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ALBERT R. MANN
LIBRARY

AT
CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ser SE ie Library

SB 466.G7C7 1
WAM

Cornell University

Library

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002803140

LIBRARY

Department of Floriculture
_ and Ornamental Horticulture
3 New York STATE CoLLEGE

of AGRICULTURE

at CORNELL UNIVERSITY
ITHACA, N.Y.

GARDENS OF ENGLAND

AGENTS

America . THe Macmirran Company
64 & 66 Firrn Avenue, New York

Ausrratasia THE Oxrorp Universiry Press
205 Frinpers Lang, MELsourne
Canapa . Tue Macmirran Company or Canapa, Lrp.
Sr. Martin’s Housr, 70 Bonp STREET, ToronTo

Inpia ,) «) Macmitran & Company, Lrp.
Macmittan Buirpinc, BomBay
309 Bow Bazaar Street, CatcuTTa

THE SUNDIAL, WOODSIDE, CHENIES

Seat of Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, who re-
planned the garden, utilising the old trees as a back-
ground in the striking manner shown, which gives
the garden a sort of Watteau effect.

GARDENS OF
ENGLAND

PAINTED BY
BEATRICE PARSONS

DESCRIBED BY

E, T. COOK

PUBLISHED BY A. & C.
BLACK - LONDON - MCMXI

re,

First Published 1908
New Impression 1911

PREFACE

TuHeE following pages contain a few thoughts—
perhaps rather on English gardening than English
gardens—which I have been asked to write. I am
much indebted to Mrs. Davidson for the chapter
on “Cottage Gardens,” to Mrs. Bardswell for
her thoughts on “The Herb Garden,” and to
Mr. S. W. Fitzherbert for “ Winter in the Garden.”
Miss Beatrice Parsons heartily thanks those who
have lent pictures painted by herself for the
purpose of illustrating this book.
EK. T. COOK.
June 1908.

CONTENTS

TuHoucuts on Cotrrace GARDENS

. Lavenper anp Rosemary

. Tue Hers Garpen .

AMONGST THE Roszs.

. THOUGHTS ON GaRDENING, 1Ts HEALTHINESS AND

1ts DEVELOPMENT

. Tue Beauty or Simpte GrRoupPine
. Tue Heatu GarpDEn

. Frowers sy Water SIDE AND ON THE WaTER

SurRPAcE

. SPRING IN THE GARDEN
. SUMMER IN THE GARDEN
. AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN. e i

XII.

WINTER IN THE GARDEN ‘< A .

vii

103

115
133
149
167
183

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FAOING PAGE

. The Sundial, Woodside, Chenies ; Frontispiece
. A London Garden in August F ‘ F 8
The Dovecote, Stonelands, Sussex. 5 . 25
“ Carmino,” Falmouth . ‘ : : 2: 32
. The Rose Garden, Drakelowe. : : . 41
The Rose Garden, Waxwell Farm, Pinner . . 48
. The Rose Garden, Newtown House, Newbury w oF
. The Pergola, Brantwood, Surbiton . ; . 64
(From the picture in the possession of H.M. the Queen.)
. The Terrace Garden, Hoar Cross House F . 81
. Daffodils, Waxwell Farm, Pinner : , - 88
. Herbaceous Borders, Dingley Park . ; - 105
. Spalding Parish Church, from the Lake Garden,
Ayscough Fee Hall ‘ 112
. Rhododendrons, Upper Pleasure Ground, toot Park 129
. The Dutch Garden, Moor Park : . - 136
. Tulips in “The Garden of Peace” . ‘ . 145
. The Round Garden, Drakelowe ; F ,- 152
. The Lily Walk, Dingley Park ‘ F . 169
(From the picture in the possession of H.I.H. the Empress Dowager of Russia.)
. August at Holyrood House, Spalding ‘ . 176
. Entrance to the Gardens, Ayscough Fee Hall - 185
. A January Moonrise, Golders Hill, Hampstead » 192

ix BSS.

I
THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS

I
THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS

THERE is a love of flowers fast knit into the very
fibre of our British nature which probably lies at
the root of the national reputation for gardening
with which we are accredited; nevertheless, it is
a love we share with such children of Nature as
the Kaffir or the South Sea Islander.

Nothing, nowadays, is more characteristic, as
we know, of our English countryside, and there is
nothing that strikes a foreigner more forcibly, than
the cottage gardens, with their aspect of homely
comfort and even luxury, which everywhere fringe
our roadsides and village lanes with the broidery
of flowers. Yet it is very doubtful whether it is
an inborn bent towards the tillage of the soil, or
even native-bred industry, which has fostered this
love of flowers into the desire to cultivate plants
for the sake of their beauty. Other peoples are

3

4 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

far ahead of us in these respects. In France and
in Belgium, our nearest neighbours, for example,
we see small plots of garden ground cultivated
with the utmost skill, crop succeeding crop of
vegetable produce, tended with the keenest sense
of profit and with seldom an inch to spare for any
vanities in the way of flowers. In England alone
we find cottage gardens of fair size, many of them
sadly enough going to waste for want of care and
practical diligence, but even so, often with the
redeeming feature of some few bright flowers—
while, at its best, the cottager’s plot is a marvel of
gay colours and sweet scents, as well as of thrifty
produce, and becomes the envy of many whose
position in life is far higher.

It may be the neutral tints of our mist-laden
atmosphere that make sea-girt folk like ourselves
crave for the contrast of rich, warm colour.
Perhaps it is the sweet English spring-time, sur-
passed in no other land, with its budding greenery,
its primroses and flooring of blue, which stirs some
lurking sense of the poetry which lies hidden below
the surface of every nature, however rude and
simple, that creates this longing to have such
beautiful things always with us. Who can tel?
Whatever the compelling influence, the fact remains

THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS 5

that the love of flowers, unless it is killed by that
which is coarse and evil, is strong in the heart
of every British man and woman; and long may it
be before it is displaced by any taste less worthy !
All the same, we may not dare to lay the
flattering unction to our souls that gardening, in any
true sense, is an instinct of pure British growth.
Looking back through the records of past ages, we
become dimly aware that before the beginning of
the Christian era, the inhabitants of Britain, brave,
and, for long years after their partial submission,
practically untamable, were little conversant with
arts or agriculture, and owed all the training and
skill which, a few centuries later, made these islands
one of the granaries of the world, to the influence
of the all-conquering Romans. To this day, indeed,
we benefit by trees and fruits, if not by flowers,
bequeathed to us at their departure. About the
intervening cycles we know little, except that
within the precincts of the monasteries and religious
houses scattered up and down the land, the culture
of simples and medicinal herbs and some few
esculents was always fostered; but there is proof
enough to show that nationally—whether it be
regarded in its aspect of industry or of pastime—
gardening gradually fell away until it became almost

