into late summer, and so does Erodium ma-
cradenium. In a large rock garden Nierembergia
rivularis is a most valuable plant for the later months.
It makes a bright-green carpet, which keeps its fresh-
ness well up to the frosts, and continues to throw up

178 STUDIES IN GARDENING

its large white flowers to the end of September, if it
is grown on the flat in full sun, and top-dressed with
leaf mould in the spring. It spreads so fast where it
prospers that it is a dangerous plant for small rockeries.
(Enothera marginata and O. taraxacifolia again are
only plants for large rock gardens. O. marginata
continues in bloom till September, and, where it
thrives, increases at a great rate by underground
suckers. It is easy enough to grow in full sun and
light soil. O. taraxacifolia, which often dies in the
winter but can be easily raised from seed to flower
the same year, blossoms up to the frosts. Both of
these plants are prostrate in habit, and have large
and beautiful white flowers. Zauschneria Californica
is an autumn flowering plant with brilliant scarlet
blossoms. It also increases rapidly and needs plenty
of room. It thrives and flowers best in a hot, dry
place. Plumbago Larpentz, also an autumn flowering
plant, with fine cobalt blue blossoms, may be grown
with it. Aplopappus Brandegei is a little known but
valuable composite from America. It is like a minute
sunflower, but low and bushy in growth. It flowers
from the beginning of July to the autumn, and thrives
in any sunny dry place. Most of the Androsaces are
spring flowering, but Androsace lanuginosa is at its
best in August, and often continues to bloom until
the frost. It is also one of the easiest to grow, as well
as one of the most beautiful. It likes a deep soil, 2 ft.
at least of fibrous loam, leaf-mould and mortar rubble
and a fairly cool situation, where its roots can run

THE ROCK GARDEN 179

under one rock and its stems trail over another. When
the stems get long they should be pegged down just
under the surface of the soil, and they will soon root
and grow into a large patch. Geranium subcaulescens,
a fine mountain species from Greece, a little larger
and more vigorous than G. argenteum, also remains
long in bloom, so does Lychnis lagascae when the
plants are young, and so does Bellis caerulescens, a
pretty little daisy from North Africa which requires
a warm place.

But the best way to ensure flowers in the rock gar-
den in the late summer and autumn is to retard the
blossoming season of certain plants by treating them
as annuals, This is really nothing else but bedding
out, and pedants who object to bedding out anywhere
will probably consider it impiety in the rock garden.
But bedding out is wrong only when it is contrived
so as to make plants look ugly; and there is no reason
why they should look ugly when bedded out in the
rock garden any more than in the border. There are
certain beautiful rock plants which will flower the
same year from seed, but later than if the seed is
sown the year before. Among these are Papaver al-
pinus, Linaria alpina, Calandrinia umbellata, Cam-
panula caespitosa and C. pumila (the same plant for
garden purposes), and Antirrhinum asarina. Papaver
alpinus and Linaria alpina will usually flower the
same year if treated as hardy annuals; but their
flowering may be ensured if they are sown in boxes
in a cold frame about the end of March and planted

180 STUDIES IN GARDENING

out as soon as possible. This applies also to the other
plants mentioned above. They are all very easily
raised from seed, and if treated as annuals will come
into flower in July and often blossom up to the frosts.
Papaver alpinus is a plant so beautiful that it has
moved M. Correvon to write a very pretty poem about
it. It is like a small and more delicate Iceland poppy.
The flowers are white, pink, orange, or yellow, and
often delicately fringed. It must be protected from
drought and often flowers itself to death, but repro-
duces itself freely by self-sown seedlings. Linaria
alpina is almost more beautiful. The type has bril-
liant purple and orange flowers. There is a variety
all purple and one pink and orange. It does well in
most situations when it has plenty of light and air.
It also often flowers itself to death, but seeds itself
almost too profusely. Both of these plants should be
transplanted with care and when they are very small.
This also applies to Calandrinia umbellata, which
likes the hottest, driest places and has flowers of a
very brilliant crimson magenta colour, which might
be ugly but for their shining silky texture. It should
be treated as an annual, as it is apt to die in our win-
ters. It does best in very hot, dry summers. An-
tirrhinum asarina is a prostrate Snapdragon from
Spain with pale yellow flowers. It also likes a very
hot place, and will usually survive the winter if planted
in a crevice between the rocks and in a soil mainly
consisting of rubble. It is a curious and beautiful
plant, but not suited for a wet or cold climate. Cam-

THE ROCK GARDEN 181

panula caespitosa, the most familiar of Alpine Hare-
bells, will thrive almost anywhere, especially if its roots
and long suckers can run under a rock. It should
not be placed near any delicate Alpines, as it is very
encroaching. There are white and pale blue varieties.
It is, of course, a true perennial; but seedlings flower
later than old plants, and remain in blossom until the
frosts. Therefore it is particularly useful when treated
as an annual. Campanula carpatica will also flower
the same year from seed; but it is rather a large plant
for a small rockery.

Of all these plants that can be grown as annuals
Linaria alpina is the most useful, since it will scarcely
smother the most minute Alpines when growing in
the poor soil which most small Alpines like, while in
better soil and on the north side of the rock garden
it grows much stronger and will give the right amount
of shade to plants such as the Alpine primulas, Saxi-
fraga apiculata, and Morisia hypogaea. It multiplies
so quickly by means of self-sown seedlings that it be-
comes almost a weed, but its growth is so slight and
delicate that scarcely any plant can be harmed by it.
There are also some true annuals that can be used
to brighten the rock garden in autumn, such as the
dwarfest form of Alyssum maritimum and the delicate
little Ionopsidium acaule, which, if sown early in the
spring, will seed and flower again from self-sown seed-
lings in the autumn. Nor is there any reason in the
nature of things why Lobelia, a beautiful plant made
unpopular by misuse, should not be employed in this

182 STUDIES IN GARDENING

way. ‘These annuals and others as small in their
growth should be sown or planted in the bare places
left by early flowering bulbs, such as Chionodoxas
and the spring and winter Irises and the dwarf Daf-
fodils. But there are also bulbs well fitted for the
rock garden which will flower in the late summer and
autumn. One of the best of these is Anomatheca
cruenta, a plant like a miniature gladiolus with bright
crimson-scarlet flowers, which grows about half a
foot high, and which should be planted in spring and
lifted for the winter. There are also the autumn
flowering Crocuses, such as Crocus speciosus, C.
zonatus, and C. pulchellus, all with delicate lilac-
coloured flowers, the autumn flowering Cyclamens,
and the beautiful autumn Snowflake, Acis autum-
nalis, which likes a cool place and very sandy soil.
The Colchicums are not so suitable for the rock gar-
den, as they throw up very large leaves in the spring;
but Sternbergia lutea is a fine plant for large rock gar-
dens, and will flower from the end of September al-
most up to Christmas. It is sometimes rather a shy
bloomer, but seems to do best in warm sheltered places
and light soil with a good dose of manure well below
the bulbs. It also likes lime. All of these bulbs, ex-
cept perhaps Acis autumnalis, are the better for a
covering of one of the smaller Stonecrops, so that the
ground they occupy need never be bare.

THE PROBLEM OF THE HERBACEOUS
BORDER

ARDENERS often write and talk as if it were
quite easy to keep a herbaceous border full of
flowers for six or seven months of the year. Now if
it were easy, the bedding-out system, with its obvious
disadvantages, would surely never have come into
vogue; and as a matter of fact it is not easy; indeed,
it is probably impossible; and gardeners of the greatest
skill and taste do not attempt it. The real problem
of the herbaceous border is not to keep it in full flower
from April to October, but to prevent it from looking
like a spent firework after the first flush of summer
bloom is over. Some of the noblest herbaceous plants,
such as Larkspurs and Oriental Poppies, have this
grave defect, that they become ugly and ragged as
soon as they go out of flower, and even with the best
cultivation remain ugly and ragged for some time.
During this period, since the better grown they are
the more space they occupy, they are an ugly blot
upon the border, and a border that is filled with plants
of this kind may be very splendid for a while, but
when half the summer is over it will begin to look
autumnal. It is easy enough to have some flowers
in blossom in the border so long as there is sun and

warmth enough to bring flowers out at all; but a
183

184 STUDIES IN GARDENING

border will not look beautiful unless it has that air
of prosperity which is attained without difficulty in
June, but not in August.

Now many borders lose this air of prosperity too
early, just because their owners are too eager for a
profusion of bloom at the time when flowers are most
plentiful. They fill the border with the flowers they
like best, Larkspurs, Irises, Madonna Lilies, Poppies,
Pansies, Columbines, and so on, and do not consider
what is to happen when these are spent. Even if
they vary these with later-blooming plants, such as
Phloxes and Michaelmas Daisies, they forget the gaps
that will remain when their favourites go out of flower.

There is a fashion just now for the herbaceous bor-
der; but that fashion will not last unless gardeners
arrive at a clear understanding of what can be done
with the herbaceous border and what cannot, and
unless they evolve sound principles for its treatment.
Otherwise, sooner or later there will be a reaction
in favour of bedding-out, with its long succession of
bloom and its persistent neatness and air of prosperity.
We are apt at present to think that there is no need
for a border to look neat; in fact, that the desire for
neatness is a proof of perverted taste. But that de-
sire is a natural one, and has always existed. It is
quite a modern idea that gardens should emulate the
wildness of nature, and one that could only arise
among a people to whom the wildness of nature is
becoming an unwonted luxury. It is, in fact, the
most artificial form of a nature worship that is itself

‘

THE HERBACEOUS BORDER 185

a reaction against excessive artifice; and, like all
artificial things, we may be sure it will not last. The
desire for neatness will revive again; indeed, it has
never died in those who care for the art as well as the
craft of gardening; and they should make it their
business to solve the problem of the herbaceous bor-
der, to combine its variety and profusion with neat-
ness and order. Only if they do this will they secure
it against a reaction which will lead to the old excesses,
to the foolish neatness of carpet bedding, the dull
monotony of ribbon borders.

There are some gardeners with large gardens who
keep different borders for different times of year; and
this is an excellent plan if the garden is large enough
to make it possible. Indeed, it is the only method
that will bring the full glory of every season into the
garden. But it is not a method for every one; and
most people, even if their gardens are large, have
borders near the house which they wish to be beauti-
ful during all the months in which the garden can be
enjoyed at all. Such borders should be planned sys-
tematically and with foresight, and, above all, with
a clear understanding that they cannot be all full of
flowers from April to October. It is the desire for
too many flowers that has produced the worst abuses
of bedding out; and only those who have rid them-
selves of this desire can solve the problem of the her-
baceous border. They must also rid themselves of
pedantic prejudices against all plants that are not
hardy perennials. No doubt the herbaceous border,

186 STUDIES IN GARDENING

if we are to make a fetish of it, should be filled only
with herbaceous plants — that is to say, with hardy
plants that die down in the winter. But this would
mean the exclusion of German Irises, Yuccas, all
shrubs, Pinks, and, indeed, all plants that give the
garden beauty and interest in the winter; and no one
would carry fanaticism so far as that. We will as-
sume, then, that our herbaceous border is not to be
all herbaceous; indeed, that it is to contain any plants
that we can grow and that will contribute to its beauty.
The essence of the herbaceous border, for those who
are not the slaves of a name, consists in its variety,
continuity, and permanence. The best herbaceous
borders are full of contrasts both of colour and form;
their beauty persists from spring to autumn, and
some of it remains even in the winter; while they
look as if they had been long established and long
cared for.

This air of permanence is not easy to impart to a
border; indeed, it cannot be imparted by means of
herbaceous plants alone or without orderly and syste-
matic arrangement. It can only be attained by the
use of shrubs and other plants which keep their beauty,
or some part of it, throughout the year, or at least
through the spring, summer, and autumn. These
shrubs and plants should be regarded as the per-
manent part of the border design, as the framework
to be planned and determined first, after which the
more ephemeral details can be filled in. But if shrubs
are planted in a border they must be in character with

THE HERBACEOUS BORDER 187

the idea of a border, and they must not interfere with
the health of the other plants in it; for, after all, a
border is not a shrubbery. There are luckily a good
number of shrubs, compact in their growth as well
as beautiful, not too wide rooting, and so long associated
with herbaceous plants that they will not look incon-
gruous in a herbaceous border. The best of these
are the most familiar, such as Rosemary, Lavender,
Lavender Cotton (Santolina), some of the Cistuses,
some of the Shrubby Veronicas, and Southernwood,
which, however, has this disadvantage, that it does
not keep its beauty through the winter. All of these
shrubs not only have a quiet beauty of their own,
but also serve as excellent foils to more brilliant plants;
while some of them, of course, are worth growing for
their flowers alone. They should, as we have said,
be arranged systematically and so as to make the
framework of the border’s design. If they are dotted
about at random, a great part of their effect is lost.
But while he is planting them the gardener must
consider how he can best combine them with the
more ephemeral plants, and he must not arrange
them so regularly as to suggest hedges. Their chief
purpose is to “pull the border together,” to make a
kind of permanent pattern that is distributed all over
it. This pattern, therefore, must be contrived so
that no part of it will be obscured at any time by
tall-growing herbaceous plants. There is no use in a
well-rounded clump of Lavender if a great Larkspur
grows up in front of it. Rather the Larkspur should

188 STUDIES IN GARDENING

be masked by the Lavender, so that it is only seen
rising behind it in its prime. Those shrubs will make
the best pattern and the best contrast with herbaceous
plants which are conspicuous for their glaucous leaves;
and these should not be used in too great variety.
Three different kinds of shrubs, such as Lavender,!
Rosemary, and the tall Cistus cyprius behind, are
quite enough for any border, even the largest. In-
deed, if the tall and dwarf Lavender are used in com-
bination, they, with the Cistus, will make an ex-
cellent framework for any border. They should be
planted regularly, the dwarf Lavender in the fore-
ground directly in front of the Cistus in the back-
ground, and the taller Lavender half-way back in the
intervals. Shrubs so used should never be allowed to
grow straggly, but should be kept symmetrical and
compact by clipping. If the reader fears that such
a regular arrangement of only two or three kinds of
shrubs would look monotonous, he should remember
that it can be combined, not only with an infinite
variety of herbaceous plants, but also with plants of
lasting beauty, such as Pinks, Yuccas, some of the
Sea Hollies, and the German Irises, which will help
to diversify the permanent design.

When a border is planned and planted in this manner,
the gardener should not be in too great a hurry for
an abundance of flowers. His first object should be
to get the plants forming his permanent design well

1 Lavender in the United States needs protection, and C. cyprius is not
hardy in the Northern States. L. Y. K.

THE HERBACEOUS BORDER 189

established and well grown. He should not, there-
fore, crowd and smother them while still small with
quick-growing herbaceous plants. If he has patience
enough, he will do well to give his shrubs two years
start of the larger herbaceous plants, for the shrubs
will be worse than useless in the border unless they
are thoroughly shapely and well grown; and it is
very easy to spoil a young plant of Lavender amid
the rank summer growth of a rich border.

There is, of course, less need to mask the later
flowering herbaceous plants with permanent shrubs
than the earlier. Indeed, plants like Dahlias, Michael-
mas Daisies, and Chrysanthemums may be employed
to hide the Larkspurs and Poppies when they have
ceased to be beautiful; and the gardener in planning
his border should place his tall early-flowering plants
behind his tall late-flowering plants, not, of course,
in monotonous rows but in a broken though regular
order. An ordered diversity is the secret of com-
position in a border as in most other things. The eye
should not be drawn from end to end by straight lines
of the same plants all flowering together, nor should
it be bewildered by a mere confusion. It should be
conscious of a framework in the design provided by
the repetition of certain prominent plants and relieved
by diversity of detail. Parts of this framework must,
as we have said, be permanent. Other parts may de-
pend upon the flowering season of different conspicuous
plants, such as Larkspurs, Peeonies, Phloxes, and
Dablias, placed at regular intervals. But the design

190 STUDIES IN GARDENING

must always be made up of plants conspicuous in some
way or another, either in their foliage or in their habit
of growth, and the less conspicuous plants should be
used only for diversity and contrast.

The front of the border, since all of it is always
visible, is more difficult to plan than the back, and
has an even greater need of permanent features. Many
gardeners overlook this fact. They aim at a continuous
blaze of flowers in the front of their borders, even when
they are content with alternations of flower and leaf-
age behind; and the result often is untidiness just
where the border ought to be most tidy. It is also
a mistake in design to have an unbroken line of bright
colour in front of a more varied background, as the
eye is then absorbed by the foreground, and can only
get away from it by an effort. There is, therefore,
an even stronger reason for alternations of flower and
leafage in the front of a border than behind, and
these alternations should be carefully planned. No
plants are more useful as permanent features in the
front of the border than the Garden Pinks; and these
should not be planted in monotonous rows, but at
regular intervals and alternating with other plants
such as Pansies, which will remain longer in bloom
and will contrast with them both in flower and in
leafage. If the ordinary Pansies are used they may be
removed after their first flush of bloom and replaced
by bedding plants such as Verbenas or Ivy-leafed
Geraniums, or any beautiful and low-growing half-
hardy annuals. But if the gardener wishes to avoid

THE HERBACEOUS BORDER 191

the trouble and expense of bedding out he can alternate
his Pinks with Violas or Tufted Pansies, which will,
if well treated, blossom for most of the summer and
can be cut back when they are spent and straggly.
Behind these low-growing plants he can arrange an-
other alternation of more or less permanent plants,
such as the dwarf Lavender, Santolina, the dwarf
Alyssum, Campanula carpatica, Pentstemons, Aquilegia
caerulea, and many others. Here, too, he may replace
spring with summer flowering plants; and here will
be the place for many bulbs, such as the dwarfer
early flowering Gladioli, the varieties of Lilium elegans,
the May Tulips, Camassia esculenta, English and
Spanish Irises, and Montbretias, which should be
planted near the more permanent shrubby plants
and will be an admirable contrast to them both in
growth and flower. Indeed, the secret of the right
use of bulbs in a border is to contrast them with plants
of a different and more permanent growth. They
should never be relied on for the main effect, as they
are usually insignificant when out of flower and do
not flower very long. So they should be planted in
clumps and not in lines, and their position should
be determined by that of the plants with which they
are intended to contrast. These are only notes upon
a large and difficult subject, but it is hoped that they
may illustrate some of the principles of border design.

THE TREATMENT OF BULBS

RITING lately upon the use of bulbs in the
border we said that the secret of that use
was to contrast them with plants of a different growth.
This is also true, we think, of their use in every part
of the garden. The beauty of monocotyledonous
plants is usually altogether different in character
from the beauty of dicotyledonous plants; more
simple, fugitive, and strange. Now the term bulb is
a vague one, especially as it is used in nurserymen’s
catalogues, where it is often applied to any kind of
tuberous or fleshy root, whether of a monocotyledonous
or a dicotyledonous plant. But in this article we
shall use it, not in the narrowest possible sense, but
only of monocotyledonous plants with bulbous roots
which are dormant for a certain period of the year;
and we shall use it thus, not for any scientific reason,
but because we wish to suggest certain principles for
the treatment of such plants in the garden, based
both upon the character of their beauty and upon
the habit of remaining dormant for a certain period
of the year.
The purpose of the old-fashioned treatment of the
best known bulbous plants, such as Tulips, Hyacinths,
and Narcissi, was to produce a great blaze of blossom

for a short time. They were planted by themselves
192

THE TREATMENT OF BULBS 193

in regiments; and when they were out of flower they
were taken up to make room for other plants. This
treatment took no heed of their individual beauty of
form. Each plant was considered only as contribut-
ing to a great mass of colour, and certainly these
masses of colour were very splendid. But a great
part of the beauty of a Tulip consists in its form, in
the shape of its flower, the manner in which it carries
its flower, and the contrast between the shape and
carriage of the flower and the shape and carriage of
the leaves. All this beauty was lost when Tulips
were arranged in regiments. But, on the other hand,
it must be admitted that a single Tulip is too small
and too simple in its form to produce much effect
in any arrangement of flowers; and this is true also
of most bulbous plants; besides this, their flowering
period is usually short. Therefore, if we are to make
the best possible use of their beauty, we must arrange
them so that a great part of that beauty may not be
lost in a blaze of colour, but also so that it may not
be frittered away by too scattered planting. The
best way to do this is to combine them with plants
of a very different habit of growth and character of
flowers; and of such combinations there is an infinite
variety. We have spoken of the difference in the
beauty of monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants.
That difference is a fortunate fact in Nature, by
means of which she produces some of her most ex-
quisite contrasts; and it is the gardener’s business
to observe such contrasts and to base his own ar-

194 STUDIES IN GARDENING

rangements upon them. We have said that mono-
cotyledonous plants are apt to be more simple, fugi-
tive, and strange in their beauty than dicotyledonous
plants; and the gardener should attempt to contrast
simplicity with complexity, fugitiveness with per-
manence, and strangeness with familiarity. This he
may do in many different ways. He may, to take
one of the most obvious, plant his Tulips among
Pansies or Forget-me-nots, so that they will rise
through the contrasting carpet of less simple leaved
flowers, as Daffodils rise through the grass. A hun-
dred Tulips all of the same kind so planted will not
lose any of their beauty of form, since it will be em-
phasized by the contrasting beauty of the carpeting
plants; and it is only by means of an arrangement
of this kind that the true beauty of Hyacinths can be
seen. Many people condemn them as stiff; and,
indeed, when they are planted out in rows by them-
selves they are as stiff as a row of Lombardy Poplars.
But as the beauty of the Lombardy Poplar only shows
itself in contrast with trees of a more spreading growth,
so the beauty of the Hyacinth only shows itself in
the same kind of contrast. No one would think of
growing Bluebells in regiments, because we are all
familiar with the manner in which Nature grows
them. But the regimental system is even more fatal
to the beauty of the garden Hyacinth.

This plan of carpeting bulbs with other plants of
a very different habit is now very general, but not so
universal as it should be. Many people who are de-

THE TREATMENT OF BULBS 195

lighted with the beauty of bulbs in the grass will yet
grow the same bulbs in beds or borders on the old
regimental system, and they do this, probably, be-
cause they think it saves trouble to the gardener.
It is so easy to fill a bed with Tulips in the autumn
and then to lift them when they have gone out of
flower to make room for summer bedding. But it is
just as easy to combine them with plants such as
Pansies, Forget-me-nots, the double Arabis, and
many early flowering annuals, which may be removed
at the same time to make room for the summer bed-
ding. In the herbaceous border, however, the prob-
lem of the right use of bulbs is less easy; and yet
it is not very difficult. True, there are many bulbs
which are best lifted as soon as they die down, and
there are others which resent disturbance at the very
time when the border may need to be dug over. But
both these difficulties may be overcome with a little
contrivance and foresight. Take, for instance, the
case of bulbs such as Tulips and Hyacinths, which
usually should be lifted at least every other year.
These may be planted in considerable masses among
carpeting plants or in clumps of eight or ten sur-
rounded with plants that will contrast with them;
and they may be taken up without difficulty when
they have died down, and without injuring the plants
about them. The arrangement in clumps is best
suited to the taller May flowering Tulips and to other
tall bulbs such as the Camassias, Gladioli, English
and Spanish Irises, Crown Imperial Lilies, most of

196 STUDIES IN GARDENING

the true Lilies, and Galtonias. Some of these, espe-
cially Madonna Lilies, resent disturbance, and it is
the bulbs which resent disturbance that we have
learnt to grow in the most beautiful and rational way.
No doubt, if Madonna Lilies could be treated like
Tulips, they would often be bedded out like Tulips,
and all their beauty would be spoilt. As it is, we grow
them in the border and treat them like herbaceous
plants, with excellent results. We should extend the
same treatment to other bulbous plants, so far as
their needs will allow. Thus, the May flowering
Tulips should be planted in clumps of eight or ten at
regular intervals along a border, and if a hundred or
more of the same kind—say, of Gesneriana or Picotee
—are then planted in the same border, they will pro-
duce a brilliant effect of colour just when it is most
needed, whether in contrast with flowering plants
about them such as Wallflower or Forget-me-not,
or with shrubs not yet in flower, such as Lavender
or Santolina. And, if necessary, they may be lifted
when they die down, just as Wallflowers and Forget-
me-not are taken up when they go out of flower, and
other plants or bulbs may be put in their place.

The contrast between the grey foliage of shrubs,
such as Lavender or Santolina or Southernwood, and
the brilliant flowers of bulbs, such as Gladioli, Eng-
lish and Spanish Irises, and some of the smaller Lilies,
is always most effective; and the beauty of the con-
trast depends as much upon the difference of char-
acter in the plants as upon difference of colour. The

THE TREATMENT OF BULBS 197

bulbs, with their fugitive brilliance, seem to have
sought the protection of the more enduring shrubs.
And this is not altogether fancy in some cases; for
Lilies never thrive so well as when they are close to
shrubs, not only because the shrubs protect them
from frost when their growth is young and tender,
but because they like a very rooty soil. Thus, both
for horticultural and esthetic reasons, it is well to
grow Lilies such as L. Chalcedonicum and L. pom-
ponium close to shrubs such as Lavender or Santolina
or Rosemary; and both the beauty and the health
of the Lilies will be improved by the association.
Among such shrubs also may be grown the different
kinds of Gladioli, particularly the early flowering
ones, which should be planted in the autumn and
which will get valuable protection from the shrubs
when their growth first appears in the winter. The
later Gladioli, if so treated, may take the place of
Tulips when they are lifted, and shrubs will be much
less dangerous neighbours to them than herbaceous
plants which, especially in wet summers, often grow
with incalculable rapidity. If bulbs are associated
with herbaceous plants the best effect will be obtained
where there is the greatest contrast of growth. Thus
bulbs which throw up tall straight spikes of bloom
should not be planted among herbaceous plants which
flower in the same way, but rather among plants of
an altogether different habit—for instance, Gladioli
among Gypsophilas; Madonna Lilies among the
lilac flowered Goat’s Rue (Galega); Orange Lilies (L.

198 STUDIES IN GARDENING

croceum) with Erigeron speciosus; Lilium elegans
with Linum perenne or Nepeta mussini (Catmint);
Tiger Lilies with Eryngiums; Galtonias with the pink
Lavatera trimestris, and so on. But in all such com-
bination care must be taken not to place bulbs too
close to some herbaceous plant that will make a strong
growth before they do, and so smother them before
they have a chance of asserting themselves.

