[Sidenote: SIX GARDENING VIRTUES]
When we first began to own a garden we could not bring ourselves to wait
in patience for developments. We expected our beds to bloom as by magic.
We vehemently ordered pot-plants because no seedlings could be expected
to “do anything” in June; and the disproportion between our bills and
the result filled us with dismay. But a garden is at once the most
delightful and cunning of teachers. How kindly are the virtues it
inculcates!—Patience, faith, hope, tenderness, gratitude, resignation,
things in themselves as fragrant and beautiful as the flowers, or like
the herbs, a little repellent of aspect, but sweet in their bruised
savour.
[Illustration: garden view - two pages wide]
Now we have even been taught to take pleasure and comfort from the
vision of the beds in their winter preparation, where with the
believer’s eye, we anticipate the fulfilment of the spring. In the
little Dutch Garden under the new wing, the two long beds between the
clipped Bilberry hedges are full of compact cushions of Forget-me-not.
Through these the green noses of the china-blue Hyacinths, that are to
make lakes of colour and scent at the end of March, are beginning to
push upwards.
The winter has been very mild.—Another garden lesson: too much spoiling
in infancy is bound to produce forwardness in the young, and the
inevitable result of withering snubs!
When the Hyacinths have faded, the Forget-me-nots will have spread a
sheet of tender beauty over the unsightliness. ‹Did we mention that a
garden teaches charity?› And between this flying scud of blue foam the
Darwin Tulips will have already reared bold green snake heads which will
gradually become invaded by tints of mauve, rose, dark purple, until the
day when their glorious chalices will open, as if cut out of living
jewels, translucent to the light.
[Sidenote: DUTCH BULBS AND ROSES]
The Dutch Garden is bounded by a clipped yew hedge on two sides, divided
by a rustic archway where Pink Dorothy rambles in June and onwards.
Against this hedge there are two long beds lying to the south, filled
with crimson and red roses: in spring edged with Darwins and Arabis,
before Mme. Normand Levavasseur spreads her disappointing maroon
clusters. On the north side the brick wall of the terrace, divided in
its turn opposite the archway by brick steps, is flanked by Darwin tulip
beds. The beds under the side of the house to the west have also Darwins
with a carpet of Forget-me-nots and a fringe of Arabis. The space that
runs back to the outer wall under the study windows is planted with
Gloire de Versailles, Pyrus Japonica and the ubiquitous Tulips and
Forget-me-nots.
There is one thing we have succeeded in impressing on the patient and
kindly Adam, and that is that we “cannot bear bald spaces.” Our bulbs
lie as close as they can without injuring each other. Our Wallflowers,
even now, in January, jostle!
In the bed that runs right along the bricked upper terrace, there lie,
awaiting the call of the different months ‹please add docility and
punctuality to the moral list›, behind a deep border of Mrs. Sinkins, a
double row of Crocuses, a row of Thomas More Tulips, a little hedge of
white and red “Polyantha” Roses, and groups of “Candidum” Lilies. At
intervals, on the top of the terrace wall, are large Compton vases which
will foam with Forget-me-Nots, and thrust clusters of Hyacinths up
against the Moor by and by. Just now they carry little yellow torches of
Retinospora Aurea, which Adam said, when he first planted them, looked,
he thought, “very lonely,” but which, each rising from a field of green
moss, stand out, we think, with a classic dignity against the sombre
magnificence of those rolling winter hills.
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