6 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

a lost art. It is true that at the end of the four-
teenth century, when Piers the Ploughman made
his complaint, the farmer, if he had little else to
keep hunger from the door until August brought
the new corn, could boast at least of “parsley and
leeks and many cabbage plants,” but a little later
on, during the Tudor dynasty, so much elementary
husbandry as even this implies had disappeared in
the harsh misery of the times, for old records reveal
that the Royal table itself had to be supplied with
“sallets of herbs” brought over from Holland,
while many a stout Dutch sloop carried its cargo of
onions and carrots to Hull for the use of wealthy
English nobles and well-to-do merchants. Luxuries
such as these were not for the poor, for in those
days, when “a sum equal to twenty shillings was
paid at that port for six cabbages and a few carrots,’
a cabbage, from its rarity, was a gift worth offering.
Thus, languishing, did the art of gardening stand
stationary, until troubles and persecutions abroad
made England, as she has ever been, a house of
refuge, among more exalted persons, for Flemish
weavers and cloth-workers. It is far from im-
probable that we may look back as far as to the
reign of Queen Elizabeth for that reawakening of
cottage gardening which has never since lost its

THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS 7

hold, and which makes so greatly for the charm of
rural England. The newcomers, frugal-minded,
and accustomed to supply their simple wants at
home by the labour of their hands, and to live mainly
upon the produce of their narrow patches of garden
ground, were not slow to discover that, in their
adopted country, they could add considerably to
their resources by'cultivating coleworts and carrots,
which, with peas and celery, met with a ready sale,
Wherever they settled—in the Cinque Ports, in
the Eastern counties, on the outskirts of London
at Wandsworth or Battersea, in Manchester and
Macclesfield, the spade and the hoe, no less than
the shuttle and the loom, were necessities of daily
existence to these luckless but undaunted emigrants.
Thus they set the tune to which, in course of time,
lazier feet began to dance the measure. By slow
degrees, English craftsmen and cottars, taking
heart, began to find out that they, too, might add
to the comforts of home, and to the pence in the
ill- filled pouch, by following the lead of the
strangers. But the Flemish were florists no less
than growers of dainty comestibles ; and it is more
than probable that flowers, appealing strongly to
national sentiment, became the true incentive to
the revival of gardening in provincial towns and

8 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

country villages. It was about the same period
that a wave of scientific research—botanical, in
common with other branches of learnng—swept
over Europe, and horticulture was eagerly taken
up—as a pastime by the wealthy no less than as
an aid to study by the scholar. Yet it is doubtful
whether the leaven of gardening would have
penetrated our English country life in the wide-
spread manner that it has, had not men, of
foreign extraction indeed, but of the like grade
in life with the labourer and the artisan, pointed
the way.

By these means, it came to pass that many a
rare plant and bulb—relics of old homes gone
beyond recall—found a passage, with onions and
cabbages, over the storm-tossed waters of the
North Sea into English gardens; and still more,
perhaps, crossed the Channel from the opposite
coast of France. For, with regard to decorative
gardening, it is possible that, even more than to
Flemish cloth-workers, we are indebted to the
French silk-weavers who settled in Spitalfields—
rural enough in those days—and whose love for
floriculture was remarkable. With many of these
fugitive Huguenots the tending of plants was a
veritable passion—a solace, besides, to allay the

A LONDON GARDEN IN AUGUST

This tiny garden, on the banks of the Thames,
Hammersmith, is an example of what can be done in
a very small space. It belongs to Mr. C. Spooner,
architect, and the lady in the picture is his wife, an
accomplished artist.

2 a a ea aa
3 BOR TAIL 7 et

THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS 9

fretting sense of exile—while they vied with each
other to produce the finest and best specimens of
their skill that could be grown. The flower shows
which were commonly held in friendly rivalry by
these Spitalfields silk-weavers were the origin and
precursors of those which survive in full vigour to
this day. Thus, by example—no doubt also by
precept—the science of gardening, little by little,
was revived and strengthened after long decadence,
through the length and breadth of the land, until
not a farmstead, not a cottage, scarcely even the
merest hovel, but had its knot of flowers, its pot-
herbs and roots, its “sin-green” on the thatch, or
woodbine clinging to its poor mud wall.

In thus expressing, however, the gratitude that
is due to foreign influence, there is no wish to be-
little that which has survived and risen to a level
above and beyond those early days of reawakening
—our own English garden craft. The British
artisan to this day may look upon vegetable fare as
a poor staple of existence, never having learnt to
prefer onion soup and salad to roast beef, but he
seldom grudges garden ground to roses, or holly-
hocks, or pinks; and in the well-loved borders of
humble country homes, thousands of beautiful

hardy plants which otherwise would have perished,
2

10 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

have found a safe asylum when the fashion of the
day cast them adrift from the parterres of the
mansion and the villa. Moreover, when that same
foreign influence tended towards the introduction
of a formality in garden design which has always
been more or less out of accord with the liberty
and freedom of the national ideal, it has been the
artless grouping of wallflowers and early tulips, of
“ pianies” and white lilies, of gillyflowers and love-
in-the-mist, with rue and rosemary, southernwood
and lavender, in the unstudied beauty of the cottage
garden which has helped to keep the balance
weighted in favour of the fuller grace of Nature.
It has been well said of late by a writer in the
Times that “this is the great difference between
gardening in England and in other countries—that
in England the cottage garden sets the standard,
whereas in other countries the standard is set by
the garden of the palace or the villa.”

It is, in fact, the love of flowers, pure and simple,
not landscape gardening nor schemes of colour,
nor display of art, still less commercial value, that
permeates the typical English garden, and forms
one strong connective link between all ranks of
English people.

The national importance of the cottage garden

THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS 11

can hardly be rated too highly, for its influence for
good, in very diverse directions, is incalculable. It
is not merely that it can and does add considerably
to the material well-being of the labourer’s family ;
it also keeps alive the sense of the beautiful in
surroundings that are too often mean and rough ;
and, speaking generally, there is no surer test of
individual character. Ill-kept, with waste of ground
which might be, but is not, well stocked with
valuable food, and with little thought of any
adornment of flowers, the cottage garden is a sure
indication of sloth, unthrift, and an unreliable
disposition ; while the well-ordered plot at once
suggests a balanced mind, contentment, and a
comfortable, if humble home.