The later and larger growing bulbs are much easier
to deal with in the border than the many little bulbs
that flower early in the spring and then die down
and remain dormant until autumn. It is possible,
of course, to lift bulbs like Crocuses, Scilla sibirica,
Scilla bifolia, the Chionodoxas, the Puschkinias, and
the Muscaris as soon as they are dormant, and to
plant them again in the autumn. But it is a trouble-
some business; and many of them do better if left
undisturbed. Yet, though they make the border
beautiful in early spring, they leave blank spaces
just when it is expected to be fullest. If they are to
be grown in the border they can be covered with
Sedum album, which will not interfere with their
growth, and which is green all the winter and very
pretty when in flower. In this case they must be
planted well in the front of the border as the Sedum,
if it is to do well and flower, must not be overshadowed
by other plants. But, indeed, these smaller bulbs
always do best in the front of the border, as they are
apt to be forgotten and dug up if they are among
large herbaceous plants, and also they do not get
the summer sun which most of them need to ripen

THE TREATMENT OF BULBS 199

them. It is also possible, of course, to sow some low
growing hardy annual over them, especially over the
Scillas and Chionodoxas, which like to be planted deep
in a light soil. But this is not so easy to manage with
Crocuses, which like to be planted just under the sur-
face. The best plan of all, perhaps, with these little
bulbs is to plant the Crocuses and Muscaris in the
grass, where they will thrive, and the Scillas and
Chionodoxas and Puschkinias on some sunny bank
which they can have to themselves. Such a bank
may be carpeted with Sedum with excellent effects.
Scilla sibirica may also be grown in the grass, where
it is not too thick and coarse; but it usually thrives
better under a Sedum.

There are the same difficulties to be dealt with in
the case of the smaller autumn flowering bulbs, such
as Crocus speciosus, Crocus zonatus, and Crocus
pulchellus, Sternbergia lutea, and the Colchicums.
The last of these will usually do well in the grass where
the soil is good and not too dry. The others are best
grown like the Chionodoxas in places which they can
have to themselves. The autumn Crocuses can be
mixed with Scillas and Chionodoxas, so that there
may be flowers in the same spot both in spring and
autumn. They are of the easiest culture. Stern-
bergias are not so easy, and in some places they re-
fuse to flower. They seem to require a light soil and
a warm sheltered place, and they are the better for
lime in the soil. A carpeting of Sedum will protect
them in the winter.

In most gardens there are odd places too dry or

200 STUDIES IN GARDENING

poor for ordinary herbaceous plants in which most
of these smaller bulbs will thrive, and where they
should be planted in large numbers. Even if such
spots are flowerless in summer, it is a great pleasure
to have them covered with flowers in spring or au-
tumn, and one which is very easily obtained.

ENGLISH IDEALS OF GARDENING

ARDENING in England, like music in Ger-

many, is a national and popular art; and just
as music in Germany is based upon folk song, so gar-
dening in England is based upon the cottage garden.
German music, when it has tended to become arti-
ficial or exotic, has been simplified and quickened
by a return to folk song, the lasting affection for which
has protected the German taste in music from those
perversities to which it is subject in other arts. It
has provided a standard of simplicity and sincerity
by which even the most elaborate compositions are
judged, just the kind of standard which Tolstoy has
tried to set up in his “What is Art?” And the Eng-
lish cottage garden has provided the same kind of
standard for the art of gardening, and in the same
way has redeemed that art from exotic perversities.
When the bedding-out mania was at its height, it
was the spectacle of cottage gardens, with their beauty
that seemed as natural to the English countryside
as the very meadows and hedgerows, which gave
people a disgust for their rows of Calceolarias and
Geraniums and Lobelias. But for the cottage gar-
dens they would never have been even aware of the
existence of all the beautiful old plants which had

been banished so long from the gardens of the rich;
20)

202 STUDIES IN GARDENING

still less would they have been aware of the right
manner of growing them. It was because gardening
was a national art practised by the poor for love, and
not as a fashionable amusement, that it recovered
so suddenly from those perversities of taste which
infected nearly all arts in the nineteenth century.
But it would not have so recovered unless the tastes
of rich and poor had been really alike, unless the
rich had found in the gardens of the poor what they
desired in their own gardens. This is the great dif-
ference 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. And
the reason for this is that, though circumstances have
made us herd together in towns, we remain at heart
a country people, unlike the French or the Italians,
and more even than the Germans. This may be
clearly seen in our architecture, with which, of course,
our gardening, so long as it remains an art, is closely
connected. Even in the Middle Ages the great French
Cathedrals were designed as town buildings, and made
to tower above the houses close about them. But
the more lowly English Cathedrals were intended to
be seen in broad closes, and half of their beauty is
lost without a close, just as half the beauty of a French
Cathedral is lost when it is isolated. But the peculiar
genius of the English builders has been shown more
in village churches and tithe barns and country houses
even than in Cathedrals; whereas the peculiar genius

ENGLISH IDEALS OF GARDENING 203

of the French has been shown in Cathedral and cha-
teaux, and of the Italians in palaces. These inveterate
country tastes of ours are, no doubt, the chief reason
why our towns are so incoherent and ugly. Our hearts
are never in the town, even when we are forced to
live in it, and our idea of improving it is to make it
as much like the country as we can. Thus our town
architecture is always apt to be freakish and incon-
gruous, putting on airs of rustic simplicity or medieval
romance, trying to make us believe that we are any-
where rather than in a modern city; and thus the
gardens of our squares are desolate parodies of wood-
land and meadow. The foreigner, who has heard of
the English passion for gardening, must suppose that
passion to be extinct when he looks through the rail-
ings of a London square at the thickets of privet and
the grass worn bare with the drip from grimy and dis-
consolate trees. He cannot know that in these dread-
ful places the Englishman has attempted an impos-
sible task and given it up in despair; that having an
open space in the heart of a town he has tried to per-
suade himself that it is a still surviving piece of the
country which he loves. A Frenchman would treat
such a space as an annexe to the houses around it,
as a kind of outdoor parlour common to the inhabi-
tants of all those houses, and he would decorate it
like a parlour with ornaments, which, whether they
were shrubs or statuary or flowers, he would keep in
their proper place. Perfectly content with town life,
he would have no wish to make believe that he was

204 STUDIES IN GARDENING

in the country. Indeed, he would be more inclined
when in the country to make believe that he was in
the town. Thus his gardening, and also the Italian
gardening, is seen at its best in the town and at its
worst in the country, unlike ours which is country
gardening and will not acclimatize itself to the town.
It is true, of course, that the gardening of our parks
is excellent, better indeed than any in Paris; but
that is just because those parks are large enough to
admit of country gardening, because flowers can be
well grown, and trees and large shrubs are not mere
nuisances in them. The gardeners of our parks have
managed with admirable art to make their flowers
seem at home where they are planted, an art which
the Paris gardeners, skilful as they are, have not ac-
quired. Even in towns we are supreme in the manage-
ment of flowers, wherever flowers can be well grown;
and the reason is that we think of a garden as a place
for flowers, whereas for the Frenchman or the Italian
it is an outdoor parlour which may be ornamented
with flowers or with other things according to the
taste of its owner.

This love of flowers is part of our love for the coun-
try, and consequently it is a love of flowers growing
rather than picked. We may compare it with the
Italian love of painting, not merely in the form of
pictures, but as a decoration to walls, which still per-
sist although the great masters of fresco have long
passed away and although it is often put to absurd
uses. Those who have only seen Italian pictures in

ENGLISH IDEALS OF GARDENING 205

galleries can never understand the purpose and full
beauty of Italian painting; they can never know
what a natural growth it was, until they see the frescoes
and altar-pieces where they were meant to be. Such
works in galleries are like picked flowers, still beauti-
ful indeed, but robbed of half their original beauty
because they have been severed from their native
soil; and just as an Italian of the fifteenth century
would feel if he saw the altar-piece of his native
Cathedral in the National Gallery, so we feel when
we see the flowers of our gardens picked and arranged
in bouquets in shop windows. Foreigners do not
usually seem to have this delight in the beauty of
growing flowers. They like them just as well picked
as growing. Indeed they are apt to grow them so
artificially that they have no more beauty when grow-
ing than when picked. For them flowers are always
mere ornaments, whether of the house or of the gar-
den. But for us they are living things with a beauty
dependent upon the whole of their life. This love of
flowers as living things, and therefore not only of
flowers but of plants, is the basis of English garden-
ing, the cause both of its virtues and of its faults.
It was overcome for a while in the last century and
in the ‘gardens of the rich; but it persisted all the
while among cottagers; and it is from cottagers that
the rich regained it. There are beautiful cottage
gardens everywhere in England, because the English-
man loves growing flowers for their own sake, as the
German loves music; and it is this love of growing

206 STUDIES IN GARDENING

flowers which has made gardening a popular art in
England.

In other countries, where there is not the same
love of growing flowers, the palace and not the cot-
tage garden sets the standard, and therefore gar-
dening is not a popular art; for the poor man cannot
hope to compete with the rich in the way of palatial
gardens, any more than in the way of palatial archi-
tecture. But he can compete with the rich in the
growing of plants since he can grow his plants for
himself, whereas the rich man must hire a gardener
to do it for him. Thus in England many a rich man
has envied the beauty of a cottage garden, and tried
to imitate it in his own; but abroad little gardens,
when there are any, are apt to be imitations of the
gardens of the rich; and in Italy or France it is the
sumptuous gardens that delight us with their terraces
and avenues and cascades, whereas in England we
get most pleasure from the little flowery patches and
clipped yew hedges and arches by the roadside. For-
eigners sometimes wonder how it is that, with all our
great poets, our common life seems to be so prosaic.
The poetry of the English nature expresses itself in
gardens as the poetry of the German nature in folk-
song; and by means of gardens it is intimately con-
nected with our common life. Once it expressed it-
self also in building, and more directly and clearly
in the homelier kinds of building than in great cathe-
drals or palaces. Once we had a true folk-art in our
cottages and farmhouses as well as in our gardens.

ENGLISH IDEALS OF GARDENING 207

That is almost lost, although there are now some
signs of its revival; but it still persists in our gar-
dens and through them it may some day return into
our architecture; for the persistence of the cottage
garden proves that the spirit which produced the
beautiful cottage of the past is still alive, even though
the cottage garden may grow up about a white-brick
and blue-slated villa.

The love of growing plants is the cause both of
the virtues and the faults of English gardening. One
instance of the faults may be noticed in the desolate
gardens of our London squares. These must be fail-
ures, as they are attempts to do what is impossible.
But in our larger country gardens are often to be
found errors of the same kind, though not so fatal.
The rich man, who admires a cottage garden and who
tries to imitate its beauty in his own grounds, is apt
to forget that a great part of that beauty depends
upon the fact that the cottage garden is planned to
suit its own small scale, that the art of cottage gar-
dening has grown up through centuries and has adapted
itself perfectly to its own conditions. The conditions
of the large garden are different and require a different
and more difficult kind of design; while its traditions
have been broken by several violent changes of taste,
such as the landscape mania of the eighteenth century
and the bedding-out mania of the nineteenth. It is
certainly possible for our larger gardens to have some of
the beauty of the cottage garden; but they must attain
to that beauty in their own way, and, in aiming at

208 STUDIES IN GARDENING

it, they must not lose sight of the different kinds of
beauty that is proper to large spaces. It has often
been remarked that, in certain details, such as their
porches and west fronts, our cathedrals were designed
as if they were little churches; and, in the same way
and for the same reasons, our modern large gardens
are often designed on a small scale suggested by the
cottage garden. The borders are not long enough,
the lawns not large enough, the paths too often broken
and curved, the shrubs dotted about without any
system or purpose. There are other reasons for these
defects besides the cottage garden ideal. One is the
landscape fashion which has not yet passed away;
another is the new fashion for having different kinds
of gardens, rock and water and rose, or gardens for
different seasons of the year; and another, closely
connected with the last, is the growing interest in the
more difficult kinds of horticulture, in the culture of
plants that require special conditions. The am-
bitious gardener nowadays is apt to lose sight of de-
sign altogether in his attempts to solve different
horticultural problems; and he is the more ready to
lose sight of design because he does not understand
that a large garden will not look as well as a cottage
garden, unless its design, like that of the cottage
garden, is adapted to its scale. A large garden can
no more imitate a cottage garden than a large house
can imitate a cottage. Just as the irregularity which
is pleasing and full of character in a cottage becomes
incoherent and absurd in a large house, so the ir-

ENGLISH IDEALS OF GARDENING 209

regular planting and planning of a cottage garden,
which are pleasing when they are made necessary by
its smallness, become merely chaotic when they oc-
cur in a large space where there is no need for them.
Our older garden designers of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries knew this thoroughly. At their best
they could design gardens that were both stately and
simple, perfectly suited to the noble houses which
they surrounded, and with no pretence to be either
wild or palatial. Then, as there were houses fitted
for every station of life, so there were gardens fitted
for every kind of house. The first invasion of this
happy state of things was made by the Dutch fash-
ion of over-elaboration and formality against which
Marvell protested in some beautiful verses. Then
came the French and Italian palatial ideals, which,
however, never got much hold in this country; and
then the violent reaction of landscape gardening,
which ended in a chaos, from which we have not yet
emerged. The cottage garden has delivered us from
the minor, but most disastrous, fashion of bedding
out. It has given us back some of our old delight in
gardens, but it cannot by itself give us back the true
principles of design. These, probably, can only be
recovered with the true principles of architecture.
It is certain that garden design deteriorated and fell
into chaos just as architecture deteriorated and fell
into chaos, also that the present improvement in
domestic country architecture has been accompanied
by an improvement in garden design. The English

210 STUDIES IN GARDENING

love of the country has already delivered us from
the worst errors of gardening. It may once again
give us beautiful houses, and perfect gardens to suit
them.

THE NORTH SIDE OF THE ROCK GARDEN

T is one of the advantages of a well-planned rock

garden that it provides a great variety of con-
ditions in a small space. But it requires some knowl-
edge of the habits of rock plants to profit by this
variety. Most rock plants, and particularly those
which grow high up in mountains, are not so adapt-
able as the plants of the lowlands. Their power of
adaptation seems to have exhausted itself in suiting
them to the peculiar conditions of their native homes;
and, the more peculiar these conditions are, the less
power they usually have of adapting themselves to
others. In this they are very like human beings;
like the Eskimo who pines away from his native ice
and snow, and the mountaineer who is homesick in
the plains. Thus, when a rock garden is well placed,
planned, and built, there yet remains the further
problem of finding exactly the right positions for the
plants that are to be grown in it; and the success of
a rock garden will depend upon the nicety with which
this is done. It is true that there are many rock plants
which will thrive fairly well in any open position;
but even these will usually do better in one place
than in another; and the gardener’s aim should be
to have all his plants doing their best.

Now, of all differences of conditions which affect
211

212 STUDIES IN GARDENING

the well-being of rock and mountain plants, the most
important are those of aspect. Of the more difficult
Alpine plants, many will thrive on one side of a stone
and not on the other, because of the difference of
aspect; and even to rock plants which are not difficult
aspect usually makes a great difference. It is, un-
fortunately, impossible to lay down hard and fast
rules about the aspects most suitable to particular
plants, because the general conditions of rock gardens
vary so much. Some are in warmer parts of the coun-
try than others. Some are fully exposed to the sun,
others shaded from it to some extent by the lie of the
ground or by trees or shrubs. Some are in gardens
with a north aspect, others in gardens with a south.
Thus a plant that would prefer a full south aspect
on a rock garden in a cold climate, might do best
with a south-west, or even north-west, aspect when
the rock garden was very hot and sunny. There is
much that the gardener can learn about his own rock
garden only by experience and observation; and
whatever general directions are given should be taken
as referring only to average conditions, and should
be modified where the conditions are not average.
But, if a rock garden is well placed and planned and
built, not too dry and not too damp, and in particular
not overshadowed by trees, there are certain direc-
tions about aspect that may be followed without
much fear. Thus a south-west or south-east aspect
is usually the best for the more delicate plants of the
higher Alps, and a full south aspect for those which

NORTH SIDE OF THE ROCK GARDEN 213

come from Asia Minor and other hot countries. But,
as mountains have their northern slopes as well as
their southern, there are many mountain plants that
will thrive better on the north side of the rock garden
than on the south; and, since many gardeners seem
to have some difficulty with the northern slopes of
their rock gardens, we propose to give a list of these
north-loving plants.

First we will speak of those which, although they
thrive on a northerly slope, yet require an open situa-
tion free from any kind of shade or drip. Some of
them also, although they like a northern aspect be-
cause it is turned away from the full power of the sun,
do not like our north and north-easterly winds par-
ticularly in early spring, when they are just starting
into growth. There is a great difference between a
north aspect that is sheltered by a bank to the north
of it, and one that is quite unsheltered. We shall
therefore first mention the plants which require shelter,
or, at any rate, a north-easterly aspect rather than
one facing north-east or full north; for there are many
plants that will endure an unsheltered north-westerly
aspect but require shelter if they are facing full north
or north-east. Of these, one of the most valuable is
Lithospermum prostratum, perhaps the most valuable
of all rock plants. It will do well on the south side,
but even better on the north when it is sheltered from
the wind; but it must have light, rich, and deep soil
free from lime, and should be placed so that its roots
can run under a large stone. It must also have very

214 STUDIES IN GARDENING

good drainage, and not be overshadowed by any other
plant. It may be interspersed with Arenaria montana
which thrives in the same position, or with Saxifraga
pyramidalis, which, unlike most of the rosette Saxi-
frages, prefers a soil free from lime. Most of these
rosette Saxifrages will do well on the north side, espe-
cially the great Saxifraga longifolia and the little S.
valdensis, both of which dislike a very hot place;
but for both of these north-west is better than north-
east. Many also of the smaller Campanulas like a
north aspect. Indeed, C. pulla always does best on
the north side, especially if it is split up and replanted
in fresh soil every two years or so in the spring. C.
muralis with its larger variety is an excellent plant
for a north aspect, and it may be mixed with the
beautiful Silene alpestris with the best effect. Other
Campanulas that do well on northern slopes are C.
turbinata, the dwarf form of C. carpatica, C. Tom-
masiniana, a most delicate little Harebell, so small
that it must not be put near any large plant, C. Scheu-
zeri, C. pumila or caespitosa, and C. garganica with
its varieties. This likes a north-west aspect and a
very open situation; and it may be mixed with the
little Silene acaulis, a native of the Welsh mountains,
which is apt to burn up in a very hot sun. Another
delicate little plant that will do well with a north-west
aspect is Asperula hirta, a Woodruff with pale pink
flowers, which roots deeply and spreads fairly rapidly
in a well-drained place among the rocks. This also
may be mixed with Campanula garganica, or with

NORTH SIDE OF THE ROCK GARDEN 215

its more vigorous variety hirsuta, with excellent ef-
fect. One of the most valuable plants for covering
a large space on a northern slope is Polygonum vac-
cinifolium. It is quite prostrate and flowers in late
summer and autumn. It grows very quickly, the
stems rooting in the ground, and no small plants
should be put near it. It flowers best in a rather poor
soil and open situation. It should be planted in
spring and not disturbed afterwards. Space also is
needed for Dryas octopetala, a lime-loving plant,
which grows into a large prostrate mass, bearing
white blossoms rather like those of a strawberry
throughout the summer. Many of the smaller Drabas
do well on the north side, especially D. Aizoon, D.
aizoides, and D. bruniefolia. Of these D. Aizoon,
a native plant and easily raised from seed, is the best.
It grows in little rosettes with a head of yellow flowers
rising from the centre of them. It is quite easy, but
does not like a hot sun. The other two are more
mossy in growth and cover a larger space. Another
little crucifer with yellow flowers that thrives on the
north side is Morisia hypogea. It blossoms very
early in the spring and should be planted in a deep
crevice, between rocks. When it has formed several
crowns it should be divided, and replanted in fresh
soil just after flowering. It is a plant to associate with
the smaller Alpine Primulas, most of which like a
north-west aspect and the same deep crevices. The
best of all these, perhaps, is Primula pubescens alba
(or nivalis), a small but vigorous plant with pure

216 STUDIES IN GARDENING

white flowers in very early spring. Others well worth
growing are P. viscosa, P. auricula with its varieties,
P. auricula marginata and P. marginata, both of
which like lime; P. calycina, also a lime-lover, P.
glutinosa, and P. minima. They all like to be closely
surrounded with rocks, and the soil should be deep,
light, and fairly rich. Atragene alpina, the Alpine
Clematis, will do well in a sheltered place on the
north side, but it must have a good space to grow in.
It likes a fairly rich soil mixed with humus and lime.
Near it may be placed Polemonium confertum mel-
litum, which has sweet-scented white flowers and
grows about 9 in. high. This plant often dies out
after a year or two, but it is easily raised from seed
and is one of the most beautiful flowers of the Rocky
Mountains. Aquilegia pyrenaica, the smallest of the
Columbines, also does well on the north side. It is
a rare plant, growing only a few inches high, and a
form of A. vulgaris is often sold for it. The true
plant is well worth growing.

Where there is an excavated rock garden many
beautiful plants may be grown upon its lower northern
slopes. It is in such a position that Ramondia pyre-
naica does best, placed between rocks so that its roots
run almost horizontally backwards, and so that the
sun never strikes upon its leaves. It likes a fibrous
soil of loam, peat, and leaf-mould, with a good dose
of lime. It is always finest near to water, but will
do well without it, provided it gets no sun. Its true
beauty is only shown when it is flourishing. Plants

NORTH SIDE OF THE ROCK GARDEN 217

that may be grown near it are Anemone alpina, a
lime-loving plant, and its variety sulphurea, which
dislikes lime, Anemone verna, several Himalayan
Primulas, such as P. rosea, P. involucrata, and P.
Sikkimensis, Chamaelirion carolinianum, the smaller
Dodecatheons, and the Soldanellas. <A little above
these, but where they will never suffer from drought,
should be placed Saxifraga apiculata, S. sancta, and
S. oppositifolia, all plants with a mossy habit of growth
and very beautiful flowers in early spring. Saxifraga
burseriana, with its varieties and hybrids, likes a
rather sunnier position and must not suffer from damp
in the winter; but, as drought in the summer is equally
fatal to it, it should be given carefully-chosen places
among rocks with a north-west or west aspect. It is
worth a great deal of trouble.

Hitherto we have dealt mainly with the choicer or
less familiar plants that like a north aspect. There
are, of course, many common plants that will do well
on any side of the rock garden; but even of these
some are better suited to the north than others. The
plants most commonly grown on the north side are
the mossy Saxifrages and those of the London Pride
section. These are so well known that it is unneces-
sary to enumerate their species and varieties. It may
be mentioned, however, that the fine S. Wallacei (or
Camposii) is more impatient of drought and sun than
most of them. It is therefore suited for the lower
northern slopes. Saxifraga tenella, which is mossy
in growth but belongs to another section, does well

218 STUDIES IN GARDENING

in the same situation. It is a very pretty plant. Rocks
on the northern slopes may be clothed with Arenaria
Balearica, a minute plant, which will cling to them as
Ampelopsis Veitchii clings to a wall, and which in
early summer is covered with small white flowers.
Near it may be grown Linaria hepaticifolia (of Kew),
a pretty plant, for which a variety of L. cymbalaria
is often sold. Among easy and vigorous plants par-
ticularly suited to the north side are Waldstenia tri-
foliata and W. fragarioides, the Acenas, particularly
A. microphylla, Margyricarpus setosus, a _ pretty
shrub with white berries, Borago laxiflora (this only
for large rock gardens), Saponaria ocymoides alba,
and those smaller flowered Tufted Pansies that are
called Violettas. These are plants of garden origin,
but the best of them are very well suited for the north
side of the rock garden. They should be given rich,
well-manured soil, and left undisturbed for some
years, where their roots can thrust deep under a rock.
Then they will endure a good deal of drought and re-
main long in flower. When they get straggly they
should be cut back. Nearly all the hardy Cyclamens
do well on the north side of the rock garden, and do
not mind a dry place provided it is not too sunny.
Among those which flower in the autumn may be
planted some of the smaller Daffodils, such as Nar-
cissus minimus, N. triandrus albus, N. cyclamineus,
and N. nanus. These will flower just when the Cy-
clamens are at rest, and the plants will not interfere
with each other.

NORTH SIDE OF THE ROCK GARDEN 219

Among plants usually grown on the south side,
but well fitted for open situations looking north, are
Aubrietia, which does not flower quite so freely with
such an aspect, but looks more green and glossy;
the creeping Phloxes, Veronica prostrata, V. pectinata,
and V. repens, Dianthus superbus; and in open dry
situations most of the stronger Pinks; Alyssum saxa-
tile compactum; many of the larger Sempervivums,
Thymus serpyllum, Arenaria tetraquetra, Codonopsis
ovata, Erinus alpinus, Globularia cordifolia, Gypso-
phila repens, Hutchinsia alpina, Iberis sempervirens
and its varieties. Papaver alpinum, Linaria alpina,
Saponaria ocymoides, and Silene Schafta. We have
now mentioned enough plants to show that there
can be no difficulty in covering the northern slopes
even of the largest rock garden, and yet we have said
nothing of shrubs, many of which will thrive with a
north aspect, and scarcely anything of bulbs.

GARDENERS

HE relation between gardener and employer is

not an easy one, especially if the employer is a
gardener himself. There is apt to be a conflict of
tastes; and the better the gardener the more acute
that conflict is likely to be. Every good gardener is
sure to have his own taste in flowers and their arrange-
ment, and in these days it is not often the taste of his
employer. The amateur in gardening is a revolu-
tionary, the professional a conservative. He has
learnt the mid-Victorian routine when he was a boy;
and if he has learnt it well it has brought him triumphs
plain for every one to see. His ribbon borders have
been the talk of the place, and he has won many
prizes at the local flower show, the certificates of
which he nails up in his conservatory. Naturally he
wishes to persist in his ribbon borders and his prize
winning. But his employer, if he is a gardener him-
self, has other ideas which to the professional seem
merely the result of ignorance. The consequence of
this conflict in tastes may be some real unhappiness
to the gardener. He has his duty to his employer,
of course, and he can only keep his place by doing it.
But he has also his artistic conscience. This he can-
not satisfy on herbaceous borders or bulbs in the

grass or rock gardens. Other gardeners have been
220

GARDENERS 221

accustomed to admire the florid health of his Begonias,
the contrasting glare of his Geraniums and Lobelias,
the precision of his carpet bedding, and the enormity
of his Chrysanthemums. The revolution takes place,
and instead of these proofs of his skill what has he
to show his friends? Daffodils in the grass which,
they know, will grow of themselves. Great lumber-
ing Larkspurs and Phloxes fit only for cottage gardens,
not for a gentleman’s place; and, worst of all, diminu-
tive Alpines, which may be troublesome but are cer-
tainly not worth any trouble.

