It is not in large gardens only that hardy flowers are to be seen in
perfection. Often the humblest wayside cottage may show such a picture
of plant-beauty as will put to shame the best that can be seen at the
neighbouring squire’s. And where labouring folk have a liking for
clipped yews, their natural good taste and ingenuity often turns them
into better forms than are seen among the examples of more pretentious
topiary work.
The cottager has the undoubted advantage that, as his tree is usually an
isolated one, he can see by its natural way of growth the kind of figure
it suggests for his clipping; whereas the gardener in the large place
usually has to follow a fixed design. So it is that one may see in a
cottage garden such a handsome example as the yew in the picture.
The lower part of the tree is nearly square in plan, with a niche cut
out for a narrow seat. There is space enough between the top of this and
the underside of the great mushroom-shaped canopy, to allow the upper
surface of the square base to be green and healthy. The great rounded
top proudly carries its handsome crest, that is already a good ornament
and will improve year by year. The garden is raised above the road and
only separated from it by a wall which is low on the garden side and
deeper to the road. It passes by the side of the yew, so that the
occupier of the seat commands a view of the road and all that goes along
it, and can exchange greetings and gossip with those who pass by.
The cottagers of the neighbourhood--it is in Herefordshire, about four
miles from Hereford--have a special fancy for these clipped yews; many
examples may be met with in an afternoon’s walk. Not very far from this
is a capital peacock excellently rendered in conventional fashion. It
stands well above a high pedestal, one side of which is hollowed out for
a little seat.
One may well understand what a pride and pleasure and amusing interest
these clipped trees are to the cottage folk; how after each year’s
clipping they would discuss and criticise the result and note the
progress of the growth towards the hoped-for form. A pile of cheeses is
a favourite pattern, sometimes on a square base, with the topmost
ornament cut into a spire or even a crown.
The English peasant has a love for ornament that always strives to find
some kind of expression. In many parts the thatcher makes a kind of
basket ornament on the top of his rick; and the pattern of crossed
laths, pegged down with the hazel “spars” that finishes the thatched
cottage roof near the eaves, is of true artistic value. The carter loves
to dress his horses for town or market, and a fine team, with worsted
ribbons in mane and headstall, and quantities of gleaming
highly-polished brasses, is indeed a pleasant sight upon the country
high road.
Now, alas! when cheap rubbish, misnamed ornamental, floods village shops
and finds its way into the cottages, the cottager’s taste, which was
always true and good as long as it depended on its own prompting and
instinct, and could only deal with the simplest materials, is rapidly
becoming bewildered and debased. All the more, therefore, let us value
and cherish these ornaments of the older traditions; the bright little
gardens and the much-prized clipped yew.
A usual feature of these cottage yews is that the seat is for one person
alone. The labourer sits in his little retreat enjoying his evening pipe
after his day’s work, while the wife puts the children to bed and gets
the supper. Probably he has been harvesting all day, and his strong
frame is tired, with that feeling of almost pleasant fatigue that comes
to a wholesome body after a good day’s work well done; and when the
hardly-earned rest is thoroughly enjoyed. So he sits quite quiet, with
one eye on the possible interests of his outer world, the road, and the
other on the beauty of his flower-border. And what a pretty double
border it is, with its grand mass of pink Japan Anemone and
well-flowered clump of Goldilocks (one of the few yellow-bloomed
Michaelmas Daisies), looking at its near relation in purple over the
way.
A graceful little Plum-tree shoots up through the flowers; its long free
shoots of tender green seem to laugh at the rigid surface of the clipped
yew beyond. Don’t be too confident about your freedom, little Plum; it
is more than likely that you will be severely pruned next winter. But
you need not mind, for if you lose one kind of beauty, you will gain
others; the pure white bloom of spring-time, and the autumn burden of
purple fruit; and be both handsome and useful, like your neighbour the
old yew.