RETREATS eNOS
eee ve
LIBRARY |
ANNEX
LF
bi
— itu
iy
HANDBOOKS OF
PRACTICAL GARDENING
THE BOOK OF
OLD-FASHIONED |
FLOWERS
BY
HARRY ROBERTS.
poo
LIBRARY
Department of: Floriculture
and Ornamental Horticulture
NEw YORK STATE COLLEGE
of AGRICULTURE
at CORNELL UNIVERSITY
ITHACA, N.Y.
Cornell University Library
SB 405.R6
old-fashioned flowers
i ie
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/cu31924003413683
HANDBOOKS OF PRACTICAL GARDENING—IV
EDITED BY HARRY ROBERTS
THE BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
NaduvO GaNOIHSV4-d10 NV
THE BOOK OF OLD-
FASHIONED FLOWERS
AND OTHER PLANTS WHICH THRIVE
IN THE OPEN-AIR OF ENGLAND
BY
HARRY ROBERTS
AUTHOR OF ‘THE CHRONICLE OF A CORNISH GARDEN”
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
REPRODUCED FROM DRAWINGS BY
ETHEL ROSKRUGE
JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON AND NEW YORK. MCMIV
i),
SBAOS
AG
Kg ; SiukO
SECOND EDITION
Turnbull & Spears, Printers, Edinburgh.
TO HOMELY UNAFFECTED PEOPLE WHO APPRECIATE
HOMELY UNASSUMING FLOWERS
‘6 The precious metals are not often found at the surface of
the earth.” —Six Artuur Hers
‘© I speak with the lowliest of the meadow flowers as readily
as with the highest fir-trees.” —HEme
CONTENTS
PAGE
Tuanxs . % ‘i P ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ xiii
Score aND LimiTaTIONS . # . . . 1
Oxp-FasHioneD FLowers . rn ‘ 7 . r 4
A GARDEN BY THE SEA . . ‘ . ’ . rz
Corrace GARDENS ‘ ‘ A a . . 24
Tue GARDEN IN WINTER * w , : 28
Tue Garpen In SpRING . . . . - : 37
Tur Garpen IN JuNE : . . * . 48
How To crow Roses”. . . . . . 52
Tue GarpEN IN JuLy. . . . . . 57
NicuT IN THE GARDEN . « . . * . 62
Tue GaRDEN In AucusT . . . c . . 69
Tue GarpEN In AUTUMN . . . . . 73
SHELTER AND SHADE ‘ fs . . . . 81
SoILs AND THEIR PREPARATION. Fy ‘ : ‘ 86
Manures ; 5 . : . 2 . 94
Srep-SowiNG AND TRANSPLANTING . * . . 96
Layers AND CuTTINGs . . . . . + 10%
Werps . . . . . . . » 103
Insect AND OTHER Pests F és r . 107
Pomts . . . c. 5 ‘ q >.
ILLUSTRATIONS
An Oup-Fasuionep GARDEN
Porry ANEMONES ‘ c ,
Yettow Jasmine ‘ ‘
Honesty é ‘ . <
SNowprops anp Crocuses
FRITILLARIES
CoLuMBINES 2 ‘ : . i
Macartney Roses ‘
Suey Poppies , 5 z r
Eveninc PrimrosEs é 4 ‘
Wuire Woop Luis <
An Op Town GarDEN
FoxGLoves .
A Popry BorpEr
PAGE
Frontispiece
to face 8
oe)
to face 24
29
41
to face 48
. 53
to face 60
65
75
to face 82
89
. 99
xi
THANKS
To that distinguished and generous gardener, Canon
Ellacombe, I wish to express my appreciation of his
kindness in giving me the freedom of his collection of
old garden books, though few are so good, interesting,
or useful as his own ‘Plant Lore of Shakspere” and
“¢ A Gloucestershire Garden.”
To Mr Folkard I am obliged for the loan of his inter-
esting book on ‘“‘ Plant Lore and Legend.”
To the Editors of the Morning Leader, Gardeners
Chronicle and Gardeners’ Magazine I am obliged for the
right to republish such parts of the following book as
have appeared in their several papers as essays from
my pen.
To Messrs Kelway, of Langport, I am indebted for
many presents of beautiful Delphiniums, Ponies and
Pyrethrums, which they grow as few others can.
xili
SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS
Many years ago an ingenious writer compiled a book
dealing with a subject with which he had no practical
acquaintance. The whole of his alleged observa-
tions were second-hand, being derived from previous
writings on the subject. In order, however, to hood-
wink the public, this author laid great stress on the
uselessness of mere book knowledge, saying that an
ounce of experience was worth a stone of theory.
Like many other foolish sayings, this one has been
regarded as an inspired utterance, and has been copied
by nine-tenths of all subsequent writers of handbooks.
As a matter of fact, whilst a certain amount of practical
experience is absolutely essential to the proper under-
standing of nearly all subjects, an intelligent reader can
learn more in an hour from a sensible book than from
many weeks of intercourse with merely “practical”
people, and many weeks of so-called experience.
This little book, forming one of a series of hand-
books with an aim purely practical, has itself an entirely
practical object. “This object is to teach those who are
comparatively new to gardening the general principles
which they must observe if they wish to grow success-
fully those flowering plants which are able to live their
whole lives in the open air of this country. By old-
fashioned flowering plants are meant those which we
may class with the herbaceous, bulbous and other hardy
plants which one always expects to find in the old
cottage gardens, old vicarage gardens and old farmhouse
gardens of romance, and occasionally in those of reality.
One is continually discovering fresh old-fashioned people,
r
A
2 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
and in like manner we are continually having additions
made to our list of old-fashioned Mowers. Many newly
discovered or newly introduced plants, therefore, are
treated of in this book, which is not intended merely as
a ‘Book of Old Flowers.” Still, as a matter of fact,
most of the flowers named in these pages are old favourites,
and have long been grown and sentimentalised over by
English gardeners and poets.
No attempt has been made to render this a complete
handbook of hardy flowers. In the first place, the pages
at disposal would barely serve even to enumerate them,
and, in the second place, the compilation of a reference
encyclopedia of hardy flowers has been done, and done
admirably, by our greatest gardening writer, Mr William
Robinson, whose book, ‘‘ The English Flower Garden,”
is in many ways the most important work on gardening
which has appeared since the time of Parkinson.
The flowers here named are but a few of those which
are worth growing, for to the present writer nearly every
plant, when allowed to develop freely and naturally, is
full of interest and full of beauty. Everyone should
decide for himself what he will grow in the particular
environment he may have to offer, for, once the art
of properly growing the flowers here named has been
mastered, little difficulty need be anticipated in growing
such other hardy plants as may be thought desirable
additions to the list.
In the matter of garden arrangement, I have neither
given dogmatic advice nor stated fixed rules which
must be followed; for it is as undesirable that gardens
should be stereotyped copies of one another, as it would
be in the case of their owners. I have, instead of dog-
matising on the rights and wrongs of garden design,
described one or two gardens which have yielded me
delight, though I fear that I have not been able to
conceal my own point of view. What that point of view
SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS 3
is I have stated in my ‘Chronicle of a Cornish Garden,”
but I am sufficiently broad-minded to recognise that
other styles of gardening appeal to other gardeners who
are quite as competent to form opinions as myself.
A garden should, as I believe, be an emanation from
the spirit of its owner, and, just as some men are formal
and some informal, some prim and some Bohemian, some
careful and some rash, so should their several gardens
vary in style and feeling.
I have laid down no laws as to the arrangement of
flowers with a view to producing ‘colour schemes,”
for I have never seen colour schemes which surpass
those chance effects of the hedgerow and the meadow,
or of those pleasant gardens where the gardeners’ sole
aim is to grow plants from the plants’ point of view,
that is to say, with the sole aim of growing them
healthily and well. Of course, occasionally, a bad colour
shows itself, but the remedy is simple and obvious.
Occasionally, also, a colour discord will be perceived
in bed or border, but a spade will cure the trouble in
five minutes. Indeed, there is some small risk at the
present moment that the individuality of beautiful plants
and flowers may be too frequently sacrificed to the
production of ‘‘effects.” This was the deadly fault of
the ‘‘ bedding ” system, and should be guarded against.
The bedding system has made such beautiful flowers
as geraniums, calceolarias and lobelias stink in the
nostrils of some of us; just as the disgusting invention
of Dr. Gregory has been successful in making raspberry
jam a source of nausea to tens of thousands of English
boys and girls.
Let us as gardeners beware of being too clever and
“‘artistic”; Nature may be a hard mistress, but she is
not a fool.
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
SrrictLy, of course, the term is indefinite, for old-
fashioned flowers and old-fashioned gardens mean to
different people different things. Probably to most people
—at all events to the present writer—old-fashioned
gardening means that system which is in direct opposi-
tion to prim geometric beds and to the imitation of
carpet patterns by arrangement of flowers. By an old-
fashioned garden, the present writer means an informal
“garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our
English ayre will permit to be noursed up,” as Parkin-
son put it; and by old-fashioned flowers he means
sweet williams and gilly flowers, mignonette, sweet
peas, roses and honeysuckle, ‘‘ daffodils, fritillaries,
jacinthes, saffron-flowers, lilies, flower-deluces, tulipas,
anemones, French cowslips or bearseares, and such other
flowers, very beautifull, delightfull and pleasant.” After
the severe, monotonous, formal arrangements which
still too often constitute the gardens around our finest
houses, how interesting and restful it is to stroll round
a delightful garden such as Canon Ellacombe’s “ Vicarage
Garden” at Bitton, where the shape of the beds or
borders is not prearranged, where all the soil is occupied,
where every plant looks healthy and at home, where
every yard brings one a surprise and a fresh interest,
where the old walls have growing from their crevices
such plants as the Cheddar Pink, Sedums and Semper-
vivums; where, too, every plant in its glory hides the
decay of its predecessor in bloom and shelters the birth
of its successor.
4
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 5
There is a class—and a very large class—of folks
who are so constituted that continual prize or applause
hunting is essential to happiness. For such, the
topiary-victimised trees, the glaring carpet beds, and
the flower show are useful and comparatively harmless
instruments for the indulgence of their little weaknesses.
But it goes sorely against the grain to give to such the
honourable and historic title of gardeners just as one
hesitates to describe as a gardener the issuer of that
curious ‘‘ catalogue of greens” which Pope satirically
described in No. 173 of The Guardian :—
«« Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by
the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm;
Eve and the serpent very flourishing. Noah’s Ark in
holly, the ribs a little damaged for want of water.
«« The tower of Babel not yet finished.
“St George in Box; his arm scarce strong enough,
but will be in a condition to stick the dragon by next
April.
«<A green dragon of the same; with a tail of ground-
ivy for the present.
“* N.B.—Those two are not to be sold separately.
«‘ Edward the Black Prince in Cyprus...
«A Queen Elizabeth in Phyllirea, a little inclining to
the green sickness, but of full growth.
«« An old maid of honour in wormwood.
«A topping Ben Jonson in Laurel.
“Divers eminent modern poets in bays.”
As a matter of fact, what we understand as old-
fashioned gardening has never been a fashion at all.
When Addison wrote in The Spectator that he would
“rather look upon a tree in all its luxuriancy and
diffusion of boughs and branches, than when it is cut
and trimmed into a mathematical figure,” and that he
fancied that ‘‘an orchard in flower looks infinitely more
delightful than all the little labyrinths of the most
6 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
finished parterre,” he was declaiming against—not with
—the fashion of his day. In truth there is no escape
from the fact that in old times, as they are at present,
real lovers of plants and of flowers for their own sakes
were few indeed. In the time of Elizabeth and then-
abouts, however, the gardening spirit seems to have
been purer and more wholesome than during the suc-
ceeding centuries. John Lyly, for instance, was, in
sentiment at least, a genuine ‘‘ old-fashioned” gar-
dener :—‘‘ Heere be faire Roses, sweete Violets,
fragrant Primroses, heere wil be Jilly-floures, Carna-
tions, sops in wine, sweet Johns, and what may either
please you for sight, or delight you with savour.” At
that time also was written what is perhaps the greatest
or at any rate one of the most important pronouncements
on gardening ever written—the essay ‘‘Of Gardens,”
by Lord Bacon. Here, indeed, is the real touch, the
genuine gardening spirit: “I do hold it in the Royal
Ordering of Gardens, there ought to be Gardens for all
the Months in the year, in which, severally, things of
Beauty may be then in season;” and again, ‘‘ because
the Breath of Flowers is far Sweeter in the Air (where
it comes and goes, like the warbling of Musick), than in
the Hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that Delight,
than to know what be the Flowers and Plants that do
best perfume the Air. Roses, Damask and Red, are
fast Flowers of their Smells, so that you may walk by a
whole Row of them and find nothing of their sweet-
hess; yea, though it be in a morning Dew. Bays like-
wise yield no smell as they grow, Rosemary little, nor
Sweet-Marjoram. That, which above all others, yields
the sweetest smell in the air, is the violet, especially
the white double Violet, which comes twice a year,
about the middle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide.
Next to that is the Musk Rose, then the Strawberry
Leaves dying with a most excellent Cordial Smell. Then
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS x
the Flower of the Vines ; it is a little Dust, like the Dust
of a Bent, which grows upon the cluster at the first
coming forth. Then Sweet-Briar, then Wall-Flowers,
which are very delightful to be set under a Parlour, or
lower Chamber Window. Then Pinks, especially the
Matted Pink, and Clove Gilly-Flower. Then the
Flowers of the Lime-Tree. Then the Honey-Suckles,
so they be somewhat afar off... . But those which
perfume the Air most delightfully, not passed by as the
rest, but being Trodden upon and Crushed, are three:
that is Burnet, Wild-Time, and Water-Mints. There-
fore you are to set whole Alleys of them, to have the
Pleasure when you walk or tread.” The essence of
‘‘ old-fashioned” gardening is here expressed.
Our modern “florists” are wont to sneer at the lack
of variety possessed by the old gardeners, but they must
be curiously unfamiliar with the writings of such men as
Gerard, Gilbert and Parkinson. To give but one or two
examples, the last named writer, in his ‘‘ Paradisi in Sole
Paradisus Terrestris,” gives a descriptive list of twelve
distinct varieties of Fritillaries, eight varieties of Grape-
Hyacinths, and no less than twenty-one varieties of
Primroses and Cowslips, whilst of Lilies and of Roses
the kinds described are even more numerous.
The greatest joy which a garden can yield is a feeling
of restfulness and peace, a feeling which no garden of
staring beds and ostentatious splendour can afford, but
which is yielded—as by nothing else in the world—by
a garden of happy, homely, old-fashioned flowers.
To most people, and more particularly to most women,
one of the chief uses or functions of a garden is to pro-
vide flowers to be cut for the decoration of rooms. But
I hold that a flower cut from its plant and placed in a
vase is as a scalp on the walls of a wigwam—a trophy
showing how one more beautiful plant has been defeated
and victimised by its powerful and tasteless owner.
8 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
The cut flower is no longer part of a manifestation of
the will of nature; rather it is a slave—beautiful, it may
be, but branded and soul-destroyed.
Regarded as decoration, I consider cut flowers in a
house much as fashion now looks on shell ornaments, or
picture-frames made of acorns, as things inappropriate
and childish. Of course, in a town there is some excuse
for them, for even cut flowers carry the mind to beautiful
associated conditions; but cut flowers in the country
seem ludicrously like lumber, just as bedsteads and
toilet-services and cruet-stands placed in a garden would
be lumber too.
The love of cut flowers is really but another mani-
festation of the spirit which hankers after ‘‘ yews carved
into dragons, pagodas, marmosets,” and the other tree-
monsters scoffed at by Rousseau, who added that he
was convinced that ‘‘the time is at hand, when we shall
no longer have in gardens anything that is found in the
country; we shall tolerate neither plants nor shrubs;
we shall only like porcelain flowers, baboons, arbour-
work, sand of all colours, and fine vases full of
nothing.”
Indeed, there is in many quarters even now a grow-
ing desire for the kind of ‘new garden,” which old
William Lawson advocated: ‘‘ Your Gardiner can frame
your lesser wood to the shape of men armed in the field,
ready to give battell: or swift running Greyhounds: or
of well sented and true running Hounds, to chase the
Deere, or hunt the Hare. This kinde of hunting shall
not waste your corne, nor much your coyne. Mazes
well framed a man’s height, may perhaps make your
friend wander in gathering of berries, till he cannot
recover himselfe without your helpe.”
Of course, the cutting of flowers is a long way from
this ; still it is difficult to see where a line can be drawn
once the worship of ‘‘ gardeners’ gardens” has begun.
POPPY ANEMONES
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 9
Through the open windows of house or cottage the
eyes should be able to feast on the beauty of freely
growing flowers quite as easily as if they were cut and
stuck in glass or porcelain vase like so many heads of
traitors on the city gates.
It has been said that all children are born scientists,
but that only a small number of them ever pass on to
the condition of artists; and it has always seemed to me
that there is much truth in the statement. Children are
ever putting the eternal ‘‘ why?” to the great confusion
of their parents, pastors, and masters; and it is the
curious, the gigantic, the rare, which always calls forth
their attention and admiration. Struwelpeter is more to
a child than all the beauties of a Charles Robinson, and
to few men or women is it given to derive as much
pleasure from beauty as from that which is usually called
“‘interesting.” Hence, the ordinary criticisms of gar-
dens; hence, also, the usual aims of gardeners. So
many people desire the gaudy, or the unique, or the
curious, that we are apt to look upon gardens merely as
appliances for the production of quaint or monstrous
flowers.
The analysis of beauty has ever a dissecting-room-feel
about it; still, as he who would become a skilful
surgeon must be first a practical anatomist, and as he
who would be a painter must first study his materials
and the “dodges” of his craft, so must the would-be
artist in gardening dissect the beauty of perfect gardens,
and study such apparently dull materials as earth and
manure, and practical garden books.
I have said that the beauty of an old-fashioned garden
is due largely to the feeling of repose and settled-down-
ness which it yields. Every plant looks as though it
“belongs” (as we say in Cornwall) to be where it is,
as though it always was there, and as though there is no
intention of shifting it in a week or two to some glass-
10 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
house, store-room, or other site. The plants in most
gardens look as though they have merely come to pay
an afternoon call, dressed exactly 2 /a mode, speaking
always ‘“‘cumeelfo”—like the people of Troy Town,
and elsewhere—giving one the certain knowledge that
they will only say the right thing, look the right thing,
and leave at the right time, unregretted and unmissed.
The “comfortably-at-home” effect is produced mainly
by three causes — firstly, the presence of abundant
deciduous trees and shrubs, giving infinitely varied
effects of light and shade; secondly, the arrangement
of the plants in bold groups of single species; and,
thirdly, the provision of each separate plant with depth
of suitable soil, and space to develop its individual form.