A significant fact may be noticed at the present
day by those who are brought into neighbourly
contact with country folk, that the best-kept gardens
belong most frequently to elderly people. The
younger and stronger members of village com-
munities spend their scanty leisure mostly in other
ways than in tilling to the best advantage the
plot of ground which seldom fails to fall to their
share. How great a loss is involved in the gradual
weakening of all ties to the land is brought home
to every thoughtful mind, but perhaps the influence

12 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

of the cottage garden is scarcely taken into account
as it might be. That influence, however, is not so
much to be maintained by honours won at cottage-
garden shows, though these have a certain value,
nor even by the healthy stimulus of mutual emula-
tion. It is, in great measure, wrapped up in that
inborn instinct of the love of flowers for their own
sake, which has here been touched upon—the
question of food supply being entirely subordinate,
yet following by natural sequence. The more this
love of flowers and of cultivating them can be
cherished and developed, therefore, in the children
of the present generation, the better for the nation.
It is only here and there that a hard-worked
master or mistress of our English elementary
schools can be found who is qualified to add
gardening to the ordinary school routine, but some
there are, and they should be held worthy of
special honour. But, at any rate, every country
school should be provided with a school garden,
which, by some means, according to the circum-
stances of the village or district, might become,
under expert guidance, a nursery ground for well-
instructed cottage gardeners. The enthusiasm is
there, burning low in the nature of scores of
English boys and girls, and it only needs kindling—

THOUGHTS ON COTTAGE GARDENS 13

as has been abundantly proved wherever it has
been given a fair trial—to break into the flame
which would help, in time, to burn up much of the
dross of half-hearted interest in the real work of
life that prevails, and the reckless craving for
pleasures, often more or less vicious, which is
steadily sapping the moral strength of the British
race.

: II

LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY

II
LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY

Wuar a happiness it is for the world at large that
there are common things of life of which we never
tire—the sweet air and sunshine, the green of grass
and trees, the bread we eat. Into the order of
such common things we may surely bring rose-
mary and lavender, two familiar everyday shrubs,
but which seemed of late years, though by good
hap not now, in some danger of being thrust out
of sight—not so much that we were weary of
them, as on account of that craving for novelty
which hankers after all untried things in. hopes
of betterment. How often in the end we come
back to the old friends, having found none more
worthy !

Probably no shrubs would seem to be more
closely interwoven with English country life than

these two. Nevertheless, they are not native-born,
17 3

18 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

nor even naturalised. The home of both one and
the other is in the countries bordering on the
Mediterranean shore, where they are happy in
torrid sunshine and dry rocky soil. Nor is there
any special mention of them as known in England
before the middle of the sixteenth century, when
rosemary and southernwood, and, twenty years
later, lavender—reputed to have come in with
Good Queen Bess— found their way into the
physic gardens of the time. For this reason, and
perhaps incited thereto by imaginative writers, we
have accustomed ourselves in thought to associate
the hoary grey of lavender with the terraces of
stately Elizabethan architecture, yet it must then
have been a plant of some rarity, though Parkinson,
some seventy years later, could speak of it as
“our ordinary garden lavender.” At that date the
dwarf species was evidently in greater favour, for
in the later edition of Gerarde’s Herbal, revised by
Thomas Johnson, we find it stated that there is
“in our English gardens, a small kind of Lavander,
which is altogether lesser than the other [and the
floures are of a more purple colour, and grow in
much lesse and shorter heads; yet have they a far
more gratefull smell: the leaves are also lesse and
whiter than those of the ordinarie sort. This did,

LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY 19

and I thinke yet doth grow in great plenty in His
Majestie’s private garden at White-Hall. And
this is called Spike, without addition, and some-
times Lavander Spike: and of this by distillation
is made that vulgarly known and vsed oile which
is tearmed Olewm Spice or oile of Spike ”]—the
sentences within brackets being Johnson’s own
addition in 1633 when Charles I. was king. A
list of medicinal virtues follows, but it is Parkinson,
not Gerarde, who tells us that the heads of the
flowers “are much vsed to bee put among limen
and apparrell” — a custom handed down from
mother to daughter in English homes for many a
century after.

As we let our thoughts wander back to the
England of old, how well we may picture to our-
selves some snugly thatched and roomy homestead
with the old-world garden shut in by its sheltering
yew hedge, where, in the glow of the sunshine
of an August afternoon, the lavender bushes are
breathing out their fragrance on the hot quivering
air, and the bees change their drone of deep con-
tent to an angry hum, as the house-maidens come
down the path and begin to cut the long spikes
from which such bounteous stores of honey might
have been gathered. Within doors, the grey

20 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

flower-heads lie drying on the broad seat of the
lattice window, and as we venture to lift the lid of
the capacious oak-chest or peep into the “aumry ”
— that pretty old word-relic of France which
still lingers in Scotland, if not farther South—we
catch a glimpse of piles of household linen, mostly
home spun, ready for the fresh lavender to be laid
lovingly between the folds by gentle mother-hands
while it waits the time when son or daughter shall
fare forth from the parent rooftree to a nest of
their own. All this is now but an echo of the
past, though the faint refrain of it all abides with
us still, Alas, no village inn can boast of its
lavender-scented bed-linen as in the coaching days
now far off. The broad oak staircases and bright
polished furniture, the cosy carven settles and the
rare old china beau-pots filled as the seasons
came round with snowdrops or lilies of the valley,
with damask roses, or, daintier far, white roses of
Provence—all these, and lavender bushes amongst
them—which used to be the pride of countless
old-fashioned hostelries, where are they? Little
is left of them but shadowy memories put away
in the inmost recesses of our thoughts, and only
brought out now and then with the same sense of
half-pitying .condescension with which we unfold

LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY 21

the faded silks and satins of some long-forgotten
ancestress.

The very name of lavender carries with it a
sense of wholesomeness, and the pure fragrance of
Nature, and we cannot but rejoice that the good
gardening and good taste which, in cultural matters,
were never more to the forefront than now, have
bidden us to restore it once more to its rightful
place in our gardens.

There are so many ways in which lavender can
be used: sometimes as a low hedge to divide the
well-filled ranks of the kitchen garden from the
flowers planted on each side of a central pathway ;
sometimes grouped in the herbaceous border to
give the needful touch of silver-grey which serves
to heighten the colours of bright-hued flowers ;
or it may be planted with excellent effect to lean
over the top of a retaining wall. It will even bear
clipping like box to make a formal edging, if it
should be desirable, in a garden design of purple
and grey. A lavender walk is, perhaps, the most
delightful of all in June, when the soft spikes are
beginning to push up from every branchlet, and
the light passing of a hand over the bushes stirs
the faint scent of the young growth in August,
when the first early flowers are breaking into blue,

22 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

and the time has come to cut the sheaf of spikes
which will fill the house for many a day with the
incense of their fuller perfume; or again, later on,
when the quiet grey of the persistent leaves suits
the mood of the sombre winter’s day. Memory
recalls such a lavender-walk, backed by a hedge
of old-fashioned pink China roses, a mingling which
is very hard to beat in its delicate harmony. ~There
are few months in the year, save in dead of winter,
when roses are not to be gathered there, but
it is in late autumn, when flowers are few, that a
plantation of the kind is most precious.

