growth. There is some planting between the lower windows at Brympton,
but it is doubtful whether it would not have been better omitted. It is
a place more suitable (if on this front any gardening is desirable) for
the standing of Bays or some such trees, in tubs or boxes on the
terrace.
There is sometimes a flower-border at the base of such a house; where
this occurs it is a common thing to see it left bare in winter and in
the early year dotted with bulbous plants and spring flowers; to be
followed in summer with bedding-plants. No such things look well or at
all in place directly against a building. The transition from the
permanent structure to the transient vegetation is too abrupt. At least
the planting should be of something more enduring and of a shrubby
character, and mostly evergreen. Such plants as _Berberis Aquifolium_,
Savin, Rosemary and Laurustinus would seem to be the most suitable, with
the large, persistent foliage of the Megaseas as undergrowth, Pyrus
japonica for early bloom, and perhaps some China Roses among the
Rosemary.
But happily this house has been treated as to its environment with the
wisest restraint. No showy or pretentious gardening intrudes itself upon
the great charm of the place, which is that of quiet seclusion in a
beautiful but little-known part of the county. The place lies among
fields--just the House, the Church and the Rectory. There is no village
or public road. The house is approached by a long green forecourt
inclosed by walls. Between this and the kitchen garden is the quiet,
low, stone-roofed church, in a churchyard that occupies such another
parallelogram as the forecourt. The pathway to the church passes across
the forecourt into the restful churchyard with its moss-grown tombs and
bushes of old-fashioned Roses, and the grassy mounds that mark the last
resting-place of generations of long-forgotten country folk.
The church has a bell-cote built upon the gable of its western wall of
remarkable and very happy form, stone-roofed like the rest. Among the
graves stands the base--three circular steps and a square plinth--of
what was once an ancient stone cross. The church seems to lie within the
intimate protection of the house, adding by its presence to the general
impression of repose and peaceful dignity.
The picture shows the walled and balustraded entrance, probably
contemporary with the classical façade, wrought of the local Ham Hill
stone; a capital freestone for the working of architectural enrichment.
It is of a warm yellowish-brown colour; but grey and yellow lichens and
brown mosses have painted the surface after their own wayward but always
beautiful manner. A light cloud of _Clematis Flammula_ peeps over the
bushes through the balusters. Stonework so good as this can just bear
such a degree of clothing with graceful flowery growth; no doubt it is
watched and not allowed to hide too much with an excess of overgrowth.
Where garden architecture is beautiful in proportion and detail it is
not treating it fairly to smother it with vegetation. How many beautiful
old buildings are buried in Ivy or desecrated by the unchecked invasion
of Veitch’s Virginia Creeper!