His employer takes no pride in his flower-show tri-
umphs; but rather discourages them, grudging the
time that is necessary for their achievement. Indeed,
he takes no pride in anything that is worth doing;
and has no appreciation of real knowledge and skill.
He is all for experiment and for growing weeds where
there ought to be flowers, and flowers where there
ought to be weeds. In fact, he seems not to know
the difference between a weed and a flower. Very
likely he will waste good ground and manure upon
single roses, and will have no eye for the perfections
of Frau Karl Druschki. In taste he is a mere an-
archist. In knowledge he is altogether wanting; at
least, whatever he knows he has got from silly books
written by people like himself. Yet he presumes to
have opinions and, what is worse, to enforce them.
He ravages the garden and no one can stop him, be-
cause it is his own according to the law. Even the
gardener who has been a conservative all his life, in

222 STUDIES IN GARDENING

politics as well as gardening, must feel the iniquity
of this. He must feel that there is a higher law which
gives him some property in what he has made beauti-
ful; and the less he reasons about it the more deeply
he will feel it.

But to the employer who is an enthusiast for the
new horticulture these tastes and ideas of his gar-
dener will seem the result of mere arrogant stupidity.
He will assume that the gardener wants to grow Gera-
niums and Calceolarias, because he can grow nothing
else. It is his business, as a gardener, to produce
whatever his-employer asks for. He has been gar-
dening all his life, yet he knows nothing about Alpines,
not even their names, and refuses to take an interest
in them. “The worst of him is,” cries the employer,
‘that he will not learn. He thinks he knows every-
thing and he knows nothing.” And all the while that
is what the gardener is whispering to himself about
the employer. It would not matter if the employer
would attend to his own business, whatever it may
be, and leave the garden to its proper master. But
this he will not do. For some unknown reason he
must try his hand at a business for which he is con-
stitutionally unfitted. He blunders about the garden,
botching jobs which he has paid others to do for him
and demoralizing the under-gardeners with his messy
habits. It is impossible to see him at work without
despising him in your heart; and then precious time
has to be spent in repairing the damage which he
does. Meanwhile the employer is also watching his

GARDENERS 223

gardener at work and despising him in his heart.
He is the slave of a brainless routine. When there
are things of real importance to be done, he is clipping
edges because it is Thursday, or sweeping up leaves
because it is Saturday. He forgets that it is also
autumn and that grand new schemes are to be exe-
cuted for the winter.

Gardeners have a great power of passive rebellion.
They take your orders and seem to be carrying them
out, and yet nothing comes of it. You may have a
fanatical dislike of bedding plants, and think that
you have extirpated them, yet all the while there
are Geraniums and Calceolarias and even Echeverias
lurking through the winter in some secret frame; and
in due season they will appear in the garden again,
and the gardener will say that he had to fill up with
something. If you are a ruthless man, perhaps you
will have them pulled up. But you will find that for
some reason nothing else will grow where the gar-
dener thinks they ought to be. It is a place ordained
by nature for bedding plants; year after year they
will come there unless you turf it up; and if you do
that they will break out somewhere else. There is
also a curious difficulty about the planting of bulbs
in the grass. You tell your gardener that he is to
arrange them in a natural disorder, you may even
make a plan for him with dots for the bulbs on a piece
of paper, and he will seem to listen and observe, and
will say that he understands. But in the spring the
bulbs will come up in orderly rows, or, worse still, in

224 STUDIES IN GARDENING

geometrical patterns. Perhaps the gardener does not
listen. Perhaps he thinks you cannot be really so
foolish as you seem; or, perhaps— and this is the
most probable explanation — the habits of a lifetime
are too strong for him, and as he plants he obeys un-
consciously his instinct for symmetry and order.
Whatever the explanation may be, these incidents
make pleasant relations difficult; and, for the en-
thusiast, unpleasant relations with his gardener are
intolerable. They must be even worse for the gar-
dener, since he cannot openly rebel except at the risk
of losing his livelihood. It is his business, you may
say, to please his employer; but he is human, and
the more his heart is in his work the more eager he will
be to do work after his own heart. Every good gar-
dener is something of an artist, however perverse his
taste may seem, and he needs to be humoured like
an artist. But then his employer too, if he is an en-
thusiast, is also something of an artist, and probably
not content with mere humouring. It may be a point
of honour with him to have no bedding plants in his
garden. It may be a point of honour with the gar-
dener to have some. When this is the case the humane
employer usually makes some concession. He sees
that if there were no bedding plants his gardener
would lose all interest in his work and pine away.
Therefore he gives him a piece of the garden to play
with and does not grudge the time he spends upon it,
provided he will do as he is bid elsewhere. This com-
promise is not perfectly satisfactory to either party.

GARDENERS 225

The employer has to explain to his friends that the
bedding plants are not his taste. The gardener has
to explain to his friends that only in one little part of
the garden has he been given a fair chance. Some
employers, perhaps, will say that they see no reason
for a compromise at all. The garden is theirs to do
what they like with. But the gardener, though they
pay his wages, is not altogether theirs. They can,
of course, get rid of him, and look for one who will
do exactly as they like; but they will find it difficult
to get him. The good gardener always has tastes of
his own; if he had not he would not be a good gar-
dener; and his tastes are usually conservative, not
merely because he has been trained in an old-fash-
ioned school, but also because all men, except the
most able, are apt to fall into routine in any difficult
work that is the main business of their lives. In the
difficult work of a Government office this tendency
produces red tape. In the difficult work of the gar-
dener it produces the bedding-out system; for gar-
dening is very difficult work, much more difficult
than the irresponsible amateur is apt to suppose.
He plays with just the parts of it which amuse him,
and he finds them easy and delightful. He forgets
that the gardener has to do many things which are
not amusing — that he has to mow the lawn and sweep
the paths; to produce fruit and vegetables as well
as flowers; and, above all, that he is expected not to
fail in what he attempts. It is this consciousness
that he must not fail which makes the professional

226 STUDIES IN GARDENING

averse from experiment. It is the consciousness that
he can fail if he chooses which makes the amateur so
eager for experiment. We wonder why the presenta-
tion portraits which we see in the Academy are so
dull and unadventurous. We should remember that
the artist who paints portraits for a living has to pro-
duce good likenesses. If he does not, he is held by his
customer to have failed. He cannot begin on the
portrait of an alderman, and then, if the whim seizes
him, turn it into a picture of light. If he does, the
alderman will not buy it. So a gardener has to pro-
duce a certain amount of cabbages in the year and
a certain amount of flowers; and if he knows one
sure way of producing them, he sees no reason for
trying another. Thus there is a cause, much deeper
than mere perversity of taste, for horticultural routine;
and many an eager amateur who rails at it would
soon slip into it if he were in his gardener’s place.
The free play of the intelligence and the consideration
of first principles are excellent things; but very few
of us have enough energy to combine them with prac-
tice, and this is the reason why practice is usually
so much less clever than criticism. It is the business
of criticism to be clever. It is the business of prac-
tice to produce results; and practice will usually take
the line of least resistance towards that object.

These are general considerations; but they have a
very particular application to gardeners, who have
much more difficult work to do than most men of so
little general education. It is only genius that can

GARDENERS 227

combine efficient practice with a free play of the in-
telligence and a consideration of first principles; and
even genius must be educated before it can do this.
Genius, of course, is as rare among gardeners as among
other men, and educated genius still rarer. Even the
most accomplished amateur, if he has the luck to
catch an intelligent gardener young, if he can teach
him all that he knows himself and train him in his
own taste, will yet probably fail to teach him that
certainty of practice which is required of most gar-
deners. His pupil may know a good deal about AI-
pines; he may be able to plant and maintain a beau-
tiful herbaceous border; but the chances are he will
be rather disappointing with his spring greens, and
no good at all at grapes. Men trained in this way
may be invaluable in very large gardens, where there
is much division of labour; but they are not so useful
as the ordinary routine-trained gardener in a place
where they have to do or supervise everything. Ama-
teurs often wonder at the certainty of the results pro-
duced by the great florists. That certainty comes
from a division of labour impossible in the ordinary
garden. The man who has only one thing to do learns
to do it excellently, not only because he is always do-
ing it, but because he has nothing else to think of.
The ordinary gardener has a great many different
things both to do and to think of. He has to plan
as well as to execute; and it is only natural that he
should plan according to a routine and should be
very unwilling to break through it. Thus, it is not

228 STUDIES IN GARDENING

sheer vice in the gardener that he likes bedding out,
but the natural tendency of even conscientious men
to simplify their tasks. Their minds flinch from the
insecurity and bewilderment that await them as soon
as they leave their routine, and the more conscientious
they are the more they prefer a narrow and obvious
success to an ambitious failure.

These reflections are not intended to dishearten
the enthusiast. Their purpose is that he shall make
the best of his gardener by first learning to under-
stand him. When he does that he may teach his
gardener to understand his own aims and to see that
they are not merely the results of ignorance. Gar-
deners are apt to think meanly of all information got
from books, for they know that books are usually
written by amateurs. It is no use, therefore, to try
. to impress your gardener with your knowledge, for he
will assume that you have got it from a book written
by some one who has never grown a cabbage. The
only way to convince him that you know something
is to prove it by results. Then he will respect you,
even if he disagrees with you. You may, by per-
suasion and artifice, even induce him to agree with
you to some extent in time. At any rate, that is the
object to aim at; otherwise you must be always at
odds with your gardener, or else always changing him
until you find a paragon; an event which may never
happen.

THE HOUSE AND THE GARDEN

HERE is a close connexion between the art of

gardening and the art of house-building, and
that connexion persists even when deliberate efforts
are made to break it. Beautiful houses made the
beautiful formal gardens of the seventeenth and earlier
centuries. Ugly houses made the landscape gardens
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is char-
acteristic of the Englishman that, when he despaired
of making his house beautiful he should not have
despaired of making his garden beautiful; or, rather,
that when he was content with an ugly house, and per-
suaded that in some way its ugliness was appropriate
to his own wants and expressive of his own ideas,
he should not have been content with the same kind
of ugliness in his garden. About the house he was
ready to believe what architects told him; but he
would no longer trust them with his garden, and thus
there came into being the landscape garden designer,
whose aim it was to make his client forget the existence
of his house the moment he walked into his garden.
Here, of course, there was a divorce between the art
of gardening and the art of house-building; but it
came about because the art of house-building ceased
to express any of the true feelings or better qualities

of the householder, because it misrepresented him to
229

230 STUDIES IN GARDENING

himself, and because he was not content to be so mis-
represented by his garden. The natural tendency of
men who are pleased with their houses is to plan their
gardens to suit them. Thus in other countries ugly
formal gardens came with ugly houses; and even in
England the man who likes a suburban villa will sur-
round it with a villa garden. If he prefers the pre-
tence of a villa to the reality of a cottage, he will prefer
an iron railing, Calceolarias, and Geraniums to a yew
hedge and a border of Larkspurs and Roses and Lilies.
But in England there are few who really like sub-
urban villas, and even the artificial taste for them is
found chiefly among those whose education has been
carried only so far as to make them distrust all their
natural tastes. A very little more education gives
an Englishman confidence in his natural taste for
countrified houses, and gardens to suit them.

But in the eighteenth century, for reasons which
we still find it difficult to understand, the English
mind reacted in most things against its natural tastes
and instincts. In other ages we have excelled more
in poetry than in prose, but then our prose was better
than our poetry. We are a country rather than a
town people by nature; but then we aimed at a town
rather than a country civilization, and built town
houses in the country, whereas at other times we
have tended rather to build country houses in the
town. But all through the eighteenth century the
English mind was uneasy under the ideals which it
had imposed upon itself, and it was always revolting

THE HOUSE AND THE GARDEN 231

in different directions against those ideals. Most of
these revolts, before the great revolt of the romantic
movement came, took the form of some kind of make-
believe. Landscape gardening was one of those re-
volts, and pastoral poetry was another. But, whereas
pastoral poetry was almost killed by the revival of
the real poetry of nature, landscape gardening per-
sisted, because the continual decline of the art of
house-building made a revival of the true art of gar-
den design impossible. You cannot design a beautiful
garden to suit an ugly house; and therefore, since
houses grew uglier and uglier, few efforts were made
to design gardens to suit them. Thus gardens did
not advance beyond the pastoral poetry stage of re-
volt against ugliness and dulness. They expressed
no beautiful realities in human life, but only a dis-
like of ugly realities. So far they were a sign of grace;
but it was a negative and impotent kind of grace.
Men, despairing of expressing in these gardens their
own minds in terms of beauty, requested nature to
express herself, and did all they could to get out of
her way. Mr. Mawson, in his book on “The Art and
Craft of Garden Making,” calls this helpless fall-
ing back upon nature realism; but in seeking to con-
demn it with a word he does it too much honour. It
is a kind of realism that will not face realities, the
realism of conscientious make-believe. The reality
was this, that men could no longer build houses in
which they could take any rational kind of pleasure,
or which expressed any pleasant facts about their

232 STUDIES IN GARDENING

lives. They were content with such houses as they
could build, but not with gardens to suit them. Now,
instead of seeing that the true remedy was to build
better houses, they called upon nature to help them
to forget their own ugliness. But, in matters of art,
as in other things, nature helps those who help them-
selves. Landscape gardening has had its successes,
where there is space enough to make a landscape. It
has brought nothing but chaotic ugliness into those
gardens which are so small that they must be all fore-
ground, and must bear signs, open or disguised, of
the occupation of man. But now we are once again
beginning to build houses in which we can take a ra-
tional pleasure, and which do express some pleasant
facts about our lives; and it is significant that with
these houses the taste for formal gardens is reviving.

But in these days every revival of art is imme-
diately endangered by fashion. Fashion is essentially
brainless; it understands nothing about principles, but
seizes upon some external feature of a reviving art,
reduces it to an absurdity by blind exaggeration, and
so quickly gives us a disgust of the art itself. The re-
vival of formal gardening, like the revival of house-
building, is in some danger from this cause. The
best houses that are built now must be a little con-
scious of their goodness. There are so many things
which an architect must learn to avoid that even
when he manages to avoid them he still leaves us
aware of their absence. In the same way a good
modern formal garden, planned to suit a good modern

THE HOUSE AND THE GARDEN 233

house, often seems conscious of its formality, and to
be a protest against the idea of landscape gardens.
This kind of self-consciousness, an inevitable though
undesirable characteristic of a reviving art, is sure to
be seized upon and exaggerated by fashion. The more
enterprising suburban builder suddenly discovers that
straight paths and rows of Thuyas are the thing; and,
since they are as cheap as winding walks and shrub-
beries, he provides them, just as he provides houses
with a fashionable air of austerity about their porches
and chimneys. But this fashionable formality is no
more satisfying than the fashionable austerity; and
people whose taste is made by fashion will soon tire
of both. There could be no more signal proof of the
close connexion between garden design and _ house-
building than the fact that a sham art in house-build-
ing has immediately produced a sham art in garden
design to go with it. The essence of good house-
building is that the facts about the house shall be
pleasantly expressed. It must make no pretensions
to be anything more than it is, and it must also make
the best of what it is, like a well-mannered man. In
the same way the essence of good garden design is
to make a piece of ground both pleasant and useful
without attempting to conceal its nature, its limits,
or its uses. The worst excesses of landscape gar-
dening have come about from a desire to make gar-
dens seem larger than they are; and landscape gar-
deners, in the vain attempt to imitate nature, have
too often forgotten that gardens are ever used for any

*

234 STUDIES IN GARDENING

purpose by human beings, or else they have assumed
that nothing useful can be beautiful, and have ig-
nored use in their pursuit of beauty.

The proper problem of garden design, as of house-
building, is to make the useful beautiful; but it is
easier in garden design, because the uses of a garden
are all pleasant. Pleasure is its purpose; and so its
very ornaments, the flowers, are objects of utility in
it. But we shall not learn how to arrange them or
any of the other things proper to a garden until we
regard them all as objects of utility meant for the
enjoyment of human beings, and not as means of
making the garden look like something other than
what it was. Trees should be in a garden to give
shade, hedges to provide shelter or to serve as boun-
daries, paths to provide a dry passage from one place
to another; lawns for many purposes —for games,
or to sit on, or to serve as a foil to flowers; and flower-
ing plants for ornament. If once a garden is thus
conceived, so to speak, in terms of utility, just as a
house is conceived by a good architect, a design formal
in the best sense of the word seems to follow as a
matter of course. But, just as there is all the differ-
ence in the world between formality in architecture
that is based upon utility and formality that is the
result of a desire to be formal, so it is with formality
in gardens. The one is living, the other is dead; the
one rational, the other irrational. A straight avenue
of pollarded limes is an instance of rational formality.
It is intended for a shady walk; and it is straight be-

THE HOUSE AND THE GARDEN) 235

cause limes so arranged give the most continuous shade
and because straight walks are the most direct. An
avenue of Thuyas is an instance of irrational formality.
They serve no useful purpose. They are mere orna-
ments, as tiresome in their meaningless repetition as
the obelisks of a pompous Baroque building. The
motive is always the test of formality in garden de-
sign as in architecture, and of informality as well as
of formality; and in both cases irrational or vulgar
motives betray themselves at once to the expert, and
produce some vague discomfort even in the inexpert.
There should be a reason, and a good one, for every
feature in a garden as for every feature in a house —
meaningless irregularities are as offensive in the one
as in the other; and so are meaningless formalities.
Reasons, of course, must depend upon the designer’s
purpose; and some purposes make more for beauty
in gardens than others. We may rule out all pur-
poses of mere ostentation, which are as sure to pro-
duce ugliness in the garden as in the house. We may
also rule out the purpose of imitating nature, as being,
except on the outskirts of very large gardens, both
misguided and impracticable. There is also the purely
horticultural purpose, very common now, which may
produce much beauty of detail, but will not produce
a beautiful design. Lastly, there is the purpose of
making the garden a pleasant habitation in hours of
ease and fair weather, just as there is the purpose of
making the house a pleasant habitation at all times.
Only with this purpose can a garden be made con-

236 STUDIES IN GARDENING

sistently beautiful both in design and in ornament,
with a beauty that seems to ennoble the pleasures
that it serves. There is something in the order and
quiet of a beautiful formal garden, in its perfect recon-
cilement of nature and man, which gives one a greater
love of life, and this is just the same feeling that one
gets from the enjoyment of a beautiful house. Both
seem to prove that man is not a mere defacer of the
world, that if he chooses he can add beauty to it, even
in fulfilling his own wants, like the flowers themselves.
The best art is nearer to nature than any attempt
to imitate her, because it comes into being, like her
beauties, for some purpose outside itself.

THE RIGHT USE OF FLOWERING SHRUBS

T is often said that flowering shrubs are too little

used in our gardens; and, indeed, considering
their number and beauty, we may wonder that more
is not made of them. Yet there is some reason for
their neglect, for of all the ornaments of the garden
they are the most difficult to place rightly. We are
uncertain whether to treat them as shrubs or as flowers.
Many of them cannot be used, like other shrubs, as
a foil or background to flowers, since they have too
strong an interest of their own when they are in flower;
and when they go out of flower they often lack the
neatness and flourishing air of other shrubs. They
have made their great display, beautiful while it lasts
but often short-lived, and when it is over they have
a spent look like herbaceous plants after their flower-
ing time. On the other hand, it is difficult to treat
_most of them as flowering plants and to place them
among other flowering plants in the border, because
of their size and because their roots rob the ground
of nourishment and moisture which the other plants
need. In a large garden, of course, they may be placed
by themselves in great shrubberies; but these are
seldom satisfactory, especially when they consist of
many kinds of shrubs. It is far more difficult to make

a pleasant arrangement of different flowering shrubs
237

238 STUDIES IN GARDENING

than of different herbaceous plants. The units of
the arrangement are so large that any intricate inter-
weaving of colour is almost impossible; besides, shrubs
cannot be put close together like smaller plants with-
out suffering from overcrowding. Most of the plants
of the border can be divided when they grow too
thick and the soil may then be redug and enriched.
But shrubs, to flourish, must be left alone. You can-
not be always experimenting with new combinations
or removing the smaller shrubs when they are over-
shadowed. Your planting must be made once and
for all; and without the power of frequent experiment
how are you to get the experience necessary for skil-
ful arrangement? You cannot even be sure of profit-
ing by the experience of others, unless their condi-
tions are exactly the same as yours; for some shrubs
grow apace in one kind of soil and others in another;
and a combination that succeeds in a rich loam may
be a failure in a light gravel. Nothing looks so miser-
able in a garden as a flowering shrub that does not
thrive. It is so large a monument of failure that it
may poison all the gardener’s pleasure in his garden,
and one sickly shrub will mar the effect of a whole
shrubbery.

Then again, the very number and diversity of
flowering shrubs are apt to intimidate the gardener.
There are so many that he would like to have, even
among those quite familiar to him, that he does not
know where to begin, especially if his garden is not
very large. And flowering shrubs have such different

RIGHT USE OF FLOWERING SHRUBS 239

associations. An Apple tree seems to belong to a
different world from a Rhododendron, and a Mag-
nolia from a Hawthorn. Associations may be quite
arbitrary and may change from time to time; but
you can no more ignore them in the use of shrubs
than in the use of words. There are some shrubs that
always have an exotic look, and need to be used as
discreetly as foreign words or phrases. You cannot
plant them without incongruity among those shrubs
that seem to belong to the immemorial past of our
gardens. Some day, perhaps, the hardy Azaleas will
look as homely as a Damask Rose; but at present they
still seem to belong to the Far East, so closely are
they associated in our minds with Japanese drawings
and decoration; and it is not easy to find plants that
will combine well with them.

We have said enough to show that the problem of
flowering shrubs —a problem at once horticultural
and esthetic — is peculiarly difficult; and it is better
not to use them at all than to use them badly, especially
in the formal garden. It must be confessed that
formal gardens, so far as flowering shrubs are con-
cerned, are at a disadvantage compared with wild
or even with ordinary landscape gardens. The best
tradition of formal gardening was developed when
there were but few flowering shrubs, and it afforded
few opportunities for the use of them. It was timid
even in the use of Roses, the chief of all flowering
shrubs; and now that there are so many Roses that
can be treated as true flowering shrubs and not as

240 STUDIES IN GARDENING

mere blossom-producing machines, we are not likely
to be content with any timid use of them. Nor can
we content ourselves with a timid use of all those
earlier flowering shrubs and trees which make the
glory of late spring in large gardens, and in garden
cities like Oxford with Hawthorn pink and white, and
Laburnum, and Lilac and the Guelder rose, and all
the Cherries, and Apples, and Plums. We cannot
forgo the rapture and abundance of these any more
than we can forgo the innumerable twinkling of Cro-
cuses and Squills and Daffodils in the grass. But the
question remains, how are we to have them without
injuring the other beauties of our gardens; and that
question is not easy to answer. Where the garden
is very large the problem is easiest. There, flowering
shrubs may be planted in broad masses and com-
binations on the wilder outskirts, and more sparsely
and carefully nearer to the house. An occasional
flowering shrub may be placed with artful irregularity
even in the most formal parts of a garden. Nothing
looks better than a single Hawthorn or Laburnum
placed, as if by accident, in the corner of a cloister,
and it may be used in the same way in a garden close.
But there must be no regularity in the planting of
such things, or it will distract the eye from the reg-
ularity of the main design. To plant a Hawthorn
in each corner of a cloister or a garden close would
be a fatal absurdity. What is needed is a contrast
between the general order and symmetry and a single
beautiful accident, for there should be some one ap-

RIGHT USE OF FLOWERING SHRUBS 241

parently accidental beauty in every garden design,
however formal, as in every picture, however sys-
tematically composed. Without it there seems to
be no inspiration and no spontaneity, nothing but
a timid anxiety for correctness. And here, perhaps,
we may have arrived at a principle for the use of the
larger and nobler flowering trees and shrubs, at any
rate in more formal and confined gardens. They
should be employed not systematically, like flowers
or shrubs of utility, but as accidents and surprises,
to enliven the formality of the whole. Needless to
say, they must be so employed with great restraint.
Accidents and surprises, if too often repeated, lose
their effect. But the difficulty in every design is to
combine restraint with abundance, to know where
to be lavish and where to be sparing. Flowering
shrubs are most beautiful objects, at any rate, when
in flower, and some gardeners, therefore, are tempted
to plant them in abundance; but the better course
seems to be, at least in small or formal gardens, to
use them sparingly in combination with an abundance
of herbaceous and other flowering plants. There
must be a sacrifice somewhere, especially nowadays,
when we have such an infinite variety of all kinds of
ornamental plants; and the sacrifice should be made
on some principle. Now, there is a principle in the
sparing use of flowering shrubs, because they are, as
we have said, too large for units in any ordered com-
bination, except in a very large garden. Therefore,
they should be used as accidents.