It is well to remember that lavender does not
last for ever in perfection. It must be cared for, or
it will lose all too soon the soft swell of its kindly
outline and grow twisted and gnarled, unsightly for
lack of timely clipping. For this work there are
two seasons—in the autumn, if a harvest of flower-
spikes is looked for in August, but if merely the
grey tone of leafage is wanted, the bushes must be
cut back in spring before the young growth has
had time to start.

RosEMARY

was earlier known—or perhaps it is more just to
speak of it as having been earlier esteemed—than

LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY 23

lavender. It offers, also, a curious instance of
gradual change in name-form, upon which, by
going back to original derivation, we get an
interesting sidelight. The native home of rose-
mary is on both coasts of the Mediterranean Sea,
and in the days long before it was carried thence,
most likely as physic merchandise, to British shores,
the shrub was known as rosmarine, or, in Old
French, romarin.

It may be found so called in the literature of the
fourteenth century —rosmarine, the bush of the
sea-spray. But in process of time, the word, pass-
ing into our English tongue, was clipped as such
words often become in familiar speech, and the final
letters dropped away, leaving it rosmart. By and
by, popular sentiment stepped in, and either on
account of the incense-like scent of its leafage, or
the hue of its pale-blue flowers, the Virgin’s colour
—the plant was dedicated, as so many others in
those days were dedicated, and it became the Rose
of Mary, as it remains to this day. In truth, it has
no more affinity with a rose than the rose of a
watering-pot, which has the same Latin name-root
of ros, meaning dew. Yet even as it stands thus
dedicated to-day, rosemary dates back for nearly
five hundred years as an English garden-plant, nor

24 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

does it seem any longer to crave the sea-dew for its
well-being, for—albeit a little tender in a very
severe winter—it thrives on land just as happily
as by the sea.

No English garden, indeed, should be without
rosemary. It is rooted in our history and in our
literature no less than in the everyday customs of
our rural life. Two faithful virtues, constancy to
the living and remembrance of the lost, have
always been close entwined about the rosemary
branch, which in the West Country we still

Grow for two ends, it matters not at all
Be’t for my bridall or my buriall.

In olden days, no bride went to church without
rosemary in her wedding posy, and tradition has it
that Anne of Cleves, staking her life’s happiness on
a poor venture, wore the green sprays wreathed
in her hair—a feeble spell on which to trust in a
hazard so fraught with peril. At country funerals
it is still customary, in many localities, to drop
sprigs of rosemary into the open grave.

Rosemary makes as good a hedge as lavender
and gives a different tone of colour, so that there
should be room for both in most gardens. Some-
times it may be seen covering the gable-end of a

THE DOVECOTE, STONELANDS, SUSSEX

Seat of Godwin King, Esq. The house is Tudor,
and has received additions from the present owner.
It was originally one of the stone mansions built by
the Sussex ironmasters, when this lovely countryside
was given over to iron-production, but the dovecote is-
new.

4

LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY 25

cottage to the very eaves, for with a little training,
it will reach a height of fifteen feet or more.

How the bees revel in the grey-blue flowers on
a bright morning in early spring! For that reason
alone, beekeepers do well to grow plenty of it, as
well as lavender, for the excellent flavour it will give
to their honey. A hedge in the open will flower a
little later than the sheltered plants nailed against
a wall, which is all the better for the bees, but it
is doubtful whether the statement that rosemary
flowers twice in the year, which is often made, has
any foundation in fact.

«Put in rosemary cuttings on Good Friday and
they are bound to grow,” is an old-fashioned
country adage; and so they certainly will, but
better plants can be raised from seed. It is a
shrub which seeds freely, and if a grain can be
coaxed to take root in the crevice of a ruined wall,
it will wax strong and hardy, and no prettier way
o° growing it can be found than to let it shape
itself as it will. It likes the lime of the crumbling
mortar, and is far more aromatic in such scant
harbourage as it can find for itself, than when given
the luxury of richer soil—only it asks for sunshine.

We may see in some country gardens a simple

archway made of rough oak boughs clothed with
4

26 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

rosemary, which is one very charming way of using
it; but it is quite as appropriate against a grand
terrace balustrade as among the homely herbs of
the kitchen garden, or trained over a farmhouse
porch.

In some way or other, be our garden what. it
may, we must find room for rosemary, and it should
be planted, not in some neglected out-of-the-way
corner, but where it can be seen and approved.
So, too, there should be plenty of it if possible, for
we surely fail to catch some undertone of that
mysterious rhythm of life which vibrates through
the common air we breathe if we cannot, now and
then, throw a rosemary branch into the fire upon
the hearth, and let its familiar sweetness awaken
tender memories of the days that are gone.

Lavender and rosemary—two good old friends
—not to be cast on one side for newer comers.
Treat them well, yet without grudge of shears in
due season, and then, come summer, come winter,
green of rosemary and grey of lavender will breathe
out new lessons of stainless fragrance and steadfast
faith, to stir within us nobler thoughts than we
sometimes harbour of the loyalty which wearies
never, though Time steps on.

III

THE HERB GARDEN

III
THE HERB GARDEN

“NoTHING but leaves” or little else is in the
herb garden. Is this the reason that the happy,
useful, pretty spot where once the herbs grew,
is now so often absent from even the best-cared-
for gardens of the present day? In vain we look
around to find the pleasant borders wherein our
grandmothers and great-grandmothers were wont
to cultivate the sweet-leaved plants which in their
train brought health and fragrance. Brilliant
colours and perfect blossoms so powerfully attract
the modern gardener that he forgets the virtues
of the aromatic herb, simply because its flowers
are inconspicuous and its features homely. But
scents and savours belong more to the leaf than
to the flower. “Nothing but leaves” indeed!
Without leaves where would the doctor or the

cook be? Both food and physic depend greatly
29

80 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

upon herbs, their subtle essences and delicate
flavours. Pot-herbs and medicinal herbs are alike
indispensable to man’s well-being, and they are
fascinating for all sorts of sideway reasons. Why
then do we not make a pleasure of growing them ?
At the outset comes the question “ What is a
herb?” Many definitions have been attempted,
but most of them are failures. It is, however,
fairly safe to use the words of a well-known herb
enthusiast, Lady Rosalind Northcote, who -has
pondered the question carefully. “Speaking
generally, a herb is a plant, green, and aromatic
and fit to eat, but it is impossible to deny that
there are several undoubted herbs that are not
aromatic, a few more grey than green, and one
or two unpalatable, if not unwholesome.” A
complete list of plants that are certainly herbs
would contain the names of about as many of
those that are out of fashion at the present time
as it does of those that are still in use. The
length of the list would be a surprise to many.