There is plenty of background, and not too much
episode.
Country people often think that the way to enjoy
London is to spend day and night in one continuous
round of “sight” seeing. In like manner, people often
have an idea that the perfect garden is a continuous
sheet of wonderful flowers. How great is the fallacy
contained in this idea it should be needless to point out.
Leaf and stem, light and shade and fragrance, these are
quite as essential parts of a garden as are the ‘‘ blooms”
of the gardening showman.
An eye for beauty is largely a product of training
and experience. A soul and a brain there must be as a
basis, but ‘‘taste” is to a large extent cultivated. One
must have read much before one is able to appreciate
the style of a Ruskin or a Pater, a Maeterlinck or a
Le Gallienne; one must have studied many pictures
before being able to realise the beauty of the works of
the great artists; and in like manner one must needs
have loved and watched plants long and steadfastly
before the beauty of winter twig and summer leaf comes
home to him.
OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS eo
Many a man with a garden looks upon winter as a
season to be got through as soon as possible, as a season
when nothing short of necessity shall drag him into the
garden. I am sure that even in the very heart of
December, one should find in the garden more of real
beauty than ninety-nine gardens out of a hundred contain
in June. I recall in particular one little heather path
bordered by large bushes of blue-grey Lavender and
green-grey Rosemary, in the bays being great Mullein
plants and clumps of Pink and Alyssum. Ferns, Peri-
winkles, Holly, Satinleaf, Hellebores, Winter Aconites
and Barberries are but a few of the plants which help to
make this walk bright and pleasant even in the depths
of winter; but most important of all in the Christmas
display are the Furzes, single and double, than which,
according to Mr Alfred Russell Wallace, the tropics can
produce nothing more brilliant or more beautiful.
Continuous beauty all the year through, rather than
acontinuous display of flowers, is a goal at which gar-
deners might wisely aim, for not only is the result far
more restful and suggestive of reserved force and be-
coming modesty, but also the individual plants are far
more likely to have a fair chance of development at the
hands of one who appreciates beautiful leaves and
healthy growth, than when cultivated by one who looks
at plants merely as flower-making machines.
A GARDEN BY THE SEA
Ir is fortunate that we are not all provided with equally
favourable sites and soils. How monotonous would
gardening become if one knew that he had but to act,
deed for deed, as his neighbour in order to attain exactly
the same garden result. We should feel disposed to
throw down our spades and trowels if the end of our
efforts might be foreseen by looking over our neighbour’s
boundary. If the difficulties to be overcome could be
formally catalogued, the whole art of gardening would
be reduced to a wooden system in which there would
be little room for surprise or pleasure. But Fate has
decreed that our gardens shall differ in spite of the
apish copying spirit which still fills so many of our
breasts. Our sites vary, our soils vary, and our atmos-
pheric conditions vary to such an extent that any
gardener, if he is to produce a result of any werth,
must perforce use his native intelligence in order to
overcome the specific difficulties peculiar to his plot
of earth.
Gardening readers will remember Dean Hole’s story
of the enthusiastic flower-loving navvy who, obtaining
the post of gatekeeper on the railway, was provided
with nothing but a barren gravel pit as apology for a
garden. ‘‘ Twelve months afterwards,” says the Dean,
“IT came near the place again—was it a mirage which I
saw on the sandy desert? There were vegetables,
fruit-bushes and fruit-trees, all in vigorous health; there
were flowers, and the flower-queen in her beauty,
‘Why, Will,’ I exclaimed, ‘what have you done to
YELLOW JASMINE
A GARDEN BY THE SEA 15
the gravel-bed?’ ‘Lor’ bless yer,’ he replied, grin-
ning, ‘I hadn’t been here a fortnight afore I swopped
it for a pond!’ He had, as a further explanation in-
formed me, and after an agreement with a neighbouring
farmer, removed with pick and barrow his sandy stratum
to the depth of three feet, wheeled it to the banks of an
old pond, or rather to the margin of a cavity where a
pond once was, but which had been gradually filled up
with leaves and silt; and this rich productive mould he
had brought home a distance of two hundred yards,
replacing it with the gravel, and levelling as per con-
tract.”
That man’s garden was a real living creation: it was
indeed a ‘“‘ great work.” And it is in everything true
that great natural possessions, though they may render life
more comfortable and possibly more apparently success-
ful, yet make the battle the tamer and less interesting.
Indeed the greater the odds to be overcome, the more
magnificent will every victory appear, and the gardener
who creates a flowery Eden out of a piece of bare and
starving desert has scored a greater success than his who
but grows beautiful flowers and delicious fruits where
soil and site and surroundings have been entirely on his
side.
I am writing in a garden which is as remarkable an
example of difficulties overcome as was the garden of
Dean Hole’s navvy. Those who are familiar with the
sand-dunes or towans which form so pronounced a
feature of much of the northern coast-line of Cornwall,
will realize that these scarcely afford ideal spots for
easily made gardens. A thin coating of poor grass,
reeds, wild thyme and occasional sea-hollies form the
only drapery for the blown sand which makes up the
whole body of soil.
Yet it was on such a spot that a friend of mine pitched
his camp, or rather built his cottage, and set to work to
16 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
create a garden. His aim in life being to kill care, he
desired nothing more eagerly than to be constantly
occupied. For three years he spent fully one half of
his days in bringing into his territory leafmould and
soil, clay and manure. He soon had a good protective
screen of pines, euonynus, privet and hazel, and only
then did he seriously begin to plant his garden. He
had, during those three years, raised crops of clover,
trifolium and the like, digging them again into the newly
created soil from whence they came.
He read all the gardening books on which he could
lay hands, he saw all the gardens within walking dis-
tance, and he studied the wants of every flower before
he sowed or planted it, just as though it were an
honoured guest whom he were inviting. He had no
rule-and-compass scheme before his eyes, and planted
his shrubs and flowers in those situations where they
might most healthily yield their beauty and their frag-
rance. Such paths as his garden has are merely gravelled
developments of the beaten tracks which usage indicated as
necessary or convenient ; and I am afraid that they would
meet with the disapproval of that great authority, Mr
Reginald Bloomfield, who has said that a garden ‘ should
be laid out in an equal number of rectangular plots where
everything is straightforward and logical.”
My friend is nearly twenty years older than when he
began to create his garden, and it has already acquired
much of the character of an old house to which successive
additions have been made. The year through, the earth
is draped and decorated with beautiful plants, Aconites,
Snowdrops, Crocuses, Primroses, Viclets, Fritillaries,
Columbines, Pinks, Roses, Lilies, Sunflowers and all the
host of old-fashioned flowers.
The great problems of ‘ architectural” gardening,
“* landscape ” gardening, and the rest, did not interest him.
So simple and unpretentious was his little house that an
A GARDEN BY THE SEA 4
attempt at terraces, clipped evergreens, and the like,
would have struck a jarring note at once. Therefore,
it is quite in keeping that beautiful flowers and beautiful
shrubs border one’s way right up to the entrance door;
nor does Nature end there, for over all the outer walls
are trained lovely and fragrant climbers—Clematis, Rose,
and Honeysuckle—which give the idea that the cottage
does indeed ‘‘ nestle” in the garden.
Through the open windows also, at almost any time
of the year, pours the delicious scent of leaf and flower
—of Winter Sweet, Violets, or Sweet Peas; of Stocks,
or Mignonette; of Wallflowers, or Roses. Just to name
a few of the plants whose scent fill the rooms, what
glories are thereby called up :—Honeysuckle and Jasmine,
Lily of the Valley, Lilac and Narcissus, Carnation,
Syringa and Heliotrope, Thyme, Bergamot, and Aloysia!
These, and a hundred other fragrances mingled together
in infinitely varying combinations, give sensuous joys
which even the most jaded can but appreciate. For
there is probably no pleasure so democratic as that which
is yielded by the fragrance of flowers and leaves. The
colour and form of plants require a little attention for
their appreciation, but their odour overwhelms our senses
whether we attend or no. The variety of perfumes
yielded by plants is almost as great as their forms, for
blossom of Apple and of Jonquil, leaf of Strawberry,
Currant and Sweet Gale gives each an esthetic pleasure
peculiar to itself.
In Elizabethan times, a royal visit seems to have been
preceded by a process of sweeting the house, which
consisted in filling the rooms with scent of crushed
leaves and flowers, scattering also extracts and essences
of fragrant plants. This sweeting of the rooms is a
continuous process through the open windows of the
cottage, and no queenly visit would induce any aug-
mentation of it.
18 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
Through the trees, which now have grown to
moderate size, may always be seen the most beautiful
setting which a beautiful garden can have—the ever
restless sea, The contrast is good and effective, and
is calculated to prevent any undue development of
horticultural vanity.
I thought of Ruskin’s statement that ‘‘the path of a
good woman is indeed strewn with flowers, but they
rise behind her steps, not before them,” when one day I
sat on a quaint old seat under a pear tree in this little
flowerful garden; for it is literally behind his steps,
not before them, that all the beauty of my friend’s garden
has sprung up. Each beautiful leaf and stem and flower
are products of his labour and care almost as much as
of sun and rain. Yet to a stranger the garden shows
no sign of human fingers, human muscles, or human
interference.
To many, possibly to most, there is attractiveness in a
garden of well-kept, straight-bordered paths, of tidy beds
symmetrical beyond reproach, of plants arranged like
soldiers under review; but to me such gardens—how-
ever pleasant to look at—seem unsuited to repose and
impossible to sit and dream in.
This garden is very different. It has no trees cut to
the shape of peacocks or wind-mills, no hideous collec-
tion of stakes and raffia, which goes by the name of
“the carnation bed” (after the manner of Thackeray’s
“library where the boots are kept”). It is merely a
bit of enclosed and humanised natural beauty, a place
where one may quietly enjoy delightful flowers and
delightful fragrance without the jarring condition of
viewing behind the scenes all the time that the per-
formance is being enacted. Every flower in the garden
was originally planted by my friend, and has been
regularly watched over and tended by him ever since,
yet not one but looks as though it had been planted
A GARDEN BY THE SEA 19
at the creation of the world and had been subject
only to the forces of Nature all its life. There is a
suggestion of woodland, a suggestion of hedgerow, a
suggestion of hillside, yet, of course, the garden differs
from them all. It is the absence of bare earth—for
scarcely one inch of soil lies undraped by plants—which
partly gives the garden that feeling of settled-down-ness.
A half-dressed person, a half-papered wall, a half-
filled bookcase, a half-finished house—all these things
hinder the feeling of repose. So it is that nearly all
gardens, looking, as they do, to be in a state of prepara-
tion and incompleteness, make restfulness out of the
question. But in this garden repose seems the natural
emotion, and to sit there beneath a tree and read or chat
is always the appropriate thing.
It is not, however, that the earth is all draped which
alone causes the feeling of rest. This is due very largely
to the fact that the garden is not a ‘ show-garden,”
was not created for show, but for the satisfaction of its
creator.
The ‘comfortable feel” of the garden is largely
assisted also by the nature of the flowers and plants
which he has elected to cultivate: Gilly-flowers, Pinks
and Purple Columbines, Sweet Carnations, Daffodils
and lovéd Lilies. To quote Korumushi, a poet of
the race which has the spirit of flower-worship in its
heart—
*¢ No man so callous, but he heaves a sigh
When o’er his head the withered Cherry-flowers
Come fluttering down.”
And no man is so devoid of feeling as to be unmoved
by the sight of the flowers associated with the ideals
of the race—the flowers which Chaucer loved, and
Shakspere.
I have seen a beautiful garden, containing none but
flowers mentioned by Shakspere. This, however, was
B
20 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
after all but a piece of pretty pedantry, and necessi-
tated the absence of Foxgloves, Forget-me-Nots,
Snowdrops, and other beautiful flowers. It is indeed
strange that he, the greatest poet of gardens as of other
things, never mentions these flowers, although they must
have been well known to him. Speaking of the Snow-
drop, Gerard, who was a contemporary of Shakspere,
said: ‘* These plants doe grow wilde in Italy, and the
parts adjacent, notwithstanding our London gardens have
taken possession of most of them many years past.”
This rather indicates that the Snowdrop then held a
very different place in the gardener’s heart, from the
place which it since has won; and doubtless the same
holds good of the other flowers which Shakspere left
unmentioned. If Shakspere were writing now, using
the names of flowers as he used them—‘‘not to show
his own knowledge,” but because the particular flowers
supplied the appropriate simile or key to sentiment—he
could scarcely fail to mention the Foxgloves or Lady’s
Fingers, the sweet Forget-Me-Nots, and, more beautiful
still, the chaste, unflinching Snowdrops. A flower takes
time—generations even, it may be—really to eat its way
into the heart of man; for it is not enough that it be
merely beautiful or merely fragrant—attractive to our
senses though these properties are—in order that we
may really become incorporate with a flower. But it
must, in addition, be full of association, and have been
long watched and lovingly studied. ‘There is one book,
difficult now to obtain, containing a record of the truest
appreciation and most careful study of flowers, and of
the beauty of flowers, which we have in the language.
That book is called ‘‘ Flowers and Gardens,” by Dr
Forbes Watson, and the following passage from its
pages beautifully explains the sentiment of the gardener
who grows mainly old-fashioned flowers, or, at any rate,
flowers with which he has been long familiar—
A GARDEN BY THE SEA 21
‘We make the acquaintance of any individual exist-
ence under an immense number of different aspects, and
it is the sum of all these aspects which constitutes that
existence to us. A Snowdrop, for instance, is not to me
merely such a figure as a painter might give me by copy-
ing the flower when placed so that its loveliness shall be
best apparent, but a curious mental combination or selec-
tion from the figures which the flower may present when
placed in every possible position, and in every aspect
which it has worn from birth to grave, and coloured by
all the associations which have chanced to cling around
it. To the bodily eye which beholds it for the first time
it might be of no consequence what lay within the petals,
though even then the imagination would be whispering
some solution of the secret; but to the eye of mind,
when the flower has been often seen, that hidden green
and yellow which is necessary to complete the harmony
becomes distinctly visible—visible, that is, in that strange,
indefinite way in which all things, however apparently
incompatible, seem present and blended together when
the imaginative faculty is at work. ‘The common Star
of Bethlehem (Oraithogalum umbellatum) is a good illus-
tration of the working of this principle. When I look
at the beautiful silver-white of the inner surface of the
petals, my mind is always dwelling upon and rejoicing
in the fact that their outer side is green, though of
that green outside I cannot see a hair’s breadth. Again,
we find the same principle at work in the feeling which
compelled the old sculptors to finish the hidden side of
the statue. They said, ‘For the gods are everywhere.’”
There are people of whom we say (indeed, it is pos-
sibly true of everyone)—2@ das the cynics—that.the more
intimately we know them, and the longer we know them,
the more we see to love and admire. So it is with a
really beautiful plant, and for this reason they who would
obtain all the possible pleasure and beauty from their
22 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
gardens should become, not gardeners only, but also
botanists and students of poetry and of beautiful form.
In spite of Shakspere’s omission, then, I advise every-
one to grow many species of Snowdrops; indeed, for a
week or two in February, my friend’s sea-side garden
seems to be all draped with their green leaves and serene
green-white ‘“‘drops,” yet not one podgy, graceless double
flower is there among them all. For he agrees with
Forbes Watson that the ‘*‘ doubling ” of beautiful flowers
generally results in deformity and the destruction of all
beauty and meaning. Double Roses, Pinks, and Carna-
tions, he grows of course; for their fragrance, their
history, and, in the case of Roses, their continuous bloom
compensate to some extent for the loss of character in
the petals, and for the ‘* pen-wiper” appearance which
has only too often been given to the individual flowers.
To return to the Shakspere garden, one finds that
Shakspere’s floral year practically began with the
Daffodil.
«When Daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy o’er the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year,”
The yellow Crocus seems to have been introduced
into English gardens whilst Shakspere was writing his
plays, and there was then, alas, no Gardeners’ Chronicle
to bring him the news. Gerard describes it as having
“ flowers of a most perfect shining yellow colour, seeming
afar off to be a hot glowing coal of fire. That pleasant
plant was sent unto me from Robinus, of Paris, that
painful and most curious searcher of simples.” What
pictures are summoned before our minds’ eyes even by
the few words just quoted: ‘pleasant plant;” ‘sent
unto me from Robinus of Paris;” ‘that painful and
most curious searcher of simples.” Each phrase shows
a type of mind or a view of life.
A GARDEN BY THE SEA 23
The garden of my friend is a ‘ pleasant ” garden, and
he, too, is a ‘‘ curious searcher ” of beautiful and pleasant
plants. That is why his garden seems to be an old-
fashioned garden, and not because it is at all like Shak-
spere’s garden, or Mary Arden’s garden, or the hideous
Elizabethan gardens pictured in the ‘‘ Hortus Floridus,”
published in 1614. His, though not by any means a
Tottenham Court Road product, is no Wardour Street
garden, but is old-fashioned in the sense that some of
Heal’s bedsteads are old-fashioned, or that beautiful
English prose is old-fashioned as contrasted with the
English of the yellow press.
He would not be without his Snowdrops, and quite
as emphatically would he not be without his Crocuses.
Great clumps everywhere, among the shrubs, at roots of
trees and by the path-sides, radiate light and beauty
like so many fairyland flashes. First come the violet
cups of Crocus imperati, often before January has
passed ; then the brilliant array of yellow Crocus luteus
(overwhelming the Snowdrops, by then well past
their chief beauty and chief interest), followed by
Crocuses of every shade of purple, lavender, and white.
These, like the Snowdrops, are left quite undisturbed
year after year, and if there be some little falling off in
the size of the flowers, which is doubtful, there is more
than compensation in the added beauty which the result-
ing gradation of colour and natural grouping yield.
When I think of these glories, I can but reflect on how
much beauty that academic ‘‘Shakspere-garden” goes
lacking. Indeed, we shall all do well to steer clear
of formulas and rigidity, as well in our lives as in our
garden-beds.
COTTAGE GARDENS
THE term “cottage garden” is an elastic one, and may
be made to include all that big class of gardens where,
in the words of the flower-show schedule, “no regular
gardener is employed.” But I think that most people,
when they think of cottage gardens, picture to them-
selves those little wayside plots attached to the homes
of working folks which cheer the passer-by nearly as
much as they cheer their owners. One thinks of Rose
and Clematis climbing over the doorway, of Sweet-
Williams, Pzonies, Hollyhocks, Sunflowers and Pansies
flowering in bed or border. Old-fashioned herbaceous
plants are those which one associates with these cottage
gardens, and nearly the year through one expects to
find something of interest and of beauty.
