it personally, or in any way likes it well enough to take a great deal
of trouble about it. To those who know, the garden speaks of itself, for
it clearly reflects individual thought and influence; and it is in these
lesser gardens that, with rare and happy exceptions, the watchful care
and happy invention of the beneficent individuality stamps itself upon
the place.
There is nothing more interesting to one of these ardent and honest
workers than to see the garden of another. Plants that had hitherto been
neglected or overlooked are seen used in ways that had never been
thought of, and here will be found new combinations of colour that had
never been attempted, and methods of use and treatment differing in some
manner to those that had been seen before.
There is nothing like the true gardening for training the eye and mind
to the habit of close observation; that precious acquirement that
invests every country object both within and without the garden’s bounds
with a living interest, and that insensibly builds up that bulk of
mentally noted incident or circumstance that, taken in and garnered by
that wonderful storehouse the brain, seems there to sort itself, to
distribute, to arrange, to classify, to reduce into order, in such a way
as to increase the knowledge of something of which there was at first
only a mental glimpse; so to build up in orderly structure a
well-founded knowledge of many of those things of every-day out-door
life that adds so greatly to its present enjoyment and later usefulness.
So it comes about that some of us gardeners, searching for ways of best
displaying our flowers, have observed that whereas it is best, as a
general rule, to mass the warm colours (reds and yellows) rather
together, so it is best to treat the blues with contrasts, either of
direct complementary colour, or at any rate with some kind of yellow, or
with clear white. So that whereas it would be less pleasing to put
scarlet flowers directly against bright blue, and whereas flowers of
purple colouring can be otherwise much more suitably treated, the
juxtaposition of the splendid blues of the perennial Larkspurs with the
rich colour of the orange Herring Lily (_Lilium croceum_) is a bold and
grand assortment of colour of the most satisfactory effect.
This fine Lily is one of those easiest to grow in most gardens. The true
flower-lovers, as defined above, take the trouble to find out which are
the Lilies that will suit their particular grounds; for it is generally
understood that the soil and conditions of any one garden are not likely
to suit a large number of different kinds of these delightful plants.
Four or five successful kinds are about the average, and the owner is
lucky if the superb White Lily is among them. But Lilies are so
beautiful, so full of character, so important among other flowers or in
places almost by themselves, that, when it is known which are the right
ones to grow, those kinds should be well and rather largely used.
The garden in which these fine groups were painted has a good loamy
soil, such as, with good gardening, grows most hardy flowers well, and
therefore the grand White Lily also thrives. A few of the Lilies like
peat, such as the great Auratum, and the two lovely pink ones, Krameri
and Rubellum. But the garden of strong loam should never be without the
White Lily, the Orange Lily, and the Tiger Lily, an autumn flower that
seems to accommodate itself to any soil. The Orange Lilies are grandly
grown by the Dutch nurserymen in many varieties, under the names
_bulbiferum_, _croceum_, and _davuricum_, and their price is so moderate
that it is no extravagance to buy them in fair quantity.
Flowers of pure scarlet colour are so little common among hardy
perennials that it seems a pity that the brilliant _Lilium
chalcedonicum_ of Greece, Palestine, and Asia Minor, and its ally _L.
pomponium_, the Scarlet Martagon of Northern Italy, should be so seldom
seen in gardens. They are some of the most easily grown, and are not
dear to buy. Another Lily that should not be forgotten and is easy to
grow in strong soils is the old Purple Martagon; not a bright-coloured
flower, but so old a plant of English gardens that in some places it has
escaped into the woods. The white variety is very beautiful, the colour
an ivory white, and the flower of a waxy texture. They are the Imperial
Martagon, or Great Mountain Lily of the old writers; the scarlet
_pomponium_, of the same shaped flower, was their Martagon Pompony. The
name “pompony,” no doubt, came from the tightly rolled-back petals
giving the flower something of the look of the flattened melons of the
Cantaloupe kind, with their deep longitudinal furrows; the old name of
these being “Pompion.” Another name for this Lily was the Red Martagon
of Constantinople. It is so named by that charming old writer Parkinson,
who gives evidence of its
[Illustration: WHITE LILIES AND YELLOW MONKSHOOD