Or HeErss IN PRESENT USE

Walking through any ordinary garden, what
will it have to show us in the way of pot or

THE HERB GARDEN 31

kitchen herbs? Well, in all gardens one is quite
sure to find mint, sage, and parsley. These three
our cooks insist on, but unless we happen to
possess a French cook there will not be many
others. The herb-lover, however, wants a dozen
more at least. He expects to see sunny, fragrant
banks of thyme, of marjoram and sweet savoury,
cheerful clumps of chives and chervil, bushes of
camomile, rosemary, and lavender, along with
borage, balm and rue. All the mints, too, he
would have. Besides lamb-mint (Mentha viridis),
there should be cat-mint and the comfortable,
hot-cold peppermint. Tarragon is another half-
forgotten precious herb for whose flavour we are
grateful when we are enjoying it in Vinaigre
ad Estragon, but few of us know how good a
freshly gathered stalk or two may be in making
salads.

Following the advice of friends from France,
the herb-borders of the writer are never without
chives. A few spikes in omelette or salad will give
just so much of the flavour of the onion as to
ensure piquancy without any of the drawbacks of a
savour that is over-strong. Chervil is a delightful
change from parsley for garnishing dishes; it is
quite as pretty, though, truth to tell, not nearly so

32 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

lasting. Borage is one of the triumphs of the herb
garden; its flowers of lovely blue would make it
well worth growing even if the leaves did not
possess the flavour of the cucumber, refined and
etherealised. No one would vulgarise his claret-cup
with real cucumber if once he had tried the
delicate flavour of the borage leaf.

Sorrel is another plant one learns to use in
France, where soups that are quite delicious are
made of nothing else than herbs and a little bread.
Sorrel helps to flavour them. If cooked as soonas it
is picked, and prepared in the same way as spinach,
it makes a capital dish. Marjoram of different
kinds, and both sorts of sweet savoury, are still
used in soups and stuffings, but not much else.

Isaac Walton gives instructions for dressing a
pike, that, besides pickled oysters, includes winter
savoury, thyme, and some sweet marjoram. Else-
where may be found an old-fashioned recipe for
“dressing a trout” with rosemary and one or two
common pot-herbs. No one can read old cookery
books without seeing how much the herb garden
was valued in former times. Few fish in these days
are treated with herbs; we have nearly lost the
custom.

Other herbs still used at the present time, but

“CARMINO,” FALMOUTH

An example of what can be done in England in
the way of gardening near the sea. The owner, Mr.
Wilson Fox, made this garden, planting a screen of
Scotch “firs first, and when the flowering shrubs and
herbaceous plants were well established, gradually re-
moving the firs till the present splendid sea-view was
regained, »

THE HERB GARDEN 33

seldom grown in private gardens, are purslane,
wormwood, tansy, sorrel, burnet, fennel, anise,
caraway, sweet basil, bugloss, coriander, dill and
hyssop. Horse-radish was formerly counted as a
herb, and so were wood-sorrel, dandelion, and
cresses.

Some of these plants are less attractive in
appearance than others, but all become interesting
when once we know all about them. There is
hardly a herb in the garden that, besides being of
use, is not mixed up with poetry, romance, and
magic. But the little plants themselves are dumb,
though the scents or “souls” of them, as Maeterlinck
calls their perfume, reveal glimpses of their inward
characters. In most herbs it is the leaf we value
for its virtue, and in some the seed: very rarely it
is the flower.

Naturally, we like our herb garden to be
beautiful as well as curious, so, of the more homely
herbs we need only have a specimen or two, and of
the handsome and deliciously scented ones, as many
as we like and can find room for.

Some of the wormwoods are pretty enough to
be an ornament to any garden. A few of mine are
sometimes put among their cousins in the flower-

beds, where they puzzle everybody, often not being
5

34 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

recognised as herbs by even the most accomplished
gardeners. Culpepper says of the bitter worm-
wood, that “being laid among clothes it will make
moths scorn to meddle with them.” In France
there are wide, waving fields of Artemisia absin-
thium, the wormwood from which is brewed the far
too fascinating cordial, absinth.

Fennel, with its strong, queer taste, was once
delighted in for flavouring broths, baked fruits, and
pippin pies. “A fardynge’s worth of fennel-seed
for fastyng dayes,” was thought a treasure. Tastes
must have changed a good deal since those early
days.

Dill is a pretty umbelliferous plant, in flavour an
exaggeration of fennel. Its seeds were used to
soothe little babies and make them go to sleep.
The entire herb was employed in working spells
and counter-spells of blackest magic.

In coriander, too, it is the seeds which “trem-
bling hang upon the slightest threads,” that are
of value. They are compared in Holy Writ
to manna. This Eastern herb is naturalised in
England and grown for the druggist and con-
fectioner. Sometimes, among sugar-plums and
caraway comfits, we light on funny little rough
pink and white balls that have an odd and

THE HERB GARDEN 35

unfamiliar flavour ; when we get through the sugar
and come to the seed, we know what coriander
tastes like. Hyssop, a good-looking evergreen
aromatic shrub, besides all other virtues, is endowed
with the power of averting the Evil Eye.

But however tempting it may be to wander
away among the labyrinths of herb lore, this is
no place for it. Far wiser and more practical it
is to read what a great authority (A. Kenny
Herbert) in culinary matters has been saying
lately about the disuse of kitchen herbs. <“Con-
tinuing the custom handed down from olden
times, our cooks,” he says, “still use mint with
lamb, green peas and new potatoes; thyme and >
marjoram in stuffing for veal and hares; sage with
ducks, geese, and pork, and fennel with mackerel.
Specialists, too, in the preparation of turtle-soup,
recognise the value of sweet basil in their flavour-
ing. But in few kitchens is summer savoury
(sarriette) used with broad beans, basil in cooking
tomatoes, rosemary in seasoning poultry, purslane
as a gamish for vegetable soups, chervil in salads
and fish sauces ; or ravigote, a blend of many herbs,
for a like purpose.”

It really seems as if in the matter of herbs and
their uses a little going backwards would forward

36 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

us in the end. What do our cooks do now, poor
things! when they want herbs for flavouring ?
We give them dried herbs from the shops in
bottles, a makeshift method that admits of no
variety and very little taste. How different in the
days of the old olitory or herb garden, where the
culture and culling of simples was as much a part
of female education as the preserving and tying
down of “rasps and apricocks.” There was not a
Lady Bountiful in the kingdom but made her
own dill-tea and diet-drinks from herbs of her own
planting :—
Herbs too she knew, and well of each could speak
That in her garden sipp’d the silvery dew;

Where no vain flower disclos’d a gaudy streak,
But herbs for use, and physic, not a few.