242 STUDIES IN GARDENING

We are all familiar with the accidental use of “orna-
mental conifers” in landscape gardens, and most of
us are tired of it. It is usually unhappy, because
these conifers are too formal and not interesting or
beautiful enough in themselves for such a use, and
also because single accidents are superfluous where
everything is intended to look accidental. An accident
in a design should be striking and beautiful in itself,
and should be used to correct and contrast with the
general formality of that design. Therefore, shrubs
or trees brilliant in their flowers and informal in their
growth should be employed for that purpose. They
should contrast in every respect with the more formal
elements of the design that will serve as a foil to them.
Thus evergreen flowering shrubs, such as Berberis
Darwinii or B. stenophylla, should not be placed
against an evergreen background such as a yew hedge.
That should serve as a foil rather to some deciduous
tree with leafage of an utterly different colour. Noth-
ing is more beautiful in a garden than contrasts of
foliage, where they occur once and as if by accident.
Nothing is more restless and wearisome than such
contrasts where they are incessant and too varied.
Thus a mixed shrubbery, even if it is altogether com-
posed of beautiful flowering shrubs, is seldom beauti-
ful as a whole. The items seem to jostle each other
and to compete for your attention, like advertise-
ments on a hoarding or pictures at an exhibition,
and they compete most violently when they are in
flower together and in their fullest beauty. But a

RIGHT USE OF FLOWERING SHRUBS 243

single flowering shrub rightly placed in front of a
dark barrier of greenery has your eye to itself and
satisfies it, like an altarpiece in a quiet church. Nor
does it compete with any border of flowers near it,
for their beauty is on a different scale and of a dif-
ferent order. But in a large garden formally designed
there may be a greater abundance of flowering shrubs
than is possible with this accidental use of them, if
only they are arranged in an orderly fashion and
without too great variety. The best Rose gardens
give us hints for the treatment of other flowering
shrubs by which we have not yet profited much.
There is no reason why we should not have shrubberies
arranged like roseries, not in a thicket all struggling
together for life and notice, but widely spaced at
regular intervals and with regular repetitions and
alternations. In such a shrubbery only a few kinds
should be planted. Harmony and simplicity, rather
than variety, should be aimed at, and the different
shrubs should be chosen so as to agree or contrast
well together in the colour and character of their
foliage and in their habit of growth, and also to pro-
vide a succession of bloom. Lower growing shrubs
might be placed between the taller ones, just as dwarf
Roses fill up the spaces in a rosery between the oc-
casional great Pillar Roses. Thus a shrubbery with
pink Hawthorn and the tallest Philadelphus (Syringa)
alternating at regular intervals might be filled up
with masses of Lavender and Cytisus precox. But
the possible combinations of such a shrubbery are

244 STUDIES IN GARDENING

innumerable, and we only mention this one as an
example. When the taller shrubs are straight and
aspiring in their growth, those in between should be
of a more spreading and bushy habit; and these
smaller shrubs should be planted as close together
and be encouraged to grow as evenly as possible.
The ground must be well covered at all costs, and all
the shrubs must thrive, or else the effect will be more
ragged even than in the ordinary mixed shrubbery.
There is no reason why some of the tall Pillar Roses
should not have their place in such an arrangement,
alternating with Lilacs or some of the taller Spirzas.
Nothing can look better than pillars of Dorothy Per-
kins encircled with Lavender or some other low-grow-
ing glaucous-leaved shrub. Where there are spaces
between the smaller shrubs they may be filled with
masses of German Irises or Pinks or any other plant
that keeps some of its beauty-all the year. But in
any case the shrubs, whether massed or single, should
be regular in their arrangement and but little varied
in kind.

The use of shrubs about a lawn is a very difficult
problem, especially in landscape gardens where there
is no formal or quiet background to serve as a foil for
them. Shrubs seldom look well when they are planted
at regular intervals about a lawn, especially if they
are at all stiff or formal in habit. On the other hand,
single shrubs dotted here and there are apt to seem
pointless and forlorn; and so are beds of low-growing
shrubs such as Rhododendrons or Azaleas. These

RIGHT USE OF FLOWERING SHRUBS 245

need a background of quiet greenery and some place
that seems to be made for them, not cut out arbitrarily
from a great expanse of grass. They should, therefore,
always be on the outskirts of a lawn and in some bay
encircled with taller shrubs or trees. Then they may
have a splendid effect when in flower. Of the larger
shrubs the best for the lawn are those which become
small trees in time, such as Hawthorns, Judas trees,
and Apples. It is strange that Apple trees should so
seldom be planted anywhere except in the kitchen gar-
den. Apart from their use, they are, perhaps, the
most beautiful of all flowering shrubs, and peculiarly
suitable by reason of their spreading growth, for
planting on the outskirts of a lawn. Where a lawn
is very large it would be well to have an irregularly
arranged orchard or grove of Hawthorns at the end
of it; and even where it is smaller a few Apple trees
or Hawthorns planted together would in time make
a pleasant shade, and serve as an agreeable transition
to some other part of the garden. But, as we have
said, the problem of flowering shrubs is a very dif-
ficult one; and we do not now pretend to do more
than explain the nature of its difficulties and offer a
few suggestions for dealing with them.

THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS

I

LARGE book full of poetry and curious learn-

ing might be written about the associations of
flowers; and there are few of us, at least among those
who care much for flowers, who can think of them
apart from their associations. In this respect, as we
remarked lately, they are like words. Some are de-
graded by their associations and others exalted. Some
are connected with history and the poetry of the past,
others only with bad fashions and foolish pretensions
of the present. Compare, for instance, the associa-
tions of Iris florentina, the true Flower de luce, with
those of the ordinary yellow Calceolaria. The Iris
is certainly more beautiful than the Calceolaria.
But it is also the Lily of France. It has been embroi-
dered upon banners, and painted upon coats of arms.
It has led men into many victories, and now it is the
symbol of a lost cause. But the poor Calceolaria is
merely the symbol of a discredited fashion in gar-
dening. We can scarcely see it without thinking of
its complementary yet discordant associates, Gera-
niums and Lobelias, just as we cannot see the words
transpire or phenomenal, even when they are rightly
used, without thinking of the manner in which they

have been misused by bad writers. The associations
246

THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 247

of some words make them impossible for poetry, and
the associations of some flowers are apt to exclude
them from the borders of imaginative gardeners.

No doubt it is easy to be too fastidious about as-
sociations. A language becomes impoverished when
its writers will run no risks in their use of words, when
they are more careful not to offend a pampered taste
than to express their meaning at all costs; and so
a gardener may think too much of the associations
of his flowers and be concerned rather with the past
than with the future. For after all flowers, like words,
when they have been degraded by a bad use, may
be ennobled by a good one. The little blue Lobelia
does not deserve to be banished from our gardens
because it has been so often discordantly combined
with Calceolarias and Geraniums. It is not the native
of a ribbon border, and, no doubt, if we had only
seen it growing wild in South Africa we should recog-
nize its beauty. In this respect flowers have an ad-
vantage over words. They are not made by men to
begin with, and, therefore, cannot, like some words,
be condemned to ugliness and base uses from the
first. Some of them are so capable of transformation
that, in their garden forms, they may become posi-
tively ugly; but few, if any, are positively ugly by
nature. It is only misuse, and the associations of
misuse, that make them seem ugly to those who have
never seen them rightly used.

There are some plants, especially those of the des-
ert, that can scarcely be rightly used in our gardens.

248 STUDIES IN GARDENING

But these we can do without. There are others that
a gardener may take a pride in delivering from the
associations of misuse and in treating so skilfully
that their beauty will surprise those who have only
seen them maltreated. Plants that deserve such
deliverance and to get associations more worthy of
their beauty are, besides Lobelias, the garden Hya-
cinths, the early Tulips, Echeverias, and other plants
associated with carpet bedding, and even Geraniums
and Calceolarias. But we have said enough about
the unpleasant associations of flowers. They nearly
all come from misuse, and will quickly disappear
when misuse ceases.

Yet there are some plants that have associations,
evil and sinister rather than merely unpleasant, plants
that belong to the romance of malign enchantment
and about which legends have gathered that we can-
not forget when we look at them. The chief of these
in England is the Deadly Nightshade, Atropa bella-
donna, which has every sinister quality. It is rare
and looks as poisonous as it is, and it grows usually
about old ruins and deserted houses. Its names,
both English and Latin, prove how much it has im-
pressed the imagination of men. It is the viper among
plants, and one might expect a viper to lie in ambush
in its shadow. Indeed it is often associated with ser-
pents in allegorical pictures. Other plants of the
same family are scarcely less sinister. The Henbane,
for instance, is apt, like the Deadly Nightshade, to
grow about ruins and deserted houses; and, though

THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 249

it has a curious beauty of its own, it looks scarcely
less sinister than the Nightshade, with its coarse
hairy leaves and dingy purple netted flowers. It
also has an evil smell. It is strange that these plants
should have habits so consistent with their appear-
ance. A rationalist might say that we have come to
think they look sinister because of the places where
we usually find them. But they would look sinister
in a spring meadow or a cottage garden. And there
is no doubt that, like Nettles, they have a curious
affection for places once occupied and now deserted
by man. They are parasites that come with ruin
and neglect. They seem to thrive best either where
man no longer thrives or where he has never been;
and, perhaps, when the famous New Zealander con-
templates the ruins of St. Paul’s he will find the streets
of London overgrown, not with grass, but with Hen-
bane and Deadly Nightshade.

A still more famous relation of Henbane, the Man-
drake or Mandragora, is now much less familiar to
us. In Mr. Robinson’s “English Flower Garden”’ it
is dismissed as “suitable mainly for botanical collec-
tions.” But Parkinson treated it with the respect
due to a plant renowned in literature and legend.
He speaks of the heady or strong stuffing smell of its
apples, and says that he has often transplanted Man-
drakes, “‘but never found harm by so doing, as many
idle tales have been set down in writing, and delivered
also by report, of much danger to happen to such as
should dig them up or break them.” And he adds,

250 STUDIES IN GARDENING

“Neither have I ever seen any form of man-like or
woman-like parts in the roots of any.... But
many cunning counterfeit roots have been shaped
to such forms and publicly exposed to the view of
all that would see them.” He does not even men-
tion the fable that the Mandrake shrieks when pulled
up by the roots. Its fame still survives in literature
from the Book of Genesis to Othello and that strange
poem of Donne’s that begins:—

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root.

But its fame has almost outlived the plant itself, so
far as our gardens are concerned, and many gardeners
would not recognize it if they saw it. It has so little
beauty that now, when it is no longer used as a medi-
cine, it could only be grown as a curiosity.

The pleasant associations of flowers are of several
different kinds, and have much effect upon their treat-
ment in gardens. Thus we naturally associate the
most beautiful of our native wildflowers with wild
places. There is no reason in the nature of things
why Primroses and the English Daffodil and Blue-
bells should not be grown in the border; yet their
beauty seems to us to be lessened by putting them
there because we think of them as a part of the beauty
of the woods or meadows. The Daffodil, even in its
most elaborate garden forms, is still for us a meadow
flower because of its likeness to the Wild Daffodil.
But the Pheasant-eye Narcissus is not, because, al-

THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 251

though meadows are full of it in Switzerland, we have
no form of it that grows wild in our fields.

There are many plants that have not been de-
veloped by the florists which we think of only as gar-
den plants because we have never seen them growing
wild. We could scarcely imagine, for instance, a
wild Madonna Lily. The very name, which, by-
the-by, is quite modern, associates it not only with
man, but with the art of man. It appears in many
famous pictures of the Virgin, from the Annunciation
of Fra Angelico to that of Rossetti. But nowhere
perhaps is it so beautifully used as in Lippo Lippi’s
Coronation, where the white flowers shine above the
attendant angels against the blue background.

These Lilies are just the same as those which grow
in our gardens now; but few of our modern Roses
are much like those which are blown by Zephyrus
upon Botticelli’s new risen Venus. They are small
and rather prim in the arrangement of their petals.
They have no thorns, and if Botticelli painted them
from a particular model it may have been from the
thornless Rose described by Parkinson. But to judge
by most old pictures of Roses primness was once con-
sidered a virtue in them as in Dahlias and Columbines.
Perhaps now we have gone too far the other way.
At any rate, our modern Roses have utterly out-
grown all the old artistic associations of the flower;
and the Tudor Rose does not seem to belong to our
gardens like the Fleur-de-lys. The new Roses, whether
hybrid perpetuals or teas or ramblers, have yet to

252 STUDIES IN GARDENING

make their artistic associations almost as much as
Orchids or any novel species of Primula or Poppy
just imported from the East. True, they have been
painted by Fantin Latour and other skilful artists;
but a flower is not thoroughly at home in art until
it has been conventionalized for decoration, until
we have in our houses, not mere representations of
it in a frame, but the flower itself tamed without loss
of character into a beautiful pattern. Then, indeed, it
becomes a part of our lives, as wild flowers are a part
of the life of the earth. But it must be very familiar
to us and very much beloved before it can be so tamed.
A designer cannot take any flower he chooses and
make a pattern of it, or at least one that will please
us for long. Such patterns must grow and be per-
fected under the hands of many different designers;
and the flowers of which they are composed must
be chosen by the consent of the world, like the flowers
familiar in poetry or legend or the figurative speech
of men. Indeed, we may compare the decorative
use of flowers with those felicitous names which they
only get when they have been familiar and beloved
for centuries, and which we find it impossible to fix
upon even the most beautiful of new flowers; and
just as the very abundance of new flowers makes it
more difficult for us now to find good English names
for them, so it makes it more difficult for us to employ

1 Remarkable illustrations of the last phrase of this foregoing sentence are
found in Foord’s “Decorative Flower Studies,” Batsford, London, 1901.
L. Y. K.

THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 253

them in decoration. There are so many competitors
for our affections that we are bewildered among them;
and before any associations have gathered about one
novelty we are distracted to another. We have no
right to complain of our riches, and no doubt in time
the novelties will be exhausted, and only the best of
them will be kept. Then they will begin to gather
associations about them and to get beautiful names,
and to pass into decoration and poetry and legend.
But at present it would be almost as difficult to make
a good pattern out of Incarvillea Delavayi, beautiful
as it is, as to introduce its name into poetry. The
flower, like the name, has no associations for us yet;
we admire, but do not love it. It must grow in our
gardens for a long while before its image can grow in
our minds; and decoration is made of mental images
rather than of imitations of particular objects. In
the same way the felicitous names of flowers express
ideas of flowers that have grown up in men’s minds
slowly and with long association. No doubt they are
often invented in a happy flash of fancy; sometimes
they are expressive corruptions of an inexpressive
original; but in any case they are not accepted un-
less they express the common idea of a flower. And
that idea is made, not only by the peculiar character
of its beauty, but by all the associations and the
romance that have gathered about it, not only by
its own life, but by its connexion with the life of men.
We cannot tell why this connexion should be estab-
lished more in the case of some flowers than of others

254 STUDIES IN GARDENING

that seem to be equally beautiful and are equally
familiar, or why some flowers that have had felicitous
names in the past have lost them now. We can only
note that it is so; and, having made these general
remarks, we propose to treat the subject in more de-
tail in another article.

THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS
II

Although we, as a nation, have a strong love of
flowers, yet they do not mean as much to us as they
mean to the J apanese, or, at any rate, we do not man-
age to express our love for them as systematically or
as clearly as the Japanese. It is, of course, a defect
of our modern life that we do not manage to express
anything very systematically or clearly. Indeed, we
rather take a pride in being inarticulate; and not
only in ordinary speech but in all our manners and
actions we conceal our deeper feelings, whereas the
Japanese, for all their Oriental composure and sup-
pression of transitory and individual emotions, have
elaborated a ritual for the expression of emotions and
tastes that are national and persistent. Flowers for
them are not merely toys or ornaments. It is impos-
sible, probably, for any European to understand all
that flowers mean to them and how far they love
them for their own sake or how far as symbols, chosen
by reason of their beauty, of certain qualities which
they cultivate as carefully as the flowers themselves.
Flowers, such as the Cherry blossom, the Iris, the
Peony, and the Chrysanthemum, have for them as-

sociations so ancient and so strong that in the in-
255

256 STUDIES IN GARDENING

dividual blossom they must always see the type, with
all that it implies to them, not merely of beauty, but
of virtues which seem to them beautiful, and which
they try to produce as naturally and inevitably as a
plant bears its flowers. Even if we know nothing of
their life and language, we can tell from their art how
intimately flowers must be connected with their lives;
for in that art flowers are almost as prominent as the
human form in the art of the Greeks. And just as,
in Greek art, the human form is simplified into types
without loss of character, so in Japanese art flowers
are simplified into types without loss, indeed rather
with emphasis, of character. This kind of simplifica-
tion cannot be achieved without a great knowledge
and love of the object simplified. Nor can it be achieved
by an individual, but only by a succession of artists
working for a public very familiar with the subject
matter of their art. It means that artists and public
alike have mental images of their subject matter com-
posed of all those qualities in- it which have most
significance for them and continually strengthened
and enriched by a disinterested study of nature.

One has only to compare the illustrations in an
English and Japanese flower catalogue to see how
strong are the Japanese mental images of flowers,
and how weak are the English. The English illus-
trations, whether from drawings or from photographs,
are representations of individual flowers and nothing
more. The Japanese, though they have just as much
individuality and far more character, insist upon the

THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 257

flowers’ typical beauty. One can see that even to
the humble artist of the catalogue these flowers are
familiar, not as mere objects of commerce, but as
elements of his own life, and that in painting them
he has been concerned, not merely with the indif-
ferent representation of facts, but with the expression
of feelings common to his race. Thus even he, work-
ing with a professedly commercial object, has com-
mand of a tradition which is altogether wanting to
the best European flower painters, and which was
wanting also to the Dutch flower painters of the seven-
teenth century. They, with all their skill, painted
like florists and for a nation of florists. One can see
that they belonged to a people who thought of flowers
rather as ornaments for the house than as having an
independent life of their own. In their pictures the
flowers are always composed into elaborate nosegays,
autumn, summer, and spring flowers all mixed to-
gether. They communicate to us no sense of their
growth. ‘They are interested only in the individual
blossom, not in the plant; and their favourite dewdrop
is intended rather as a touch of realism and a proof
of skill than as a suggestion that the flowers have
ever grown out of doors. But the Japanese flower
painters, even the catalogue artists, treat flowers like
landscape painters rather than like florists. They
may show us only a few blossoms, but they seem to
be growing in the open air. They always insist as
much on the character and growth of the whole plant
as on the beauty of individual flowers; and it is plain

258 STUDIES IN GARDENING

that they have studied the plant as it grew, and not
merely its flowers picked and arranged in a nosegay.
The Japanese are great gardeners, but they have
never become florists, partly perhaps because most of
their flowers are indigenous, and they are used to see
the types of even their most elaborate garden flowers
growing wild; but chiefly because the very life of
flowers is sacred and significant to them almost as
human life is to us. No doubt these two reasons are
connected with each other. For we are much more
ready to play tricks with exotic than with native
flowers; we take much more pleasure in the whole
life and growth of a Primrose or of a Bluebell than
in the life and growth of a Dahlia or of Lilium Aura-
tum. The Japanese have a great advantage over us
in the splendour and variety of their native flora.
Flowers must make a great appeal to the imagination
of any one where Lilium Auratum is to be found grow-
ing wild; and there must be little temptation there
to make a sharp division between wild and garden
flowers or to treat garden flowers as utterly artificial
things. It may well be that the splendour of the native
flora has had a most powerful influence upon Japanese
art, and even that it has made the Japanese an artistic
people. However that may be, there can be no doubt
of the great part which flowers play both in their
life and in their art. And their flowers are so closely
connected with their art that even for us they are
most strongly associated with it. Every one will
have noticed how many Japanese flowers seem to

THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 259

have a peculiar Japanese character; and how by
reason of that character they have a foreign look in
our gardens. The explanation of this must be, not
that they come from a very distant country, but that
they are associated with an art utterly different from
our own, so different that, however much we may
admire and imitate it, it still remains strange and
unreal to us. And thus Japanese flowers, beautiful
as they are and in many cases easily grown in our
gardens, are apt to look strange and unreal to us.
They seem not works of nature, but the products of
a fantastic Oriental mind. The Japanese have made
decoration of their flowers with so little elimination
or perversion of fact that the flowers themselves seem
to us to be decoration, of an utterly alien kind, even
when they are growing in our gardens or half wild
in our woods. The hardy azaleas are grown every-
where now, but there is still something in their beauty
that is incongruous with our English gardens; and
there is the same incongruity in nearly all Japanese
shrubs which flower before their leaves are fully out,
particularly in the early flowering magnolias. It is
a curious fact that even Japanese flowers which are
not familiar to us in Japanese art, such as the Platy-
codon, have a Japanese look; and that the Funkias
or Plantain Lilies which have been so long in our gar-
dens still seem to belong to a different world from
that of the Larkspurs and Phloxes and other border
plants commonly associated with them. These plants
have certain qualities of texture and form upon which

260 STUDIES IN GARDENING

the Japanese are apt to insist in their decorative
treatment of flowers; and thus we seem to see Japanese
art in the plants themselves, so strong is the influence
of that art upon our minds.

But however much we may admire and imitate it,
it is not our art, and we cannot make it ours. Fa-
miliarity with it only makes the things most commonly
represented in it seem the more foreign to us. If it
were not for Japanese art many Japanese plants
would now seem quite homely to us which we still
find incongruous with the ordinary plants of our gar-
dens, and which for that reason we cannot love as
much as we admire them. Beauty is not the only
quality for which we love a flower. The very fact
that flowers are the most beautiful objects in nature
makes their associations so powerful that often these
associations gather between us and the flower itself,
so that we cannot see it exactly as it is but only through
its associations. Often, of course, they are connected
not only with its appearance, but with its scent, and
the sense of smell calls up associations more quickly
than the sense of sight. But for its scent, Mignonette
would be a mere curiosity, and grown only in botanical
collections. Bluebells are beautiful flowers, but it is
their scent even more than their beauty that evokes
for us all the delight of woods in May, the songs of
birds and the whisper of leaves in the wind, as well
as the coloured light and shadow. And it is the faint
odour of Primroses which most powerfully reminds
us of the mossy places in which they grow and of the

THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 261

cool and fitful weather of their flowering time. In
fact, scent is to sight what poetry is to painting; less
definite but far wider in its power, moving us more
by association than by a direct appeal, enriching the
present not merely with visions but with sounds and
emotions of the past, and seeming to involve all the
other senses and the mind as well in one complex de-
light.

It may be that our sense of smell is growing less
acute. Certainly we seem to lay less store by scented
flowers than our ancestors used to do, to judge by
their writings. Bacon is not often a poetical writer,
but when he speaks of the scent of flowers he writes,
though in prose, like Shakespeare himself. The breath
of flowers, he says, is far sweeter in the air (where it
comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in
the hand. There are many people now who never
notice that a flower is scented at all unless it is thrust
under their noses. Then the list which he gives of
flowers that are fast of their smells and of those which
yield them to the air proves that he was curious in
this matter. He notes, for instance, that Strawberry
leaves dying yield a most excellent cordial smell; and
that Burnet, Wild Thyme, and Water-Mint perfume
the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest,
but being trodden upon and crushed. “Therefore
you are to set whole allies of them, to have the pleasure,
when you walk or tread.” Parkinson, too, is often
very elaborate and exact in his description of scents,
whether sweet or foul; and far more plants were

262 STUDIES IN GARDENING

grown in the past for their scent alone than are grown
now. Indeed, we have become so indifferent to scent
and all its delightful associations, that it is scarcely
considered a fault in a new Rose or Carnation that
it should be scentless.

It may be that the present fashion for Alpine flowers
has increased our indifference to scent, for few of them
have much smell, and yet their associations are so
strong and delightful that it is no wonder we should
overlook this deficiency in them. Probably these
associations, more even than their beauty, are the
cause of their present popularity. It is only natural
that when men take a delight in mountains they
should also delight in the flowers that grow upon
them. There are thousands of Englishmen now who
think of their holidays always in connection with the
Swiss mountains, and for whom, therefore, everything
associated with those mountains has a peculiar de-
light. They cannot have those mountains in their
own gardens, though in one famous rock garden there
is a miniature Matterhorn; but luckily they can, by
the kindness of nature, have many of the mountain
flowers. And these by reason of their character and
beauty, in which they are so distinct from the flowers
of the lowlands, do very powerfully call to mind their
mountain homes. They are the only “outlandish”
flowers in which we take delight because of their native
associations, which seem to us wild, even in our own
gardens, and which, therefore, we are as unwilling to
associate with any kind of formality as our own Prim-
roses and Bluebells and Honeysuckle. Many of them

THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 263

will grow quite well in the border, and yet so grown
they seem to lose half their beauty with all their
power of association. Therefore we make special
places for them as congruous with their associations
as possible.

It is to be hoped, however, that as we travel more
and more and further and further afield we shall not
develop this kind of sensitiveness about all the for-
eign plants which we find growing in their native
homes. Gardening would become impossible if we
tried to imitate the natural conditions of plants from
all over the world, if the new associations of foreign
travel were to destroy the old associations of our gar-
dens; if we could no longer take delight in Lobelia
cardinalis in the border because we had seen it grow-
ing in an American wilderness; or if a cottage garden
came to seem an absurdly artificial and incongruous
place to us. But this is never likely to happen. At
present our sense of the associations of flowers is
weakened and troubled by many things, by the revolu-
tion in gardening fashions which is still continuing, and
by the multitude of new plants that are constantly
introduced. There are some gardeners who prize
novelty for its own sake and take no pleasure in fa-
miliar beauties. But this time of revolution and dis-
covery must come to an end; and then we shall find
out which of the plants, new and old, we love the
best; and about these associations will gradually
gather again, and they will become familiar to us,
we may hope, not only in our gardens, but also in
our poetry and art.

BULBS FOR SPRING PLANTING

TE are all accustomed to think of autumn as
the time for planting bulbs, and, indeed, most

of our best and most familiar bulbs have to be planted
in the autumn. Yet there are a good many bulbs
not perfectly hardy in our winters which luckily do
not, like Daffodils and Crocuses, begin their growth
before the spring, and which can, therefore, be taken
up and stored during the winter, and only planted
when all fear of severe frost is over. Some of these,
like the Gladioli, are quite familiar to us; but others
are not often seen in our gardens and deserve to be
grown more than they are. They are, as a rule, sun-
loving plants, and should be planted in warm and
sheltered places, with good drainage and light, rich
soil. Gardeners often make the mistake of supposing
that bulbs which grow in the poorest of soil in their
native countries will necessarily need no more nourish-
ment in England. It is natural to suppose this, but
often wrong. For as human beings need more food
in cold countries than in hot ones, so it is apt to be
with plants. It has been discovered, for instance,
that Iris tingitana, which thrives in Africa almost
in the desert, will not usually flower in England with-
out a good dose of manure under it. It is impossible

to reproduce in England all the conditions to which
264

BULBS FOR SPRING PLANTING — 265

an African plant is used, and, this being so, it may
often be a mistake to attempt to reproduce as many
of those conditions as possible. The inevitable want
of one condition can perhaps only be supplied by a
change in other conditions. Only experiment can
determine how far this is the case, and, therefore,
when a bulb from a hot country fails to flower in Eng-
land it is always worth while to try a richer diet upon
it. But manure when it is given to bulbs should al-
ways be placed well below them so that they may
not suffer from contact with it, and it should also be
well rotted.

Many of the bulbs which are best planted for the
first time in spring can be left in the ground after-
wards if they are in warm sheltered places, as, for
instance, close to a south wall. Such bulbs, however,
should be planted deep, and in hard winters protected
with litter, which should be removed as soon as mild
weather comes. But if these bulbs refuse to flower
with this treatment, they should be lifted in the au-
tumn.

