How stout and strong and full of well-being they are--the autumn flowers
of our English gardens! Hollyhocks, Tritomas, Sunflowers, Phloxes, among
many others, and lastly, Michaelmas Daisies. The flowers of the early
year are lowly things, though none the less lovable; Primroses, Double
Daisies, Anemones, small Irises, and all the beautiful host of small
Squill and Snow-Glory and little early Daffodils. Then come the taller
Daffodils and Wallflowers, Tulips, and the old garden Peonies and the
lovely Tree Peonies. Then the true early summer flowers.
If you notice, as the seasons progress, the average of the flowering
plants advances in stature. By June this average has risen again, with
the Sea Hollies and Flag Irises, the Chinese Peonies and the earlier
Roses. And now there are some quite tall things. Mulleins seven and
eight feet high, some of them from last year’s seed, but the greater
number from the seed-shedding of the year before; the great white-leaved
Mullein (_Verboscum olympicum_), taking four years to come to flowering
strength. But what a flower it is, when it is at last thrown up! What a
glorious candelabrum of branching bloom! Perhaps there is no other hardy
plant whose bulk of bloom on a single stem fills so large a space. And
what a grand effect it has when it is rightly planted; when its great
sulphur spire shows, half or wholly shaded, against the dusk of a wood
edge or in some sheltered bay, where garden is insensibly melting into
woodland. This is the place for these grand plants (for their flowers
flag in hot sunshine), in company with white Foxglove and the tall
yellow Evening Primrose, another tender bloom that is shy of sunlight.
Four o’clock of a June morning is the time to see these fine things at
their best, when the birds are waking up, and but for them the world is
still, and the Cluster-Roses are opening their buds. No one can know the
whole beauty of a Cluster-Rose who has not seen it when the summer day
is quite young; when the buds of such a rose as the Garland have just
burst open and the sun has not yet bleached their wonderful tints of
shell-pink and tenderest shell-yellow into their only a little less
beautiful colouring of full midday.
By July there are still more of our tall garden flowers; the stately
Delphiniums, seven, eight, and nine feet high; tall white Lilies; the
tall yellow Meadow-Rues, Hollyhocks, and Sweet Peas in plenty.
By August we are in autumn; and it is the month of the tall Phloxes.
There are some who dislike the sweet, faint and yet strong scent of
these flowers; to me it is one of the delights of the flower year.
No garden flower has been more improved of late years; a whole new range
of excellent and brilliant colouring has been developed. I can remember
when the only Phloxes were a white and a poor Lilac; the individual
flowers were small and starry and set rather widely apart. They were
straggly-looking things, though always with the welcome sweet scent.
Nowadays we all know the beauty of these fine flowers; the large size of
the massive heads and of the individual blooms; the pure whites, the
good Lilacs and Pinks, and that most desirable range of salmon-rose
colourings, of which one of the first that made a lively stir in the
world of horticulture was the one called _Lothair_. In its own colouring
of tender salmon-rose it is still one of the best. Careful seed-saving
among the brighter flowers of this colouring led to the tints tending
towards scarlet, among which _Etna_ was a distinct advance, to be
followed, a year or two later, by the all-conquering _Coquelicot_. Some
florists have also pushed this docile flower into a range of colouring
which is highly distasteful to the trained colour-eye of the educated
amateur; a series of rank purples and virulent magentas; but these can
be avoided. What is now most wanted, and seems to be coming, is a range
of tender, rather light Pinks, that shall have no trace of the rank
quality that seems so unwilling to leave the Phloxes of this colouring.
Garden Phloxes were originally hybrids of two or three North American
species; for garden purposes they are divided into two groups, the
earlier, blooming in July, much shorter in stature and more bushy, being
known as the _suffruticosa_ group, the later, taller kinds being classed
as the _decussata_. They are a little shy of direct sunlight, though
they can bear it in strong soils where the roots are always cool. They
like plenty of food and moisture; in poor, dry, sandy soils they fail
absolutely, and even if watered and carefully watched, look miserable
objects.
But where Phloxes do well, and this is in most good garden ground, they
are the glory of the August flower-border.
* * * * *
In the teaching and practice of good gardening the fact can never be too
persistently urged nor too trustfully accepted, that the best effects
are accomplished by the simplest means. The garden artist or artist
gardener is for ever searching for these simple pictures; generally the
happy combination of some two kinds of flowers that bloom at the same
time, and that make either kindly harmonies or becoming contrasts.
In trying to work out beautiful garden effects, besides those purposely
arranged, it sometimes happens that some little accident--such as the
dropping of a seed, that has grown and bloomed where it was not
sown--may suggest some delightful combination unexpected and unthought
of. At another time some small spot of colour may be observed that will
give the idea of the use of this colour in some larger treatment.
It is just this self-education that is needed for the higher and more
thoughtful gardening, whose outcome is the simply conceived and
beautiful pictures, whether they are pictures painted with the brush on
paper or canvas, or with living plants in the open ground. In both cases
it needs alike the training of the eye to observe, of the brain to note,
and of the hand to work out the interpretation.
The garden artist--by which is to be understood the true lover of good
flowers, who has taken the trouble to learn their ways and wants and
moods, and to know it all so surely that he can plant with the assured
belief that the plants he sets will do as he intends, just as the
painter can
[Illustration: PHLOX AND DAISY