hardy flowers to the planting of Lady Henry Grosvenor, whose fine taste
and great love of flowers made it in her day one of the best gardens of
hardy plants, and whose untimely death, in the very prime of life, was
almost as much deplored by the best of the horticultural amateurs who
only knew her by reputation, but were aware of her good work in
gardening, as by her wide circle of personal friends.
She had a special love for the flag-leaved Irises, and used them with
very fine effect. The borders that show to right and left of the steps
had them in large groups, and were masses of bloom in June; other
plants, placed behind and between, succeeding them later. Lady Henry was
one of the first amateurs to perceive the value of planting in this
large way, and, as she had ample spaces to deal with, the effects she
produced were very fine, and must have been helpful in influencing
horticultural taste in a right direction.
Another important portion of the garden at Bulwick is a long double
flower-border backed by holly hedges, that runs through the whole middle
length of the kitchen garden. It is in a straight line with the flagged
walk that passes westward across the green court next to the house, and
parallel with its garden front. The flagged path stops at the gate-piers
in the second picture, a grass path following upon the same line and
passing just behind the shaded seat.
The holly hedges that back the borders are old and solid. Their top
line, shaped like a flat-pitched roof, is ornamented at intervals with
mushroom-shaped finials, each upon its stalk of holly stem. The grass
walk and double border pass right across the kitchen garden in the line
of its longest axis. At the furthest end there is another pair of the
same handsome gate-piers with a beautiful wrought-iron gate, leading
into the park. The park is handsomely timbered, and in early summer is
especially delightful from the great number of fine old hawthorns.
In Lady Henry’s time several borders in the kitchen garden were made
bright with annuals and other flowers. Such borders are very commonly
used for reserve purposes, such as the provision of flowers for cutting,
with one main double border for ornament alone. But where gardens are
being laid out from the beginning, such a plan as this at Bulwick, of a
grass path with flower borders and a screening hedge at the back,
passing through a kitchen garden, is an excellent one, greatly enlarging
the length of view of the pleasure garden, while occupying only a
relatively small area. It is also well in planning a garden to provide a
reserve space for cutting alone, of beds four feet, and paths two feet
wide, and of any length suitable for the supply required. This has the
advantage of leaving the kitchen garden unencumbered with any
flower-gardening, and therefore more easy to work.
Such a long-shaped garden is also capable of various ways of treatment
as to its edge, which need not necessarily be an unbroken line. The
length of the border in question is perhaps a little too great. It might
be better, while keeping the effect of a quiet line, looking from end to
end, to have swung the edge of the border back in a segment of a circle
to a little more than half its depth, every few yards, in such a
proportion as a plan to scale would show to be right; or to have treated
it in some one of the many possible ways of accentuation where the cross
paths occur that divide it into three lengths. The thinking out of these
details according to the conditions of the site, the combining of them
into designs that shall add to its beauty, and the actual working of
them, the mind meanwhile picturing the effect in advance--these are some
of the most interesting and enlivening of the many kinds of happiness
that a garden gives.
Be it large or small there is always scope for inventive ability; either
for the bettering of something or for the casting of some detail into a
more desirable form. Every year brings some new need; in supplying it
fresh experience is gained, and with this an increasing power of
adapting simple means to such ends as may be easily devised to the
advancement of the garden’s beauty.