The best-known bulbs for spring planting are, as
we have said, the Gladioli, but of these only the later
flowering kinds should be planted in spring. The
beautiful early flowering ones, of which there are
now many varieties, start into growth in the winter
and should be planted in late autumn, and protected,
at least, for the first winter. Of the later flowering
Gladioli there are now several groups and an infinite
number of varieties. The groups also are tending,

266 STUDIES IN GARDENING

owing to hybridization between them, to lose all dis-
tinctive qualities. From nurserymen’s catalogues one
can only learn, as a rule, that each group is generally
considered superior to all the rest. The oldest group
was G. gandavensis, supposed to be a hybrid between
the natural species G. psittacinus and G. cardinalis,
but other species were afterwards crossed with them.
The well-known G. Brenchleyensis, the scarlet Gladio-
lus, is probably only a form of gandavensis. The
other groups are all hybrids either between Ganda-
vensis and some natural species, or between Ganda-
vensis and other hybrids. Thus G. Lemoinei is a
hybrid between forms of gandavensis and G. pur-
pureo-auratus, and the strain of the latter parent has
produced some varieties that are almost blue. Then
Mr. Lemoine has produced a new group, nanceianus,
by crossing G. Lemoinei with a species of G. Saun-
dersii. These have larger flowers than G. Lemoinei.
Close to them are G. Childsii, hybrids of G. ganda-
vensis and G. Saundersii. Of all these groups G.
Lemoinei are the most distinct in their colours and
markings. The largest of all gladioli is a new variety,
Princeps, of a fine scarlet colour with a white stripe.
The culture is the same for all. They may be planted
from the beginning of April to the end of May, and
the earliest planted come into flower about the middle
of July. The Lemoinei group flower the earliest, the
hybrids with G. Saundersii the latest. Gladioli are
at their best in a rich loam, though they will do well
enough in a light soil if it is well manured. The ground

BULBS FOR SPRING PLANTING ~— 267

should be well dug and manured some months before
planting, but no manure should be close to the bulbs.
The position should be warm and sunny, and the
plants must be watered in dry weather. The bulbs
must not be lifted until they are thoroughly ripe—
that is to say, not until the end of October. Then
they should be kept in a dry place and protected from
frost.

Many Lilies are best planted in spring, especially
those imported from Japan, which do not usually
arrive in time to be planted earlier. But we have
written of Lilies before. There is also little need to
speak of such well-known plants as Montbretias,
Galtonias (the Cape hyacinth), and Schizostylis coc-
cinea. These are all hardy, except in the hardest
winters in very cold parts of the country, but they
are best planted in spring. The Schizostylis, or Kaffir
Lily, is valuable because it flowers in late autumn.
It requires the same kind of culture as Gladioli, but
prefers a rather lighter soil, especially if it is not lifted.
In very cold winters it should be protected.

A bulb that deserves to be better known is Lapey-
rousia (or Anomatheca) cruenta. It is like a very
small Gladiolus, with scarlet flowers spotted a deeper
colour. It should be planted about the end of March,
and flowers for a long time, often persisting from July
to September. It is an excellent bulb for the rock
garden, as it is only about 9 in. high and requires sharp
drainage. Otherwise it is quite easy to grow. It is
not certainly hardy, but in a warm place will survive

268 STUDIES IN GARDENING

most winters if it is planted about 6 in. deep. The
soil should be light and mixed with leaf-mould and
rubble.

The beautiful Amaryllis belladonna is hardy in
a warm place, as, for instance, against a south wall.
It likes a rich loam mixed with leaf-mould and rubble,
and should be planted 9 in. deep. Sharp drainage
is very important, and a good layer of manure well
below the bulbs will encourage it to flower well. It
should be disturbed as seldom as possible.

Crinum longifolium (C. capense), a noble bulb
closely related to the Amaryllis, is still hardier, and
may be grown in a sunny border. It has pale pink
flowers, and there is a beautiful white variety. It
likes a rich soil and plenty of water while growing.
C. Moorei and C. Powelli are scarcely less hardy.
There is a splendid white variety of C. Powelli. They
need the same cultivation as Crinum longifolium.
The genus Zephyranthes is also closely related to the
genus Amaryllis. Nearly all its species are tender,
but one, Zephyranthes candida, seems to be quite
hardy in warm situations in most parts of England.
In South America it is a marsh plant, but, like its
fellow countryman, Nierembergia rivularis, it re-
quires good drainage in England. The soil should
be rich and the position sunny. The flowers are white
and like those of a crocus, only more starry; some-
times they are slightly tinged with pink. It is an ex-
cellent bulb for the rock garden, especially as it flowers
in September, when rock gardens usually have few

BULBS FOR SPRING PLANTING ~— 269

flowers. Zephyranthes Atamasco, a very beautiful
plant with large white flowers flushed with pink when
they first open, is hardy in very warm places, but
should be protected in winter. It is also a marsh
plant by nature, but needs the same culture in Eng-
land as Zephyranthes candida.

The Tigridias are well enough known, but not so
much grown as they deserve. It is true their flowers
last but a short time, but they are so strangely beauti-
ful and borne so frequently that this may be forgiven
them. They belong to the Iris family, and in shape
are rather like Irises, though the petals which would
be “standards” in the Iris are pressed back upon the
“falls” or lower petals. Tigridias come from Mexico —
Tigridia pavonia is the species commonly grown —
and it is not safe to leave them out all the year in
England, though they will often survive mild winters.
They should, therefore, be treated like Gladioli, planted
out in March, lifted when the leaves die down, and
stored for the winter in sand. They like a very sunny
position and a rich, well-drained soil. They do miser-
ably if they are starved either of food or of sun. In
very dry weather they should be well watered. They
begin to flower in July and continue, when well treated,
for about two months. Most of them are self-coloured
on the outer part of their broad lower petals, and
strongly spotted in the middle. There is a yellow
variety, spotted crimson; a scarlet variety, with darker
spots on a yellow ground; a beautiful white variety,
with deep pink spots; and a pure white variety.

270 STUDIES IN GARDENING

The Nerines are beautiful bulbs for the green-
house, but Nerine Sarniensis, the Guernsey Lily, is
worth trying out of doors in a very warm spot with
the same culture as Amaryllis belladonna. It should
be carefully protected in winter and disturbed as sel-
dom as possible. It is only a bulb for the skilled gar-
dener, but its beauty is so great and strange that it
is worth some trouble.

The Pancratiums are little grown in our gardens,
but Pancratium Illyricum is a beautiful plant, closely
related to the Daffodil, and hardy, at least in most
winters, in the south of England. It should be planted
as early as possible, as it flowers in June. It likes a
good sandy loam in a well-drained sunny position.
The flowers are white, curiously shaped, and sweet
scented. Pancratium maritimum also has white
scented flowers, but it is not so beautiful as P. Illyri-
cum. It flowers a month later. It was apparently
known to Parkinson; at least the plant, which he calls
Narcissus marinus, or the great white Sea Daffodil,
seems to be the same, though his illustration of it is
rather conventional. He remarks that “it will not
thrive and bear flowers if it be often transplanted, but
rather desires to abide in one place without removing.”

Parkinson also speaks of another most beautiful
bulb not often seen in our gardens — namely, Or-
nithogalum Arabicum, “the Great Starre-flower of
Arabia,” but he gives it the bad reputation which
it still possesses. He recommends that it be kept
out of the ground from September to February in a

BULBS FOR SPRING PLANTING 271

dry place and then planted under a south wall. But,
even with this care, it will seldom flower more than
once in England. Luckily, however, it is a cheap
bulb to buy and far the most beautiful of its genus.

Milla biflora is the only species which is still al-
lowed to this unfortunate genus. It has beautiful
white starry flowers in late summer; and, as it only
grows a foot high, is an excellent bulb for the rock
garden. It is not hardy and should be treated like
the Gladioli.

Crocosma (or Tritonia) aurea is a pretty little plant
like a small Montbretia. It has orange red flowers
in late summer. It is not quite as hardy, perhaps,
as the Montbretias, but in warm places will stand
most winters. Like the Montbretia it increases very
rapidly, and the bulbs will overcrowd each other if
they are not taken up and replanted every two or
three years. They should be taken up when the
leaves die down, and it is then safest to store them
for the next winter.

It is, of course, a common practice to plant many
species and varieties of Anemone in spring, but, ex-
cept in very cold heavy soils, those which are usually
planted in spring, such as the varieties of Anemone
coronaria, are better planted in August or September,
or, better still, raised from seed, sown where they
are to grow. Anemone fulgens seldom does much
the first year if it is planted in spring. Early autumn
is the best time for planting it, as also for the varieties
of Anemone stellata or hortensis. The varieties of

272 STUDIES IN GARDENING

Ranunculus Asiaticus, however, are best planted in
February or March; although the Turkish or Tur-
ban Ranunculi are hardier than the French or Persian,
and will often do well if planted in October or Novem-
ber. These garden Ranunculi have gone out of fash-
ion with other flowers that suggest Dresden china.
But they have a considerable precise beauty of their
own and their colours are exquisite. It is a pity that
single forms of them are not more cultivated. The
single scarlet species, however, is now becoming pop-
ular, and it is to be hoped that its beauty will cause
a demand for single varieties of other colours. The
Ranunculi require careful cultivation to do well. The
soil must be rich and strong, but not too heavy, and
they must not be allowed to suffer from drought
while growing. They like a sunny position and are
apt to rot away if planted in very wet weather. Neither
Anemones nor Ranunculi are really bulbs, nor have
they any resemblance to bulbs; but since they are
treated like bulbs we may be excused for speaking
of them now. There are many Cape bulbs worth a
trial in English gardens which we have not mentioned,
but most of them are little known at present and
should be tested by experts before they are attempted
by the ordinary gardener who does not wish his experi-
ence to be costly and painful.

RAISING PERENNIALS FROM SEED

OST gardeners show curiously little enterprise

in the matter of raising perennial plants from
seed. Of course the expert gardener increases and
improves his stock of plants in this way more than
in any other. But the ordinary amateur seems to
be very shy of attempting what is both the most
profitable and the most exciting process of all the
many delightful processes of gardening. Wallflowers,
Snapdragons, Pentstemons, Hollyhocks, and other
doubtful perennials are raised from seed as a matter
of course. But the true perennials are usually either
bought or begged to start with, and afterwards in-
creased by cuttings or by the slow and sometimes
injurious process of division. Now it is true that
some perennials are difficult to raise from seed, and
others take a long time before they flower. Many
bulbous plants, for instance, such as Daffodils, Tulips,
and Lilies, often take six years or more. But the
great majority are scarcely more difficult than an-
nuals or bie.inials, and even those that are difficult
or slow will come much more easily and quickly from
seed sown as soon as it is ripe. Besides, seed even
of rare plants is seldom very dear; and it is always
worth while to experiment even if nothing comes of

it. But the great advantage of raising perennials
273

274 STUDIES IN GARDENING

from seed consists in the chances of getting some
fine new variety, chances which exist for the humble
amateur as well as for the great florist. Many of the
most beautiful modern novelties have been produced
by amateurs without large trial grounds or even large
gardens; and if it were a common practice for ama-
teurs to raise perennials from seed, no doubt the num-
ber of fine novelties would be greatly increased. Again,
the amateur, if he raises his own plants, can consult
his own taste and aim at his own ideal in the case of
those plants, such as Larkspurs and Columbines,
which vary much from seed. Many of these can be
developed without any skill in hybridizing and merely
by the selection of seed from those varieties which
are most to the gardener’s taste. The gardener who
is in the habit of raising perennials from seed will
look into every garden with a curious eye, and if, as
very often happens, he sees an unusually fine variety
of some plant, he can beg a little seed of it without
misgiving. No one minds giving seed, at least no true
gardener, unless it be from a plant so precious that
every seed must be treasured; and the gift of seed
can always be repaid with a plant or two a few months
later. Then the gardener may choose some particular
plant to develop in this way; and if he chooses dis-
creetly and proceeds systematically he may do wonders
in a few years without occupying much ground or
taking very much trouble. A great number of peren-
nials, if the seed is sown as soon as ripe, will flower
the next year. Some, if the seed is sown in early

RAISING PERENNIALS FROM SEED 275

spring, will flower the same year; and only com-
paratively few take more than two years from sowing
to flower.

Speaking roughly we may say that monocoty-
ledonous plants take longer than dicotyledonous
plants to flower from seed, and are more troublesome
to manage. But it was a common practice among
English gardeners in the seventeenth century to raise
Tulips from seed, and there is no reason why any
amateur should not increase his stock of any rare
species by this means, if he has the patience. The
seed of most spring-flowering bulbous plants usually
germinates very early in the year, and it is best to
sow them some time in the summer or autumn in a
box or pan and keep them in a cold house or frame
through the winter and early spring. The seed of
ordinary dicotyledonous perennials should be sown
either when ripe or in the spring or early summer of
the next year. It is safest always to sow them in
boxes, or, in the case of the smaller and more delicate
Alpines, in pans. Many perennials will germinate
quickly and readily with the most ordinary routine.
All that is needed is light, rich, and fairly fine soil,
say a mixture of sandy loam and leaf-mould, and
that the seed boxes be regularly watered with a fine
rose and kept shaded and cool in hot weather. In
all cases seed should be sown as thinly as possible
and covered with a layer of soil proportionate to their
size. Very small seed, as of the Saxifrages and Cam-
panulas, should be mixed before sowing with a much

276 STUDIES IN GARDENING

larger amount of silver sand and scarcely if at all
covered. If the seed is carefully mixed with the sand,
the sower will be able to tell by the distribution of
the sand upon the surface of the soil whether the seed
is evenly sown. Seedlings that are too thick are
hampered in growth from their very birth, and may
have to be pricked out before they are ready for that
process. Very fine seed should never be sown in a
draughty place, as the wind may blow it all about.
More failures in the raising of seedlings come from
excessive or irregular watering than from any other
cause; and plants that are difficult to raise must be
watered with great care and delicacy. But we are
now dealing with ordinary perennials, and the gar-
dener who is raising these will easily be able to see
whether the soil is too dry or too much sodden with
wet. He should water them carefully every day, and
before the seed is sown he should see that the soil is
thoroughly and evenly moist down to the bottom of
the box. To ensure this it is best to water the soil
before it is put into the box. In the case of strong
growing and rich feeding plants it is a good plan to
cover the bottom of the box with a layer of manure.
The seedlings will root down into this and can be
transplanted with their roots still fastened to it. But
the box must be fairly deep when manure is used, so
that the seedlings may not reach it while still very
young, and the manure must be very well rotted.
Manure from an old hotbed is the best to use. The
seedlings must be pricked out as soon as they begin

RAISING PERENNIALS FROM SEED 277

to hamper each other’s growth. And this fact shows
the great advantage of thin sowing. Perennials that
are thinly sown can often be kept in the seed box until
they are ready to be planted out of doors, and thus a
great deal of trouble is saved. It is well to have a plot
of ground in the kitchen garden ior seedlings; and there
they may be left until the autumn, when they can be
planted where they are to flower next year, or else,
if the gardener intends to keep only the best of them,
they can remain until they flower the next year. When
seed is sown as soon as it is ripe, it is often safest to
winter the seedlings in a frame, unless they have
grown very strong; and for this reason most gar-
deners prefer to sow the seed of perennials in the
spring, so that they may be large enough to face the
next winter out of doors.

It would be impossible to give anything like a com-
plete list of perennials that are easily raised from seed.
We can only name some of the best and easiest of
them, and they are enough to stock a large garden.
All the perennial Larkspurs are very easily raised
from seed, both the innumerable hybrids and species
such as D. formosum and D. grandiflorum and the
scarlet D. nudicaule and D. cardinale, both of which,
however, are only doubtful perennials. It is now
possible to get seed of the beautiful pale blue D. bella-
donna, and this is said to come true. All perennial
Larkspurs will flower the next year from seed sown
as soon as it is ripe, and some will flower the same
year from seed sown in early spring. Columbines are

278 STUDIES IN GARDENING

as easily raised from seed as Larkspurs, and vary as
much. We have written before in some detail of these
beautiful plants and of the possibilities of their fur-
ther development, so there is no need to say anything
further on the subject now.

Most of the Campanulas are easily raised from seed,
particularly C. persicifolia, C. carpatica, C. grandis,
C. lactiflora, C. latifolia pyramidalis, and C. rhom-
boidalis, besides many small species and hybrids
suitable for the rock garden. C. persicifolia and C.
carpatica vary a good deal from seed, and very fine
varieties may be got by careful selection. Alstroeme-
rias, although of the Narcissus family, soon flower
from seed. The seed should be sown as soon as ripe
and the seedlings planted out in the spring if they are
strong enough. They should be well established in
any case before they face a winter out of doors. An-
chusa italica, a doubtful perennial, comes as easily
from seed as any biennial, and fine forms can now be
got from seed of the splendid Dropmore variety.
Anemone coronaria is quite easily raised from seed
sown as soon as ripe, but the seed should be sown out
of doors, and kept well shaded until the seedlings
are strong. The finest Anemones are those which
are left to flower where the seed is sown. A. fulgens
can be raised as easily as A. coronaria. Michaelmas
Daisies are easily raised from seed, but so easily in-
creased by division that it is best to get a large stock
of the finer varieties in this way. The Catananches,
Centaurea montana, the perennial species of Coreopsis,

RAISING PERENNIALS FROM SEED 279

Commelina caelestis, the Dracocephalums, Echinops,
most species of Eryngium, Erodium Manescavi, most
species of Cranesbill, Gaillardias, Geums, the peren-
nial Gypsophilas, Linaria Dalmatica, the perennial
Linums, Lobelias, and Lupins, Lychnis chalcedonica,
L. Haageana and L. viscaria, Malva moschata, Morina
longifolia, Ginothera macrocarpa (or Missouriensis),
(. speciosa and QE. fruticosa, the perennial Poppies,
the Pentstemons, species as well as hybrids, Platy-
codon grandiflorum, the Polemoniums, the Potentillas,
nearly all the perennial species of Pinks, the Salvias,
the Caucasian Scabious, the Statices, and the Violas
or Tufted Pansies, as well as many species of Viola
— these are only some of the most familiar of our
garden plants that can be raised from seed with the
most ordinary care. They will all, or nearly all, flower
the year after the seed is sown, and most of them will
be fine plants by that time. About 60 plants have
been obtained from one penny packet of the seed of
(Enothera macrocarpa, some of which flowered the
same year that the seed was sown. ‘These plants,
if bought from a nurseryman, would probably have
cost sixpence apiece; so that the transaction, which
entailed very little trouble or skill, was a profitable
one.

There are, of course, many plants which are less
easy to raise from seed. Either the seed is slow and
irregular in germinating, especially when not quite
fresh, or the seedlings take a long time to reach ma-
turity. It is often difficult, for instance, to get the

280 STUDIES IN GARDENING

seed of Phloxes to germinate, although self-sown
seedlings of some varieties come freely in certain
years. This is also the case with the seed of the Gen-
tianella, a capricious plant in all respects, which grows
and seeds itself like a weed in some places, and in
others only lingers and dwindles. It is a good plan
to soak the seed of both these plants for some hours
before sowing in tepid water; but even then, if the
seed is not fresh, disappointments must be expected.
Again, the seed of Auriculas, and of many other kinds
of Primula, such as P. Japonica, is slow and capricious
of germination, unless it is sown as soon as ripe. But,
in all these cases, the gardener should not despair
after a few months. Seed sown in June may not ger-
minate till the next spring. The seed boxes should
be kept in frames through the winter, and then put
out in warm spring rains. A sudden crop of seedlings
will often be the result. Snow often produces ger-
mination in certain stubborn seeds, particularly those
of the Gentians; and it is worth while to expose a
box of these to a fall of snow in early spring. There
are many plants which may ripen seeds in England
in hot summers, so the gardener should choose his
own time to experiment with them. Indeed he will
be wise to try most of his bolder experiments in seed
sowing after a hot summer; as the seed, even of plants
well accustomed to our climate, is apt to be uncer-
tain when there has been little sun to ripen it. It is
well always to be on the look-out for seed even on
plants that are not generally supposed to ripen it in

RAISING PERENNIALS FROM SEED 281

England. There is no strict rule in such matters; and
sometimes a plant that has never even formed seed
before will suddenly bear it and ripen it profusely.
Then the gardener, if he is watchful, may get a large
stock of a rare plant for nothing except his pains.
It is difficult to give precise directions for the treat-
ment of capricious seed, or of seedlings that are hard
to bring up. Different plants need different treatment
at all periods of their life; and general principles, if
easy to lay down, are hard to apply. Watering is
the most important point, and the keeping of the soil
fresh and sweet. Boxes or pans that are to contain
seedlings impatient of stagnant moisture should be
well drained, but in such a case the soil should be of
such a nature that it will not dry very quickly. It
is, therefore, a good plan to use a compost retentive
of moisture, such as rough peat and fibrous loam and
leaf mould; but the surface, as in all seed beds, must
be much finer, and should consist of well-sifted soil
mixed with silver sand. In this the seed can be easily
covered and will germinate readily, and as the seed-
lings grow they will throw down their roots into
the richer and rougher soil below. Gardeners often
take great trouble to make all the soil in their seed
boxes very fine, with the result that it holds no mois-
ture, and that the seeds do not germinate, or that the
seedlings wither up in their first infancy. It is a good
plan to cover up seed boxes with a sheet of glass or
even a newspaper, to prevent evaporation. But this
must be removed soon after the seeds have germinated.

282 STUDIES IN GARDENING

No seedlings, of course, must be exposed to a hot sun,
but they should have as much light and air as possible
from the first. They always require careful watching
in their youth, and it is only by that means that the
gardener can learn how to treat them. He should
also know something of the habits of plants which
he wishes to raise from seed, as that knowledge will
give him some idea how much they ought to be watered,
how much sun they will endure, and what amount of
drainage and what kind of soil they will need. Of
course, in natural conditions, the seed germinates
near where the parent plant grows; and the gardener’s
aim should be, not to depart entirely from these con-
ditions, but only to modify them so as to make germina-
tion more certain.

These are only a few general hints on a very large
subject, but they may be of use, at any rate, to those
amateurs who have never themselves attempted the
most exciting and delightful of all gardening processes.

THE BEAUTY AND CHARACTER OF
FLOWERS

NE might become very metaphysical over the

beauty of flowers; and it would be good for
metaphysicians to observe their beauty disinterestedly
for a long time before attempting to deal with esthetic
questions. “To look with the eye confounds the wis-
dom of ages.” It gives you a respect for facts, for the
thing in itself. It makes you cautious of theories,
not from scepticism, but for fear lest they should im-
poverish your sense of the value of things. A disin-
terested love of flowers enriches that sense. For
flowers, so far as we are concerned, are simply beau-
tiful things. We cannot argue about them as we
argue about works of art. Even the Senior Wrangler
who wanted to know what “Paradise Lost’’ proved
would not have made the same demand about a rose.
Men make works of art, and it is open to any one to
say that they might be better employed. But flowers
are made by nature, just like ourselves, and if we
question their right to exist, we question our own.
Therefore, no one does question their right to exist
or the pleasure which they give us. It is part of the
process of life. Flowers are beautiful, and we are
made to enjoy their beauty, just as we are made to

eat and sleep; and there is an end of it. We cannot
283

284 STUDIES IN GARDENING

enjoy the beauty of works of art in the same simple
unquestioning way, for behind the work of art is the
artist, a man like ourselves, however superior, who
expresses all his character in his work, his infirmities
as well as his virtues; and we like or dislike his work
as we like or dislike his character. It bears the mark
of his age and race and a hundred other marks of
circumstance, all of which have some kind of signifi-
cance and association for us, pleasant or disagreeable.
And thus we are never quite just to works of art, and
never can see their beauty with disinterested eyes.
There is always something involved in it which affects
other faculties besides our sense of beauty. Now-
adays, for instance, the beauty of Italian Primitive
pictures is heightened for us, because we think of
them as produced in the springtime of the modern
world. Their promise, like the promise of Crocuses
and Daffodils, is more delightful to us than the mid-
summer pomps of the high Renaissance. In the same
way, the beauty of the Bologna eclectics is hidden
from us because it has the sickly taint of a declining
age. Our historical sense interferes with our sense
of beauty. We have learnt to believe that no Italian
of the seventeenth century had a real faith or real
emotions, and we scent unreality and pretence in all
their works. Luckily, we have no historical sense
about flowers. It may be that we love the flowers
of spring better than those of autumn; but, unless
we are morbid, we are reconciled to the succession of
the seasons and can take a delight in it. It is in the

THE BEAUTY OF FLOWERS 285

nature of things that the beauty of autumn should
differ from the beauty of spring. We do not feel any
human waste or perversity in the decline of the year
any more than in the sunset. There is sometimes a
fashion among poets to lament the autumn; but
that is only because they produce melodious tears
more easily than melodious laughter. There is no
true analogy, as we all know, between

Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang—

and the old age of men; for spring follows winter,
but age does not change into youth. It is the great
merit of Keats’s “Ode to Autumn” that it is full of
delight in that delightful season without any han-
kering after another.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music, too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies.

So it is, too, with the flowers of autumn. They have
their own beauty, and it is mere wilfulness of fancy
and waste of emotion to connect it with thoughts of
death and irrevocable loss. In all wild flowers there
is a free gift of delight to us, with no poison in it and
nothing to provoke criticism. They seem to express
a happiness inherent in life, to be the art of nature

286 STUDIES IN GARDENING

herself, and to show us what our own art ought to
be, and would be, if we could purify it of sick fancies
and disgusts, and vain subtleties and ambitions, and
affectations.