Such is the ideal; sometimes such is the reality.
In some of our rural districts, where the local squire is
of the resident benevolent feudal school, the cottages are
surrounded by little paradises of flowery beauty. Those
who have travelled through the Porlock Estate of the
Acland family will know what I mean. In many places,
however, little pride or interest is taken in gardening,
and the yards fronting the cottages are dull and dismal
from January to Christmas. Indeed, there are few
districts where pretty cottage gardens are the rule.
Yet it were as easy to create a lovely picture within an
area of twenty square yards as in the space of a palace
garden, though possibly not so imposing or valuable an
one. The size of the canvas is a detail; the other
limitations are, however, more important. In a little
24
HONESTY
COTTAGE GARDENS 25
plot we must often do without those lovely backgrounds
of tree and shrub and those lovely foregrounds of grass
or other dwarf herbage which are such helps in creating
great garden pictures. It is at a sonnet that we small
gardeners must aim and not at an epic or great narrative
poem. Yet I often feel that brevity is of the very
essence of fine poetry, and it is possible that limitation
of space may be contributory to the finest expression of
gardening. At all events, it affords a greater test of
one’s skill and taste as a gardening craftsman, for, whereas,
in a big place, trees, shrubs and lawn almost create a
beautiful garden of themselves, in a little garden we
have to practise more selection and more rejection, and
to exercise greater judgment and care in arrangement,
since here every detail counts and every fault jars.
The cottage gardener has usually to employ the
simplest flowers wherewith to express himself, but it
is probable that this limitation is helpful rather than a
source of increased difficulty. He may say, in the spirit
of Lewis Carroll :—
«¢ T never loved a dear gazelle,
Nor anything that cost me much:
High prices profit those that sell,
But why should I be fond of such?
And these old common plants thrive as well and flower
as beautifully in the garden of the shepherd as in the
grounds of Windsor Castle. The wind blows from the
same quarter, the rain falls equally, and the frost is as
severe in the one as in the other.
I like each garden to contain some one feature of
special and unique interest—some well-grown plant
which is not much cultivated in the neighbourhood,
or some brilliant floral pageant peculiar to the particular
garden. Thus, one garden which I know is always
associated in my mind with a little thicket, about ten
feet in height, of the White-stemmed Bramble (Rubus
26 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
biflorus), which, on a moon-lit evening, is a most im-
pressive sight, and even in winter is very beautiful. In
another little garden I always look for its show of
beautiful Pansies, of which its owner—a fisherman—
is very naturally and rightly proud. Of course, a
special feature of this kind need not interfere with
the perennial interest which every garden, even the
smallest, should possess. For instance, in the garden
with the Nepal Bramble (which, by the way, is sur-
prisingly little known when one recalls the fact that
it was introduced many a hundred years ago) are
Poppies and Roses, White Musk-Mallows and Colum-
bines, Canterbury Bells and Michaelmas Daisies; and
my friend of the Pansies has the earliest Crocuses and
Snowdrops in his village, and relies on a hedge of
Chrysanthemums and Rosemary to brighten his plot
when the Pansies are over.
If our suburban villas were fronted by unpretentious
plots cultivated frankly as cottage gardens and bordered
by simple palings, how very different would be their
aspect, and how much more pleasant would a suburban
walk become. For there are numerous plants of great
beauty which would thrive even in the suburbs of
London, given care and a little knowledge as to the
correct preparation of the soil.
In the country, very much may be done by those
who care to do so. Country squires, doctors, parsons
and others who have money, or time, or influence can
very materially alter the appearance of their district by
encouraging the gardening spirit among working folks,
by helping with advice if they are themselves gardeners,
by helping with surplus plants, seeds and cuttings, and
by organising competitions and offering prizes for the
best kept cottage gardens.
Small gardens are the largest which are at the disposal
of most of us, but we need not bemoan our fate on that
COTTAGE GARDENS 27
account. Fully as great pleasure may be extracted from a
tiny plot as from broad acres, and a few plants well grown
are as productive of satisfaction as is the largest collec-
tion. ‘‘It was a singular experience that long acquaintance
which I cultivated with beans,” said Thoreau, ‘but
I was determined to know beans.” That is the true
gardening spirit, and with that as a possession one may
pluck as much joy from the cultivation and study of
Thistles or Brambles, or even Docks (as Canon Ella-
combe reports a friend as growing—his acquaintances,
of course, laughing at him for making a Dock-yard), as
from the rarest Orchids of the millionaire.
One of the greatest gifts of a perfect garden is the
gift of solitude, and that is generally beyond the power
of the little cottage plot to offer; but, as a source of
infinite pleasure to its owner, as a source of pleasure to
all those who pass by, as a cheering feature of English
landscape, and as a great force tending towards content-
ment and peace, the cottage garden is beyond price.
THE GARDEN IN WINTER
Wuen the last of the Michaelmas daisies and of the
out-door chrysanthemums have cast their blooms, many
gardeners are apt to think that the interest and beauty
of the garden are over, and that for three months there
is nothing to be done but to dig and enrich the soil, and
to wait patiently for the onset of spring. TThis is a
narrow and an ill-informed view, for, though through
the months of winter we cannot hope to see many or
gaudy flowers, we may yet have our gardens bright
and interesting with evergrey and evergreen shrubs and
herbs, with the delightfully-coloured barks of willows,
dog-woods and other trees, and, not less interesting,
with the often beautiful stems of the last season’s
growth of herbaceous plants, usually sacrificed to the
tidying spirit of those who would tidy the floor of
heaven itself. Moreover, even in winter, flowers of no
mean rank may be had in the open borders of English
gardens.
The Christmas and Lenten Roses or Hellebores alone
can be so used as to make a border interesting during
the whole of the winter months, for not only do they
all possess handsome foliage, but their flowers also are
very beautiful and varied in colour. They are easy of
culture, liking a deep, fairly stiff and rich, though well-
drained, soil, and thriving best in dense shade, under
trees or on the north side of a hedge or wall. The
Hellebores are impatient of disturbance and meddlesome-
ness. The flowers, coming as they do in the rainy
season, should be saved from being soiled with splashes
28. :
SAS IDIOND UNV AMONS
THE GARDEN IN WINTER 31
of mud by having moss placed on the earth beneath
them. Of the many species and varieties, the old
Christmas Rose (H. niger) is by far the most valuable,
Its large white flowers, appearing at the end of the year,
when most flowers have succumbed to numbing cold or
blighting winds, stir the imagination in the same way
as does a beautiful face in the Bow Street dock or a
butterfly in a foundry. The so-called Helleborus niger
maximus, or H. altifolius, has larger flowers, which,
moreover, appear earlier than those of H. niger, but the
colour is not so pure, many of the flowers being tinged
with pink. The crimson H. abchasicus, and H. colchicus
with flowers of darkest purple, as well as some of the
hybrids derived from them, should be grown in every
garden, The green and inconspicuous flowered varieties,
such as H. fetidus, H. hvidus, which came from Corsica
about the beginning of the eighteenth century, and H.
viridus, are well worth growing for their foliage, and
indeed for their flowers also, if there be any shady moist
corner where few plants will thrive.
A plant somewhat related to the Hellebores, though
smaller in every way, is the pretty little Winter
Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis), which brightens the ground
early in January with its yellow cups resting on the
daintiest of green ruffles. It looks its best when it has
become well established and naturalised in grass, or
among trees and shrubs. Long after the flower has
fallen, the beautiful foliage continues to drape and deco-
rate the earth during the early months of the year. In
warm, sheltered situations, two species of Scilla often
produce their flowers in January :—Scilla bifolia, which
sends up spikes of dark blue bells, the spikes being
about eight inches in height, and the much smaller and
somewhat later S. siberica, with flowers of peculiarly
intense blue. Some of the anemones often begin to
flower in winter, especially the Blue Wind-flower of
32 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
Greece (4. b/anda), and in warm situations the old 4.
coronaria itself. In any case the foliage of anemones,
and beautiful foliage it is, is one of the ornaments of the
hardy winter garden. Some of the species of crocus,
also, belong to the section of winter bloomers, notably
the mauve C. imperati, and the pale lilac C. pulchellus. In
sheltered shady spots, where it can enjoy well-drained
leafy soil undisturbed, the round-leaved Cyclamen
(C. coum) and its white-flowered variety (C. Ayemale)
produce abundance of welcome little flowers often quite
early in January. Those who fear the assaults of evil
spirits should remember a couplet quoted in Folkard’s
‘Plant Lore, Legends and Lyrics” :—
«St John’s Wort and fresh Cyclamen she in her chamber kept,
From the power of evil angels to guard him while he slept.”
Its potency as a drug was so thoroughly believed that
Gerard fenced round all his cyclamens, and also laid
sticks over them crosswise lest any unfortunate indi-
vidual might tread on the corms, and so bring about the
direst results.
In wild waste spots, or under trees where few things
will thrive, the fragrant Winter Coltsfoot is well worth
growing. It spreads at a terrible pace, and must there-
fore not be introduced into the mixed borders. The
common primrose and its garden varieties, as well as
many other species of primula, are of the utmost value
in the winter garden, both for their foliage and for their
flowers, which in some cases begin to appear soon after
Christmas. One of the very earliest is the purple
Caucasian Primrose (P. amcena), which bears its umbel
of flowers often in the very depth of winter. All the
primroses like shelter, partial shade, deep moderately-
rich soil, and ‘‘ peace and quietness.”
But of all the flowers of winter, the most beautiful is
the fragrant Iris reticulata. No description can convey
THE GARDEN IN WINTER 33
a tithe of its effect. Two grass-green sheaths drape the
lower part of the flower-stalk, the sheath on the convex
side becoming at its margin so thin and transparent as to
seem to melt into the stem itself. The flower-stalk up to
this point is of a curious green colour veined with purple,
but gradually, as the flower is neared, the purple in-
creases so as to colour the whole surface of the stem;
and, indeed, at the root of the petals the stem becomes
almost black. Nor is the flower itself unworthy so
dainty a support, for the colouring and form are ex-
quisite. The falls, which are coloured on the outside
a dull purple with centrally some green spotting, turn at
about one quarter way from their extremities suddenly
outwards almost at a right angle, thus forming horizontal
landing-places. The inside of the fall is of a rich light
violet colour, running up the centre from the claw’s
root being a white patch with yellow and dark purple
markings, terminating at the horizontal blade in glowing
orange. ‘The effect is slightly reminiscent of that pro-
duced by a leopard’s skin. The standards are bright
violet with relief of yellow pollen just below the centre,
above which are little stigmatic ledges which brush
pollen from entering insects. The flower stalk is
definitely arched as though the flower were too heavy
for its strength, but near the flower itself the stalk
becomes erect, thus giving the whole an appearance of
health and vigour. The early Irises are not difficult to
grow in moderately light and well drained soil, but they
should usually be afforded a warm and sheltered site.
Other fragrant species which bloom in winter or very
early spring are the soft blue Iris stylosa, of which there
is an equally beautiful white variety, and the purple and
rose Iris histrio, somewhat resembling Iris reticulata in
habit and colouring.
The flowers which usher out the winter and announce
the near approach of the spring, the winter gilliflowers or
34 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
snowdrops, have long been among the treasures of English
gardens. Naturalised in grassy lawns or orchards, or
grown undisturbed in shrubbery borders, the single and
double common snowdrops (G. nivalis) almost invariably
thrive and increase. The common snowdrop is on the
whole the most important and most valuable, but in
light warm soil the handsome Galanthus Ekwesi should be
grown, and in any soil the broad-leaved G. /atifolius, and
a fragrant hybrid derived from it, G. A/leni, with large
flowers and leaves almost like those of the tulip.
Several of the periwinkles, notably the lilac Vinca
acutiloba, bear flowers during the months of December
and January, and in warm sheltered spots violets and
roses may often be picked in the open air.
Among the shrubs, several of the most beautiful
bear their flowers in the depth of winter. The fragrant
yellowish flowers of the Winter Sweet (Chimonanthus
Jragrans), which is one of the many gracious gifts of
Japan, are among the best of winter blossoms. The
Chimonanthus is worth a place against a warm wall
facing south. After flowering, the young shoots should
be pruned back to the old branches. The variety known
as Grandiflora bears somewhat larger flowers. The
scarlet flowers of Cydonia japonica (the Japan Quince),
are familiar to everyone although it is but a nineteenth
century introduction into this country. Other species
and varieties of Quince, however, are equally well
worth growing. C. Maule, with orange-red flowers
freely produced seemingly over the entire plant, C.
nivalis, with large white flowers, and C. cardinalis are
all good.
When the climate is mild, and the soil not too heavy,
the Laurustinus (Viburnum tinus) is of great value in
winter and early spring. The yellow Jasmine and
the shrubby Honeysuckles, Lonicera fragrantissima and
L. Standishi, are easy to grow, and should be seen in
THE GARDEN IN WINTER 45
every open-air winter garden, as also should the old
Daphne Mezereon, single and double, the double Furze
(Ulex Europaeus flore pleno), and the evergreen Garrya
elliptica with its hardier variety Thuretii. The Garrya
is hardy enough in many gardens, but in exposed or
cold situations profits by being afforded the shelter of a
wall or other screen. Many other winter flowering shrubs
and flowers might be named, but I must refer readers to
the list of winter bloomers which forms an appendix to
my ‘Chronicle of a Cornish Garden.”
Great, however, as is the importance of growing as
many as possible of the plants which bear flowers through
the months of winter, the value of evergreen and ever-
grey foliage must not be overlooked. Among the latter
may be named Lavender, Rosemary, Pinks, Carnations,
Mulleins, Alyssum, Lavender Cotton, Stachys chrysantha,
Achillea umbellata, Achillea moschata, Silene maritima,
Hieraceum villosum, H. gymnocephalus, Cistus (of sorts),
Artemisia lanata, Agrostemma, Senecio leucophyllus,
Teucrum aureum, Cerastium tomentosum, Arabis varie-
gata, Gypsophilum repens, Festuca glauca, Sedum
Turkestanicum, Olearia insignis, Agrostemma coronaria,
Onopordon arabicum. To give a list of useful ever-
green plants would require much more space than I have
to spare, but the following names may possibly be of
some help. Of evergreen trees and shrubs, Yew,
Hollies, Box, Tree Ivies, Pernettyas, Ruscus racemosus,
the silver-edged Euonymus radicans variegatus, Berberis
aquifolium, Aucuba Japonica (and other kinds), Kalmia
latifolia, Rhododendrons, Ericas, Sand Myrtles, Dwarf
Partridge Berries, Andromedas, Skimmias, Olearia
Haasti and Phillyrea Vilmoriana, are among the most
useful and interesting. The number of valuable ever-
green border plants is almost infinite; the following
list includes some of the best :—
36 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
Saxifrages, kinds numerous.
Sedums, do.
Sempervivums, do.
Gentiana acaulis,
Gentiana verna.
Primulas, kinds numerous.
Helleborus, do.
Dwarf phloxes.
Forget-me-nots.
Thymus, of sorts.
Acanthus.
Iris, kinds numerous,
especially valuable being
I. feetidissima with brill-
iantly red seeds.
Omphalodes, of sorts.
Aubrietia.
Arabis.
Vinca.
Violas and Violets.
Iberis.
Sternbergia.
Megaseas.
Aquilegias.
Asarum, of sorts.
Wallflowers.
Cyclamen, of sorts.
Evergreen ferns should be grown in gardens much
more than they usually are.
the hardiest kinds :—
Asplenium augustifulium.
Asplenium ebenum. -
Aspidium Floridanum.
Camptosorus rhizophyllus.
Dictogramma Japonica.
Lastrea marginalis.
Lastrea Standishi.
Lastrea aristata.
The following are a few of
Lastrea corusca.
Lastrea fragrans.
Lomaria alpina.
Niphobolus lingua.
Polystichum acrostichoides.
Polystichum setosum.
Phygopteris alpestris.
Woodsia alpina.
The British species of Asplenium, Blechnum, Ceterach,
Polypodium, Polystichum and Scolopendrium are often
useful and always available.
THE GARDEN IN SPRING
THE dividing line between the seasons is, of course,
quite arbitrary, for Nature progresses evenly, gradually,
unceasingly, and not in the jerky way which our clumsy
divisions of time imply. Still it is convenient, almost
necessary indeed, to adopt some such broad classifica-
tion of the periods of the year as that into the four seasons
which has done duty for so many centuries. One may
take the flowering of the snowdrop to indicate the onset
of spring, though itself belonging more especially to
winter. Yet the Dutch Crocus seems to be the earliest
real spring flower, and a brighter little herald of the
glories to follow could not be selected. The parents of
most of the Dutch Crocuses are two species which grow
wild in South-Eastern Europe, C. aureus and C. vernus.
The latter is sometimes considered to be a native British
plant, but in all instances of its discovery in English
hedges or meadows its presence is most likely due to
removals of garden soil or garden rubbish.
There are nearly seventy distinct species of Crocus
known to botanists, and most of these are well worth
growing, though more bloom in the autumn than in the
spring. Even in the seventeenth century, Parkinson
described as many as thirty-one kinds, but probably
some of these were merely garden varieties.
Crocus imperati, found wild near Naples, is one of
the earliest species to flower as it is also one of the
most beautiful, the inside of the petals being coloured
a deep purple, whilst the outside is of a lightish brown,
the stigma standing as a brilliant orange lamp in the
centre of the flower’s cup.
37
c
38 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
The Crocuses will grow and prosper in almost any
good soil, especially if it rest on chalk or other porous
subsoil. The commoner kinds may advantageously,
especially in soils not too heavy and wet, be left in the
ground undisturbed for many years, and there are few
floral sights more beautiful than that afforded by a
skilful grouping of yellow crocuses naturalised in grass
either under deciduous trees or in the open. The very
early species should be grown in a warm and sheltered
position, where the winds and frosts of January will not
be able to destroy their beauty. Almost as valuable as
the crocus, and even more easy to grow, are several of
the species of scilla, a bulb long cultivated in English
gardens. ‘Two of the species, which are especially worth
growing on account of their beauty and extreme earliness,
are the dark-blue S. d:folia (with its varieties, pracox and
taurica) and S. sibirica, with its intense, vivid blue
colour, as of some gem resting on the dark green leaves.
Later, larger and sturdier, though scarcely so valuable,
are the well known light blue Spanish Scilla, S.
campanulata, and the numerous varieties of our beautiful
wild bluebell, S. zutans. Scillas, like crocuses, should
be planted in bold natural groups among other plants,
or naturalised in woodland glades or shady lawns and
meadows. Somewhat resembling the Scillas, though
even more beautiful, are the recently introduced
Chionodoxas (C. Luciliae, C. Sardensis, and C. grandiflora),
which exhibit every shade of purest blue, mingled in
varying proportions with white. In light soils they
increase very rapidly both by division of bulbs and by
seed.