SoME vERY OLD-FASHIONED HERBS

Of herbs that are even more out of fashion than
those we have been considering, there is a long list.
Many of the names are unfamiliar ; others we only
know as wild plants. Here are some of them:
Alecost, angelica, blites, bloodwort, buck’s-horne,
cardoons, clary or clear-eyes, dittander, elecampane
(which makes a sweetmeat), fenugreek (beloved of
cattle), Good King Henry, herb patience, hore-

THE HERB GARDEN 37

hound, lady’s-smock, lang-de-beefe, lovage, penny-
royal (which made a drink for harvesters), rampion
(one of Hans Andersen’s fairy stories is about
rampion), saffron, self-heal, skirrets, smallage,
samphire, Sweet Cicely.

Alecost or costmary is a charming herb, with
long, narrow leaves of palest green, tasting slightly
of mint; it was used in flavouring beer, hence its
name. Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odorata) is a pretty,
graceful plant, the stalk and leaves of which taste
as if sprinkled with sugar, but not at all of myrrh
so far as I can perceive. Bees love it, and so did
housemaids in time gone by, who used oil made
of its seeds to polish and scent their oaken floors
and furniture. Both these plants deserve a place
in every herb border.

From the bulb of saffron the useful medicine
colchicum is extracted. Samphire, St. Peter’s herb,
properly a sea-cliff plant, was once so popular as
a pickle that it was made to grow in gardens.
Did space permit, there is a good deal to be said
about all these old-world plants, now seldom seen,
but every one supplying scent or savour, food or
medicine.

38 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

Makine THE Hers GAarDEN

How to set about making and furnishing a herb
garden is the next question. No one must expect
a single border to contain all the herbs he will be
longing to grow. Some herbs require one aspect
and some another; some like a moist place, some
a dry ; and soil, too, must vary, if we are to please
all the different kinds. No doubt the old super-
stition that plants are apt to quarrel among them-
selves and sometimes refuse absolutely to be
neighbourly, originated, in the first instance, in the
fact that there are great differences of opinion
among them as to the soil in which they like to
live. Rue will not grow with basil, so they say ;
radish detests hyssop; and I know myself that
mint and parsley will never agree.

Among herbs there are Annuals, Biennials, and
Perennials.

Annuals, as a rule, do best where they can get
ample sunshine, but it will be found that those
which are thin-leaved will soon scorch up if exposed
to a very hot sun. Some of mine (among them
wormwood and Sweet Cicely) did badly for two
years on the south side of a fence. When moved
to the other side, where there was a little shade,

THE HERB GARDEN 39

the same herbs flourished. One has to learn a
good deal as one goes on, for there is rather a lack
of information in gardening books in the matter
of herb-growing ; even a few hints may be better
than nothing.

Coriander and anise like a warm, dry soil ; sweet
marjoram and summer savoury must be sown in
light earth and kept watered after being thinned
out; borage can be raised from seed at first, and
will then scatter itself wherever it finds foot-
hold, and come up year by year with no further
trouble.

Chervil, if successive crops are wanted, can be
sown any time between the end of February and
August. If the leaves (which are ready for use
when about two or three inches high) are cut quite
close, the plants will soon spring up again.

Of Biennials our old friend parsley is the chief.
He likes a deep soil, not too rich, and is not averse
to a little soot. An odd idea still lingers in the
gardening world that it is unlucky to plant parsley
roots ; you must sow it or expect the most disastrous
consequences. And we must never be surprised
-when parsley seed is a long time in germinating—
it has gone to the nether regions and back again
three times before being allowed to spring up!

40 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

Perennials form a numerous family. Those
from the South want warmer quarters than the
rest, but most of them are hardy. ‘Tansy grows
anywhere; homely as it is one loves its tight
little golden flowers. Horehound and rue like a
shady border and a dry and chalky soil. Now and
again it is a good plan to cut the rue down and let
it grow into a well-shaped bush again. Ah! the
smell of rue; it is the quaintest smell in all the
world ; not at all nice, but so clean, so purifying.
No wonder it was used to keep off fevers and even
worse things. Rosemary, sage, and hyssop like
a light and sandy soil. Mint, peppermint, and
pennyroyal delight in moisture. Look at the wild
peppermint in sedgy places.

Elecampane likes shade and a fairly damp place,
where it grows sometimes as much as six feet high,
throwing up spikes of pretty yellow flowers ; it is
propagated by off-sets. Saffron prefers sand and
sun and to be grown from seed. Basil it is safer to
raise from seed in a hotbed, and plant out in a
warm border about May-time. Coriander may be
sown in March, during dry weather, and the seeds
put in half an inch deep.

Sorrel we increase by dividing the roots. There
are two kinds, the French sorrel and the English

THE ROSE GARDEN, DRAKELOWE
(BANKS OF THE TRENT)

This quaint garden was one of the original Dutch.
gardens laid out in the time of “Dutch William ’”
III. The temple at the end was built from the
designs of Mr. Reginald Bloomfield—author of “ The
Formal Garden in England.”

THE HERB GARDEN 41

or garden sorrel. The first likes a dry soil, and the
second rejoices in a damp one. It is a strong
grower and will overrun the garden if allowed.

Thyme affects a light, rich earth, but who does
not know the kind of banks on which the wild
thyme grows? We have got to bring those into
our gardens. Thyme is best propagated by cut-
tings. It is an insult to anybody to tell them how
to grow balm. Once in a garden never out of it,
but luckily it is a darling, precious, welcome weed,
and can never come amiss. Let us stick a bit in
the ground whenever we can to be ready for pinch-
ing as we pass it!

The varieties of Artemisia, such as wormwood,
tarragon, and southernwood, all prefer a dry and
rather poor soil. Lavender loves a sandy soil, and
is happiest near the sea. Bergamot grows any-
where. Rosemary grows well from seed, but to
save time we always propagate by cuttings ; it
loves to spread itself against a wall, where its
flowers show to advantage. Winter and pot mar-
joram like a dry, light soil ; sweet marjoram is not
a perennial. Winter savoury we propagate by
cuttings. Bugloss does not care where it is put,
and will grow happily in a gravel-pit—the same
with alkanet, which has rather a pretty blue flower,

6

42 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

and is sometimes mistaken for borage, of which it
is a very poor imitation.

The best time to start a herb garden is early
spring, having prepared the plots beforehand. All
herbs that are wanted for storage should be picked
before they flower. ‘Dry them in the shade,” says
one of our old advisers very quaintly, “so that the
sun draw not out their vertue, but in a clear air
and breezy wind that no mustiness may taint
them.”

