ROOF AND BACK-YARD GARDENS IN THE CITY
“High over roaring Temple Bar
And set in Heaven’s third story.”
“O, green is the colour of faith and truth.”
When one comes to write of roof and back-yard gardens the pen must run
less glibly; such oases in the dust and drouth of towns are few and
rare. The roofs of English houses are not shaped well for gardening,
and if there happen to be a back-yard, it is often more like a well
than a garden; not a dripping well lined with fern and soft with moss,
but a well walled round with smoke-black bricks, and not much of a
sky above it. Yet garden-lovers do make their little plots somehow,
even in London’s heart, and live there happily tending their flowers.
In the broad City thoroughfare that leads from Blackfriar’s Bridge to
St. Paul’s Cathedral stands a church among the shops and marts--an old
church built by Sir Christopher Wren. Behind this building, up a narrow
street--little more than a passage--is a Rectory-house hemmed in at
back and sides with factories; yet, hidden away in this strange corner
may be found a bower of greenery. Mrs. Clementi-Smith, the Rector’s
wife, shall tell the story of her City garden in her own words. We must
imagine it to be in the month of March.
[Illustration: A BOAT-SHELTER WITH CERASTIUM ON ROOF]
“The foreground of our garden consists of a bank of rock work,
interspersed by hundreds of the very finest Crocuses which one
could find anywhere, mostly purple, bright mauve, pure white, and a
few yellow. These were put in last autumn, and have certainly done
splendidly, in spite of smuts and smoke. The only grievous thing about
them is that, when the flowers are over, the bulbs will have to be
pulled up and thrown away, as we have found that one season is quite
enough for them; they would not flower again if left in for another
year.”
In gardens such as this bulbs do better than anything else; they give
back the treasure that was stored up by them when living in the air
and sunshine. A little greenhouse between the wall and rock garden is
full of ferns. Geraniums will not grow, but Cyclamen and Palms are well
content, and Azaleas manage to bloom for one year--not more, as there
is not enough sun to ripen the new wood. One fair-sized tree stands
in the middle of the plot, a Lime; not a good town tree, because its
foliage fades and falls so soon. This one is to come down and make room
for an apple-tree.
The annals of another City garden are worth recording because so
instructive. They were confided to the sympathetic ears of the editor
of _The Garden_ under the title of “Struggles in Smoke.” Every reader
sympathized. This garden, too, lay in the shadow of a cathedral, but in
the north of England.
“Everything we touched was black, and how strong it all smelt of smoke
and the mingled fumes of fried fish and burnt shoe-leather from the
small shops that backed on to it! The garden was at the very edge of
a wind-swept hill, the ground falling away so suddenly below it that
the tops of the chimneys of the City beneath were just at the proper
level to pour their smoke right into it. When the wind blew from the
south, the thick clouds from the foundry and factory chimneys made it
impossible to see across the garden. Then we had to set to work.”
Nothing teaches so well as an object-lesson. Let us hear what flowers
were persuaded to grow in this garden of difficulties, where cats and
sparrows, we learn, were nearly as troublesome as the smoke.
“Tiger Lilies seemed to love us best. These grew and spread and
triumphed, till at times the garden glowed with an orange glory. Their
cousins, the White Lilies, would have nothing to do with us. Naturally,
bulbs were the most satisfactory things, and Crocus, Narcissus and
Tulip were joyful, but soot-coloured Snowdrops were not inspiring.
We felt rich when the Lilies of the Valley were in bloom--there were
always enough to give away. We revelled in the carpets of Woodruffe and
white Periwinkle, from which sprang great clumps of the yellow Trollius
and the silvery stars of Astrantia. Auriculas, Double Daisies, Violas
and Pansies did their best to make up to us for the lack of Violets
and Mignonette.” A good list, and there is more to follow. “Christmas
Roses did well, but very few bedding plants answered. Various Irises,
Campanulas, Monkshood, Canterbury Bells, Lychnis and masses of
_Epilobium-Angustifolium_ made things bright. The old pink Cabbage
Rose and Gloire-de-Dijon flowered well. Cornflowers and Larkspurs were
happy, and one small Pear-tree yielded fruit.” What love and toil must
have gone to give such rich results, and how great the joy, can only be
guessed by those who have had a like experience.