But so soon as flowers are altered and developed
by men there is something in their beauty that pro-
vokes criticism at once. For they are connected,
like works of art, with men’s ideas and purposes; and
therefore we like or dislike them according as we
like or dislike those ideas and purposes. Of course
all flowers, even those which have suffered the great-
est garden change, have still something of wild na-
ture in them. They are children of the earth and
only pupils of the gardener; and, though they may
express for us a phase of taste which we dislike, they
do not express it so merely as furniture or pictures.
But, still, they do express it; and we cannot look
upon whatever beauty they may possess with disin-
terested eyes. There are flowers, for instance, like
the prim double Dahlias and Ranunculuses which
remind us of the blossoms on Dresden china, and
which have, no doubt, been developed by the same
kind of taste that produced those blossoms. If we
like Dresden china, we shall like these flowers; and
there are a hundred subtle causes connected with
our whole view and experience of life which affect
our taste in such things. The artificiality of a few
years ago is always distasteful to us. We have just
escaped from it and see only its absurdities. But the
artificiality of a remoter past often has some romance

THE BEAUTY OF FLOWERS 287

for us, half pathetic and half amusing; and when we
are sated with one kind of artifice we turn with relief
to another that is less familiar. Thus we are inclined
just now to be sated with flowers that are loose and
floppy and fantastic in shape, and hectic or over-
refined in colour, flowers like some of the tree Pzeonies
and Tea-roses, and tuberous Begonias; and, there-
fore, we have a kindlier feeling for the old prim flowers
which, at least, did not look exhausted by their efforts
to be beautiful, which bore themselves with some
reserve, and were not dishevelled by any violence of
wind and rain. In all these cases it is the human
element in the flower that provokes reactions and
changes of fashion. The gardener exaggerates its
natural qualities in one direction or another to suit
his own taste; and its beauty at once becomes subject
to the insecurities of taste which affect all beautiful
things made by men. But the beauty of flowers un-
changed by men is not subject to these insecurities
— or subject to them only when the flowers are grown
in unnatural conditions. Wild flowers have developed
in their own world and seem to be as perfectly fitted
to it as stars to the sky. One can no more see the
true beauty of Houseleeks or Stone Crops when they
are forced into the pattern of a carpet bed than one
can see the true beauty of wild animals in a cage at
the Zoo. There is a mystery of fitness in all beauty,
and the way to be sure of it is to study the beauty
of wild flowers, of Woodruff on a shady bank, or
Bluebells under wild Cherry blossom in a wood, or

288 STUDIES IN GARDENING

Daffodils about a stream in an open meadow. Take
these away from their surroundings and they are still
beautiful; but they have lost almost as much of their
beauty as the Columbines in the Bacchus and Ariadne
would lose if they were cut out of the canvas.

The best kind of gardening is based upon a sense
of the beauty, not merely of individual flowers, but of
flowers growing in natural conditions; yet gardening,
like all art, must do something more than imitate
nature. We cannot even pretend to provide many
of our finest garden plants with natural conditions.
They are like domesticated animals that in this coun-
try need constant human care if they are to thrive.
And then we have to remember that nature is often
content to make a particular spot beautiful with
flowers for only two or three weeks in the year. Dur-
ing these weeks that spot may be the despair of the
gardener, but at other times it is overgrown with
weeds. Nature makes no compromises, but the gar-
dener must be always making them. And yet, like
other artists, while he modifies nature to suit his own
purposes, he must still keep a respect for her modesty
and a love of her beauty in his heart. He should never
be a mere virtuoso and do violence to nature just to
show how clever he is. Flowers are the facts of a
garden, and they must not be distorted or exaggerated
or wrongly related to each other, for they are facts
beautiful in themselves and introduced only for that
reason; and they all have a certain character in their
beauty which can be strengthened or weakened by

THE BEAUTY OF FLOWERS 289

the manner in which they are treated. There are,
for instance, broad differences of character between
monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous flowers, be-
tween Irises and Lilies and Tulips and Narcissi on
the one hand, and Roses and Pinks and Campanulas
on the other. The beauty of the monocotyledons is
both simpler and more mysterious than the beauty
of the dicotyledons. The dicotyledons are usually
inferior in purity both of colour and of form; and
yet we are apt to love them better, because with less
perfection they seem in their greater complexity to
be nearer to human beings. There is something
strange and remote even in so familiar a flower as
the German Iris. Its beauty beside that of the Rose
is like the beauty of the sea compared with the beauty
of the earth. Everything about it seems mutable
and unsubstantial, as if it had been made by enchant-
ment and might vanish by the same means. Iris
colours are liquid or cloudy. It has got its very
name from a beauty of the sky. But the colours of
the Rose, though less pure, seem to be more fixed.
One cannot think of them as flushing and then fading
again like a rainbow; and the whole plant looks as
if it were firmly rooted in the earth and had grown
slowly out of it by a natural process, not by any en-
chantment. The Iris, leaf and flower, seems to be all
of a piece and created at a stroke; so do the Tulip
and the Narcissus and the Lily. There is a much
stronger difference in the parts of a Rose and much
more wayward variety of growth. In the flowers of

290 STUDIES IN GARDENING

monocotyledons there is often an unfathomable com-
plexity of colour, as on the surface of the sea; but in
dicotyledons there seems to be a greater complexity
of nature and purpose, as in the earth; and there-
fore they look more at home upon the earth, and as
if they were its inhabitants and not passing visitors
from an unknown state of being.

These may seem fanciful distinctions, but they can
be applied to some purpose in the arrangement of
flowers. It is certain that the beauty of monocoty-
ledons is of one kind and the beauty of dicotyledons
of another, and also that these different beauties are
enhanced by intermixture and contrast. A number
of Tulips or Daffodils or Spanish Irises grown by them-
selves are apt to look monotonous and unsubstantial.
Their true character is revealed only when they are
mingled with plants of another nature, when they
seem to have sprung up among them by chance, giving
a last touch of strangeness and wonder to the beauty
of the whole. Any formality of arrangement is con-
trary to their nature. They should look as if they
had alit among the leafage of other plants like a flight
of glittering birds. Then our pleasure in them is not
troubled by the thought that they will so soon be
withered. Their fugitive brilliance is at its best when
contrasted with the more quiet and enduring beauty
of other plants, and especially of shrubs, such as
Rosemary or some of the Veronicas which never look
dishevelled or exhausted with flowering. These give
the sense of permanence that is needed in all garden

THE BEAUTY OF FLOWERS 291

design, and the same kind of foil that nature pro-
vides for her momentary splendours.

There are some flowers which seem to keep a wild
beauty however familiar they are to our gardens, and
others which look as if they could never grow wild
anywhere, but must have been created for the gar-
den. Nearly all the Campanulas look wild wherever
they are, and as if they ought to be in the woods or
on the mountains. The Cranesbill is always a wild-
looking plant, whereas its near relation the zonal
pelargonium, commonly called the Geranium, is the
tamest of flowers. Tame flowers are not, however,
to be condemned for their tameness. They might
look out of place in a hedgerow, but they often look
beautiful enough in a garden. Sometimes they look
tame because they have been developed by the gar-
dener. Thus garden roses are often the tamest of
flowers, and wild roses the wildest. But some flowers
look tame only because they come from some far
country with a flora utterly unlike our own, and be-
cause therefore we can think of them only as growing
in gardens. Lilium auratum grows wild in Japan,
but for us it is entirely a garden flower, since there is
nothing at all like it among our wild flowers; whereas
many even of the most exotic Campanulas remind
us of our own Harebell or some other native species.
It is well to bear in mind the wildness or tameness
of different flowers when planning their arrangement.
One must not be too subtle in such matters; but,
where there is a large garden with some parts of it

292 STUDIES IN GARDENING

wilder than others, it is easy to make some separation
between the wilder and tamer looking plants; not to
put Bluebells, for instance, in the same kind of posi-
tion as garden Hyacinths, or to mix the natural species
of Roses with hybrid perpetuals. It is in wild gar-
dening that a sense of the character of flowers is most
needed, for plants such as Dahlias, Kniphofias, double
Ponies, or garden Pinks look most dismally out of
place in any imitation of a wilderness. It is the same
with a rock garden. There the single mountain pinks
look their best and the double garden Pinks are as
inappropriate as weeds. But place a mountain Pink
in the border, and, even if it thrives, half its beauty
is lost. The mountain Pink is a wild flower, the gar-
den Pink a tame one; and, if we can, we should treat
each accordingly. All beauty has a character of its
own, and the character of flowers is most clearly shown
when they are placed in conditions that suit that
character — in artificial conditions if the character is
artificial, in natural conditions if it is natural. It is
only by studying the character of flowers and having
regard to it that the gardener can achieve those subtle-
ties of beauty which look as if they had come by
chance, but which really are the last triumphs of his
art.

SAXIFRAGES!

HERE is no genus of hardy plants so diverse

in form as the saxifrages, and none, perhaps,

with such a multitude of species and varieties. But
the diversity of the saxifrages is mainly in their leaf-
age and habit of growth. Their flowers vary, of course,
in size, in colour, and in shape; but less than the
flowers of many other genera, far less than the flowers
of the orchids; while even orchids do not vary so
much in their whole appearance. There are mossy
saxifrages; saxifrages growing in rosettes, some, at
their largest, 9 in. across, some smaller than the flower
of the daisy; saxifrages with great leathery leaves,
some of them rather coarse border plants; saxifrages
in close minute tufts, obviously high mountain plants,
and only to be grown with some skill on rockwork;
and saxifrages of the London Pride class, the most
homely of plants, yet with the peculiar character
and grace of the family. There is Saxifraga peltata,
the umbrella plant, so called from its great spreading
leaves, sometimes 18 in. wide; and, for contrast with
this, there are Saxifraga caesia and Saxifraga squar-
rosa, the single leaves of which are almost too small
to be distinguished, while a large plant of either of
1 Most of the Saxifrages are difficult in the United States, though with

pains many can be successfully grown.
293

294 STUDIES IN GARDENING

them could be covered with the leaf of a geranium.
And saxifrages are no less varied in their habits and
requirements. Some species could be found to thrive
in almost any part of the largest and most diversified
garden that it is possible to conceive. The greater
number are rock plants, indeed, they are the chief
of all rock plants; but some are natives of marshes,
others like cool, shady places in an ordinary border,
others will grow anywhere. Few are really difficult,
and the difficult ones are seldom the most beautiful
in a genus that is full of beauty. The saxifrages are
never likely to be popular with those who grow plants
only for their flowers, for their beauty and their peculiar
charm are nearly always as much in their habit of
growth as in their blossoms. These are seldom bril-
liant or conspicuous. No one would use saxifrages
for bedding out or ‘‘to make a show.” The best of
them are plants for the gardener who delights in char-
acter and in fitting the plant to the place. Saxifrages
seem to belong to a situation that suits their char-
acter like moss to a stone; and, even if they thrive
in one that does not, they look like exiles making the
best of their banishment. Even the familiar London
Pride does not consort well with the ordinary plants
of the border; and those who think of it as a dull
thing will be surprised at its beauty when they see
it in some cool, rocky place among oak-ferns and
Primulas. In fact, all, or nearly all, saxifrages are
determinedly wild plants. They have suited their
character to certain natural conditions; and, al-

SAXIFRAGES 295

though many of them will grow well enough in the
ordinary conditions of the gardens, they will not take
on the air of a garden plant. Very few of them, there-
fore, are plants for the border. They belong either
to the wild outskirts of the garden or to rockwork;
and most of them belong to rockwork.

It is easy enough to talk in general terms of saxi-
frages, but the most learned expert must have some
fears when he comes to particulars; and that not
merely because of the multitude of species and varie-
ties, nor because there is much dispute about the
cultivation of most of them, but simply because of
their names. There is no lack of names among saxi-
frages, indeed there are too many; and the difficulty
is to apportion them. Saxifrages, especially certain
divisions of them, are extremely variable, and hy-
bridize almost as readily as Columbines. Nursery-
men and others have taken a delight in giving new
names to all the minute variations they can distinguish
and to innumerable and often indistinct hybrids;
and these names have been given recklessly and with-
out reference to any universally acknowledged au-
thority. The consequence is that some saxifrages
have several different names, while others share the
same name between them. Any one who wants to
get an idea of the anarchy which prevails in this matter
should read the chapters on saxifrages in Mr. Reginald
Farrer’s book “My Rock Garden.” Mr. Farrer is
an expert indeed, and has perhaps the largest collec-
tion of saxifrages in the world. Yet their names

296 STUDIES IN GARDENING

often baffle him, and half his time he is explaining
that the familiar name of some well-known variety
is not the right one. In the matter of names, there-
fore, one must do the best one can, avoiding tiresome
controversies and also, as far as possible, avoiding
misleading errors.

Some idea of the complexity of the subject may be
gathered from the fact that the innumerable different
species and varieties of saxifrages are usually divided
into about fifteen sections. But of many of these
luckily it is unnecessary to speak in an article ad-
dressed to the general reader. Here we shall mention
only those sections which contain plants likely to
interest the ordinary gardener; and, of these, the
best known is the Aizoon section, in which are grouped
all the rosette saxifrages, of which 8. Aizoon is sup-
posed to be the type. We say supposed, because
nobody seems to know what exactly S. Aizoon is.
Mr. Farrer says that he believes it to be a sort of
Platonic idea, “represented only by innumerable
varieties or partial manifestations of its sacred es-
sence.” When you see a rosette Saxifrage of ordinary
size and do not know its name, you call it S. Aizoon,
and no harm is done. For the fact is, the species is
so variable and so liable to hybridize with other sim-
ilar species, that it has lost its identity. Yet this
may be said for certain about it, that it grows in sil-
very rosettes of varying size, the largest about 3 in.
across, and that from the centre of these rosettes it
throws up sprays of little flowers white or a pale yellow

SAXIFRAGES 297

and usually more or less spotted with pink. It is a
true rock plant and, though easy to grow in any open,
well-drained place, looks its best only among the
rocks. It likes the sun, but not extremes of drought
and heat. It thrives best in a light, fairly rich soil,
with plenty of lime in it, and when it is planted on a
steep bank so that its roots can run under the rocks.
It will do well on the north side of an open rockery,
but grows leggy and blossoms poorly in shade. These
remarks apply to nearly all the saxifrages of this sec-
tion and to many others. There are few that like
either drought or complete shade; and very many
need lime if they are to flower profusely.

It would be impossible even to mention all the
varieties of S. Aizoon. There is a pretty yellow variety
and a beautiful pink one, still new in commerce. There
is a very small variety called minima. There is crus-
tata, a name given to many different varieties. There
is elongata, and so on. S. lingulata is usually con-
sidered a species. It has large white flowers, varies
much from seed, and has hybridized with S. Aizoon.
S. Lantoscana is a variety of it; and sometimes one
sees very splendid forms called Lantoscana superba,
but nurserymen are apt to call any variety of lingu-
lata by this name. The two finest species of this
section are 8. cotyledon and S. longifolia. Both have
very large rosettes and sprays of flowers often a couple
of feet high. 8S. cotyledon will grow in any sunny
place not too hot. The flowers of the true species
are, we believe, unspotted; but there are spotted

298 STUDIES IN GARDENING

varieties. S. pyramidalis is only a variety and not
a very distinct one. There are other varieties that
need not be specified. S. cotyledon does not need
lime, and some of its varieties seem to dislike it. It
is very easy to grow, but deserves a good place and
rich, light soil, as then it spreads into great patches
and blooms profusely. It can be quickly increased
by means of offsets, and differs in this from the even
finer S. longifolia, the giant saxifrage of the Pyrenees.
This dies as soon as it has flowered, but it often takes
some years to flower, and is worth growing both for
the beauty of the plant and for its short-lived glory
of bloom. It likes a cooler place than S$. cotyledon,
and does very well on the north side of a sunny rock
garden in deep pockets between the rocks filled with
a rich, light, limy soil. It can be easily raised from
seed, like all the Aizoon saxifrages, but hybridizes
so profusely that one can never be sure of getting the
pure species. Hybrids, however, are often beautiful
and interesting, and some of them make offsets be-
sides growing as large as the species itself. S. coty-
ledon also hybridizes with other species, though less
freely, and a hybrid between it and one of the Aizoons
is called S. McNabiana. This is a splendid plant, but
difficult to get true. The true form, we believe, has
pink spots all over the flower. S. cochlearis is a species
with rather small rosettes, and not certainly in the
Aizoon section. S. valdensis is usually considered a
variety of it, and is a beautiful little plant, easily
grown in limy soil and a cool place among the rocks.

SAXIFRAGES : 299

The section which contains the rarest, most beau-
tiful, and most delicate of the saxifrages is known as
the Kabschia section. The saxifrages included under
it nearly all want some care and are all mountaineers.
They should be grown among large rocks that are
sunk deep into the soil, and must have perfect drain-
age and be quite free from any drip. The chief dif-
ficulty in their cultivation is to provide them with a
place that is dry enough in winter and cool enough
in summer. In a sunny rockery they do best, as a
rule, with a west or northwest aspect. On the south
side they are apt to be burnt up by the sun. Their
soil should be composed of light loam, silver sand,
leaf mould, and mortar rubble or pieces of limestone,
and the surface should be covered with rubble or
limestone. They should also be placed so that their
roots can run under a large stone. This sounds a
formidable list of directions; but many of the Kab-
schia saxifrages are worth any amount of trouble;
and any one who has seen a fine clump of S. burseriana
would be ready to take it. It grows in minute silvery
tufts, and from these in March rise flowers large for
the size of the plant and like delicate little white
roses. There is no more beautiful spring flower in
the world; and it is not really difficult to grow, with
a little care. Burseriana major is a finer variety; and
there is one called Gloria, not yet in commerce, and
said to surpass all other forms. The easiest and most
useful of all these saxifrages is S. apiculata, a vigorous
plant which makes large tufts of deep shining green,

300 STUDIES IN GARDENING

and has pale yellow flowers in March. This needs
no particular care. It likes lime, a cool, well-drained
place, and a light deep soil. If it ceases to bloom it
should be divided in early autumn. It is a most
valuable spring plant. S. Elizabethae is like a smaller
and more delicate apiculata. It should be grown like
burseriana, but is easier and more vigorous, in spite
of its delicate beauty. S. Salomonii appears to be a
hybrid of burseriana; it has the same beautiful white
flowers on rather longer stalks. It is as easy as S.
Elizabethae. S. Boydii is another hybrid, very small
and very slow-growing, a plant for experts. Its white
variety, however, is easier and quicker growing. It
is also much cheaper. S.‘Griesbachii is remarkable for
its crimson flowers, and quite easy to grow, with a
little care. 5S. caesia is a minute rosette saxifrage,
a pretty little plant which must have lime and a fairly
cool place, though it is less impatient of heat than
some of the Kabschia saxifrages. S. squarrosa is
even smaller, and grows higher in the mountains. It
requires the same culture as S. caesia, but rather
more care. These are plants only for those who care
for minute beauty. There are many other species
and varieties in this section, some very beautiful,
but most of them rare and little grown as yet by ordi-
nary gardeners.

The mossy saxifrages of the dactyloides section, on
the other hand, are nearly all very easy to grow,
and most of them common in gardens. Dovedale
Moss (S. hypnoides) is the best known of them and

SAXIFRAGES 301

a native common in Derbyshire and some other coun-
ties. There is great uncertainty about the names of
many of the mossy saxifrages. The finest of the com-
moner white ones is 8. Camposii (or Wallacei), a most
beautiful plant with large shining white flowers in
early summer. S. muscoides is a close-growing species,
and the variety atro-purpurea is better still. S.
Rhei is, perhaps, a variety of S. caespitosa. It has
delicate pink flowers and a close habit. Guildford
Seedling is a splendid variety of this, with deep crim-
son flowers. There are some other varieties of Rhei,
but not differing much from the type. S. pedemon-
tana, at least the plant usually sold under that name,
is a quick-growing, vigorous species with flowers of
a less bright white than those of S. Camposii, but still
very pretty. Other good species of this section are
cuneata, ajugaefolia, and exarata. All the mossy
saxifrages like a cool place, and they are excellent
plants for the lower parts and the north side of the
rock garden. They do not need rock work, but look
their best on it. They like a light soil rich in humus. S.
Camposii is more impatient of drought than the rest,
and is apt to wither up in hot sun, while in too deep
shade it grows leggy. When this happens it should
be taken up and replanted deeper. There have lately
been obtained a number of hybrids between mossy
saxifrages and the meadow saxifrage (S. granulata),
which is so abundant in damp meadows in some parts
of the country. These hybrids are generally known
as S. decipiens, and some of them are well worth grow-

302 STUDIES IN GARDENING

ing. There is also a double form of S. granulata, a
pretty plant, but not so pretty as the wild species.
S. tenella belongs to a different section from the mossy
saxifrages, but it looks even more mossy than they
do, and is a charming plant for a cool place on rock-
work. It is impatient of hot sun.

The most brilliant flowered of all the saxifrages is
S. oppositifolia. It grows on English, Scotch, and
Welsh mountains, and produces bright crimson-ma-
genta flowers in March. There is no spring flower more
beautiful or surprising. It is quite easily grown, and
yet many gardeners fail with it. It should be planted
in an open yet cool place on the north side of the rock
garden, and in poor soil mixed with mortar rubble.
If the soil is too rich it gets leggy and refuses to flower.
It benefits by a top dressing in spring of sand and
leaf-mould, and if it gets rusty it should be taken up
and replanted in fresh soil in early autumn. There
are several varieties, including a white one, which is
not of much value.

Saxifraga Fortunei is a fine species from Japan which
flowers in autumn. There is some doubt about its
hardiness, and it should be grown in a well-drained
and sheltered, but fairly cool, position in the rock
garden, with some protection in hard frosts. Most
of the larger saxifrages belong to the Bergenia or
Megasea section. S. cordifolia and S. crassifolia, both
often called S. megasea, are the best known. They
are border plants with pretty pink flowers, but the
leaves usually look rather dingy. To flower well,

SAXIFRAGES 303

they require a fairly sunny place and a good rich soil.
S. ligulata and its variety S. ciliata are better suited
for bold rock-work, and look well among plants such
as Corydalis nobilis. S. Stracheyi is the prettiest
species of the section, with delicate pink flowers early
in March or April. It sometimes dies in very hard
winters and should be given a fairly cool, sheltered
position among the rocks. The variety Afghanica
has white flowers and is a beautiful plant not often
seen.

We have mentioned but a few of the innumerable
species and varieties of the saxifrage. The gardener
who begins to collect saxifrages will never come to
the end of them, and he will be wise always to see less
known species and varieties before he buys them. If
he does not, he will probably acquire many common
or nondescript plants with romantic names. The
anarchy among saxifrages is such that nothing could
put an end to it except the appointment of a Dictator
and an Act making it a criminal offence to call any
saxifrage by any name except the one given to it by
him. But even then in a few years there would be
a number of new hybrids and as much confusion
among them as ever.

THE FIFTY BEST HARDY PERENNIALS

VERY one likes to make anthologies, for no one

is satisfied with the anthologies of others; and
in making them there is a pleasure both of inclusion
and exclusion. There are some things unjustly ig-
nored by other anthologists, and others unduly prized
by them. There is no lover of poetry that would not
like to work some changes upon the Golden Treasury;
but it is far easier to make a figurative anthology of
poems than a real one of flowers. In the first place,
you can produce your poems to justify your choice;
but you can only produce the names of your flowers,
and those who do not know them must take your
judgment on trust. In the next, there are no garden
varieties of poems. There is no Lycidas grandiflorus
to oust the original and no Dropmore version of the
Ode to the West Wind. No one dares to touch up
a poem except the author of it. When he is dead the
type of the poem is fixed. But with flowers it is other-
wise. If, making an anthology of them, you speak of
the Rose, you are asked at once, What Rose? And
what can you answer? How can one be chosen among
so many with such different merits and defects? It is
the same with Irises and Lilies and Larkspurs and
Peonies. It is impossible to satisfy even yourself

with any one choice among them. And yet it is amus-
304

BEST HARDY PERENNIALS 305

ing to try, and may amuse others. But even the at-
tempt is possible only with strict and arbitrary limi-
tations, which are difficult to define and still more
difficult to keep. We will confine ourselves to fifty
hardy perennial plants. We will have nothing to do
with shrubs, thus avoiding roses, which could only
be treated in an anthology to themselves. Then how
about bulbs? They, too, need an anthology to them-
selves. So we will leave them all out except Lilies,
which must be included because the Madonna Lily
cannot be left out. We will also confine ourselves to
border plants; and one of our chief tests shall be that
a plant can be easily grown in the ordinary garden.
This is to be an anthology for every one, not for the
specialist; and when we say easily grown, we mean
grown without fuss or constant renewal. Thus we
get rid of Carnations, which also need an anthology
to themselves. Our fifty best perennials must be
hardy, easily grown, and true perennials, or at least
perennial for some years. They must also, of course,
be beautiful; and where there is a great choice of
varieties we shall try to select one which excels in all
the qualities of a border plant. But, having laid
down these strict rules for our choice, we shall be
tempted to break them in one or two cases, where a
plant has such signal merits that it ought to be in
every garden, although it has also defects that ought
to exclude it from our anthology. We shall try to
make that anthology classical rather than romantic,
indulging in our own freaks of taste no more than we

306 STUDIES IN GARDENING

can help. But even so it is sure to seem freakish to
some readers; and if it does they will have the pleasure
of disagreeing with it.

We will begin with Larkspurs, one of our chief dif-
ficulties. The florists are always raising new varieties
of these, but many of them are not pure blue, and
surely the glory of a Larkspur is in its blueness. In
this Delphinium Belladonna has never been surpassed.
It is not quite so robust as some varieties nor so tall
growing, but will do well enough in most sunny well-
drained borders; and it flowers longer than any Lark-
spur. Persimmon is taller and larger flowered and a
splendid variety, but it has not all the grace of Bella-
donna. True Blue is a noble plant, a darker colour
with a brown centre like a bee, but it has a doubtful
constitution. Therefore we choose Belladonna for our
Larkspur. It used never to ripen seed; but a seed-
bearing variety has now been obtained from which
it is said the seedlings come true. Several species of
Lilies are thoroughly good garden plants. The chief
of them, of course, is the Madonna, whose one defect
is its disease. Plant it in August or September in
a rooty place, but where it gets plenty of sun, and
with the top of the bulb only about an inch under
ground. In a poor soil give it a good dose of cow
manure well under the bulb. Then never disturb it,
and it will probably triumph over the disease, even
in districts where the disease is rampant. Lilium
testaceum must also come into our anthology. It is
even easier to grow than the Madonna Lily, and

BEST HARDY PERENNIALS 307

needs the same culture, and where it thrives it in-
creases at a great pace. It has apricot coloured flowers
with bright red anthers, and grows taller than the
Madonna Lily. It does not mind disturbance so much,
and is almost as beautiful. It makes a magnificent
contrast with the Belladonna Larkspur. These are
the two chief garden lilies. Others are beautiful and
easy, but not good enough to be among our fifty plants.
Then there are Peonies. Among these it is impossible
to make a final choice, but there is none more beau-
tiful, robust, and free-flowering than The Bride, a
large, pure white single variety of Peonia albiflora.
Columbines are even more difficult to choose. Aquile-
gia caerulea is not a true perennial in most gardens;
A. glandulosa and the hybrid Stuartii are very capri-
cious. The long-spurred hybrids are not fixed and
have no names; but they are the Columbines for the
ordinary gardener, and there is no flower in the gar-
den to beat a fine blue and white hybrid of A. caerulea,
with a thoroughly robust habit.

