The Earl of Mayo’s residence in County Kildare, Ireland, lies a few
miles distant from the small market town of Naas. The house is of
classical design, built within the nineteenth century. Around it is
extensive park-land that is pleasantly undulating, and is well furnished
with handsome trees both grouped and standing singly. In the lower level
is a large pool with Water-lilies, and natural banks fringed with reeds
and the other handsome sub-aquatic vegetation that occurs wild in such
places.
There was an older house at Palmerstown in former days, whose large
walled kitchen garden remains. It is a lengthy parallelogram, divided in
the middle into two portions, each nearly a square, by a fine old yew
hedge with arches cut in it for the two walks that pass through. The
paths are broad, and some width on each side has been planted as a
flower border, giving ample space for the good cultivation and enjoyment
of all the best of the hardy flowers, so willing to show their full
growth and beauty in the soft genial climate of the sister island.
It is a place that shows at once the happy effect of wise and sure
direction, for Lady Mayo is an accomplished gardener, and the inclosure
abounds with evidences of fine taste and thoughtful intention. One
length of border is given to Lavender and China Rose, always a
delightful and most harmonious mixture. There is a length of some twenty
yards of this pleasant combination--the picture shows one end--with a
few groups of taller plants, such as Bocconia, behind. Fruit-trees,
trained as espaliers, form the back of the border, or sometimes there is
a hedge of Sweet Pea. Vegetables occupy the middle portions of the
quarters. The flower-bordered paths pass across and across the middle
space, with others about ten feet within the walls and parallel with
them. Quite in the middle the path passes round a fountain basin, and
there are four arches on which Roses and Clematis are trained.
Such flower borders give ample opportunity for the practising of good
gardening. The task is the easier in that only one of the pairs of
borders can be seen at a glance, and a definite scheme of colour
progression can easily be arranged. Such schemes are well worth thinking
out. The writer’s own experience favours a plan in which the borders
begin with tender colourings of pale blue, white and pale yellow, with
bluish foliage, passing on to the stronger yellows. These lead to
orange, scarlet and strong blood-reds. The scale of colouring then
returns gradually to the pale and cool colours.
It is by such simple means that the richest effects of colour are
obtained, whether in a continuous border or in clump-shaped masses. A
separate space of flower-border may also be well treated by the use of
an even more restricted scheme of colouring. Purple and lilac flowers,
with others of pink and white only, and foliage of grey and silvery
quality, the darkest being such as that of Rosemary and Echinops, make a
charming flower-picture, with a degree of pictorial value that any one
who had not seen it worked out would scarcely think possible.
The right choice of treatment depends in great measure on the
environment. When this, as at Palmerstown, consists of old walls and a
grand hedge of venerable yews, a suitable frame is ready for the display
of almost any kind of garden-picture.
The yews are ten feet high and six feet through. Over a seat one of them
is cut into the form of a peacock. To the left of the green archway in
the Lavender picture, the yew takes the form of the heraldic wild-cat,
the Mayo crest. Outside the garden is a yew walk of untrimmed trees;
they show in the picture to the right, over the wall. Here, in the heat
of summer, the coolness and dim light are not only in themselves restful
and delightful, but, after passing along the bright borders, where eye
and brain become satiated with the brilliancy of light and colour, the
cool retreat is doubly welcome, preparing them afresh for further
appreciation of the flower-borders.