[Illustration: AN EAST-END ROOF GARDEN]
Roof-gardens are even rarer than yard-gardens. One that is full of
interest may be seen in Bishopsgate Street, E.C., at the Home for
Working Boys. Trees of quite a respectable size are grown in it;
Sycamore trees twenty feet high, Limes from eight to ten feet, with
Nut and Cedar, Chestnut, Holly, Fir, and Plane. Cats are, of course,
a hindrance, but the wire netting which keeps them out is hidden in
summer by Virginia Creeper, and on the parapets and in tubs and boxes
are Evergreens and Orange plants, and bushes of Rose and Lilac. Eight
or ten sorts of flowers bloom freely, Petunias doing best of all.
Gardening operations, as carried on by the boys and Superintendent, are
an unfailing source of amusement to the children of the surrounding
poor. A pond and fountain with spray rising sixteen feet high are
crowning glories of this shady jungle, where, but a few years since
there was nothing to be seen but a bare zinc roof, some twelve yards
square. The place has now been pet-named “Pelham Park.”
A private roof-garden at the back of a London house, four stories from
the ground, is graphically described by an amateur gardener, who says
he “fights for failure,” but he does so cheerfully. There are some
points, he says, on which the many-acred owner of a country garden
might envy his rival on the roof. One is his personal intimacy with his
garden kingdom and its subjects.
“Up among the chimney pots he has watched each plant through all
difficulties struggling up into timid blossoms; he has washed away
daily smuts and combated incessant sparrows with cotton entanglements,
and now knows every flower, nay, every petal, with a personal love.
He will tell you which day of the week the Pansy lost its second
bud through the sparrows, just when it looked certain to be quite
as good as the flower he got last year; or he will show you how the
Canariensis, baffled by the same marauders last Friday week, has tried
again with a second shoot which will be out before Wednesday; those
Pansies were specially bought at Covent Garden; as for the Sweet Peas,
they came as seedlings, not a tenth their present size, and they will
be even better in a fortnight. The Solanum is a special prize, and
comes from a country garden; but dearer than that is the Geranium,
grown from one of his own cuttings, a real scion of the family.”
A Geranium among the slates and chimney stacks! This was a triumph
indeed; enough to make the Clementi-Smiths at St. Andrew’s Rectory
envious.
In these roof-gardens there are joys undreamed of by the stranger.
A real honey-bee buzzing and working over the flower-beds, even a
spider--a real garden spider, with a shining web, a country-looking
weed, a stinging nettle,--a lively one that knows how to sting, and on
one bright still evening, when the sunshine lingered on the gas-work’s
chimneys, a humming-bird hawk-moth fluttering well-pleased among the
flowers.
After these flights among the tiles and chimney-stacks it is tame work,
talking of the City gardens of the level ground; but, after all, they
are the commonest and most generally useful. The dreary churchyards
now made into play-grounds, where a few simple flowers bloom, and
there is a shrub or two; we may see such any day at St. John’s in the
Waterloo Road. And there are the old, old gardens about the Temple and
the Law Courts; how many generations of lawyers they have cheered (not
one space can be spared); and who has not felt a thrill of joy when
nearing St. Paul’s Cathedral, to see the fresh green of the trees and
the indescribable beauty of the rustling, swaying boughs, so strangely
sweet in such a spot.
Not the least good done by our City gardens is the welcome given by
them to bird and butterfly; even the seagulls did not come to London
till after we had planted trees on the Embankment and laid down turf.
The more gardens we make, the more country visitors will come to them,
gladdening the Londoner with rural sounds.
“A cuckoo cried at Lincoln’s Inn
Last April, somewhere else one heard
The missel-thrush with throat of glee;
And nightingales at Battersea.”
[Illustration: A ROOF GARDEN]