A stately flower, which formerly held a much more
respected place in the garden than it now occupies, is
the Crown Imperial (Friti/laria imperialis). In rich, deep,
garden soil, or in a rich shrubbery border, it usually
thrives ; and when well established is an interesting and
THE GARDEN IN SPRING 39
showy plant, growing upwards of four feet to the top
of its flower stalk in April or May. There are varieties
displaying various combinations of red, yellow and
orange. Parkinson placed it ‘before all other Lilies,”
and Chapman referred to it as ‘‘ Emperor of Flowers.”
Valuable as it is, one is not disposed to place it on quite
such a pinnacle to-day. Most of the other Fritillaries
are dwarf bulbous plants, which thrive in rich, light
soil, preferably in the partial shade of deciduous trees.
The commoner kinds are very suitable for naturalisation
in grass or woodland. Most of the Fritillaries produce
sombre-coloured, curiously-chequered, snaky-looking,
pendulous flowers.
Even in the seventeenth century Parkinson describes
twelve varieties, but since his day numerous species
have been discovered. Among those best for growing
are F. Meleagris and its varieties; F. Moggridgei, an
Alpine species, with yellow bells beautifully marked
with brown and red on their inner surface; F. aurea,
and the brilliant, though somewhat tender, F. recurva.
The Fritillary was so called because of its chess-board-
like markings, and for the same reason Gerard spoke of
it as the Ginnie-hen flower.
The Grape-Hyacinths, or Muscari, do not seem to
have developed in popularity, as their beauty in colour-
ing and hardiness would have led one to expect. In
rich, deep, sandy soil, in the rock garden or border,
these bulbs thrive and multiply. Parkinson enumerated
eight varieties, which he called ‘‘ The Ash-Coloured
Musk Grape Flower, the Red Musk Grape Flower, the
White Musk Grape Flower, The Dark-blue Grape
Flower, the Sky-coloured Grape Flower, the Branched
Grape Flower, the White Grape Flower, and the Blush
Grape Flower.” The varieties which are most worthy
of garden cultivation are M. racemosum, with its fruit-
scented purple flowers and long drooping leaves; M.
40 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
botyroides ; M. armeniacum, which blooms later than most
other kinds; and M. moschatum, with little fragrant
yellow bells. The allied Feather Hyacinth, AZ. comosum
monstrosum, is equally well worth growing for the beauty
of its feathery lilac blooms.
The Snowflakes, or Leucojums, are again becoming
popular and better known. They have not the charac-
teristic grace of the Snowdrop, the stems being sturdier,
the arch being quite different in character, and the petals
being all of the same length; but they have much beauty
of their own and are easy to grow. Most of the Alliums
are interesting, and should be planted where there is
space at disposal, as also should Trite/ia, or Milla, uniflora.
But more important than most of these are the various
Anemones, both the ‘‘ fair and frail” wild species which
is found in our own woods (4. nemorosa) and the numerous
kinds—all beautiful—which have been introduced into
our gardens from Southern Europe. The old Poppy
Anemone (4. coronaria) is a favourite with everyone,
blooming as it often does during all the early months
of the year. It is easy to raise from seed sown in light
soil in the open during March, April or May. The
seedlings should be pricked out in September, and that
is also the month for planting the roots, should that
method of obtaining plants be adopted. In warm soils
A. coronaria lives on from year to year if left undis-
turbed, but in other soils it is sometimes necessary to
raise fresh plants annually. The Scarlet Anemone (4.
fulgens) is the most brilliant flower of early spring, whilst
A. Apennina, A. banda (two species with flowers of the
loveliest sky-blue), 4. sy/vestris (the Snowdrop Wind-
flower), and 4. ranunculoides (a charming yellow-flowering
kind), are all beautiful and hardy plants in most garden
soils.
Anemones are not bulbous plants, but their tubers are
usually listed in the florists’ catalogues with bulbs, and
FRITILLARIES
THE GARDEN IN SPRING 43
in many ways this is a convenient arrangement; but of
all bulbous plants those which have most attracted the
attention of florists and hybridists are undoubtedly the
Tulip and the Daffodil. The Daffodil has won the heart
of the poet as well as of the florist, and English verse is
full of references to the ‘‘ darling Daffodils” (as Marvell
called them) and ‘faire Narcissus.” Keats named these
graceful flowers as an example of those things of beauty
which are joys for ever, and Shelley, whose garden of
the Sensitive Plant contained many beautiful flowers,
referred to the Narcissus as ‘‘ the fairest among them
all.”
Perdita’s description of Daffodils,
« That came before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty,”
is familiar to all who read their Shakespeare. The daf-
fodil is indeed an old-fashioned flower, for dry specimens
of Narcissus Tazetta have been found in Egyptian
mummy cases dating back nearly four thousand years.
Mr Burbidge thinks that many species of Narcissus
were introduced into England by the Phcenicians when
they came to Cornwall for tin, ‘‘and, as Cornwall has
a climate and soil eminently suited to daffodils, these
have been there perpetuated.” Daffodils will grow in
almost any garden soil, but in many gardens, especially
in very rich soils or in soils which are badly drained,
they tend to disappear in the course of one or two
seasons. A little shade from the heat of the sun is
desirable, as also is a little shelter from cold winds.
Stiff loam of moderate richness is suitable for most
varieties of daffodil, and the bulbs should be planted
by the end of August. After being planted they should
in suitable soils be left undisturbed for from two to six
years; and when lifted they should be placed to ripen
in a shady place, and replanted in the course of a month.
The bulbs should be planted from four to six inches
44 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
apart, and from four to six inches deep, according to the
size of the bulb and the lightness of the soil. Where
all the varieties are beautiful it seems hopeless to select.
To a beginner, perhaps, the following list may be of some
help :—Poeticus-ornatus, Obvallaris, Emperor, Leedsii
Minnie-Hulme, Empress, Golden Spur and Grandee; to
which should be added the sweet Campernelle Jonquil.
For naturalising in grass, the poet’s and star narcissi,
as well as some of the trumpet daffodils, are particularly
suited.
In the whole history of the craft, few things have
occurred so calculated to throw ridicule on gardening
and gardeners as the celebrated outbreak of Tulipomania
in the seventeenth century, though at times the con-
temporary Daffodilmania threatens to rival it. The
Tulip was introduced into England towards the end
of the sixteenth century, and but half a century later
Parkinson describes a hundred and forty varieties. Apart
from the various species which the florist has not as yet
seriously taken in hand, the bulk of the tulips commonly
grown in gardens are of two great classes, the short
stalked April-flowering tulips which are descended from
T. cuavolens, and the taller May flowering descendants
of T. Gesneriana which are known as “ Florist’s Tulips.”
These garden varieties are of every shade of colour and
do well in any rich well-drained garden soil. It is
advisable to lift them every year, or in light soils every
three years, as otherwise they tend to become crowded
and poor. The bulbs should be planted in October,
about four inches deep and four inches apart, and, like
all other bulbs, if grown for decorative effect, should
have the earth between them carpeted with some dwarf
surface-rooting plants as elsewhere suggested. Far
better for ordinary garden decoration than any of the
florists’ striped or feathered varieties is the parent of the
race, the brilliant red or crimson Gesner’s tulip. Its
THE GARDEN IN SPRING 45
effectiveness is much increased by the great dark brown
blotch at the bottom of its cup, and this is even more
marked in the variety spathulata. Many of the self-
coloured Darwin tulips are also delightful and vigorous
growers. The early dwarf species, J. Greigi, with its
brilliant red flowers and quaintly marked leaves, is well
worth cultivating either in small groups or bold masses,
as also is the native species, ZT. Sy/vestris, with pale yellow
flowers of great beauty. Among other species and
varieties specially worthy of a place in the garden are
T. Elegans, T. retroflexa, T. australis, the dwarf T.
kolpakowskyana, T. viridiflora, T. clusiana (introduced
early in the seventeenth century), 7. vitellina, and the
kinds known as Golden Eagle, Picotee, and Bouton d’Or.
To modify the observation of a writer of the seventeenth
century, ‘‘ The tulip is a queenly flower, and asketh a
rich soil and the hand of a lover.” And indeed given
these conditions tulips may be easily and successfully
Town.
The bulbs already named are but a few of those
worth growing for effects of beauty in the spring gar-
den, for a complete enumeration would occupy many
times the amount of space at disposal. There is, how-
ever, one other bulbous plant which should be included
in any collection of spring flowers, the Erythronium or
Dog’s Tooth Violet. The beautiful European species,
E. dens-canis, has been grown in England for nearly
three hundred years, and, in light soil and an open sunny
site, produces its rose coloured flowers with freedom.
The more recently introduced American species are
equally worth growing. Spring is the great season for
the flowering of bulbous plants for the very obvious
reason that only plants with an accumulated store of
last season’s solar energy can produce flowers so early
in the year. For like reason it is that the thick-rooted
primroses and other species of primula are such early
46 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
bloomers. The hybrid primroses (mostly descendants
of P. acaulis and P. altaica) often produce their variously
coloured flowers long before the native P. vulgaris
begins to bloom. The primroses rejoice in moderately
rich soil and partial shade. It is well to divide and
replant every two or three years—especially in the case
of the pretty P. rosea. In July it is a good plan to top-
dress them with a fine and well rotted mixture of
manure, leaf mould and loam. Most of the primroses
are easily raised from seed, sown as soon as ripe in
light soil kept shaded and slightly moist. The old
double primroses cannot of course be raised from seed,
and are by no means so vigorous as the single kinds.
They require partial shade, and are somewhat. intolerant
of frequent interference.
Oxlips, Cowslips and Polyanthuses are all beautiful
and easily grown. Among other species of Primula
which are easily grown and worth growing are P.
denticulata, with long stems surmounted by large mauve
flower heads, P. ¢. Cashmeriana, similar to denticulata but
with yellow centres to the flowers, P- cortusoides, with
beautiful rose-coloured flowers, and the many varieties
of the handsome P. japonica, which specially likes moisture
and shade.
Given a well-drained, yet not too dry, situation,
the various Alpine Auriculas are not difficult to
grow, and include varieties with many beautiful
colours.
The charming Hepatica Angulosa and H. tribola, in its
many kinds, are lovers of shade, leaf-mould, moisture
and non-interference. Of the Gentians, the two species
best worth cultivating are the little G. verna and the old
Gentianella (G. acaulis), both bearing flowers of the purest
blue. They are not plants which thrive everywhere,
but they like well-drained soil, an open situation, and
moisture in summer. The Gentian of Pliny was pro-
THE GARDEN IN SPRING 47
bably the medicinal G. /utea, which is not very valuable
for garden decoration.
Candytuft, Violets, Doronicums, Aubrietia, Alyssum,
Adonis vernalis, Double Daisies, Thrifts, Lilies of the
Valley, Wallflowers, Dog’s-tooth Violets, Asphodels,
Trilliums, Dodecathons, Veronica prostrata, Saponaria
ocymoides, Lithospermum prostratum and some of the
species of Trollius are but a few of the very many
beautiful spring flowers which may be grown in the
open borders of English gardens.
To give the names of trees, shrubs and climbing
plants which flower in spring is unnecessary, for every-
one must be well acquainted with the blossoms of Apple,
Pear, Plum and Cherry, of Hawthorn, Wistaria, Guelder
Rose, Syringa, Lilac and Laburnum. There are, how-
ever, a few good shrubs which are not grown nearly as
much as they should be. Those who can afford warm
and sheltered sites should certainly try to grow the
magnificent Magnolias, especially M. conspicua and M.
stellata; and everyone may grow Forsythia suspensa, with
long sprays of yellow flowers in April and May, Spiraea
Thunbergii, the leaves of which turn a crimson in
autumn, as also do the leaves of S. prunifolia, which
is covered with white double - daisy ~like flowers in
spring, and Exechorda grandiflora (The Pearl Bush),
which likes plenty of sun and hates being cramped
or cut.
THE GARDEN IN JUNE
THE flowering of the Columbine is the beginning of
summer. Tulips and Double Narcissi and stray
Anemones may still afford bright colour or sweet
fragrance, but they do not charm us any longer, for
they are of the spring, and the spring is past. What a
beautiful old flower it is—‘‘the Columbine commendable,”
as Skelton called it four hundred years ago! Indeed,
all the old garden writers mention it, its vigour and grace
having always earned it a secure place in the English
garden, where it has been grown for centuries “for the
delight both of its form and colours.” The Columbines
of our ancestors were all varieties of the wild English
species (Aquilegia vulgaris), and so vigorous and hand-
some do some of these plants become under garden
cultivation, that it is questionable if any of the newer
kinds surpass them in beauty. However, the various
species of Aquilegia which have from time to time been
added to our garden flora are to be counted with the
most valuable of plants, among the best of them being
the very curiously coloured red and orange species known
as A. Skinneri, the tall golden A. chrysantha, and, perhaps
most beautiful of all, the Rocky Mountain Columbine,
A. cerulea, with its quaint green “horns of honey.”
This is the month when the Pyrethrums and Paeonies,
of which such splendid varieties have been raised by
Messrs. Kelway and others, are in their glory, as also
are the Snapdragons, Bride Gladioli, Pansies, Ranun-
culuses (of which the old R. asiaticus, though somewhat
tender, may be easily grown in rich light soil if planted
8
COLUMBIN
THE GARDEN IN JUNE 49
in February at a depth of two inches and kept well
watered during the growing period), Madonna Lilies
(which must be planted in good garden soil and left
alone), Lilium elegans, and L. longiflorum, with its
beautiful varieties (which like well-drained spongy
soil containing plenty of leaf-mould).
If asked what was the typical garden flower of June,
I suppose that nearly everyone would name the Rose.
As a matter of fact, however, the great bulk of the
Roses now grown in gardens—that is the members of
the two great classes known to gardeners as Hybrid
Perpetuals and Tea-Roses—are not seen at their best
before July. But it is in June that the Wild Dog Roses
of our English hedgerows are in their glory, as also are
most of the Briars imported from other countries,
together with the old Provence and other ‘*Summer
Roses.” And, with the possible exception of some of
the Teas, it may well be doubted if any roses surpass in
beauty such ‘‘ unimproved” species as the deliciously
fragrant Macartney Rose (R. bracteata), the trailing Rosa
Wichuriana with its pure white cups, or the sweet Eglan-
tine. Speaking of the Eglantine, one is reminded of the
lovely hybrids derived from it, known as the Penzance
Briars, which combine the fragrant foliage of the Sweet-
briar with various beautiful blossoms according to parent-
age. Perhaps the most beautiful of all of them is the
variety known as Lady Penzance—descended from the
Austrian Copper Briar and the Eglantine—which hag
single flowers of the most delicate blend of pink, yellow
and orange. One great advantage which these single-
flowered briars, as well as most of the June-flowering
roses, have over the Hybrid Perpetuals is that they may
be left practically unpruned, and so display the naturally
graceful habit which is as important a part of the beauty
of the Rose as is the flower itself.
Of all the flowers of June, I should myself crown the
50 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
Pink (or Pentecost flower—for such is said to be the
source of its name) for its fragrance, the Spanish Iris
for the beauty of its flowers, and the Rose for its grace.
The Flower-de-luce, or Iris, is of nearly a hundred
species and of many hundred varieties, among which
are some of the most beautiful flowers which can be
grown in the open air of England. Many of the irises,
however, require the expenditure of much knowledge
and skill that they may prosper, but the so-called Spanish
Irises, which are among the most wonderfully formed
and coloured of all, may be grown by anyone who can
grow ordinary hardy plants. They rejoice in sun,
shelter and a light, well-drained soil.
The Iris is well named, for nearly every shade given
by the rainbow is represented in one or other of its kinds,
though there is none of the gaudy glaringness, commonly
—though wrongly — attributed to that phenomenon.
Spenser appreciated the unique quality of the beauty
of the Iris, altough he had not met with many of the
splendid kinds which everyone may now grow.
“ Strow mee the grounde with Daffadown-Dillies,
And Cowslips, and Kingcups, and lovéd Lillies ;
The Pretty Pawnce
And the Chevisaunce
Shall match with the fayre Floure Delice.”
June is a great month for old-fashioned flowers—the
flowers of sentiment, as time and literature have made
them — “ gold-dusted Snapdragon,” ‘Sweet William
with his homely cottage smell,” ‘‘ Woodbine hanging
bonnilie,” ‘‘ Foxglove cluster dappled bells,” Paeony,
Lilac, Laburnum and ‘‘ fresh Hawthorne,” each full
of tender associations, and each very beautiful in
itself.
In June a spirit of indolence begins to come over the
gardener who grows his flowers in the open air. All
through the months of spring, the garden contains—
THE GARDEN IN JUNE 51
or should contain—numerous objects of beauty and
numerous objects of interest, but not until June does
the garden become swamped by a great sea of beauty,
in the presence of which the modest gardener can but
stand aside and gaze with wonder and enjoyment.
HOW TO GROW ROSES
Rosts are lovers of pure air and are therefore difficult
to grow in large cities, though even there beautiful
specimens are occasionally to be seen. They require
the shelter of a high hedge on the north side, and also
dwarfer shrubby screens at a little distance on the
east, south and west in order to break the force of
winds from those quarters. Yet these screens must not
be sufficient to shade the plants, for roses are great
sun lovers.
Like other hardy plants, they rejoice in deep, rich,
well-drained soil containing plenty of humus derived
from the decomposition of stable or farm-yard manure.
Most of the hybrid perpetuals do best in a rather heavy
soil, though sandy loams are often to be preferred for
the culture of Tea roses.
Purchase roses grown on the briar stock or on their
own roots, and insist on the plants having plenty of
fibrous roots.
Order from a reliable florist early in October, request-
ing that the roses may reach you early in November.
The ground having been trenched and manured some
weeks previously, the roses should be carefully planted
immediately on their arrival. For each rose should be
dug a hole about a foot square, and of such a depth that
the planted rose shall have the junction of its stock and
scion about two inches below the surface of the soil. In
this hole the plant should be placed, and its roots (which
may with advantage be dipped into a pail of water just
before being planted) carefully spread out and covered
52
aS
SHSOM ASNIMVOVIN
HOW TO GROW ROSES 55
with a few inches of fine soil. This should be firmly
trodden in and the hole then filled with the ordinary
soil. If the weather be dry, yet not frosty, it is well to
settle the soil above the roots by means of a heavy
watering. If the roses are to form a bed, they may,
if dwarfs, be planted at an average distance of about
eighteen inches apart.