Wandering in the herb garden it is a pretty
pastime to look closely at the plants and observe
the signs, or signatures as they were called, which
betray their several virtues. The stem of the
viper’s bugloss is speckled like a snake, so it is a
remedy against poison or the sting of a scorpion.
Heart-trefoil, or Calvary clover, by many reckoned
a herb, has heart-shaped blood-stained leaves, and
defends the heart. St. John’s wort is pierced with
tiny holes like the pores of the skin, and is a
sovereign remedy for cuts. In other herbs their
common names express their qualities, as in self-
heal, clary (clear-eyes), or horehound, which cures
a barking cough or a dog’s bite.

THE HERB GARDEN 43

Tue IpEAL HERB GARDEN

The ideal herb garden would have one or two
things in it not strictly herbs, perhaps, but im-
possible to exclude from that debatable ground
between the flower and kitchen garden where
mostly herbs do grow. Bergamot or bee-balm,
mary-gold, and sweet woodruff, each must have a
place in it ; so must rosemary, lavender, and myrtle.
Bay trees may overshadow it and the coral-fruited
barberry. Snow-white camomile and the pink or
purple mallows must have a sunny corner, and the
tall tree-mallow space to spread its velvet, healing
leaves. Southernwood (pet-named old man or
lad’s love) must be admitted, and so must santolina,
the little grey shrub better known as lavender
cotton, or French lavender. Of leaves there will
be many grey and many green, and not a few with
specks and flecks of gold, so that, even without
any flowers whatever, the borders may be gay.

There will not be much difficulty in establishing
a herb garden, for herbs are not exacting; very
few of them want fussing over. The greatest
difficulty lies in getting the variety we should like
to have. Some we must beg from friends, others
we may find in cottage gardens, and a good many

44 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

(by no means all) will be found in the florists’ lists.
It is not half so easy to get a really good collection
of herbs together as it is to get the rarest, finest
bulbs or roses, or herbaceous plants or orchids, but
it is well worth doing. And to those who cannot
give up room for a whole herb garden, my advice
is, have a border of herbs; let it be near the
kitchen, and teach the maids to use it.

IV

AMONGST THE ROSES

IV
AMONGST THE ROSES

WHEN an elaborate history of modern gardenng
comes to be written, much should be said of the
rose, which has brought to our gardens a sweetness
of fragrance and beauty of colouring that were
denied in a large measure to our forebears. True,
there was the quaint little moss rose, the Provence
or “old cabbage,” as if such perfumed petals
deserved so coarse a name; Celeste, pink as a
maiden’s cheek ; the dainty Coupe d’Hébé, and the
richly coloured damask. I love these favourites
of sweet memory, and the rose lover should plead
for their retention, especially those that have been
named, and the following: the Moss de Meaux,
the Provins, with its quaintly striped forms, Rosa
Mundi, and the true York and Lancaster (both
striped roses), the double yellow Banksian—a flood

of golden glory in early summer, Rosa lucida, Rose
47

48 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

d’Amour—beautiful when smothered with double
pink bloom and even more so in hep time,
Maiden’s Blush, the rose-coloured Boursault—
called Morleth, the common pink China rose,
Cramoisie Supérieur, the warmth-loving Fortune's
Yellow, and Madame Plantier—white as a snow-
drift when burdened with flowers in summer, and
charming as a standard or pillar rose. I hope the
day will never come when these old rose friends
are cast aside for novelties which may have few
of their virtues.

One of the pleasantest features of the modern
garden is the free way in which the rose is planted.
Vivid are the recollections of sunny hours spent
in gardens in which the rose was the queen, and
one never tires of a flower that in its most modern
development will bloom from early summer until
the Christmas bells ring out in the winter wind.
This is truer of the South of England than of the
Midlands and North, but at the time of writing,
a few days before the great festival, a few flowers
still linger. I hope to fill a bowl with rose flowers
on Christmas Day, and not buds seared and hurt
in the winds and rains of December, but those
which will open as fresh and fair as any rose of
summer or autumn. My rose friend late in the

THE ROSE GARDEN, WAXWELL FARM,
PINNER

See note to Daffodils, Waxwell Farm,

AMONGST THE ROSES 49

year is the tea G. Nabonnand—a poem in form
and colour. It does not glow with colour in the
garden, but half-open buds expand into flowers
with trembling petals painted with tender shades
—a mingling of softest salmon, buff, and pink, and
one detects the presence of this beautiful creation
by a fragrance sweeter than the flower brings
forth in the drowsy summer evenings. The white
Frau Karl Druschki gives freely of its symmetrical
blooms, and the joyous little Camoens defies even
the winter snow. A strange picture was a group
of Camoens in the snow, its cherry-red flowers
peeping up from the caressing mantle, but such
was the case once in my hilltop garden. I think
the dry soil and cool winds which blow across
the groups of roses may account for this unusual
picture—a marriage of rose and snow.

But perhaps the greatest joy in late December
is to find in some sunny corner the graceful flowers
of Madame Laurette Messimy, the sweetest of the
China roses, hanging from the still evergreen shoots;
or the monthly rose itself, which has been planted
more largely of recent years than generations ago,
when it was the pride of squire and cottager. I
never advise planting this pink “ China” in a bed by

itself; it is too vigorous—a strong leafy bush, and
7

50 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

without the association of rosemary and lavender
seems to lose something of its wonderful colouring.
A grey border is a border of quiet beauty. I shall
ever remember its winter effect in Miss Jekyll’s
exquisite garden at Munstead Wood. Winter
there is as full of colour and of interest as in the
high summer days, or in autumn when the star-
worts are in bloom. The modest China rose
should hold a high place amongst the many roses
that the flower-lover considers essential to the
planting of the modern garden. One of the
soonest to bloom, and in full flower when other
early roses are only budding, it has a long season
of flowering, while its autumn bloom is also
abundant and prolonged. China roses, it must
be remembered, can be used in many ways—in
hedges, in beds, and with other plants or shrubs.
Some of the happiest associations are with the
tree-ivy, that blooms so freely in ‘October, or
with rosemary, joining hands with this fragrant
shrub in the very first of the summer days when
it is still in bloom, and making an admirable
companion to its autumn clothing of deep-toned
grey foliage.

But I wish to describe a small border in a
Buckinghamshire hilltop garden. It is in full

AMONGST THE ROSES 51

exposure to sun, wind, and rain; there is no
shelter whatever, and when the roses were planted,
it was felt that their lot was not a happy one, but
there they are, big lusty bushes, steeped in pink
flowers in early summer days—a picture of fault-
less association of colour. The pink China and
the warm salmon-rose tints of Madame Laurette
Messimy and Madame Eugene Resal are in perfect
harmony with rosemary and lavender, both the
tall and dwarf forms, the lamb’s ear, or Stachys
lanata, and the deep grey-green of Jerusalem sage
(Phlomis fruticosa). At one corner the blush-
white Bourbon Souvenir de la Malmaison gives
bountifully year by year of its homely flowers, but
its growth is not strong—perhaps the exposure
is too unkind.

