compel and command the colours on his palette--plants with an unerring
hand and awaits the sure result.
When one says “the simplest means,” it does not always mean the easiest.
Many people begin their gardening by thinking that the making and
maintaining of a handsome and well-filled flower-border is quite an easy
matter. In fact, it is one of the most difficult problems in the whole
range of horticultural practice--wild gardening perhaps excepted. To
achieve anything beyond the ordinary commonplace mixture, that is
without plan or forethought, and that glares with the usual faults of
bad colour-combinations and yawning, empty gaps, needs years of
observation and a considerable knowledge of plants and their ways as
individuals.
For border plants to be at their best must receive special consideration
as to their many and different wants. We have to remember that they are
gathered together in our gardens from all the temperate regions of the
world, and from every kind of soil and situation. From the sub-arctic
regions of Siberia to the very edges of the Sahara; from the cool and
ever-moist flanks of the Alps to the sun-dried coasts of the
Mediterranean; from the Cape, from the great mountain ranges of India;
from the cool and temperate Northern States of America--the home of the
species from which our garden Phloxes are derived; from the sultry
slopes of Chili and Peru, where the Alströmerias thrust their roots deep
down into the earth searching for the precious moisture.
So it is that as our garden flowers come to us from many climes and many
soils, we have to bear in mind the nature of their places of origin the
better to be prepared to give them suitable treatment. We have to know,
for instance, which are the few plants that will endure drought and a
poor, hot soil; for the greater number abhor it; and yet such places
occur in some gardens and have to be provided with what is suitable.
Then we have to know which are those that will only come to their best
in a rich loam, and that the Phloxes are among these, and the Roses; and
which are the plants and shrubs that must have lime, or at least must
have it if they are to do their very best. Such are the Clematises and
many of the lovely little alpines; while to some other plants, many of
the alpines that grow on the granite, and nearly all the Rhododendrons,
lime is absolute poison; for, entering the system and being drawn up
into the circulation, it clogs and bursts their tiny veins; the leaves
turn yellow, the plant dies, or only survives in a miserably crippled
state.
An experienced gardener, if he were blindfolded, and his eyes uncovered
in an unknown garden whose growths left no soil visible, could tell its
nature by merely seeing the plants and observing their relative
well-being, just as, passing by rail or road through an unfamiliar
district, he would know by the identity and growth of the wild plants
and trees what was the nature of the soil beneath them.
The picture, then, showing autumn Phloxes grandly grown, tells of good
gardening and of a strong, rich loamy soil. This is also proved by the
height of the Daisies (_Chrysanthemum maximum_). But the lesson the
picture so pleasantly teaches is above all to know the merit of one
simple thing well done. Two charming little stone figures of _amorini_
stand up on their plinths among the flowers; the boy figure holds a
bird’s nest, his girl companion a shell. They are of a pattern not
unfrequent in English gardens, and delightfully in sympathy with our
truest home flowers. The quiet background of evergreen hedge admirably
suits both figures and flowers.
It is all quite simple--just exactly right. Daisies--always the
children’s flowers, and, with them, another of wide-eyed innocence, of
dainty scent, of tender colouring. Quite simple and just right; but
then--it is in the artist’s own garden.