But a bed of roses, beautiful as it is, is but one ex-
pression of the culture of these precious flowers. Over
walls, trellises, arches and arbours they should be allowed
to trail and climb at will, showing the graceful curves
of briar stem, as well as the beautiful flowers themselves.
Many roses, too, can be used to form hedges either
alone, in the case of such varieties as the Ayrshires and
Evergreens, Rosa Brunonii, the Crimson Rambler, the
Scotch Briars and some of the Penzance Sweet Briars,
or with other shrubs in the case of more leggy and
straggling kinds.
In the April of each year, cut out all weak sappy
growths, and, in the case of hybrid perpetuals, cut back
to about eight inches from the surface of the ground
the strong shoots which remain. ‘Teas, if required for
garden decoration, need only be thinned out, any dead
wood being removed at the same time, and similar
treatment is applicable to most of the summer roses.
It is difficult to select a few varieties as specially
worthy of cultivation where so many are excellent.
The old Provence, Gallic and Moss Roses bloom only
in June and July, but are well worth growing for their
fragrance, beauty and associations, as are also such
summer bloomers as that vigorous hybrid China known
as Blairii No. 2, and the very floriferous white Madame
Plantier. The hybrid sweet briars, notably Lady Pen-
zance and Anne of Geierstein, are of the easiest culture,
but a warm sheltered situation is required by the beauti-
ful Austrian copper briar, which is not everyone’s rose.
56 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
Easiest of all roses to grow are the Climbing Ever-
green and Ayrshire varieties, of which Bennett’s Seedling
bears white flowers, most of the other kinds producing
flowers of sundry shades of pink. The Japanese roses
(R. Rugosa) are almost equally vigorous and rampant,
and are specially valuable for their scarlet fruits which
help to brighten the garden in late autumn.
But, after all, it is the so-called perpetual bloomers
on which most gardeners will place the highest value,
and here the choice of good varieties is very great.
There are seven principal classes of perpetual or
autumnal roses, known respectively as Hybrid Per-
petuals, Teas, Hybrid Teas, China Roses, Bourbons,
Noisettes and Hybrid Moss Roses. From these classes,
if I were asked to select eight varieties for a beginner
to ‘“‘learn on,” I should name Madame Berard (Tea),
Marie van Houtte (Tea), Blanche Moreau (Moss),
Celine Forestier (Noisette), Souvenir de la Malmaison
(Bourbon), Ducher (China), Prince Camille de Rohan
(Hybrid Perpetual) and Viscountess Folkestone (Hybrid
Tea).
Rie more names of good roses are these—Among
Hybrid Perpetuals: Fisher Holmes, Ulrich Brunner and
Mrs John Laing; among Hybrid Teas: Mrs W. J.
Grant, Bardou Job, La France and Kaiserin Aug.
Victoria; among eas: Marechal Niel, Hon. Edith
Gifford, Niphetos, Madame Lambard, Belle Lyonnaise,
Madame Hoste, Madame Falcot and Souvenir de S. A.
Prince; and, among Noisettes: William Allen Richard-
son, Aimée Vibert, Madame Alfred Carriére and |’Idéal.
To mention Gloire de Dijon is, of course, superfluous,
though I am inclined to regard its general utility as
somewhat overrated.
THE GARDEN IN JULY
A FLOWER with a history, with a name long honoured,
full of that blue blood which a genealogical tree is
supposed to imply, the Carnation needs no apology or
recommendation. It was among the most admired of
the flowers used by the Greeks and Romans in the
making of chaplets, and hence derived its name of
Coronation by which Spenser and other early writers
knew it. Its generic name, Dianthus, or Flower of
Jupiter, equally points to the high honour in which it
was held by the Latins. It was formerly much used
both medicinally, ‘‘ wonderfully above measure com-
forting the heart,” and for the flavouring of liquors—
whence it obtained its name of Sops-in-wine :—
“ And many a Clove Gilofre,
To put in ale,
Whether it be moist or stale.”
The beautiful form of the flowers of the various species
of Dianthus—Pinks, Carnations and Sweet Williams—
partly accounts for its distinguished position, but the
characteristic fragrance has been even more contributory
to its reputation. The old name of July-flower, gilli-
flower, or gylofre was but a corruption of caryophyllus
—the nut-leaved clove tree—which name it earned by its
delicious spicy scent. Much more regard was paid to
fragrance by the old gardeners and flower-lovers than
seems to be the case to-day, and it is very much to be re-
gretted that many of the most beautiful of the newer
varieties of carnation are nearly scentless, or as nearly
é 37
38 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
scentless as any member of the family can be. In ordinary
good garden soil most of the carnations can beeasily grown.
It is a good plan thoroughly to prepare and enrich the
ground in August, and to raise on it a crop of mustard,
digging in the latter a month later, at which time the
Carnations should be planted. Two varieties which I
would recommend to a beginner are the pure white
clove variety, Gloire de Nancy, and the old Crimson
Clove. It should be borne in mind that carnations do
not thrive in the shade, and that they will not tolerate
the presence of rank manure. They are, however,
among the plants which can be grown in the muggy
atmosphere of cities.
Blue is the only colour which is not to be found
among the carnations, and indeed it is a colour not very
common in the garden flora. Gentians, Forget-me-nots,
Veronicas, Borage, and a few others are the only blue
flowers commonly to be seen, but among these few
others there is one of the stateliest and most beautiful
of the ornaments of the July garden. The Larkspur,
Lark’s-heels, or Delphinium (Dolphin flower) is one of
those few old fashioned flowers which have been really
improved in every way by the selection and hybridising
of the florist. The varieties raised during the past few
years by Messrs Kelway of Langport and others are
more robust and more beautiful than the original species
or than any of the old garden kinds. The sepals are of
every shade of blue and their beauty is enhanced by the
white petals within. The foliage too is very beautiful,
and, the plant being of the same width throughout—
cylindrical rather than conical in form—the leaves, with
the exception of those near the ground, are finely divided
in order to allow light to reach the leaves below. The
Delphinium is elaborately equipped with machinery for
securing effective cross fertilisation by its humble-bee
visitors. The stamens ripen before the pistil, and are
THE GARDEN IN JULY 59
so placed that the bee cannot get at the honey without
covering its head with pollen, which it then bears to
another flower. The stigma is not in evidence until the
stamens have died, when it occupies a similarly ob-
structive position in the road of the pollen-covered bee.
Martagon Lilies, Alstroemerias, Montbretias, English
Irises, Hollyhocks, Lupins, Perennial Peas, Coreopsis,
Scabious, Galega officinalis alba and all the species of
Campanula are among the July bloomers. Pretty as
they are, the old blue and white Canterbury Bells are by
no means so graceful as many of the other Bellflowers.
C. pyramidalis, C. persicifolia and C. glomerata are among the
best of the tall kinds, whilst from the dwarfer species
may be selected C. isophylla, C. carpatica, C. alpina, and
C. turbinata.
In July also the handsome plants of the Thistle family
are at their period of greatest beauty. Echinops ruthenicus,
E. ritro, Eryngium amethystinum, E. Oleverianum, E. gigan-
teum and E. glaciale are among the finest, but those habi-
tants of the kitchen garden—the Cardoon and the Globe
Artichoke—require much excellency in their peers.
July is the month of climax for the gardener who
grows only annual flowers raised afresh each year from
seed. A very fine show he may have, too, during his
somewhat brief season. To the grower of herbaceous
plants who aims, and wisely aims, at having flowers all
the year through, July is but one month out of twelve.
Spring means for him not a season for sowing, so much
as a very flowery season, full of Crocuses and Ane-
mones, of Primroses and of Hepaticas; for him even
winter itself is not flowerless, since he has his Hellebores
and winter Aconites and fragrant Coltsfoot. But with
annual flowers the case is different. It is true that,
by sowing in July or August, one may obtain such
beautiful flowers as those of Erysimum, Nemophila and
Saponaria calabrica in the spring, but the great bulk of
60 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
annual flowering plants are summer bloomers. Many of
them are among the most beautiful, and certainly among
the most showy, of our garden occupants. Sweet-peas,
Convolvuli and Nasturtiums are as beautiful as any per-
ennial climber; and one has but to name Cornflowers,
Mignonette, Coreopsis, Escholtzias and the glorious and
gaudy army of Poppies in order to show what a garden
of annuals may offer in the months of summer.
I know of no floral sight more brilliant than that of a
garden full of poppies in full bloom. Each flower is
bright almost to gaudiness, yet with petals so thin and
flimsy that no insect can rest on them, and each cup is
accordingly furnished with a substantial alighting stage
in its centre. Shirley poppies in every shade of red;
Iceland poppies in every shade of white, yellow and
orange; scarlet Tulip poppies; white Alpine poppies
—one knows not which to prefer. The poets have
generally used the poppy only for its assistance in point-
ing amoral. Thus, for example, Burns—
«« Pleasures are like poppies spread—
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed.”
“Faire without and foule within” has generally
summed up its popular reputation, though Ruskin has
spoken with appreciation of its beauty and delicacy.
All the hardy annuals are easy to grow, their require-
ments being ample sunshine, deeply dug soil, finely
broken up and moderately, though not excessively,
enriched, and ample space for individual development.
Where failure occurs, it may usually be traced to omis-
sion of one or other of these conditions—most commonly,
perhaps, of the one last named. There are few annuals
which will thrive in the shade, though Forget-me-nots,
Venus’s Looking-glass and Nemophilas will succeed in
damp situations if the shade be not too intense.
Personally, although I should not like to grow annuals
SHIRLEY POPPIES
THE GARDEN IN JULY 61
alone, I should regretfully miss my hedge of Sweet-peas,
my Poppies, and the soothingly fragrant, though insig-
nificant, flowers of my Mignonette.
One other annual flower is the prettily and appropri-
ately named Love-in-a-Mist, with the daintiest of blue
flowers enveloped as in a green cloud. If our poets
were wont to look at flowers for themselves instead
of copying one another’s natural history, they might be
referred to this delightful plant. Mr Swinburne, I
think alone among poets, has used it as subject for
one of his roundels. Fortunately, the neglect of poets
has little influence on the beauty of flowers.
NIGHT IN THE GARDEN
Durine the heated days of late summer, few but the
most enthusiastic of gardeners care to loiter in the open
garden until evening. Then, the sun having sunk in
the west, we venture forth from the shade of house or
of trees, and leisurely walk the round of our paths,
refreshingly fanned by the little rippling breeze which
makes the leaves flutter as it rhythmically comes and
passes. The last bees have reached their hives, laden
with the sweet product of their hard Jabour. The
honeyed flowers, which look to their visits and to the
visits of other sun-loving insects for aid in fertilisation,
have, so far as possible, covered their tempting cups to
avoid the damping or loss of the precious pollen within.
Snails and slugs crawl from hidden caves, prepared to
work in darkness the evil which fear of feathered
warders hinders by day. Except for these workers of
ill, these foes of beauty, the garden is apparently going
to sleep. But wait. Wherefore is this increasing frag-
rance streaming from the honeysuckle trellis into the
cooling air—a fragrance surely not without seductive pur-
pose? Straight as the course of a homeward bound bee,
a hawk-moth flies to the expanded blossoms and extracts
the honey from the narrow tubes, too deep for bee or
wasp to sound. Look, too, at this bed which but an
hour ago showed nothing but a green mass of leaves
serrated as those of dandelions. Great white flowers,
three inches or more across, have now appeared and
produce a truly wonderful effect. These are the
flowers of one of the evening primroses (Oenothera
6a
NIGHT IN THE GARDEN 63
taraxicifolia), originally imported from America. Not so
pure a white are the larger blossoms of another evening
primrose (Oc. marginata) which is just beginning to send
forth from the border a fragrance as of magnolias. The
old double white Rocket (Hesperis matronalis), or Damask
Violet, as it was formerly called, smells more strongly
as evening draws in, and its scent now takes on the
character of the scent of Violets. Even more noticeable
is the delicious fragrance which begins to be yielded by
the Night-scented Stock (Hesperis tristis), a fragrance
which will continue until the commencement of the
dawn. In the presence of these happenings, we begin
to realise that the garden is not after all asleep. Indeed,
we see that a part at least of the living beauty of nature
only awakes at the approach of night.
Convention rules over us, and in the most unlikely
places we see those unadaptive, stereotyped results
which mark the realms where she is sovereign. How
otherwise can we account for the fact that, although
evening is the best time for enjoying the flowers of our
gardens during the months of July and August, few
gardeners ever think of devoting any part of their
borders to the cultivation of flowers which bloom at
night? Yet the pleasure to be obtained from them is
very great, and the possible variety is considerable.
Nearly all are fragrant, as otherwise it would be difficult
in the darkness for them to attract the moths which
they mostly desire as pollen bearers.
None of these flowers of night are more remarkable
than Silene nutans, one of our native catchflies (so called
from their viscid stems which prevent ants and creeping
things from reaching and robbing the honey stores),
which may occasionally be seen growing on limestone
rocks. This plant bears many large white flowers
during June and July, each flower living but for three
nights. At about seven o’clock of the first evening,
64 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
the flower quickly opens and emits a strong scent as
of hyacinths. Five of its stamens quickly develop, the
pollen ripens and the anthers burst. At three o’clock
in the morning, or thereabouts, the scent ceases to be
produced, the five anthers wither, and the corolla closes.
During the following day the flower looks as though
dead or dying. At the same hour as on the previous
evening, however, it again opens and again becomes
fragrant. Five more stamens develop and ripen their
pollen, after which the plant again closes as before.
The proceeding is again repeated on the third night,
the pistil, however, now developing instead of the
stamens. The stigma having been fertilised with
pollen brought by moths from another flower, the
corolla closes as before in the early morning, and never
again reopens. Other of the Silenes, such as §. noctiflora,
S. inflata, §. vespertina, and S. longiflora, also bloom at
night and are equally interesting.
Almost a shrub in size, the Marvel of Peru (Mirabilis
jalapa) is one of the handsomest of night blooming plants,
opening its variously coloured ephemeral flowers at
about eight o’clock, and closing them again for good
and all before three o’clock the following morning.
It is a somewhat delicate plant and will only thrive in
warm soils and sunny situations. A plant not often
seen in gardens is the fragrant Sand Verbena (bronia
fragrans), a Californian perennial of fairly vigorous
trailing habit, producing a quantity of beautiful flowers
of purest white which open and yield a vanilla-like
fragrance at night.
Although too delicate to be grown all the year
through in the open air of this country, several of the
Thorn apples or Daturas can easily be grown as half-
hardy annuals, and during July and August are objects
of great beauty. The mauve-tinged white trumpets of
D. Ceratocaula which open and afford sweet fragrance
EVENING PRIMROSES
NIGHT IN THE GARDEN 67
at night are especially handsome, but some of the other
kinds are almost equally worth growing.
In addition to the evening primroses already referred
to, there are several other very attractive species, some
veing delightfully fragrant. They are quite easily
grown in almost any soil, and night-gardeners should
cultivate all of them. Od0cnothera eximia, which likes a
light soil, is one of the best of the white-flowered kinds,
its scent somewhat resembling that of the magnolia.
Oe. speciosa (white to rose), Oe. odorata (yellow), Oe.
fruticosa (yellow), Oe. macrocarpa (yellow), Oe. biennis
grandiflora (yellow), and Oe. triloba (yellow) are but a
few names. Some of the evening primroses remain
more or less open in the daytime, in which case they
are usually visited by bees as well as by their guests of
the night.
The catchflies are a family of night-bloomers, and
their relative, the Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), re-
sembles them in this respect, for its large rosy flowers
open and become fragrant much after the manner of
those of Silene nutans. The common pinks, too, which
are allied plants, yield increased fragrance during the
hours between sunset and sunrise, and are then fre-
quently visited by moths.
The petunias are not often capable of being grown as
hardy perennials in English gardens, but are easily
grown as half-hardy annuals. They lend much beauty
and fragrance to the night-garden, the white P.
nyctanigifiora being especially good. All the scented
pelargoniums are delightful, the night-scented P. triste
and P. atrum being as good as any. The hardy
terrestrial orchids, Habenaria bifolia and H. chlorantha,
which yield their spicy fragrance at night, are easily
grown in the bog garden, or indeed in any damp shady
place if plenty of leaf-mould be mixed with the soil.
Although usually to be seen only under glass, it
68 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
would be impossible to dismiss the subject of night
blooming plants without referring to the ephemeral
blossoms of the night-flowering cactuses, Cereus grandi-
ftora—with its vanilla scented brown and yellow flowers,
often measuring a foot across—and C. nycticalus, known
as the Queen of the Night. The flowers of these
plants open at about nine o’clock and begin to wither
some six hours later.
One might go on adding to the list, but, even from
the few plants here enumerated, it will be seen that
the night gardener has a considerable field in which to
work; whilst to those who share Baudelaire’s love of
scents, the realm of night-blooming flowers should be a
very Paradise.
“«H] est des parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
Et d’autres, corrumpus, riches et triomphants,
Ayant l’expansion des choses infinies,
Comme |’ambre, le muse, le benjoin et l’encens,
Qui chantent les transports de lesprit et des sens.”
THE GARDEN IN AUGUST
AucusT is really but July continued, for no important
new feature is peculiar to it. July is very distinct from
June, as the latter is from May, and that again from
April, but July and August are essentially alike. The
weather is similar, the flowers are similar, and, as a
result, it is probable that the enthusiasm of gardeners
reaches a lower point in August than in any other month
of the year.
Roses and Carnations are still among the most im-
important flowers in the garden, and the majority of
summer blooming annuals and perennial herbaceous
plants are still flowerful.
It is somewhat depressing to observe how the beautiful
race of Fuchsias has gone out of cultivation since it went
out of fashion. Ido not know quite when the Fuchsia
was introduced into this country, but I believe it was
about the middle of the eighteenth century. The Rev.
William Hanbury, ‘‘Rector of Church Langton, in
Leicestershire,” in a two volume work in folio, en-
titled «« A Complete Body of Gardening and Planting,”
published in 1771, of which I possess a copy, says that
in his time only one species of Fuchsia was known.
“« This being the only species of the genus, it is named
simply Fuchsia. Father Plumier calls it Fuchsia triphylla
flore coccineo. It grows naturally in most of the warmest
parts of America.” Hanbury included it among stove
plants, alleging that it is ‘“‘very tender at all times,”
but as a matter of fact F. coccinea can easily be grown
in the open air in most districts of England, though it
69
70 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
thrives best in the milder parts. The scarlet drops
hanging from a tall bush of this plant—and it sometimes
reaches a height of five or six feet, or even more—are
very attractive, and one can but admire the taste of the
humming birds which in its native home the Fuchsia
seeks to attract.