The Dropmore variety of Anchusa italica must
come in our anthology, although it will die out after
a year or two if not propagated by ordinary or root
cuttings. It is, however, the finest of all blue border
plants, and cuttings are very easily struck. The new
pale blue variety, Opal, is almost as beautiful. Among
the Campanulas we have no hesitation in choosing
C. persicifolia, variety grandiflora. This is a plant
to be raised from seed. The seedlings will vary both
in the colour and the size of their flowers. The best

308 STUDIES IN GARDENING

should be chosen and perpetuated. Platycodon grandi-
florum is closely related to the Campanulas, and a
valuable low-growing border plant. We choose its
dwarf variety Mariesii, and with this should be grown
(Enothera macrocarpa for the contrast both of their
colour and growth. There are many fine (notheras,
but this is the best perennial one for the ordinary
garden. It can be very easily raised from seed, and
flowers for a long time. There is no better plant for
the front of the border. Centaurea montana is a
humble plant and spreads like a weed; but it is very
beautiful in its blue, white, and pink varieties, and
has the great merit of growing anywhere and flowering
early. If it were not so easy, it would be prized, and
it deserves to be more prized for its easiness. An-
other humble and slighted plant is Nepeta mussini,
which has a peculiar modest beauty both of flower
and growth, and will flourish anywhere. It is a most
valuable plant to give some quietness and neatness
to the front of a gay border. It combines beautifully
with the giant Thrift, Armeria cephalotes, another
plant of the highest merit and too little seen in gar-
dens. There is a richly coloured variety of this called
rubra, the deep pink flowers of which contrast well
with the dark lavender of the Nepeta. With both of
these may be associated the beautiful Polemonium
reptans. All Polemoniums are fine plants, but this
is the best, both in colour and in habit, and it is quite
easy to grow.

Erigeron speciosus is another plant often slighted

BEST HARDY PERENNIALS 309

because of its easiness, but it has many merits besides
that and deserves a place in our anthology. It can
be grown with the Oriental poppy for a fine bold con-
trast, not with one of the sickly new varieties, but with
some splendid deep scarlet form such as Goliath.
The great defect of Oriental poppies is that they are
untidy after they have flowered. Miss Jekyll advises
that Gypsophila paniculata should be grown among
them so as to cover their untidiness. This is a good
idea, and Gypsophila, of course, comes into our an-
thology except for gardens with very heavy soils.
Gypsophila suggests a plant which is a perfect mate
for it, but which ought not to be in our anthology at
all. The hybrid Pentstemons are not hardy in win-
ter or in cold gardens. But they are so easily raised
from seed or cuttings, and they are so valuable, that
every garden ought to contain them. But if we are
not allowed to include them we must insist upon P.
barbatus, which is hardy in most gardens, and partic-
ularly upon its variety Torreyi, with its coral-red
flowers. We must also insist upon Hollyhocks, which
are not true perennials perhaps, but should be in
every garden big enough for them. Raise them from
seed, and, if possible, sow it where the plants are to
remain, and then they will probably escape the dis-
ease. It is difficult to choose among the Anemones,
but for the ordinary border there is none to equal
the ordinary white Anemone japonica. It is still
more difficult to choose among Irises, but without
further argument we name the variety of Iris pallida

310 STUDIES IN GARDENING

dalmatica called Princess Beatrice. At least there
is no more beautiful garden flower in existence. Then
there are the Violas or tufted Pansies; a choice is
impossible among these. But there is nothing to beat
Florizel for beauty and vigour, though there are
others to equal it. We name it because one variety
must be named; and if we are to choose a particular
pink, we will have Albino for the beauty of its flowers,
as fine as those of a white carnation. Of the Phloxes
we scarcely dare name one. But there is none so bril-
liant in colour as Coquelicot, though others have a
better constitution. Among Michaelmas Daisies we
choose Aster acris, but only for the sake of choosing
one. It has this advantage over most, that it does
not spread all over the border or need constant divi-
sion if it is not to deteriorate; and there is none more
beautiful. Among Funkias we have no hesitation in
choosing F. Sieboldii for the beauty of its glaucous
leaves; but the Day Lilies are much more difficult
to choose. H. aurantiaca major is always said to be
the finest, but it usually prefers not to flower. We
prefer H. Thunbergii, which has a sweet scent and
clear yellow flowers. The Kniphofias are no easier,
but there is none to surpass K. caulescens either in
flower or in leaf, and it is very easily increased.

There are innumerable Veronicas, but none so bril-
liant in the border as Veronica amethystina, the best
variety of which has bright blue flowers. Among the
Flaxes none remains so long in bloom as Linum perenne,
although L. narbonnense has larger blossoms. Of the

BEST HARDY PERENNIALS 311

Yuccas Y. gloriosa is far the most splendid when in
flower, but it flowers rarely. YY. filamentosa is a free
bloomer and also a splendid plant. Scabiosa caucasica
is not a true perennial always, but it will last for some
years in most good, well-drained borders, and can
be easily raised from seed. Its beauty should give
it a place in any anthology. Of the Spirzeas we choose
S. aruncus, an obvious but sound selection. The
Meadow Rues are not showy plants, but they have
a peculiar quiet beauty, and there is none so good as
the purple-flowered variety of Thalietrum aquilegi-
folium. The Cranesbills are a valuable family of
plants. We are tempted by Geranium grandi-
florum, but the most brilliant is the variety of G.
ibericum called platypetalum. There are many gar-
den varieties of Potentilla, but none flowers so long,
has so delicate a colour, or is so ready to thrive any-
where as Potentilla nepalensis. Few of the genus
Coreopsis are true perennials, but C. lanceolata lives
for a reasonable number of years. It is very like C.
grandiflora, but rather smaller and more delicate in
flower.

The Goatsrues are excellent border plants, with
a delicate beauty of flower which would be more
valued if they were less easy to grow. There is a more
compact form of Galega officinalis which is perhaps
the best; Spiderwort is another homely but beauti-
ful plant — Tradescantia virginica is its botanical
name -—and of many good varieties the white one
has the most exquisite beauty. The Globe flowers

312 STUDIES IN GARDENING

are all fine plants, only at their best in a rich moist
soil. New varieties are now being produced every
year, but none has finer flowers than the variety of
Trollius asiaticus called Orange Globe. The Statices
are also being continually improved, and some of the
finer varieties of Statice latifolia are splendid plants.
It varies much from seed. Therefore the plants
should be seen, if possible, when in flower, and a good
form chosen. Those who have space can easily raise
it from seed and should keep only the seedlings with
the finest flowers.

Incarvillea Delavayi is still a new plant, and for
some time after its introduction was supposed not
to be hardy, or at least to need care and a special
place in the rock garden. One reason for this, no
doubt, was its appearance and the fact that it be-
longs to a family in which are not many hardy plants.
But though it looks as tender and foreign as a Glox-
inia, it appears to be quite hardy in any light, good
soil, and it is a splendid plant for the front of the
border.

There are some plants which, however beautiful
they may be, are disliked by gardeners because they
spread like Goutweed. One of the worst of these is
Coronilla varia, and one cannot, in spite of its beauty,
recommend it for any border whatever. The com-
mon Rose-bay, Epilobium angustifolium, is almost
as bad; but the white variety of this is so beautiful
and so ready to thrive anywhere that it must be in-
cluded in our anthology. But the gardener should

BEST HARDY PERENNIALS 313

beware of it, as it spreads by underground suckers,
and these will come up 6 ft. away from the parent
plant. Sidalcea is also a very spreading plant, but
S. Listeri, with delicate pink flowers, is less trouble-
some by far than S. candida, and also prettier. The
musk mallow (Malva moschata) is one of the most
beautiful of our wild flowers, and well worth a place
in any garden; but the white variety is still more
beautiful and not so often seen in gardens as it de-
serves. Of the St. John’s Worts Hypericum Mose-
rianum, a half shrubby species, is the best and a beau-
tiful border plant. Most of the Erodiums are rock
plants, but E. Manescavi should be in every garden,
if only because it is one of the longest blooming of
all hardy plants. It is not brilliant, but its flowers
have a quiet and delicate beauty of their own. The
most familiar Saxifrage, of course, is London Pride,
but a finer plant altogether for the cool border is a
variety of S. rotundifolia sold as S. Lasiophylla. This
is probably not its true name, but it is the only one
we know it by. It has much larger flowers than those
of London Pride and also prettier leaves. It is a
little known plant, but of the highest value. Tiarella
cordifolia is another beautiful plant of the same family
for the front of the cool border, well known, but not
so much grown as it deserves. We have mentioned
fifty plants and there are dozens of others which we
feel we have unjustly neglected. But some of them
are a little difficult, like the beautiful Mertensia vir-
ginica, which where it thrives makes an exquisite

314 STUDIES IN GARDENING

contrast with Tiarella; and some are not exactly to
our taste. No doubt also there are obvious omis-
sions in the anthology, due not to perversity, but to
forgetfulness. But that anthology is not meant to
be dogmatic. At the worst it can only be disagreed
with. At the best it may make the reader more in
love than ever with some old favourites, and intro-
duce him to some new ones.

THE FIFTY BEST ROCK PLANTS

T is not quite so difficult to make a choice of the

fifty best rock plants as of the fifty best hardy
perennials; but no list is likely to please any one very
much except the maker of it; and even he will proba-
bly see the faults of it soon after he has made it. One
plant will seem the best of its kind to-day and another
to-morrow. Besides, he is sure to forget some of his
favourite plants. But still his list may contain some
beautiful plants unknown to some of his readers, and
it may confirm their liking for others. The list which
follows does not pretend to be even the writer’s final
choice, but it will contain only plants which he has
thoroughly tested, and which he knows can be made
to flourish without any great amount of skill. Some
of them are quite easy, others not quite so easy; but
none are inexplicably capricious, and none demand
conditions which the ordinary well-made rock garden
in the country cannot supply. They are chosen first
for their beauty, next for their perfect fitness for the
rock garden, and last for their comparative ease of
culture. None of the larger shrubs suitable for the
rock garden are included among them, and no bulbs.
Some are not rock plants in their native countries,
but all will look better and probably do better in the

rock garden than anywhere else.
315

316 STUDIES IN GARDENING

If the present writer were allowed to grow only
one rock plant, he would without hesitation choose
Lithospermum prostratum. It has only two faults
—namely, that it will not endure lime in the soil
and that it is not easy to propagate. Otherwise it is
as perfect as a plant can be. It is a small shrub, quite
prostrate in its growth, and for some months of spring
and early summer covered with brilliant blue flowers,
while it often bears again, though more sparsely, in
the autumn. It is always described in books as quite
easy to grow. Yet one often sees poor plants of it
even in pretentious rock gardens. The reason is that
gardeners often will not give it what it wants. Its
wants are well known, and, except on limy soils, easily
supplied — but they must be supplied if it is to thrive.
It will do well either on the north or the south side of
the rock garden; but does not like too hot a place or
too poor a soil. It roots very deeply, and should be
planted in at least 2 ft. of good fibrous soil and leaf-
mould, and placed so that its roots can run under a
large rock. Also it should never be disturbed, and if
possible it should be sheltered from easterly winds,
which often damage it in winter and early spring.
When it is well grown it spreads into a bush several
feet across, and in flower is almost as brilliant as any
gentian. It must be propagated by cuttings, which
are sometimes difficult to strike. These are usually
taken after it has flowered, and consist of fresh growth
with a little of the old wood, but good healthy shoots
taken in April will often root better.

FIFTY BEST ROCK PLANTS 317

|
An excellent contrast to the Lithospermum is

Arenaria montana, which has large white flowers.
But care must be taken that the Arenaria does not
smother the Lithospermum, as it grows at a great
pace. It will thrive anywhere except in deep shade or
a bog, and few rock plants are more beautiful. It can
be raised from seed almost as easily as mustard, or
any shoot will root quickly. It is equally beautiful
mixed with Saponaria ocymoides, another rampant
plant, also of the Pink family, and with bright pink
blossoms. This also should be raised from seed, and
cut back whenever it gets leggy. A small shrub of
the highest beauty and value is Daphne cneorum,
especially the finer variety of it called majus. This,
like the Lithospermum, has certain definite wants.
It thrives best among rocks and in the same kind of
soil as the Lithospermum. It must not have either
too dry or too damp a place, but may be grown either
on the south or the north side of a sunny open rock
garden. There is some dispute as to whether it likes
lime, but it will certainly thrive without it. It is
difficult to increase except by layers, and these take
some time to root. Whenever the shoots grow leggy
they should be layered, and then the plant will spread
and increase in vigour. It is beautiful at all times
of the year, but the beauty and scent of its pink blos-
soms are incomparable. It has the reputation of
being capricious; but this is probably because it dis-
likes disturbance, bad drainage, sour soil, and an ex-
posed position. It should not be planted anywhere

318 STUDIES IN GARDENING

near the Lithospermum, but a good contrast to it is
Saxifraga cotyledon, the most useful of all the rosette
Saxifrages. ‘There are several varieties of this, but
they do not differ much. It can be easily raised from
seed or increased by offsets, and flowers very freely.
It likes a rich, light soil, and does not need lime. It
should be given plenty of space, as each rosette will
grow into large patches. There are, of course, in-
numerable Saxifrages, and at least twenty of them
might claim to be among the best fifty rock plants.
We must include one more of these and we choose
S. Burseriana major for its extreme beauty. It needs
some care and should be grown in a cool, well-drained
place, where it gets sun for about half the day. The
soil should consist of fibrous loam, leaf-mould, and
mortar rubble, and the plant should be surrounded
with rubble or chips of rock. It is small and must
be secluded from all rampant plants. There is the
same difficulty with the Campanulas as with the
Saxifrages. It is hard to make a choice among them.
We choose the best variety of Campanula garganica,
the name of which appears to be uncertain. It has
pale starry blue flowers, is easily raised from seed,
and thrives in any well-drained open place among
rocks and in rich, light soil. There is no Campanula
more beautiful either in flower or in habit. If a more
vigorous Campanula is required, we must add C.
muralis, especially its larger variety, Portenschlagiana.
This will grow anywhere on the rock garden, and looks
its best contrasted with Silene alpestris, an exquisite

FIFTY BEST ROCK PLANTS 319

but most vigorous plant, with flowers like those of
a delicate little white pink. Both of these should
be left undisturbed for some years after they are
planted. The Silene does not like a very hot, dry
place. For a contrast to C. garganica there is nothing
to surpass Asperula hirta, a little woodruff with deli-
cate pink flowers, that looks as if it would be difficult,
but is almost as easy as Aubretia. But even more
beautiful and worthy of the best position in the rock
garden is Asperula athoa (or suberosa), a downy little
plant with flowers like pink coral, which it bears all
through the summer. This is not difficult, but should
be planted in a dry fissure between the rocks in full
sun and looking south, in a compost consisting mainly
of mortar rubble with a little fibrous soil and leaf-
mould. It is not a plant for a cold climate, but may
be easily grown in the south of England, and can be
increased by careful division in spring or by cuttings
taken at the same time. It should also be planted
in spring. Of all rock plants the Pinks are the most
valuable genus, and if one species is to be chosen
among them we choose Dianthus neglectus. It is
not the easiest, but easier than D. alpinus or the
wonderful D. callizonus; and it is perhaps the most
beautiful of all. It can be easily raised from seed,
but hybridizes too readily with other species. Some
seedlings will probably be inferior, some true, and
some may turn out splendid hybrids, finer even than
the species. It is a small plant with grassy leaves
and brilliant pink flowers washed with yellow on the

320 STUDIES IN GARDENING

underside of the petals. It thrives best in fissures
between big rocks looking south and in poor, rubbly
soil. It certainly likes lime.

The Androsaces are a difficult family, but A. carnea
is not so difficult as some, and very beautiful. It
should be planted in a cool, well-drained position, as
it can endure neither drought in summer nor stagnant
moisture in winter. In a hot rock garden it will do
best with a northwest aspect. The soil should con-
sist of fibrous loam, silver sand, and leaf-mould. It
grows best in a level pocket, if it is sharply drained,
and cannot endure lime. It should be top-dressed
with leaf-mould and silver sand in the spring. It
can be raised from seed, if this is sown when fresh,
and it often ripens seed in England. Near A. carnea
may be grown the exquisite Oxalis enneaphylla, a
much easier plant. This likes a rich, light, stony
soil, and to be left alone when once planted. It bears
milky white flowers, large for the size of the plant,
in late spring, and dies down in the autumn. Another
beautiful plant for a cool, well-drained place is Pole-
monium confertum. This is rare, but can be easily
raised from seed or increased by careful division in
spring. It has delicate pale lavender blossoms, and
is more beautiful even than its white variety, P. mel-
litum. It likes a light soil enriched with leaf-mould.

For the hottest places in the rock garden there are
no plants better than the Aethionemas, and of these
E. grandiflorum is the most brilliant in colour. It is
hardy enough to endure most winters and can be

FIFTY BEST ROCK PLANTS 321

easily raised from seed, especially if sown when fresh
or from cuttings taken in spring. All the Aethionemas
like lime and a poor soil. Another excellent plant
for the same kind of position is Onosma tauricum
(Golden Drop). In a dry place and poor soil this
grows to a considerable size, and flowers all the sum-
mer. Its chief need is protection from stagnant mois-
ture in the winter. It should be increased by cuttings
taken either in April or the autumn. The cuttings
must be kept as dry as possible, as they are apt to
damp off. The Erodiums are all plants for dry places,
except the beautiful little E. Reichardii, which is not
very hardy. The best of them, perhaps, is E. gut-
tatum, neat in habit and with delicate white spotted
flowers. It is a very easy plant for sunny rock work
and often ripens seed in England. Geranium argen-
teum is the best of the Cranesbills for the rock garden,
more beautiful than G. cinereum because of its silvery
leaves. It should be planted in a deep crevice between
rocks looking full south, and must be top-dressed or
replanted if it grows out of the ground. It shares
this habit with many of the Alpine primulas, among
which it is difficult to make a choice. But certainly
none is more easy or beautiful than the white Primula
nivalis (the true name of which appears to be P.
pubescens alba). This thrives in any cool place in
light rich soil, which should be 2 ft. deep at least.
All the Alpine primulas like to be surrounded with
stones.

Few Gentians are quite easy, and not long ago

322 STUDIES IN GARDENING

Gentiana verna was supposed to be almost impossible
in England, chiefly because it was treated as a rock
plant. It should be grown in a flat sunny basin where
it will catch all the rain. If this is well drained it
will not suffer from damp in the winter. The soil
should be deep, half loam and half leaf-mould. It is
best planted in early spring, and the most important
point in its culture is to top-dress it with leaf-mould
at intervals through the summer and to water it fre-
quently in dry weather. The plants must be very firm
in the soil, and it is well to tread on them whenever
they seem to be at all loose. Strong plants should
be obtained to start with, and these are best got from
Ireland. With these precautions it is easy to grow
where the air is pure, and there is no need to speak of
its beauty. It should never be disturbed when estab-
lished.

The culture of Ramondia Pyrenaica is now fairly
well understood. It is most splendid near a water-
fall, but most gardeners cannot provide it with this.
It will thrive, however, among rocks where it is placed
so that the sun never strikes upon it, and is best planted
so that the roots run horizontally into the ground.
It likes a rich soil of loam, peat, and leaf-mould, though
peat is not necessary, and is not averse to lime.

Rosa alpina is the only rose suitable to the rock
garden, and it is suitable only to large rock gardens.
It grows rather more than a foot high and has bright
pink flowers. It needs space, as it spreads by suckers
and prefers a cool place and rich soil. It is very easily

FIFTY BEST ROCK PLANTS 323

grown. It varies a good deal in size, and pains should
be taken to get the dwarfest variety.

There are not many rock plants that flower in au-
tumn, and one of the best of these, where there is
space for it, is Polygonum vaccinifolium, a perfectly
prostrate Knotweed with pink blossoms in September
and October. It spreads rapidly, and its shoots root
in the ground as they spread. It should be grown in
poor soil and in an open position on the north side
if it is to flower well. It can be readily increased by
rooted shoots cut off and replanted in spring, but
should not be disturbed when established. Other
plants that will flower late in the year are Papaver
alpinus and Linaria alpina. These often die after
flowering, but if raised from seed in spring in a cold
frame and planted out as soon as possible they will
come into flower about July and continue to bloom
till the frosts. They can also be sown where they
are to bloom. They will flourish in any well-drained
position not too dry and seed themselves profusely.
Both are extremely beautiful.

Few of the Pentstemons are true perennials, but
P. glaber alpinus lasts as long as any, and is a true
rock plant. It varies in colour, but the best varieties
are a beautiful glass blue. It can be easily raised
from seed or increased by cuttings. Of the Colum-
bines, Aquilegia Pyrenaica is the dwarfest and a very
beautiful plant. It is easy to grow in a cool well-
drained place, but difficult to get. A. alpina is never
seen in its true beauty in England. It seems to de-

324 STUDIES IN GARDENING

teriorate in cultivation. Of the low-growing spring
Phloxes there are many varieties, but none so beauti-
ful or compact as the white Phlox Nelsoni and the
pink P. Vivid. These should be mixed among bold
rocks and in a light rich soil. In damp or shady places
they are apt to die off in winter. If they are top-
dressed with leaf-mould the shoots will root, and this
is the best way to increase them.

There are several Alpine Ranunculi, but none more
beautiful or vigorous than R. amplexicaulis, which
likes a cool place and a soil of loam and leaf-mould.
Of all the Violas, the new Viola gracilis from Greece
seems the most valuable for the rock garden. It ap-
pears to be hardy and vigorous and has bright but
delicate purple flowers. It should be grown in a warm
place and light, rich soil, at least until its capacity
for standing our winters is better known. Among
Veronicas we choose V. prostrata, among Potentillas,
P. alba—both most beautiful plants not so often
grown as they should be. P. alba flowers for six months
of the year, and will grow almost anywhere. In a
large rock garden space should be found for Nierem-
bergia rivularis, which in England thrives best in a
flat, sunny, well-drained place and should be top-
dressed with leaf-mould when it starts into growth
in spring. It increases at a great pace, and flowers
for a long time. Dryas octopetala also needs a large
space, and flowers most freely in full sun when it is
protected from drought by large rocks. It likes a
strong dose of lime in the soil. There are many good

FIFTY BEST ROCK PLANTS 325

Achilleas for the rock garden, all liking a dry, sunny
situation, but the best is A. argentea (rightly called
Tanacetum argenteum). This is beautiful both for
its silvery foliage and for its pure white flowers. There
is no better plant for the top of the rock garden, and
it may be mixed with the Aethionemas.

Few of the dwarf Hypericums are quite hardy; but
H. reptans will survive most winters if planted in a
warm place where its roots are protected by large
rocks, and it is the most beautiful when in flower.
It likes a rich, light soil, and may be increased by
cuttings taken in spring. Near it may be grown
Edraianthus serpyllifolius, a little bell flower of a
brilliant purple colour, not at all difficult to grow in
fissures of the rocks and in light, rubbly soil. This
is also best increased by cuttings taken in spring.
One of the earliest of all spring flowers is Iberis saxa-
tilis, the smallest of the Candytufts, and not always
easy to obtain true. It likes a limy soil and a fissure
between rocks looking full south. It is quite pros-
trate, and the largest plants are only a few inches
across. House-leeks are innumerable in variety, but
the best for the rock garden is Sempervivum arach-
noideum and its larger variety S. laggeri. These are
quite easy in any high and dry sunny place. They
like a fissure where they can spread out over the face
of the rocks.

All the plants mentioned in this list are only sug-
gestions, and could be matched with other plants as
beautiful. The writer chooses them because he has

326 STUDIES IN GARDENING

tried them all and knows their beauty and that they
can be grown with a moderate amount of skill and
pains. He could make another list almost as much
to his taste — and perhaps more to the taste of others.
There are now too many rock plants, and the be-
ginner is apt to be bewildered among them. But if
he stocks his rock garden with the plants we have
mentioned, he will have nothing worthless and noth-
ing that he need despair of growing.