It may seem presumptuous to advise the devoted
flower-lover to prepare the border thoroughly before
planting, but this fact is mentioned as the outcome
of experience. The border under consideration was
trenched two feet deep, the gravelly soil removed,
and loam, stacked for twelve months, filled in to
take its place, with a layer of well-rotted manure
just beneath the roots of the plants. There must
be many exceptions to a general rule in gardening.
Advice given for one place is not suitable to

52 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

another ; but this one can say with absolute truth,
that on a poor soil, such as falls to the lot of
many, it is unwise, expensive, and brings certain
disappointment, to lay a poor foundation. <A
small grouping of white pinks gives a still greater
charm to the picture, the soft billowy mass of
fragrant bloom in June hiding for the time those
silvery leaves which seem more silvery still in the
coo] winter light.

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

AMONGST THE ROSES 53

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

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

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

54 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

AMONGST THE ROSES 55

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

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

56 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

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

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

AMONGST THE ROSES 57

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

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

8

58 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

AMONGST THE ROSES 59

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

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

60 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

AMONGST THE ROSES 61

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

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

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

62 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

AMONGST THE ROSES 63

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

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

64 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

oe

THE PERGOLA, BRANTWOOD, SURBITON

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

AMONGST THE ROSES 65

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

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

66 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

AMONGST THE ROSES 67

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

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

68 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

AMONGST THE ROSES 69

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

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

70 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

AMONGST THE ROSES 71

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

72 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

AMONGST THE ROSES 718

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

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

10

V

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING
ITS HEALTHINESS AND ITS DEVELOPMENT

Vv

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING
ITS HEALTHINESS AND ITS DEVELOPMENT

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

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

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

78 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 79

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

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

80 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

THE TERRACE GARDEN, HOAR CROSS
HOUSE

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

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 81

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

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

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

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

82 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 83

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

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

84 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 85

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

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

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

86 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 87

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

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

88 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

DAFFODILS, WAXWELL FARM, PINNER

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

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 89

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

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

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

90 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

THOUGHTS ON GARDENING 91

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

92 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

VI

THE BEAUTY OF SIMPLE GROUPING

VI
THE BEAUTY OF SIMPLE GROUPING

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

have as much right to demand beauty in the garden
95

96 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

THE BEAUTY OF SIMPLE GROUPING 97

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

is past, such as the lyre flower, Dicentra
13

98 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

THE BEAUTY OF SIMPLE GROUPING 99

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

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

100 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

THE BEAUTY OF SIMPLE GROUPING 101

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

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

VII

THE HEATH GARDEN

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

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

very old,

VII
THE HEATH GARDEN

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

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

106 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

THE HEATH GARDEN 107

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

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

108 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

THE HEATH GARDEN 109

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

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

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

110 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

THE HEATH GARDEN 111

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

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

112 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

‘

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

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

THE HEATH GARDEN 113

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

varieties may be commended, the white-flowered
15

114 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

A heath garden is a garden I never tire of.

VIII

FLOWERS BY WATER SIDE AND ON
THE WATER SURFACE

Vill

FLOWERS BY WATER SIDE AND ON
THE WATER SURFACE

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

Jackson Dawson, superintendent of the famous
117

118 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

FLOWERS ON WATER SIDE AND SURFACE 119

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

120 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

FLOWERS ON WATER SIDE AND SURFACE 121]

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

ing. Some of these form strong clumps which
16

122 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

FLOWERS ON WATER SIDE AND SURFACE 123

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

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

124 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

Those who have no tanks but wish to begin

FLOWERS ON WATER SIDE AND SURFACE 125

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

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

126 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

FLOWERS ON WATER SIDE AND SURFACE 127

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

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

I cannot refrain from introducing the notes

128 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

RHODODENDRONS, UPPER PLEASURE
GROUND, MOOR PARK

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

ham, was so named after this one. _
\

FLOWERS ON WATER SIDE AND SURFACE 129

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

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

turf to slope down to the water side.
17

130 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

FLOWERS ON WATER SIDE AND SURFACE 131

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

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

132 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

IX

SPRING IN THE GARDEN

Ix

SPRING IN THE GARDEN

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

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

is spoken. Who has not felt the glad surprise
135

136 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

THE DUTCH GARDEN, MOOR PARK

SPRING IN THE GARDEN 137

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

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

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

138 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

SPRING IN THE GARDEN 189

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

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

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

140 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

SPRING IN THE GARDEN 141

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

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

142 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

Upon her head a cremosin coronet

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

Embellish the sweete violet.

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

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

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

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

SPRING IN THE GARDEN 143

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

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

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

144 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

* TULIPS IN “THE GARDEN OF PEACE”

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

SPRING IN THE GARDEN 145

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

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

associations of colour lasting until the threshold
19

146 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

SPRING IN THE GARDEN 147

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

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

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

148 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

x
SUMMER IN THE GARDEN

x
SUMMER IN THE GARDEN

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

that will best fit in with their environment. No
151

152 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

THE ROUND GARDEN, DRAKELOWE
(BANKS OF THE TRENT)

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

SUMMER IN THE GARDEN 153

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

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

is there to prevent such delightful everyday things
20

154 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

SUMMER IN THE GARDEN 155

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

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

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

156 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

SUMMER IN THE GARDEN 187

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

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

158 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

SUMMER IN THE GARDEN 159

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

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

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

160 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

SUMMER IN THE GARDEN 161

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

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

for the greys and purples. These therefore assume
21

162 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

SUMMER IN THE GARDEN 163

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

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

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

164 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SUMMER IN THE GARDEN 165

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

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

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

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

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

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

XI
AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN

THE LILY WALK, DINGLEY PARK

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

XI
AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN

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

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

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

170 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN 171

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

172 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN 173

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

174 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN 175

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

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

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

176 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

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

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

AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN 177

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

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

chemical changes in its composition take place. To
23

178 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN 179

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

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

180 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN 181

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

182 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

XII

WINTER IN THE GARDEN

ENTRANCE TO THE GARDENS,
AYSCOUGH FEE HALL

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

XII
WINTER IN THE GARDEN

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

besprent with jewels unnumbered. The summer-
185 24

186 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

WINTER IN THE GARDEN 187

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

188 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

WINTER IN THE GARDEN 189

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

190 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

WINTER IN THE GARDEN 191

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

192 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

A JANUARY MOONRISE, GOLDERS HILL,
HAMPSTEAD

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

WINTER IN THE GARDEN 193

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

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

the handsomest forms having violet - purple falls,
25

194 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

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

WINTER IN THE GARDEN 195

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

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

196 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

WINTER IN THE GARDEN 197

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

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

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

198 GARDENS OF ENGLAND

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

WINTER IN THE GARDEN 199

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

THE END

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

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