Except near the sea and in certain warm situations,
Fuchsias can hardly be regarded as thoroughly hardy
plants; but, wherever they will succeed, they should
certainly be grown, for they are amongst the most
beautiful ornaments of the garden in late summer and
autumn. Perhaps the hardiest of all is F. Riccartoni,
with bright red flowers, but the old F. giobosa is almost
its equal in vigour.
F, macrostema gracilis is of taller and, as its name
implies, of more slender habit than the other hardy
kinds. It has the further advantage of producing its
pretty scarlet and purple drops somewhat later in the
autumn. A Fuchsia bush rarely looks shabby on account
of dead and dying flowers, for, when their work is done,
the petals usually fall before they have begun to wither,
I am sure that gardeners who study the native flora
of England derive much more pleasure from their
flowers than those who focus all their attention on
the cultivated species and hybrids which are grown in
gardens. The hedges and woodlands are full of ex-
amples and full of suggestions, for they show us the
habit and manner of life of the English relatives of our
exotic plants. By studying the wild species with their
wonderful grace and simple beauty, indicative of adapta-
tion of means to ends, we are less liable to become the
slaves of the florists.
The hedges, or rather the wayside patches at the
hedgerow’s base, are very beautiful just at this season,
with the yellow flowers of two of the Cinquefoils, the
silky fern-like-leaved Potentilla Anserina (Silver weed)
THE GARDEN IN AUGUST 71
and the creeping P. reptans. The Cinquefoil much
resembles the Strawberry, producing its honey by means
of a dark-coloured ridge which runs round the tube of
the flower near its base. Its stamens and pistil how-
ever develop coincidently, whereas the stigmas of the
Strawberry ripen long before the stamens, and con-
sequently self-fertilisation is far more common than is
the case with the latter.
It must have been the quinately leaved P. reptans
which was formerly in favor as a heraldic device.
Folkard says that the number of the leaves answered
to the five senses of man. The right to bear Cinquefoil
was considered an honourable distinction to him who
had worthily conquered his affections and mastered his
senses.
Many species of Potentilla are valuable garden plants,
from the little Alpine P. nitida, whose leaves shine more
brilliantly than our Silver weed, to the showy P. atro-
sanguinea, and the hybrid varieties derived from it,
which are the kinds usually seen in gardens. Among
these hybrids are a number of single and double sorts,
nearly all of which possess good colour—mostly ranging
from yellow to scarlet.
Two other races of garden hybrids are of extreme
importance in late summer, the Pentstemons and Phloxes,
the latter being among the most valuable of border
plants. In selecting varieties of either of these flowers
one should be careful to avoid the very washy and hate-
ful magentas and purples which are but too frequently
seen. The Pentstemons are worthy of greatly increased
culture, for they often continue to flower until the
frosts of November.
The great race of hybrid Gladioli derived from G.
brenchleyensis and G. gandavensis are now fashionable, as
they deserve. The scarlet G. brenchleyensis is itself very
hardy and should be grown in quantity.
72 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
The hybrids require some care and should be planted
in March at a depth of three inches and a distance of
nine inches apart in deeply dug, rich, well-drained soil,
free from fresh manure. About the second week in
September, before the foliage has died down, the corms
should be lifted and thoroughly dried off in a freely
ventilated shed.
But most brilliant of all the flowers of August are
the scarlet Lobelias, L. cardinalis (described by Parkin-
son), and L. splendens with their varieties. They are
not very hardy, but with a little protection during
winter can be grown in most well-drained gardens.
Moisture during summer is essential, so that a slightly
shaded position should be selected.
THE GARDEN IN AUTUMN
Ir is the deciduous trees and shrubs which announce the
arrival of autumn. Green leaves take on a colouring of
yellow, brown, or red more pronounced than the yellows
and reds of spring. As the wind blows, a few of the
ripest leaves fall, and one becomes conscious of a feeling
of evening, of the end of a play, or of the end of a
beautiful poem. If it were but by these autumnal
colourings, and by the feelings which the fall of the
leaf produces, one would be well repaid for the planting
and cultivating of trees and shrubs.
Because the active life of these larger plants is over
for a season, however, one need not imagine that the
well managed garden is suddenly to become flowerless.
Roses and Pentstemons, Potentillas and Phloxes, Sweet-
Peas and Nasturtiums, and a host of other summer
bloomers still remain and often continue to bear flowers
till hard frost pulls down the curtain. But it is not on
summer flowers that we need rely, for there are numer-
ous beautiful hardy flowers peculiar to autumn itself.
Dahlias, Rudbeckias, Sunflowers, Tritomas, Michael-
mas Daisies, Japanese Anemones, Fuchsias and Chrys-
anthemums are those which immediately rise in the
memory.
The common Torch Lily, or Red-hot-Poker, is almost
the hardiest of the Tritomas—or Kniphofias, as they are
now called—and in a moderately light soil will live year
after year with little or no attention. Often, in neglected
cottage gardens at about the end of August, a group of
these Flame flowers, burning red and glowing yellow,
3
74 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
arrest the attention and cheer the landscape. The variety
known as grandis is even more effective, often reaching
a height of nine feet or even more.
The dark crimson Kniphofia Burchelli is valuable on
account of its long blooming period, as also is the orange
and scarlet K. Saundersii, but all the kinds are good,
though not all are distinct. Considering that it was
introduced from the Cape nearly two hundred years
ago, it is somewhat curious that the Kniphofia is still
comparatively a rare flower.
Although it was mentioned by Hernandez in his
History of Mexico, as long ago as 1651, the Dahlia
was not introduced into this country until 1789, when
Lady Bute brought a plant from Madrid. It is scarcely
hardy in heavy soil or in the northern half of England,
and it will generally be necessary to lift the roots in
late autumn, and, having ripened them in a shed, to
store them for the winter in a cool dry place, where
the temperature will not fall below freezing point. In
the spring, the separate tubers may be planted in deep
rich soil; or the roots may in February be placed in a
hot bed, and as the young shoots which form are about
three and a half inches long, they may be separated
together with a small piece of the tuber, and potted in
small pots which should be placed in the hot-bed until
the young plants are ready to be planted out. The old
double kinds are much inferior to the single and cactus
varieties. Dahlias compass a very wide range of colour,
and there are so many good sorts that each grower may
well be left to select for himself. In choosing Cactus
Dahlias, it is wise to select kinds in which the flowers
stand out well beyond the foliage.
The vigorous Sneezeweeds or Heleniums are among
the easiest of all plants to grow, and will exist on almost
any soil. Like other hardy plants, however, they pay
for deep cultivation and manure. They bear yellow
WHITE WOOD LILIES
THE GARDEN IN AUTUMN Tg
composite flowers, and grow to a height of five or six
feet. H. autumnale is the most generally valuable.
The Cone-flowers, or Rudbeckias, are also handsome
American plants, the best being R. speciosus, which bears
orange flowers with dark yellow centres, and is a very
fine bloomer.
But even more useful and important than Heleniums
and Rudbeckias are the various perennial sunflowers,
of which. Helianthus multiflorus and H. rigidus, with
their varieties, are perhaps the best worth cultivating.
All these North American composites are such very
vigorous growers that they should not be placed in close
proximity to small or delicate plants, and it is advisable
—except in quite wild places—to take them up every
two years and divide the roots.
The Michaelmas Daisies, or tall-growing Asters, are
steadily growing in favour coincidently with the growth
of the popular taste. Deep cultivation, moderately rich
soil, and division every two or three years, are the
conditions of their successful culture. Aster ericoides,
A. amellus bessarabicus, A. acris, A. Shortii and A. vim-
ineus are a few good kinds.
Both the white and the rose-coloured varieties of
Anemone Japonica should be grown, and are of the
easiest culture. They may be rapidly increased by
division, and should be allowed to develop into bold
clumps. Megasea cordifolia and the Pampas Grass are
among the autumnal bloomers, as also are the Crocus-
like Colchicums, the even more delicately coloured
autumn Crocuses, Sedum spectabile, Sternbergia lutea,
the late-flowering Gladioli, and the beautiful Amaryllis
Belladonna.
Quite unlike all other autumn flowers—indeed unlike
all other flowers—the Japanese Chrysanthemum gives
us the latest display of brilliant colouring of the garden
year. For border decoration, they may be treated much
E
78 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
as other herbaceous plants and divided in the spring.
Owing to the season at which they flower and the
frequent occurrence of violent storms at that period, it
is desirable to grow Chrysanthemums against a wall or
hedge. The varieties are infinite in number, so that
when ordering plants for out-door use it is advisable to
instruct the florist as to the purpose to which you intend
to devote them. A few very hardy kinds are Madame
C. Desgrange, Lady Fitzwigram, Roi des Précoses, and
Ryecroft Glory.
The autumn tints assumed by the leaves of many
deciduous trees and shrubs are very interesting and
beautiful. Of such, the following short list may be of
a little help :—
Acer colchicum rubrum. Cornus (of sorts).
Acer platanoides lacini- Liriodendron.
atum. Parrotia persica.
Acer Schwedleri. Rhus (of sorts).
Azalea pontica. Rubus (of sorts).
Amelanchier canadensis. Spiraea Thunbergii.
Berberis Thunbergii. Silver Birch.
In one of his most suggestive essays, John Burroughs
pointed out that in autumn the battles of the spring are
fought over again. But, whereas in the spring it is the
summer warmth which eventually, in spite of many
mishaps and reverses, wins the victory, in the autumnal
ebb it is the cold which finally gains the day. This
constant strife between succeeding seasons at the points
of meeting lies at the root of the peculiar charm of the
English climate and of the English flora.
Tue following lists are borrowed from my Chronicle of
a Cornish Garden :-—
A FEW GOOD TALLEST BORDER PLANTS.
Hollyhocks.
Delphiniums.
Pzonies.
Aconitum napellus.
Aconitum autumnale.
Rudbeckia maxima.
Rudbeckia laciniata.
Digitalis.
Tritomas.
Campanula macrantha.
Campanula pyramidalis.
Galega officinalis alba.
Phlox (in variety).
Spirga aruncus.
Doronicum plantagineum Helianthus (in variety).
excelsum.
A FEW GOOD TALL BORDER PLANTS.
Anemone japonica alba.
Aquilegias (in variety).
Papaver orientale.
Iris germanica.
Lilium candidum.
Achillea ptarmica fl. pl.
Dicentra spectabilis.
Scabiosa caucasica.
Campanula persicifolia.
Campanula latifolia alba.
Campanula Van Houttei.
Campanula turbinata.
Primula japonica.
Coreopsis.
Carnations.
Helleborus niger.
Helleborus orientale.
Adonis vernalis.
Alstroemeria.
Erigeron speciosus.
Montbretias.
Gladioli.
Pentstemons.
Lobelia cardinalis.
Asters.
Chrysanthemums.
Geum chiloense.
Marguerites.
79
80 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
A FEW GOOD DWARF BORDER-PLANTS.
Veronica prostrata.
Veronica saxatilis.
Veronica rupestris.
Silene Schafta.
Silene acaulis.
Silene alpestris.
Campanula isophylla.
Campanula pulla.
Campanula turbinata.
Anemone apennina.
Anemone blanda.
Anemone coronaria.
Anemone fulgens.
Anemone nemorosa.
Dianthus alpina.
Dianthus deltoides.
Dianthus plumarius.
Gentiana acaulis.
Gentiana verna.
Iberis coriaefolia.
Iberis sempervirens.
Phlox amoena.
Phlox subulata.
Auricula (alpine varieties).
Cyclamen (various).
Viola pedata.
Campanula carpatica.
Campanula pumila.
Campanula pelviformis.
Hepatica (various).
Aubrietia (various).
Primula rosea.
Primula vulgaris.
Primula Sieboldi.
Primula nivalis.
Viola (various, violas and
pansies).
Papaver nudicaule.
Cistus (various).
Helianthenum (various).
Alyssum 2
Fritillaria ag
Crocus
Galanthus
Narcissus
Tulipa -
Scilla
Tris
Leucojum
Chionodoxa 3h
Eranthis hyemalis.
SHELTER AND SHADE
THERE are many ways of growing hardy flowering
plants, and of growing them to advantage, but all these
different methods have certain fundamental conditions in
common. Of these conditions the most important are
the possession of a suitable site and the provision of
suitable soil. Children are raised in slums and hovels,
and even in besieged and famine-stricken towns; and, in
like manner, there is no site so bad, no aspect so dull,
no air so vile, no soil so poor and shallow but plants
may be found which will there exist. But in order that
we may grow any considerable variety of beautiful
flowers we must screen our garden from bitter winds,
and so prepare our soil that it shall be adapted for
vigorous plant growth. Wind-resisting screens may
consist either of walls or of suitable trees and shrubs.
Which of these forms of protection should be selected
depends on circumstances which vary with different
gardens. In any event, it will be generally agreed that
a garden should be so enclosed (Hortus—an enclosed
space) as to afford not only shelter to plants from the
more strenuous forces of Nature, but also that privacy
from the vulgar gaze which we call seclusion. If the
garden is to be enclosed by walls, let these be of a
fair height—not less than ten feet; and let them be
clothed with a variety of the lovely climbing plants
now at the disposal of the gardener. There is con-
siderable room for choice both among deciduous and
evergreen climbers. Among the best of the former
81
82 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
section are the self-clinging Ampelopsis Veitchii, the
blue and the white Passion-flowers, numerous varieties
of Clematis, the winter-blooming Jasminum nudiflorum,
Wistaria, Honeysuckles, Bignonia radicans, and many
of the Roses and Vines; whilst against walls facing
north we may grow Tropzolum speciosum, Clematis
flammula, the Evergreen and Boursault Roses and the
Virginian Creeper. The Evergreens mostly prosper
with any aspect. Among the best are the various Ivies
and Cotoneasters and Crataegus pyracantha.
The trees and shrubs which may be used are
numerous; but for dense hedges perhaps the most
useful are Holly, White Thorn, Privet, Barberry, Laurel,
Box and Yew. Where possible, the straight line of a
long clipped hedge may be broken by groups of shrubs
planted within, unless a formal garden effect be desired.
It is well to distinguish between the use of shrubs or
trees as bounding fences or screens and their use as
beautiful individual plants; and, when a dense screen
is required, to obtain it by means of suitable trees and
a properly made and properly shorn hedge rather than
by a thickly-planted and therefore overcrowded “ shrub-
bery.” Whether it be trees or shrubs or climbing
plants that we propose to plant, the ground should be
deeply trenched and well manured, so that annual
meddling about the roots may not be required. Whilst
a certain proportion of evergreen shrubs, such as the
beautiful hollies and barberries, should be used, it is
nudesirable to make too free a use of non-deciduous
plants. The ordinary overcrowded laurel and privet
shrubbery is hideous and depressing.
Trees and shrubs, however, are useful not only for
the shelter and seclusion which they yield, but also
for their delightful summer shade. In one of his essays,
Emerson quotes an Arabian poet’s description of his
hero :—
NAUVOO NMOL G10 NY
SHELTER AND SHADE 83
« Sunshine was he
In the winter day ;
And in the midsummer
Coolness and shade.”
That is a beautiful description of a perfect friend, but it
might serve equally as a description of a perfect garden.
The flowers of July are infinite in their number and
exquisite in their beauty, yet, if they are grown in a
large, tidy, treeless, shrubless garden, they will yield
but little pleasure. A garden is not a place merely for
the exhibition of floral wonders, but a place wherein to
rest, to talk, to read or to dream. With the blazing
sun of July beating on one’s unshaded head, dreaming,
resting, and reading are equally uncomfortable and
unprofitable.
A shade-giving tree is worth all the flowers of
midsummer, though fortunately one is not called upon
to sacrifice either. Trees and shrubs yield welcome
shade, but, quite apart from this, they help to throw up,
and provide suitable backgrounds for, the dwarfer plants
which make up the majority of our garden contents.
We have been too fond of cutting down trees, and many
a suburb has reason to regret the revision of the old
forest law of King William: ‘Gif the forestier or
wiridier finds anie man without the principall wode, but
sit within the pale, heueand dune ane aik tree, he sould
attack him.”
According to our soil and site, must we select the
shrubs and trees which will be happiest under the con-
ditions we can offer them. When we have ample space,
no trees can surpass in beauty our native deciduous trees,
such as the oak and hornbeam; but it is from the smaller
trees and larger shrubs that owners of more moderately-
sized gardens must chiefly look for shade and back-
grounds. Japan has given us many things of infinite
value, but few more precious than the white-flowering
84 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
species of Styrax. The dense, bright foliage, the
sweetly-scented, snow-white bells, and the general habit
of the tree render Styrax obassia one of the most valuable
constituents of a garden. Japan, too, has given us a
number of Maples which afford a feast of colour unrivalled
by any other group of trees in the world. They are
worth trying in any mild or protected situation, though
they should be planted on a small, experimental scale at
first as they do not thrive everywhere. They seem to
like partial shade and a north aspect. Those who have
mild and weather-favoured situations may glory in the
fragrant and—when well grown—handsome Magnolias,
though with these again success is not to be fore-counted
acertainty. But few are so badly placed but they may
grow the Lilacs, Laburnums, Hawthorns, Guelder Roses,
Spireas, Dogwoods, Weeping Birches, Weeping
Willows, and Flowering Currants. As decorative as
most, however, and more useful than any, of the shrubs
and trees worth growing in a garden, are the apples and
pears, medlars and quinces, plums and cherries whose
flowers and fruits have always impressed the traveller as
a beautiful feature of English landscape.
Beneath the shade of deciduous trees there are many
plants which will live healthy and flowery lives. In the
spring we have for such situations the great array of
bulbs, together with many of the Primroses, Sweet Wood-
ruff, Hepaticas, Hellebores, Fair maids of France, Doroni-
cums, and other early bloomers; and, even when the
trees are in full leaf, we may enjoy, if the soil be but
properly prepared, such pleasant flowers as those of the
Martagon Lily and Lilium speciosum, Campanulas, both
dwarf and tall, Foxgloves, Knotweeds, and Columbines;
whilst ferns of many kinds, together with several of the
Saxifrages and Megaseas, and such plants as Acanthus
mollis and the herbaceous Geranium, all help to produce
the pleasant effect which is yielded by the draping of the
SHELTER AND SHADE 85
floor of coppice or of forest. When the shade is so
dense and the soil so poor that even these plants will not
thrive, we may fall back on Ivy, Creeping Jenny, and
Periwinkle; though, where the soil is enriched with old
leafmould and manure and properly dug, no shade of
trees is too dense for many of the ferns, both deciduous
and evergreen.