INDEX

INDEX

Acana MicropHy.ia, 218

Acantholimons, 50

Achillea, 10; argentea, 325; huteri,
176; rupestris, 176

Acis autumnalis, 182

Aethionema, culture, 50, 56; as rock
plants, 320, 321; coridifolium, 11,
73; grandiflorum, 11, 320; pul-
chellum, 11, 73

Afghanica, 75

Ageratum, 172

Allium, 79; neapolitanum, 79

Alpine flowers, associations, 262;
lack of perfume, 262

Alpine plants, use of term, 48; cul-
ture, 48-59; hardiness, 49; leaf-
mould for, 73, 74; raising from
seed, 57, 58; soil for, 58, 59; top-
dressing, 53

Alstroemeria, 32, 278

Alyssum maritimum, 181; saxatile,
9,176; saxatile citrinum, 9; saxa-
tile compactum, 219

Amaryllis belladonna, 268

Anchusa italica, 278; Dropmore
variety, 307; Opal variety, 307

Androsace, as rock plants, 178, 320;
carnea, 54, 73, 320; ciliata, 54;
coronopifolia, 73; lactea, 73;
lanuginosa, 178; verna, 74; vil-
losa, 54; vitaliana, 54

Anemone, time for planting, 271;
treated like bulbs, 272; raising
from seed, 278; alpina, 217; co-
ronaria, 32, 271, 278; fulgens, 32,
271, 278; hortensis, 271; japo-
nica, 32, 309; stellata, 271; sul-
phurea, 217; verna, 217

Angels’ tears, name, 21

329

Annuals, culture, 165-173; suitable
soil for, 34; use as a stop-gap, 165,
173; autumn sowing of, 168-170;
best sown in spring, 170, 171; half-
hardy, 171, 172; in rock garden,
181, 182

Anomatheca, 267; cruenta, 182

Antirrhinum asarina, 20, 50, 179,
180; majus, 20

Aplopappus Brandegei, 178

Apple trees, 245

April garden notes, 70-80

Aquilegia, name, 20; alpina, 66,
323; caerulea, 63, 64, 307; cali-
fornica, 64; canadensis, 64; chry-
santha, 64; glandulosa, 64-66,
157, 158, 307; Jaeschkanii, 64;
pyrenaica, 55, 67, 216, 323; Skin-
neri, 64; Stuartii, 66, 157, 158,
807; vulgaris, 60, 62, 63; Witt-
manniana, 66

Arabis, for banks, 9; 97

Arenaria Balearica, 218; montana,
9, 21, 214, 317; tetraquetra, 176,
219

Armeria caespitosa, 50; cephalotes,
308; laucheana, 10; maritima,
10; rubra, 308

Artemisia argentea, 175; sericea, 12,
175

Asperula athoa, 319; hirta, 214, 319

Aster acris, 310

Astragalus hypoglottis, 10

Atragene alpina, 55, 216

Atropa belladonna, 248

Aubrietia, 219; suitability for banks,
9; in borders, 29; raising from
seed, 75, 76

Auriculas, 156, 280

330

Azaleas, 27, 120, 239, 244, 259; cut-
ting back, 160

Bacon, Lord, on perfume of flowers,
261

Banks, 1-14; in garden design, 154,
155; neglect of, 1-6; suitable
plants for, 7-14; arrangement of
plants on, 14; use of rocks, 7

Bartonia aurea, 169

Begonias, 100

Bellis caerulescens, 179; perennis, 15

Berberis Darwinii, 242; dulcis nana,
175; stenophylla, 242

Bergamot, 32

Biennials, soil for, 34

Bleeding Heart, name, 19

Bluebells, 250, 260

Borago laxiflora, 218

Borders, 28-30, 183-191

Broom, for banks, 12

Bulbs, treatment of, 192-200; suit-
ability for banks, 11; suitable soil
for, 31; in the grass, 79, 80; prop-
agation, 110-112; cheap, 111,
112; use of manure on, 117, 118,
265; removal of, 122; use in her-
baceous border, 191; regimental
arrangement condemned, 193-—
195; carpeting with other plants,
194; varieties for spring planting,
264-272

Buttercup, name, 15

CauLaNpDRINIA UMBELLATA, for
banks, 11; culture, 179, 180

Calceolaria, associations, 246-248

Callirhoe involucrata, for banks, 11

Camassias, 195

Campanula, culture, 32, 36-47, 50; on
northern slopes, 214; raising from
seed, 278; wild nature of, 291;
abietina, 45; alliarisefolia, 39; Alli-
oni, 46; barbata, 42; Burghalti, 39;
caespitosa, 42, 43, 179, 181, 214;

INDEX

canterbury-bell, 37; carpatica,
41, 181, 214, 278; cenisia, 46;
Elatines, 46; excisa, 46; Fergus-
sonii, 40; fragilis, 45, 46; gar-
ganica, 44, 45, 214, 318; glome-
rata, 40; grandiflora, 38; gran-
dis, 278; haylodgensis, 44; Hen-
dersonii, 40; Hostii, 40; isophylla,
45, 46; lactiflora, 39, 278; lanata,
46; latifolia, 38, 39; latifolia
pyramidalis, 278; latiloba, 38;
medium, 37; mirabilis, 41; mura-
lis, 43, 214, 318; persicifolia, 38,
98, 278, 307; Portenschlagiana,
318; pulla, 43, 44, 56, 214; pu-
mila, 179, 214; punctata, 40; pu-
silla, 42; pyramidalis, 39; rhom-
boidalis, 41, 278; rotundifolia, 40,
41; Scheuzeri, 214; soldanel-
loides, 41; Tommasiniana, 44,
214; turbinata, 41, 214; urtici-
folia, 40; van Houttei, 39; Wald-
steiniana, 45; Wilsoni, 44; Zoyzii,
46

Candytuft, 175, 325

Canterbury-bell, 37

Cardinal’s flower, name, 23

Carnation, 81; name, 18, 19, 23; in
borders, 29

Caryophyllus, 17-19

Catmint, 198

Centaurea montana, 308

Chamaedrioides, 55

Chamaelirion carolinianum, 217

Cheddar pink, 8, 84

Chionodoxa, 70, 79, 198, 199; name,
16; planting, 12, 31

Christmas roses, 32

Cinders, use, 27

Cistus, 175; cutting back, 159;
cyprius, 188; florentinus, 13;
formosus, 13; lusitanicus, 13

Clematis, 55; Alpine, 216; clam-
mula, 22

Clipping, its limitations, 141-143

Codonopsis ovata, 219

INDEX

Colchicums, 182, 199

Collomia coccinea, 169

Colour arrangement of flowers, 168

Columbine, name, 20; culture, 60-
69, 323; in stiff soil, 32; in bor-
ders, 68; division of, 68; hybridi-
zation of, 61-67; raising from
seed, 277, 278; renewing from
seed, 67, 68; varieties, sce under
Aquilegia

Coreopsis, 32; grandiflora, 311; lan-
ceolata, 311

Cornflowers, 169, 170

Coronilla cappadocica, 10; varia,
312

Corydalis nobilis, 303

Cotoneaster, name, 22; congesta,

175; thymifolia, 175

Cottage gardens, 201, 202, 205-209

Cranesbills, 32, 291, 311, 321

Crinum capense, 268; longifolium,
268; Moorei, 268; Powelli, 268

Crocosma aurea, 271

Crocus, 171, 198, 199; for banks, 12;
planting, 31; pulchellus, 182, 199;
speciosus, 182, 199; zonatus, 182,
199

Crown Imperial, 80, 195

Cyclamen, 32, 182, 218

Cypripedium spectabile, 119

Cytisus, varieties, 18; Ardoini, 12;
Kewensis, 12; preecox, 243, 244;
Schipkaensis, 12, 13

Darronit, 70, 72, 100, 111; associa-
tions, 250; in borders, 28;
names, 24; planting, 31, 33; pal-
lidus preecox, 78; Princeps, 78;
Queen of Spain, 78, '79; Sea, 270;
Tenby, 78; Trumpet, 33

Dahlia, name, 17

Daisy, 98; dividing, 157

Daphne Blagayana, 55; cneorum,
317; majus, 317

Datura, 16

Day Lily, 32, 310

331

Deadly nightshade, its associations,
248, 249

Delphinium, name, 20; belladonna,
277, 306; cardinale, 277; formo-
sum, 277; grandiflorum, 277; nu-
dicaule, 277

Designing, garden, 189-155, 233,
234

Dianthus, alpestris, 86; alpinus, 54,
74, 89, 319; arenarius, 8, 85;
atrorubens, 87; cesius, 8, 84;
callizonus, 54, 90, 319; carthusi-
anorum, 87; caryophyllus, 18;
cinnabarinus, 87; cruentus, 87;
deltoides, 8, 84, 85; fragrans, 8,
85; freynii, 50, 90; gallicus, 86;
giganteus, 87; glacialis, 88, 90;
Heddewigii, 82, 172; Knappii, 87;
monspessulanus, 8, 85; neglectus,
50, 88, 819; noeanus, 86, 176;
petraeus, 8, 85; plumarius, 8, 83,
84, 86; sinensis, 82; squarrosus,
90; suavis, 86; superbus, 86, 219;
sylvestris, 86

Dicentra, 19; spectabilis, 32

Dodecatheons, 217

Doronicum, 32

Dorothy Perkins, 244

Doubling flowers, 97-99

Douglasia, 54

Dovedale Moss, 300

Draba, 176; aizoides, 215; Aizoon,
215; bruniefolia, 215; Mawii, 54;
pyrenaica, 54

Drainage, use of, in stiff soil, 25-29

Drought, protection from, 53-57

Dryas octopetala, 215, 324

Dutch gardens, 153, 154

Ecxeverias, 248

Edraianthus, 50; serpyllifolius, $25
Epilobium angustifolium, 322
Eremuri, 119

Erigeron speciosus, 198, 308
Erinus alpinus, 219

Eritrichium nanum, 53

332

Erodium chrysanthum, 50; gutta-
tum, 50, 321; macradenium, 177;
Manescavi, 313; Reichardii, 55,
177, 321

Eryngiums, 198

Eschscholtzia, name, 17, 169, 170

Eurybria gunniana, 13

Evergreens, cutting back, 158, 159

Farry Forcet-mMe-Nnot, 53

Farrer, Mr. Reginald, “My Rock
Garden,” 295, 296

Flowers, anthologies of, 304; artifi-
cial development, 92-101, 286;
associations, 246-263; beauty,
283-292; characteristics artificial
and natural, 287; decorative use
of, 251-253; doubling, 97; effect
of surroundings, 288, 291, 292;
improvement, 92-101; Japanese,
255-260; names, English and bo-
tanical, 15-24; perfume and its
associations, 260-262

Foam Flower, 22

Foord’s ‘‘Decorative Flower Stud-
jes,” 252

Forget-me-not, 77, 196; name, 21;
soil, 32

Forsythia, 4

Foxglove, 32

Fritillaria imperialis, 80; meleagris,
79, 80

Fuchsia, name, 17, 18

Funkia, 32, 259; Sieboldii, 310

Gasca, 197; officinalis, 311

Galtonias, 196, 198, 267

Gardeners, characteristics and rela-
tions with employers, 220-228

Gardening, artificial character, 117;
cheap methods, 102-112; Eng-
lish ideals, 201-210; experiments,
their necessity, 114; foreign ideals,
201-204; landscape, 4, 147, 229-
233; pleasure, 148

INDEX

Gardens, cottage, 201, 202, 205-209;
designing, 139-155, 233, 234;
Dutch, 153, 154; formal, 140, 141,
232-236; wild, 292

Genista, pilosa, 13, 175; tinctoria,
12, 13, 97, 175

Gentiana, as rock plants, 321, 322;
acaulis, 80, 122; verna, 51, 52, 74,
122, 32%

Gentianella, seed of, 280

Gentians, seed of, 280

Geranium, 321; associations, 246—
248; as rock plant, 321; argen-
teum, 50, 179, 321; cinereum, 50,
321; grandiflorum, 311; ibericum,
311; platypetalum, 311; subcaules-
cens, 179

Gillyflower, name, 17-19

Gladiolus, 195-197; culture, 264—
267; Brenchleyensis, 266; Child-
sii, 266; gandavensis, 266; Le-
moinei, 266; nanceianus, 266;
Princeps, 266; Saundersii, 266

Globe flowers, 311, 312

Globularia cordifolia, 219; nana, 54

Goatsrue, 197, 311

Golden Drop, 321

Goldilocks, name, 23

Gorse, 4

Grape Hyacinth, 79

Gypsophila, 197; paniculata, 309;
repens, 9, 219; repens monstro-
sum, 9

Haresett, English, 37, 40-42

Hawthorn, 240; use on lawn, 245;
in shrubbery, 243

Helianthemum, for banks, 10; cro-
ceum, 10; formosum, 175

Helichrysum, 23

Hemerocallis, 32; aurantiaca ma-
jor, 310; Thunbergii, 310

Henbane, associations, 248, 249

Herbaceous, borders, 28-30, 183-
191; plants, cutting back, 162,
163 :

INDEX

Hollyhocks, 107, 108, 309; planting
of, 32

Honeysuckle, name, 15

House-leeks, 325

Houses, relationship of gardens to,
229-236

Humus, use, 27, 28

Hutchinsia alpina, 219

Hyacinth, 248; arrangement of, 194,
195; Cape, 267

Hypericum coris, 50; Moserianum,
313; repens, 50; reptans, 50, 325

Inserts CorRE&FOLIA, 175; saxatilis,
50, 325; sempervirens, 175, 219

Incarvillea Delavayi, 15, 253, 312

Tonopsidium acaule, 181

Iris, 70, 111, 122, 195, 196, 244;
beauty of, 289; English, 111;
florentina, 246; German, 30, 32,
122, 244, 289; orchioides, 72;
pallida dalmatica, 309; sindja-
rensis, 72; Spanish, 111, 195, 196;
tingitana, 264; Willmottiana, 72

Ivy, overgrowth deprecated, 140

JAPANESE flowers and Japanese art,
255-260

Judas trees, 245

Juniper, 175

Karrir Liny, 267
Kalmias, 27
Kniphofia caulescens, 310

Lasurnum, 240

Lady’s Laces, name, 23

Landscape-gardening, origin, 229-
233; unhomeliness, 147; misap-
plication of principles, 4

Lapeyrousia cruenta, 267

Larkspur, 99; cutting back, 163;
planting, 29; raising from seed,
277; soil for, 32; Persimmon, 306;
True Blue, 306

333

Laurels, clipping deprecated, 6

Lavatera trimestris, 198

Lavender, 175, 187, 188, 196, 197;
for banks, 18; use in shrubbery,
9A3, 244

Lawns, use of shrubs, 244, 245

Lilacs, 244

Lilium auratum, 118, 128, 129, 136,
137, 258, 291; Batemanniae, 131;
Brownii, 128, 136; Canadense,
134, 135; candidum, 128-130;
Chalcedonicum, 32, 118, 128, 132,
138, 197; concolor, 137; coridion,
137; croceum, 118, 128, 131, 198;
Dalmaticum, 132; Davuricum,
131; elegans, 32, 128, 131, 198;
giganteum, 128, 129, 135; Grayi,
135; Hansoni, 128, 129, 131;
Henryi, 128, 135; Humboldtii,
138; Kraetzeri, 136; Krameri,
126, 128, 137; Leichtlini, 128, 129,
188; longiflorum, 128, 137; mari-
timum, 138; Martagon, 32, 128,
132; pardalinum, 118, 134, 135;
Parryi, 188; perenne, 198; Phila-
delphicum, 126, 138; pomponium,
128, 1388, 197; Pyrenaicum, 32,
132, 133; rubellum, 187; specio-
sum, 118, 128, 129, 1386, 137;
splendens, 131; superbum, 118,
134, 135; Szovitzianum, 118, 127,
133, 134; Takesima, 137; tenui-
folium, 138; testaceum, 118, 128,
130, 306; tigrinum, 118, 128,
131; umbellatum 32; Washing-
tonianum, 126, 138

Lily, culture, 112, 118, 127, 195-
198; name, 20; raising from seed,
126, 127; association with shrubs,
196, 197; treatment, 125-138,
306, 307; use of manure, 118;
varieties for spring planting, 267;
Crown Imperial, 195; Day, 32,
310; Orange, 32, 197; Tiger, 32,
198

Lily of the Valley, in stiff soil, 32

334

Linaria alpina, 179-181, 219, 323;
cymbalaria, 218; hepaticifolia,
218; Maroccana, 169

Linum narbonnense, 310; perenne,
310

Lithospermum prostratum, 176; cul-
ture, 316; protection from wind,
71, 213

Lobelia, 181; associations, 247, 248;
cardinalis, 23

London Pride, 293, 294, 313

Lonicera, 15

Love-in-a-Mist, 169; name, 19

Lupins, 32

Lychnis lagascae, 50, 179

Maponna Lity, 122, 196, 197; as-
sociations, 251; culture, 118, 129,
130, 306; suitable soil for, 32

Magnolias, 259

Maianthemum bifolium, 22

Maiden pink, 84

Malva moschata, 313

Mandrake, legendary associations,
249, 250

Manure, use, 28, 117-120, 163

Margyricarpus setosus, 218

Mawson, Mr. T. H., “Art and Craft
of Garden Making” noticed, 139,
147, 150, 231

Meadow Rue, 32, 311

Mertensia virginica, 313

Michaelmas Daisy, 32, 110, 123, 278,
310

Mignonette, 260

Milla biflora, 271

Mimulus, 32

Montbretias, 267, 271

Morisia hypogaea, 55, 157, 215

Mountain Sandwort, 21

Muscaris, 198, 199

Musk mallow, 313

Myosotis dissitiflora, 77; rupicola, 54

Narcissus, 111; cyclamineus, 72,
218; lobularis, 72; marinus, 270;

INDEX

minimus, 72, 218; minor, 72;
nanus, 72, 218; pheasant-eye, 33,
250; poeticus, 33; triandrus albus,
21, 72, 218

Nemesia, 172

Nemophila, 169-171

Nepeta mussini, 198, 308

Nerines, culture, 270

Nierembergia rivularis, 268, 324;

‘ culture, 116, 177

CnoTHERA Macrocarpa, 279, 308;
marginata, 178; taraxacifolia, 178

Olearia stellata, 13

Omphalodes luciliae, 54

Onosma tauricum, 321

Orange Globe, 312

Orange Lily, 32, 197

Oriental poppies, 809

Ornithogalum Arabicum, 270; nu-
tans, 79; pyramidale, 79; um-
bellatum, 79

Oxalis enneaphylla, 320

Pzonta ALBIFLORA, 307

Peonies, in stiff clay, 30, 31; The
Bride, 307

Pancratium maritimum, 270; I-
lyricum, 270

Pansy, 77; cutting back, 159; in
herbaceous border, 190; in stiff
soil, $1, 32; tufted, 99, 218, 310

Papaver alpinus, 179, 180, 219, 323

Parkinson, on Columbines, 60, 61, 63;
on the Sea Daffodil, 270; on the
scent of flowers, 261; on the Man-
drake, 249, 250; on the Ornitho-
galum Arabicum, 270

Peake, Mr. C. M. A., “A Concise
Handbook of Garden Annual and
Biennial Plants’’ noticed, 166, 167

Pearls of Spain, name, 23

Pentstemon, 99, 107, 108; barba-
tus, 309; glaber alpinus, 323;
Torreyi, 309

Perennials, hardy, fifty best varie-

INDEX

ties, 804-314; raising from seed,
plants suitable for, 106-109, 277-
279; plants difficult to raise from
seed, 279-282; suitable soil for, 34

Petrocallis, 54.

Phacelia campanularia, 169

Pheasant’s Eye, 33, 250

Phlox, for banks, 11; in borders, 29;
time for planting, 29; raising from
seed, 280; in heavy soil, 81, 32;
amoena, 77; Coquelicot, 310;
decussata, 99; divaricata, 773
Drummondii, 172; Nelsoni, 11,
76, 324; ovata, 77; subulata, 76;
trailing, 76; vivid, 11, 76, 324;
Phyteuma comosum, 50; G. F.
Wilson, 76

Pillar Roses, 243, 244

Pinks, 29, 176, 219, 244; in herba-
ceous border, 190; as rock plants,
8319; Albino, 310; mountain, 292;
varieties, see under Dianthus

Plantain Lilies, 259

Planting, autumn, 29-31

Plants, adaptability, degrees of, 115;
associations, 246-263; cutting
back, 158-163; division, 120-123,
156-158; half-hardy, 171, 172;
removal of, 121-123; reproduc-
tion, 158; root characteristics, 30,
120, 121; surface-rooting, bene-
fits of manure, 118, 119; seed,
cheapness of raising from, 106;
southern, suitability for banks, 11

Platycodon, 259; grandiflorum, 308:
Mariesii, 308

Plumbago Larpente, 178

Polemonium confertum, 54, 320;
confertum mellitum, 177, 216;
mellitum, 320; reptans, 308

Polyanthuses, 32, 123, 156

Polygonum vaccinifolium, 177, 215,
323

Poppy, 121, 170; Oriental, 162

Potentilla alba, 324: nepalensis,
311; nitida, 50

335

Primrose, 32, 123, 156, 250, 260

Primula, raising from seed, 280; Al-
pine, 54, 55; auricula, 216; auri-
cula marginata, 216; calycina,
216; denticulata, 123, 156; gluti-
nosa, 216; involucrata, 217; Japo-
nica, 156, 280; marginata, 216;
minima, 216; nivalis, 74, 321;
pubescens, 74; pubescens alba,
215, 321; rosea, 156, 217; Sikki-
mensis, 156, 217; viscosa, 216

Princess Beatrice, 310

Publications noticed: “Beautiful
Gardens,”’ 102; ‘Art and Craft of
Garden Making,” 139, 147, 150,
231; “A Concise Handbook of
Annual and Biennial Plants,” 166;
“‘Decorative Flower Studies,”
252; “English Flower Garden,”
21, 249; “My Rock Garden,”
295, 296

Puschkinia, 198, 199; libanotica, 79

Ramonpia Pyrenaica, 216, 322

Ranunculus, as rock plant, 324;
acris, 15; amplexicaulis, 324;
Asiaticus, 272

Rhododendron, 27, 120, 244; cut-
ting back, 160; chamaecistus, 54

Robinson’s “English Flower Gar-
den,” 21, 249

Rock gardens, condition in April,
70-80; aspect, 212; autumn con-
dition, 174-182; annuals sug-
gested, 181, 182; bedding out
suggested, 179; in garden design,
155; north side, suitable plants,
213-218; south side, suitable
plants, 219; plants that require
shelter from wind, 213

Rock plants, fifty best varieties, 315-
326; autumn, 175-182, 323

Rockspray, name, 22

Rosa alpina, 322

Rosaruby, name, 23

Rose-bay, 312

336

Rose of Sharon, 32

Rosemary, 13, 175, 187, 188, 197

Roseries, 243

Roses, artistic associations, 251, 252;
beauty of, 289; names, 23, 24;
planting time, 29, 30; pruning,
160-162; for rock garden, 322;
soils, suitability of heavy, 33; har-
monizing surroundings, 171, 172

Rubble, mortar, use, 27, 28

Sanp Hovust-Leex, 21

Santolina, 196, 197; incana, 13, 175

Saponaria, 170, 171; for banks, 9,
10; ocymoides, 9, 219, 317; ocy-
moides alba, 218

Saxifraga Afghanica, 303; Aizoon,
296-298; apiculata, 54, 176, 217,
299; atro-purpurea, 301; Ber-
genia, 302; Boydii, 54, 300; bril-
liant flowered, 302; burseriana,
54, 217, 299, 318; caesia, 54, 293,
300; Camposii, 217, 301; ciliata,
303; cochlearis, 298; cordifolia,
302; cotyledon, 297, 298, 318;
crassifolia, 302; decipiens, 301;
Elizabethae, 300; Fortunei, 302;
Gloria, 299; granulata, 301, 302;
Griesbachii, 54, 300; Guildford
Seedling, 301; hypnoides, 300;
Kabschia, 299, 300; Lantoscana,
297; Lasiophylla, 313; ligulata,
297, 303; longifolia, 50, 214, 297,
298; McNabiana, 298; megasea,
302; mossy, 176, 300-302; mus-
coides, 301; oppositifolia, 217,
302; pedemontana, 301; peltata,
293; pyramidalis, 50, 214, 298;
Rhei, 301; rotundifolia, 313; Salo-
monii, 300; sancta, 217; squar-
rosa, 54, 293, 300; Stracheyi, 303;
tenella, 217, 302; valdensis, 214,
298; Wallacei, 217, 301

Saxifrages, culture, 293-303; confu-
sion in names of, 295, 296, 303;
as rock plants, 214, 217, 318; ro-

INDEX

sette, 296; wild character of, 294,
295

Scabiosa caucasica, 311

Scent of flowers, 260-262

Schizostylis coccinea, 267

Scilla bifolia, 198, 199; sibirica, 72,
79, 198, 199

Sedum, name, 20; album, .2, 43,
198, 199; Ewersii, 177; glaucum,
75; Sieboldii, 177

Sempervivum arachnoideum, 325;
arenarium, 21; laggeri, 325

Shrubberies, arrangement, 242-244

Shrubs, suitability for banks, 12;
clipping, 142, 143; cutting back,
159-162; in herbaceous border,
186-189; for rock garden, 175;
soil, heavy, 33; advantage of leaf-
mould, 120

Shrubs, flowering, their right use,
237-245; varieties, 238-240

Sidalcea, 123; candida, 313; Lis-
teri, 313

Silene, 170, 171; for banks, 9, 10;
acaulis, 54, 214; alpestris, 43, 214,
318, 319; Elizabethae, 50; mari-
tima, 97; maritima flore pleno, 9;
Schafta, 177, 219

Slopes, see Banks

Slugs, how to deal with, 34, 35

Snails, how to deal with, 34, 35

Snapdragon, 107, 108; name, 20

Snowdrop, planting, 31

Snowflake, 182

Soil, heavy, 25-85

Soldanellas, 217

Solomon’s seal, 32

Southernwood, 187, 196

Spiderwort, 32, $11

Spirsea, 4, 32, 244; aruncus, $11

Squills, 70; planting, 12, 31

Statice latifolia, 312

Sternbergia lutea, 182, 199

St. John’s Wort, 313

Stonecrop, for banks, 12; name, 20

Summer houses, 152, 153

INDEX

Sun roses, 10
Sweet Sultan, 170
Syringa, 243

Tanacetum AcuiILuEA, for banks,
10; Argenteum, 10, 176, 325

Tender and True, name, 24

Thalietrum aquilegifolium, 311

Thrift, 10, 308

Thyme, suitability for banks, 10

Thymus lanuginosus, 10; serpyl-
lum, 10, 176, 219

Tiarella cordifolia, 22, 313

Tiger flower, culture, 269; name, 21

Tiger Lily, 32, 198

Tigridias, culture, 269

Towns, English treatment of open
spaces, 203, 207

Tradescantia virginica, 311

Trees, clipping, 142, 143; apple, 245;
Judas, 245

Tritonia, 271

Trollius, 32; asiaticus, 312

Tufted pansy, 99, 218, 310

Tulipa Batalini, 75; biflora, 75;
Kaufmanniana, 70, 74; linifolia,
75; lownei, 75; silvestris, 79; pul-
chella, 75

Tulips, 248; early April, 70, 71;
best arrangement, 193-196; for
banks, 12; in borders, 28; in the
grass, 79; planting, 31; Cottage
Maid, 111; Picotee, 111

337
Umsre.ia Piant, 293

VERBENA, 172

Veronica amethystina, 310; pecti-
nata, 10, 176, 219; prostrata, 219,
324; repens, 176, 219; teucrium,
10

Vetch, for banks, 10

Villas, suburban, Englishman’s dis-
like of, 230

Viola, 99; cutting back, 159; as
rock plant, 324; Florizel, 310;
gracilis, 324

Violet, 32

Violettas, 218

Virgin’s Bower, name, 22

WadtEnBeERGIAS, 50; hederacea, 56

Waldstenia fragarioides, 218; trifo-
liata, 218

Wallflowers, culture, 77, 78, 196;
name, 19

Wistaria, name, 17

Wright, Mr. W. P., “Beautiful Gar-
dens,”’ noticed, 102-104

Yucca Finamentosa, 311; gloriosa,
311

ZAUSCHNERIA CALIFORNICA, 178
Zephyranthes Atamasco, 269; can-
dida, 268

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