SOILS AND THEIR PREPARATION
Many people imagine that in some mysterious fashion
plants eat soil much as we eat beef-steak; and that, all
soil being just ‘* soil,” one has but to make a hole in the
ground and thrust the roots of a plant into it, in order
to make the desert bloom as the rose. This idea is in-
correct, just as was the idea of a Devonshire farmer
whom I once saw feeding his month-old baby with
cheese and cider. ‘‘ Feed un on milk?” said he. “I'd
zooner gee ’un zope-zuds. Let ’un ’ave summat wi’
zum strength in’t.”
Soil is to plants not a source of food alone, but is a
suit of clothes, a blanket and coverlet, a cooking-range
and a drawing-room fire. It is a pied-d-terre in its most
literal sense, and it is a cellar and tankard combined.
To all the great and beautiful world of flowers, the soil
is indeed mother earth, giving them warmth and nourish-
ment in their infancy, affording them a root-hold
throughout their life, and offering them sanctuary for
their bodies when their earthly life is done.
He who would grow beautiful flowers must therefore
first study the soil from which he would raise them.
He must get to know it, to learn its wants, and learn also
how he may best satisfy them. In time, if he be indeed a
lover of flowers, he will grow also to love the earth and
to understand it. He will become one of those true
and happy gardeners so beloved of the gods that every
flower they lovingly plant is made to flourish and
multiply.
86
SOILS AND THEIR PREPARATION 87
First, then, let us think of what this soil is made, and
of how it came into being. Look at the surface of any old
stone-built church or house and you will see how every
stone is partly covered by moss or lichen or other lowly
plant. These plants are growing in soil—formed by the
slow action of rain and air on the surface of the walls.
Similarly, in the gradual pulverisation and decomposition
of rocks, has all soil taken its origin. Similarly also, as
a rule, have lowly plants been its first offspring, the
bodies of which have been afterwards incorporated with
their mother soil. By the further action of the weather,
coupled with the action of the accompaniments of the
decomposition of these early plants, the soil becomes
deeper, and becomes also furnished with dead vegetable
matter, or humus, without which none of the higher
and more developed plants are able to live.
According to the nature of the original rock, and
according also to the sort of natural ‘‘ weathering”
or ‘‘ watering ” to which it has been subjected, so will
the resultant soil be mainly sand or mainly clay, or an
equal mixture of the two. Mixed with these will
usually be found a certain amount of little stones or
gravel, and a certain amount of dark coloured humus.
In a soil which is nearly all sand, or in one which is
nearly all clay, few flowers will thrive, but in what is
called a loamy soil—that is, one in which clay and sand
are nearly equal—nearly all plants will grow and prosper
if other conditions be favourable. The presence of
humus in the soil is important in many ways, for not
only does it contain much that is essential food for plant
growth, but also it assists the earth in retaining that
moisture without which life is impossible. By its
chemical activity, also, it produces useful heat and
liberates stores of food from the mineral soil itself.
Therefore it is that we add dead leaves, farmyard
manure, sea-weed and the like to our garden soil.
88 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
But, though moisture is essential to the health of plants,
the presence of stagnant water is little less fatal than
drought. If we find that a hole dug in our gardens to
the depth of two feet soon contains water not obtained
from above, we may usually assume that drainage is
required.
If our soil be too light (ze. sandy) we may improve it
by the addition of dried and powdered clay, meal and
organic manure, from cowshed or stable; if it be too
heavy (ze. containing an excess of clay) we may make it
more suitable for our garden use by mixing with it
sand, ashes, lime, gritty road-scrapings, or old
mortar.
We all know how very much hotter in summer and
colder in winter is a starched linen shirt than is one
made of flannel or of some cellular open-woven fabric.
This is of course due to the fact that the former is the
better conductor of heat. In like manner, a loose,
cellular, ‘‘ open-woven,” porous soil is a much worse
conductor of heat than the caked and baked soil which
we often see in ill-kept gardens.
The roots of plants like coolness in summer, but in
winter they desire all the warmth that they can obtain.
Hence the desirability of always maintaining the surface
of the ground to the depth of an inch or two in a loose
open condition by means of the hoe. This is of value
also in checking evaporation, for, by keeping the surface
inch of soil loose and fine, the capillary connection
between the air and the deeper layers of soil is broken.
Surface mulchings of litter, moss, leaves or manure
act in the same way as does the simpler mulch of hoed
soil. Of course the process of top-dressing with leaves
or farm-manure, in order to add to the soil the food
elements which they contain, is quite a different matter,
and cannot be replaced.
Very few gardeners can be said to make anything
FOXGLOVES
SOILS AND THEIR PREPARATION 91
approaching adequate use of the soil which they cultivate.
The majority of amateur gardeners, and not a few pro-
fessional ones, never get their spade more than a foot
or, at the outside, more than eighteen inches below the
surface. Asa matter of fact, all garden soil should be
dug to a minimum depth of two feet, or preferably to
a depth of three feet when possible. In preparing a
E G M K ' B
D
“Fo oH 4 ov ec
piece of ground for planting, it should, therefore, be
trenched as deeply as possible, preferably to a depth
of three feet.
This operation may be performed as follows :—
Let 4 BC D represent the piece of ground to be
trenched. Measureoff 4 E,EG,GM, DF,F H,andN H,
each the distance of one foot. Stretcha line from Eto F
and notch the surface with a spade along this line. Pro-
ceed in the same way from G to H. Next dig the piece
92 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
4 E F D toa depth of one foot, wheeling this surface
soil to form a heap at B. Also dig to the same depth
the piece & G H F and add this soil to the heap at B.
Next remove the subsoil from the piece 4 # FD to the
depth of another foot, and wheel it toC. The deeper
subsoil in the piece 4 £ F D should then be dug toa
depth of another foot and left in its old position. The
subsoil from & G H Fto the depth of a foot should
now be placed with the spade on 4 & FD, and the deep
subsoil below it dug and left in situ. A layer of farm-
yard manure may next be placed on the 4 E F D, and
on this should be placed the top foot of soil from
GMNH. The subsoil from G MN G should next
be placed on E G H F, on this being placed a
layer of manure covered in turn by fresh top soil.
In this way the work should be proceeded with until
the last two feet of the patch are reached. The sub-
soil from I B C J is to be placed on the deep subsoil
of K I J L, and on this a layer of manure covered
by one half of the surface soil in the heap at B.
The heap of subsoil at C and the remainder of
the surface soil at B are to be placed in the space
IBCL.
This proceeding may strike the novice much as a
problem of Euclid strikes the mentally lazy, but the
importance of deep cultivation is so great that everyone
who would be a successful gardener should thoroughly
understand its practice. By the method of trenching
above described, the three layers of earth called here
soil, subsoil and deep subsoil are maintained in their
respective orders of depth, for nothing is more fatal
than to bury the “living earth” of the surface below
the reach of the roots of our plants, bringing to
the surface in its place the barren subsoil devoid
of humus and devoid of those living bacteria so
essential to the fertility of the soil, By proper and
SOILS AND THEIR PREPARATION 93
continuous cultivation, the actual living soil attains
an ever increasing thickness, so that in time the
top two feet may be correctly described as surface
soil and become freely interchangeable throughout its
thickness.
MANURES
Tue idyll of manures has been written by the Dean of
Rochester, who has placed on eternal record his devotion
to Sterculus, the son of Faunus, whom he imaged as
riding proudly, pitch-fork (‘agricultural trident”) in
hand, in his family chariot, the currus Stercorosus (Anglice,
muck-cart). As I can confess to no such love, I will
merely state the few facts which all plant-growers must
bear in memory.
The great and safe manure for hardy flower culture
is that of the stable or farm-yard, which is so valuable,
not only for the actual food elements which itself con-
tains, but also for the mass of straw and other organic
material which by its fermentation sets up chemical
activity in the soil, and so liberates a small continuous
supply of the plant-foods therein contained. This latter
property is what gives much of its manurial value to
the mixed “rubbish” of the ash-pit—containing as it
generally does such waste organic matter as cabbage
leaves, potato-peelings, and ‘‘ bits” of all kinds. Buried
weeds, leaves and ‘‘ garden refuse” act in a precisely
similar way. These organic manures are, moreover, of
the greatest service in keeping the soil open, porous and
friable, in retaining water and so retaining also mineral
plant-foods dissolved therein, and in adding to the
warmth of the soil both by engendering heat in the
process of fermentation and by mechanically rendering
the soil a worse conductor.
In the preliminary preparation of borders or beds,
provided the soil be well dug to a depth of two or
94
MANURES 9§
three feet, a really heavy dressing of farm-yard manure
should be well incorporated—say about a ton to every
two hundred square yards. The manure should not
be buried, but should be intimately mixed with the
whole depth of soil. A light sandy soil will take a
heavier, and a heavy soil a lighter dressing than the
average one suggested. The beds should be manured
and otherwise prepared sometime before the planting
is to take place, as many plants and especially many
bulbous plants cannot stand the proximity of fresh and
rank manure.
When the ground is thus properly prepared at the
start, little more actual cultivation is needed in the case of
most hardy herbaceus plants beyond annual top dressing
with manure, occasional loosening of the surface soil
where not covered by dwarf plants, weeding, and
occasional thinning or division of big clumps. When-
ever a plant is taken up, the opportunity should be
seized to add a fork-load of rotten manure to the spot
vacated. Top dressings should as far as possible be
placed round plants in early spring, just before new
growth starts, as the manure is then soon covered and
concealed by foliage.
Bone meal, finely-broken bones, small quantities of
guano, and even carefully-applied nitrate of soda (half-
an-ounce to the square yard) have their respective values,
but the novice will be wise in placing reliance on farm-
yard manure for the bulk of his plants.
SEED-SOWING AND TRANSPLANTING
THE gardening beginner will be well advised to obtain
the greater number of his perennials as plants; but
there are some which are easily grown from seeds,
and seed-sowing is the method by which all the hardy
annuals and biennials are to be raised. In the case of
annual and biennial plants, such as sweet-peas, mignon-
ette, nasturtiums, convolvuluses, nigellas, and the rest,
the seed may well be sown in the open borders or beds,
if the soil be but well dug and finely divided. It is advis-
able, however, to mix a little sand and leafmould with
the soil, and to give the seed-bed a good watering on
the night previous to sowing the seeds, if the soil be
otherwise dry. At the same time it is necessary to
avoid sowing when the ground is sticky after or during
heavy rain. The seed having been sown in finely-
pulverised soil which is neither too wet nor too dry,
it is a good practice to press the seed-bed, either by the
use of a roller, or by patting it with the flat of a spade.
This tends to promote the flow of a continuous supply
of moisture from the deeper parts to the surface of the
soil by means of capillary attraction. As, however,
this proceeding also promotes a continuous loss of soil-
moisture by evaporation, the surface should be loosened
by hoe or rake as soon as the young plants appear-——
indeed, in the case of the more deeply-buried seeds,
such as sweet-peas, the surface should be slightly dis-
turbed as soon as the sowing and pressing have been
performed. In dry weather, evaporation from the seed-
bed may be checked by shading it with a screen placed
about two feet above the surface.
96
SEED-SOWING AND TRANSPLANTING 97
As to the depth at which seed should be sown, much
depends on the variety, as also on the nature of the soil
and the season of the year; but it may be taken as a
general rule that small seeds should be covered by a
depth of soil about equal to their thickness, whilst
seeds such as sweet peas should be sown two inches
deep. The soil must not be allowed to become quite
dry, but great care is to be taken in watering, which
should be done, when necessary, with a watering-pot
provided with a very fine rose. Those perennials, such
as the columbines, campanulas, poppies, and primroses,
which are easily to be raised from seed, may be sown
in open beds, but, as they are somewhat slower in
germinating, it will usually be found more satisfactory
to sow them in shallow earthenware pans containing a
mixture of loam, sand and leaf-mould. The soil in the
pans can best be kept moist by occasionally dipping the
seed-pan in a vessel of water, being very careful not to
lower it so that the surface of the soil is below the
surface of the water. A sheet of glass may be placed
as a cover to the seed-pan until germination takes place ;
but, in order to check evaporation from the surface, care
should be taken not to ‘‘ damp off” the young seedlings
through excessive moisture and insufficient air.
There is one great rule to be borne in mind in sowing
all kinds of seed, and that rule, printed in largest type,
should be placed wherever gardeners are to be found :—
SOW THINLY. Do not rely too much on subsequent
thinning out, but allow space for development from the
first, for at no stage of its career should a young plant
be pressed upon by its neighbour. A knowledge of the
size and habit of the mature plant is therefore necessary
in order to estimate the requisite space between the seeds.
It must, however, be remembered that a certain propor-
tion of seeds will fail to germinate, and that a certain
proportion of seedlings will fall victims to disease and
98 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
snails. In the case of plants which are intended to be
transplanted from the seed-bed or seed-pan, it is of
course the size of the seedlings at the transplanting
stage which has to be borne in mind in judging of the
correct distance between the seeds. But it is a point
which cannot be too often drubbed into young gardeners
—and old ones too for that matter—that one well-
grown plant is better than twenty badly grown ones.
Also it should ever be remembered that a plant starved
in infancy suffers for it throughout its career.
Seeds of hardy plants may be sown at almost any
time during spring, summer, or autumn, provided that
due attention be given in the matter of watering, pre-
paration of the soil and the like. Most of the biennials
and perennials may with advantage be sown in June and
transplanted to their flowering quarters in September.
Annuals intended to bloom in the summer or autumn
should be sown in March, April and May; whilst those
intended to flower in the following year should be sown
in August and September.
Most plants may be transplanted at any season of the
year if the operation be properly performed. A dull
day or an evening should be selected, and a ball of
earth should if possible be removed attached to the
roots. The ground into which the plant is to be re-
moved, should be well and deeply dug, and a deep and
capacious hole be made with a trowel or dibbler. Into
this the plant is to be carefully placed, its roots being
well spread out and well settled by means of water.
For a day or two after being moved, it should be shaded
from the hot sun, and for the first few evenings should
be liberally watered.
A POPPY BORDER
LAYERS AND CUTTINGS
Tue division of the rootstock is a method of propaga-
tion applicable to the majority of perennial plants. In
the case of most corms and bulbs, it is necessary, in
order to increase the supply, to separate the young
bulbels or cormels and to plant them out in a nursery
bed until they develope toa useful flowering size, But
in the division of the rootstocks of herbaceous plants a
certain amount of violence is usually required, and a
strong knife, a cold chisel and a mallet will be found
useful tools. Each plant, if it is to develop into a new
plant, must include at least one eye or bud and must
usually also be provided with a supply of rootlets.
Many plants may be propagated by the process known
as layering, which essentially consists in pegging down
a shoot to the ground by means of a little crotchet stick,
having notched with a sharp knife half way through a
joint at the point where the shoot touches the soil, and
covering the pegged down part of the shoot with a few
inches of good gritty loam. In a littl: while, roots will
form at the point of section and the shoot can be
separated from its parent as an independent plant. The
Carnation is usually propagated in this way, the layering
being performed in July and the young plants being
separated a few months later. Roses may be pegged
down and layered in a somewhat similar way, but in
their case it is the middle of a branch and not its base
which is cut and pegged beneath the soil.
Another method by which many plants can be in-
creased is that of cuttage. This is the method usually
103
102 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
employed by growers of chrysanthemums, pansies, and
certain other plants. To effect this, a cut should be made
in a slanting direction through the stem to be severed,
just below a joint. As a rule cuttings of herbaceous
plants should be made in the spring. Some cuttings
will root readily in light soil in the open air if a shady
position be selected, but usually it will be found to be
desirable to plant the cuttings in pots of sandy loam and
to place in a hot bed, shading from the sun until they
are rooted.
WEEDS
“Ler the painfull Gardiner expresse never so much
care and diligent endeavour; yet among the very fairest,
sweetest, and freshest Flowers, as also Plants of most
precious Vertue; ill savouring and stinking Weeds, fit
for no use but the fire or mucke-hill, will spring and
sprout up.” So wrote Boccaccio nearly six hundred
years ago, and the truth of his observation has not lost
its savour in spite of the centuries—though I, for one,
should be sorry to apply to any plant of my acquaintance
the adjectives of abuse which Boccaccio so naturally
uses.
Of course one tries, and must ever try, to keep the
garden free from weeds, but it is a matter for con-
gratulation that we can never entirely succeed. Pro-
bably the earliest gardening memories of most of us are
associated either with weeds, or with that branch of
gardening usually first delegated to children — the
operation of weeding. A great deal of the pleasure
of growing flowers is undoubtedly due to the difficulties
which one has to combat, and gardening with no weeds
to worry us, with no snails, slugs, or green fly for us
to fight, would be about as insipid an occupation as that
known among the provincial middle-class as ‘‘ paying
calls.” What beauty there is in these much despised
weeds! Few wall plants, for instance, surpass in general
“usefulness” the little Ivy-leaved Toad-flax (Linaria
Cymbalaria), which bears its dainty purple snapdragon-
like flowers nearly the year through. It is a tidy little
plant, too, for, as soon as its flowers have been fertil-
103,
104 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
ised and are beginning to fade, it bends them aside so
that the seed vessels may rest in some suitable crevice
where the ripened seed may safely be born. The flowers
which stand out from the plant, therefore, always look
fresh and attractive.
Not everyone can grow the Gentians, but certainly
everyone can grow—though not all of us can exter-
minate — those beautiful Veronicas, the Germander
Speedwell and the Field Speedwell, with their brightest
of blue flowers. Merely to name the dandelion, daisy,
plantain, convolvulus, dock, pheasant’s eye, and even
the groundsel, is to remind ourselves of the great beauty
which our garden weeds possess, and of the essential
place which they occupy in the mental picture of a
homely garden. Yet is there one ‘‘ weed”—or ‘‘ good
plant in the wrong place,” as a weed has been well
defined—more prevalent than all others, hardier than
most, and as beautiful as any. No garden, no road, no
wall or fence even, but grass does its best to drape and
to beautify it. And if gardening has made men blind
to the beauty of the grass leaf, so blind that they needs
must roll and cut it for appearance’s sake, then is
gardening to be ranked with that spirit of vestrydom, of
which Mrs Meynell says such true, sarcastic things. But
gardening need have no such tendency. Rather should it
tend to make its devotees observant and admiring where
plant beauty is concerned. Still, with weeds, be they
ever so beautiful, ever so interesting, must the gardener
wage eternal war. Nature, like the artist she is, abhors
bare earth as much as she abhors a vacuum, and, where
she sees a piece of ground uncovered, there she sows
her seeds or projects her roots. One of the best ways
of keeping weeds within bounds, therefore, is to have
as little earth as possible uncovered by plants, for then
weeds have small chance of entry and smaller chance of
development. There is a hackneyed saying to the
WEEDS 105
effect that one year’s seeding means seven years’ weed-
ing, and there is wisdom in it; but rare indeed must be
the gardens where in some odd corner weeds do not
succeed each year in ripening and scattering their seeds.
As soon as a weed is seen, it should be pulled up, or
Dutch-hoed off, and, if it have not a perennial root,
straightway buried in the garden or used as a mulch
round shrubs or herbaceous plants. In addition to its
primary object, the mere pulling up of weeds, or hoeing
off their heads, is of the utmost value in loosening the
surface of the ground, and so checking evaporation and
the conduction of heat. In fighting with weeds, garden
flowers will be much assisted by deep cultivation, rich
soil, and a provision of those general conditions which
conduce to their health and vigour. As a rule the
annual weeds are kept under with comparative ease, it
usually being the perennials with spreading roots which
give the real trouble. In preparing a piece of ground,
every piece of such root—be it of couch grass, bind-
weed, or what not—should be picked out and burnt.
Then, if, through several seasons, every shoot of
perennial weed be pulled off directly it is seen, they
will eventually be subdued or even vanquished. For
weedy paths, it is no longer necessary to spend hours
or days in hand-weeding with basket and knife—his-
torically interesting though that practice is. All that
is now required is to water the paths, when dry, with
a solution made by boiling five ounces of powdered
arsenic in a gallon of water, stirring the while, and then
adding two gallons of cold water, and half a pound of
soda.
Such is the fate of the man who would be a gardener.
He must wage constant battle with flowers whose beauty
he can but acknowledge. He must be full of zeal for
the murder of plants he is bound to love and admire.
It is a little like hitting a woman; and, when one sees
106 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
the weed, which has been violently hurled from bed
and border, patiently trying to live its humble life on
wall or rubbish-heap, smiling as sweetly as it may on
the ‘“‘owner” of the soil, one is reminded of that
pathetic—even if fictitious—story of the vivisector’s
dog.
INSECT AND OTHER PESTS
Vicorous.y growing plants are far less liable than are
feeble ones to the attacks of the various living enemies
which the gardener is called upon to combat. Therefore
the most important item in the suppression of insect or
fungoid pests is careful and correct culture. But, even
in the best kept gardens, green-fly and earwig, slugs,
snails and wireworms will appear, and must be dealt
with by repressive as well as by preventive measures.
The green-fly, which is sometimes such a trouble to
our roses and fruits, should be treated with vigorous
and repeated syringing or hosing with water. If this is
found to be inadequate, the affected plants may be
washed with tobacco water (made by pouring half a
gallon of boiling water on an ounce each of soft soap and
shag tobacco, and allowing the strained infusion to cool),
or with an emulsion made by stirring well together half a
pint of petroleum oil, two ounces of hard soap, and a quart
of nearly boiling water, afterwards adding half a gallon
of cold water, and thoroughly mixing. ‘This last appli-
cation should always be applied in the evening.
Wireworms, which are such a foe of the carnation
grower, may usually be destroyed by spreading gas-lime
at the rate of two pounds per square yard over the un-
occupied soil in the fall, ploughing or digging it into the
ground a month or two later. If this is impracticable,
the wireworms may often be trapped by burying pieces
of potato at intervals, removing them every few days.
For destroying the fungus of mildew nothing is more
effective than sulphur mixed with soft soap and water
107
108 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
in the proportion of one ounce of sulphur and four
ounces of soap to four gallons of hot water.
Earwigs, which so often spoil the Dahlia blooms, may
be trapped by crumpling a newspaper and placing it among
the plants, or by filling a flower-pot with moss and in-
verting it over a stake—in either case examining the
traps daily and destroying the victims.
Snails and slugs should be caught at night and killed
by placing them in a bucket and covering them with
salt. They may be trapped by placing cabbage or
lettuce leaves at intervals about the garden, examin-
ing beneath them each morning; or they may some-
times be destroyed by watering the plants which they
frequent with lime-water (made by adding a gallon of
water to a quarter pound of freshly burnt lime, and
straining).
Birds are sometimes harmful, but on the whole they
do more good than harm in a garden, and I am inclined
to agree with an old gardener, who, having caught a
blackbird among the gooseberries, was asked by his
master what he had done with it. ‘‘Oh,” he replied,
‘“<T just gave ’im a warning and let ’im go.”
POINTS
1. Grow no plant which does not strike you as either
beautiful or interesting.
2. Learn the requirements of every plant as far as
possible before ordering it, and have everything ready
before its arrival.
3. Do not overcrowd, but allow every plant to
develop and display its own form of beauty. On the
other hand, show as little bare earth as possible at every
season of the year.
4. Have few beds and many and wide borders. It
will often, however, be found convenient to grow in
beds such flowers as Carnations, which require to be
frequently replanted, and which will not tolerate the
competition of other plants; but even with Carnations
may be planted many bulbs, such as Crocuses, Tulips,
Spanish Irises and Gladioli. In any case, aim at being a
four-season gardener, and make your garden interesting
in every part the year through.
5. The borders should generally be wide—where
there is ample space not less than nine to twelve feet.
They should be backed by a plant-covered trellis or
wall, or by flowering and evergreen shrubs.
6. Cultivate the soil to a depth of two or three feet
in the manner described in this book, and in dry weather
supply abundance of water, and keep the surface mulched
either with moss or manure, or with loose soil.
7. In arranging mixed borders, avoid dottiness, pre-
ferring rather to plant bold clumps or masses of indi-
vidual species. Let the surface of the soil be carpeted
by low-growing, surface-rooting plants, such as the
109
110 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS
dwarf Campanulas, Aubrietias, Arenarias, Silene acaulis,
S. alpestre, Linaria alpina, Veronica saxatilis and the
like. Let the taller growing plants be mostly towards
the back of the border, and the smaller plants mostly
near the front, but avoid primness by allowing an occa-
sional clump of tall plants (especially those, such as
Gladioli and Lilies, which need special care) to break
the front margin, and by letting the dwarfer carpeting
plants spread towards the back of the border.
8. Keep ina shed or ina corner of the garden a compost
heap composed of two parts sand, one part fibrous loam
(such as the top spit of meadow land), one part of two-
year-old leaf mould, and one part of two-year-old stable
manure. Whenever one is transplanting a herbaceous
or other plant, it will be found very helpful to cover the
roots with a few inches of this soil. Mixed with an
equal quantity of sand it will also be useful to place
round bulbs when planting them.
g. When planting, always dig a hole sufficiently large
and deep to contain the roots well spread out. Place
the plant in position, cover the roots with a few inches
of the compost just named, and give a bucketful of water
to settle the earth. Then fill up the hole with ordinary
soil, firmly pressing with the foot if necessary, though
the liberally watering often does away with the need.
In any case the surface should be ruffled up into a state
of looseness in order to check evaporation.
Io. Keep a special garden notebook in which to note
things which want correcting or developing. If not
noted when recognised, they are likely to be forgotten
when the season for making the change comes round.
Also note any good plants or good effects which you
may see in the gardens of others.
11. Buy your seeds of the best seedsmen, regardless
of price. Buy your plants from the best nurseries, even
though they may be listed a little cheaper elsewhere.
POINTS ese
12. Do not be content merely to copy the “ arrange-
ments,” “groupings” and such which you may see
suggested in books or practised by your friends. Study
books, study gardens, and study wild nature, but use
your own brains.
13. Make, or remake, one border every year. You
will thus always have sufficient surprise to afford spice
or seasoning to the ‘¢ settled” part of your garden.
14. It is interesting, in addition to cultivating a large
variety of flowers, to grow one flower or one race of
flowers as a specialty.
INDEX OF PLANTS
AconiTE, Winter, 11, 31.
Allium, 40.
Aloysia, 17.
Alyssum, 11.
Amaryllis, 77.
Anemone, 31, 40, 77-
Apple, 17.
Auricula, 46.
BarBErRY, I1.
Bellflower, 59.
Bergamot, 17.
Border Plants, Lists of, 79, 109.
Bramble, White-stemmed, 25.
Burnet, 7.
Cactus, 68.
Calceolaria, 3.
Campanula, 59.
Canterbury Bell, 59.
Carnation, 6, 17, 19, 22, 57, 199.
Catchfly, 63, 67.
Cherry, 19.
Chionodoxa, 38.
Christmas Rose, 28.
Chrysanthemum, 77.
Cinquefoil, 70.
Climbing Plants, 82.
Colchicum, 77.
Columbine, 19, 48.
Coneflower, 77.
Cowslip, 7, 46.
Crocus, 22, 23, 32, 37) 38 77>
Crown Imperial, 38.
Currant, 17.
Cyclamen, 32.
DarroDiL, 19, 43.
G
Dahlia, 74, 108.
Delphinium, 58.
Dock, 27.
Dog’s-tooth Violet, 45.
Ecuinops, 59.
Eryngium, 59.
Erysimum, 59.
Escholtzia, 60.
Evening Primrose, 62, 67.
Evergreen plants, 35, 36.
Evergrey plants, 35.
Featuer Hyacintu, 40.
Ferns, 11, 36.
Forget-me-not, 20, 60.
Forsythia, 47.
Foxglove, 20, 50.
Fritillary, 7, 38, 39.
Fuchsia, 69.
Furze, 11, 35-
GarryA, 35.
Gentian, 46.
Geranium, 3.
Gillyflower, 6, 19, 57.
Gladiolus, 48, 71.
Grape-hyacinth, 7, 39.
Grass, 104.
HawTuorn, 50.
Heliotrope, 17.
Hellebore, 11, 28.
Hepatica, 46.
Holly, 11.
Honeysuckle, 7, 17, 34.
113
114
Hyacinth, Feather, 40.
Hyacinth, Grape, 39.
Iris, 50.
Iris histrio, 33.
Iris reticulata, 32.
Iris stylosa, 33.
JASMINE, 17, 34.
Jillyflower, 6, 19, 57-
Jonquil, 17.
LaBURNUM, 50.
Larkspur, 58.
Laurustinus, 34.
Lavender, 11.
Lenten Rose, 28.
Lilac, 17, 50.
Lily, 7,17, 49-
Lime, 7.
Lobelia, 3, 72.
Love in a Mist, 6.
Macno.a, 47, 84.
Maple, 84.
Marjoram, 6.
Marvel of Peru, 64.
Megasea, 77.
Mezereon, 35.
Michaelmas Daisy, 77-
Mignonette, 17, 60.
Mint, 7.
Mullein, 11.
Narcissus, 17, 43.
Nasturtium, 60.
Nemophila, 59.
Orcu, 67.
Oxlip, 46.
Pzony, 50.
Pampas Grass, 77.
Pansy, 26, 48.
Pearl Bush, 47.
Pentstemon, 71.
Petunia, 67.
INDEX
Phlox, 71.
Pink, 4,7, 115 19, 225 59 57-
Plants, Border, 79-
Plants which thrive in shade, 84.
Polyanthus, 46.
Poppy, 60.
Primrose, 6, 7, 32) 45
Primula, 32, 46.
Queen or THE NIGHT, 68.
Quince, 34-
RanuncuLvs, 48.
Red-hot Poker, 73.
Rocket, 63.
Rose, 6, 7, 17) 22; 49» 52, 107-
Rosemary, 6, 11.
SAND VERBENA, 64.
Saponaria, 59.
Satinleaf, 11.
Scilla, 31, 38.
Sedum, 4, 77:
Sempervivum, 4.
Snapdragon, 48, 59.
Sneezeweed, 74.
Snowdrop, 20, 34
Snowflake, 40.
Sops in Wine, 6.
Speedwell, 104.
Spirza, 47.
Star of Bethlehem, 21.
Sternbergia, 77+
Stock, 17, 63.
Strawberry, 6, 17-
Styrax, 84.
Sunflower, 77-
Sweet Briar, 7, 12.
Sweet Gale, 17.
Sweet John, 6.
Sweet Marjoram, 6.
Sweet Pea, 17, 60.
Sweet William, 50, 57-
Syringa, 17.
THISTLE, 59.
INDEX 115
Thorn Apple, 64. Venus’s Looxinc-G1ass, 60.
Thyme, 7, 17. Veronica, 104.
Toadflax, 103. Vine, 7.
Toad Lily, 73. Violet, 6, 17.
Trees for shelter, 82.
Trees with autumnal tinted leaves, | WALLFLOWER, 7, 17.
78. Winter Aconite, 11, 31.
Tritelia, go. Winter Coltsfoot, 32.
Tulip, 44. Winter Sweet, 17, 34.
The Country Handbooks
A Series of Illustrated Practical
Handbooks dealing with Country Life,
suitable for the pocket or the knapsack
Under the General Editorship of
HARRY ROBERTS
Price 3s. net. bound in Limp Cloth. Price $1.00 net.
Price 4s. net. bound in Limp Leather. Price $t.z0 net.
Vol. IL—THE TRAMP’S HANDBOOK. For the use of
Travellers, Soldiers, Cyclists, and lovers of the Country.
By Harry ROBERTS.
Vol. IIL—THE MOTOR BOOK. By R. J. MECREDY.
Vol. III.—THE BIRD BOOK. By A. J. R. ROBERTS.
Vol. IV.—THE STILL ROOM. By Mrs CHARLES ROUNDELL.
Vol. Vi—THE TREE BOOK. By Mary ROWLES JARVIS.
Vol. VIL—THE WOMAN OUT OF DOORS. By MENIE
MURIEL Dowie.
Vol. VII.—THE STABLE HANDBOOK. By Rev. D.
MONTEFIORE.
Vol. VIII.—THE FISHERMAN’S HANDBOOK. By EDGAR
S. SHRUBSOLE,
Vol. IX.—THE SAILING HANDBOOK. By CLove HItTcuH.
An Eight-page Prospectus Post Free on Application,
. LONDON: VIGO STREET, W.
JOHN LANE * NEW YORK: 67 FIFTH AVENUE.
*
WF CATALOGUES & SAMPLES FREE FRO
AGRICULTURAL & HORTICULTURAL ASS? LIP ae
OR ANY OF THOR ~,
actin Ge Consens}
“ONE & ALL GARDENING”
A most useful book for Amateur Gardeners.
200 pages profusely Illustrated.
PUBLISHED ANNUALLY, Price 2d.
EDITED BY
EDWARD OWEN GREENING.
PUBLISHED AT 92 LONG ACRE, W.C.
FOR SALE AT ALL BOOKSTALLS, NEWSAGENTS, RTC.
Handbooks of Practical
Gardening
Under the General Editorship of
HARRY ROBERTS
Price 2s, 6d. net. Crown 8vo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price $1.00 net,
Vol.
I. THE a OF ASPARAGUS. By CHARLES ILOTT,
F.R.H.S.
Il. THE BOOK OF THE GREENHOUSE, By J. C.
TALLACK, F.R.H.S.
IIL. ai es OF THE GRAPE, By H. W. WARD,
IV. THE BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS. By
HARRY ROBERTS.
V. THE BOOK OF BULBS. ByS. Arnott, F.R.H.S.
VI. THE BOOK OF THE APPLE. By H. H. THomaAs.
VII. THE BOOK OF VEGETABLES. By GEORGE
WYTHES, V.M.H.
VII. THE ee OF ORCHIDS. By W. H. WHITE,
FR.
IX. THE BOOK OF THE STRAWBERRY. By EDWIN
BECKETT, F.R.H.S.
X. THE BOOK OF CLIMBING PLANTS. By S.
ARNOTT, F.R.H.S.
XI. THE BOOK OF PEARS AND PLUMS. By the Rev.
E. BARTRUM, D.D.
XII, THE BOOK OF HERBS. By Lady ROSALIND
NORTHCOTE.
XIII. THE BOOK OF THE WILD GARDEN. By S. W.
FITZHERBERT.
XIV. THE BOOK OF THE HONEY BEE. By CHARLES
HARRISON.
XV. THE BOOK OF SHRUBS. By GEORGE GORDON, V.M.H.
XVI. THE BOOK OF THE DAFFODIL. By the Rev. S.
EUGENE BOURNE,
XVII THE BOOK OF THE LILY. By W. GoLpRING.
XVII. THE BOOK OF TOPIARY. By CHARLES H. CurTIs
and W. GIBSON.
XIX. THE BOOK OF TOWN AND WINDOW GARDEN-
ING. By Mrs F, A. BARDSWELL.
XX. THE BOOK OF RARER VEGETABLES. By GEORGE
WytTuHEs, V.M.H. and HARRY ROBERTS.
XXI: THE BOOK OF THE IRIS.
XXII. THE BOOK OF GARDEN FURNITURE,
', Any of the above volumes will be sent post free by a Bookseller
on receipt of a Postal Order for Two Shillings and Ninepence.
LONDON: VIGO STREET, W.
JOHN LANE: yew vorx: 6 FIFTH AVENUE.
The New Pocket Library
Bound in Cloth.
Price 1s. 6d. net. Price 50 cents net.
Bound in Leather.
Price 2s. net. Price 75 cents net.
I, ADAM BEDE. By GeorGe ELIOT.
II. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. By Grorce ELIOT.
III. DR THORNE. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
IV. THE WARDEN. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
V. BARCHESTER TOWERS. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE-
VI. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. By GrEorGE ELIOT.
VII. SILAS MARINER. By GEORGE ELIOT.
VIII. FRAMLEY PARSONAGE. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
IX. LAVENGRO. By GEORGE BoRROw.
X. THE ROMANY RYE: A Sequel to ‘‘Lavengo.” By
GEORGE BorRow.
XI. THE BIBLE IN SPAIN. By GreorcE Borrow.
XII. THE ZINCALI: An Account of the Gipsies in Spain.
With an original collection of their Songs and Poetry,
and a copious Dictionary of their Language. By
GEORGE Borrow.
XII THE SCARLET LETTER. By NATHANIEL HAw-
THORNE.
XIV. THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES. By
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
XV. EUPHRANOR. By EDWARD FITZGERALD.
XVI. TYPEE. A Real Romance of the South Seas. By
HERMAN MELVILLE. Edited with an Introduction,
by W. CLARK RUSSELL, and Notes by MARIE
CLOTHILDE BALFOUR.
XVII OMOO. By HERMAN MELVILLE. Edited by W. CLARK
RUSSELL. With Notes by MARIE C. BALFOUR.
XVIII. MR MIDSHIPMAN EASY. By Captain MAarRRYAT.
Edited by W. CLARK RUSSELL.
XIX. PETER SIMPLE. By CAPTAIN MarRryaT, Edited by
W. CLARK RUSSELL.
XX. THE BERTRAMS. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. Edited
with an Introduction, by ALGAR THOROLD.
XXI. THE THREE CLERKS. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
Edited, etc., by ALGAR THOROLD.
. LONDON: VIGO STREET, W.
JOHN LANE: New vor. 67 FIFTH AVENUE.
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11