The Master of the House—he has admitted it himself somewhere in these
pages—understands little if anything of gardener’s art: that is, of the
art of rearing flowers in their proper seasons, in suitable ground and
so forth. But he complacently believes that he has an aptitude for what,
on a larger theatre of operations than the few acres of Villino Loki,
would be called Landscape Gardening! He imagines that, had fate provided
him with an “estate,” he would have been great at devising vistas,
grouping trees, laying out pleasing curves of approach, and all that
sort of thing.
[Illustration: men in garden]
At the Villino this imaginary special competency could only find an
opening in clearance work. And when we first bought this strip of
hill-side, clearance was indeed no small matter.
With the exception of the terraces immediately round the House and of
the kitchen yards about the Cottage, the whole place was a congeries of
almost impenetrable thickets, interspersed with patches of heather and
furze. There were but two paths, running down, in purely utilitarian
lines, from the higher level to that of the cottage _potager_.
‹What has been achieved since then in the matter of path-cutting can be
made patent by a glance at Mr. Robinson’s perspective map of the Villino
grounds.›
So thick and strenuous was the growth of underwood—self-sown infant
Hollies, adolescent Larches and Pines, young Ashes, Oaks and Chestnuts
in their nonage, all interlocked, entwined in Brambles and Honeysuckle,
that hardly anywhere could the trunks of the full-grown trees be
distinguished.
Now it is obvious that the beauty of wooded grounds depends essentially
upon light effects under the foliage and between the boles; upon distant
peeps. In no direction ought the view ever to be solidly stopped—unless,
of course, where it is desired to hide some unpleasing prospect. It may
therefore be erected into a maxim that, if trees are to be enjoyed,
underwoods must be sacrificed wholesale.
* * * * *
At first, with that reverence for things which, if they may be laid low
at one blow or two of the billhook, require many years for their growth,
one feels inclined to hesitate. One’s heart rebels at the thought of
cutting off in the flower of its youth the sapling that in the spring is
of so tender green, the bush of name unknown but engaging enough—if
there were not “so many of him.” But it soon becomes evident that you
must harden your heart and ruthlessly slash away the bulk of
undergrowths, for good and all.
And this has been the province of the _padrone_. And although on many an
occasion at first the _padrona_ bewailed bitterly, almost tearfully,
that he was making the place “simply scald,” it is now generally
admitted that the result has proved a matter for congratulation.
[Illustration: man working in garden]
[Sidenote: THE PROBLEM OF HOLLY]
There have been a few mistakes, no doubt. It was not easy, for instance,
in the case of Holly, and perhaps also of Rowan, for the beginner to
distinguish which clump was likely to bear the decorative winter coral
and which not. Seeing what some of our Hollies in a good season can be
‹that which closes the prospect at the north end of our Hemicycle, for
example, what a glory of pure scarlet it displays when all bright
colours have disappeared from the garden!› we regret not to have spared
a few more. Nevertheless, it is a wise decision, in grounds overgrown by
underwood, that _delendum est Ilex Aquifolium_—that Common Holly must
go.
In the first place, nothing will grow under the shade of its dark
leathery, spinous leaves, which, even when shed, are more indestructible
and noxious to grass than pine needles themselves. And, secondly, Holly
is a very bully and brigand among growing trees. Its vitality and
pushfulness over-masters everything. Your young Holly will thrust aside
the sturdiest neighbouring branches; will conquer its “place under the
sun” to the detriment of the equally fair claims of Oak, or Ash, or
anything that strives upward.
No—the right place of Holly is in the close-set hedge, for which its
forbidding, never-failing foliage and its vigorous growth pre-eminently
fit it. Or, again, in a dignified isolation where it can, without
truculent self-assertion, develop on all sides its regular, shapely
growth, look beautiful at all times in its evergreen sheen; and, if of
the fruit-bearing sex, relieve with its scarlet the browns of autumn and
the white of a winter landscape.
* * * * *
The first spot to be assailed was the area now called the Blue-bell
Glade, the interior of which was then _terra incognita_. It had to be
tackled like a fortress—by regular sap. Nothing was spared but the
full-grown trees. Terrible was the destruction, and gigantic the
accumulation of small firewood for future use. But great was the
landscape result: it gave us our first far-reaching perspective along
our own ground. We had, of course, fine and wide views over the
tree-tops from the highest terrace. But now we obtained, in one
direction at least, a middle-distance prospect of green fields between
the boles under overhanging branches. And the effect was singularly
satisfying.
And so the war on undergrowth was carried-on, with system, until the
present pleasing condition was reached, when in every direction the eye
is able to find, up hill or down, either some far view of moor or
valley, or some corner of the grounds themselves, now grass-grown or
bright with flower-beds.
Grass—that was what Villino Loki most wanted! And the extirpation of the
greatest enemies to grass—Brushwood, Heather, Gorse, and Bracken—has
been the hardest achievement of all: one which Grandpa is fond of
letting every one know is more especially his own.
[Sidenote: THE GREAT CLEARANCE]
The Great Clearance took place in what may be called the pre-Adamite age
of this little Earthly Paradise. Adam ‹in a kind of fateful way› only
appeared upon the scene after the rougher work had been dealt with of
letting in the air and light of heaven wherever it had hitherto failed.
He arrived, of his own initiative, to offer his services in the matter
of _gardening_, on the very day when his predecessor—one Grinder, whom
on benevolence intent we had allowed to assume the duties of “gardener,”
save the mark!—had had at last to be dismissed.
The late Grinder, whatever his disqualifications for the honourable
title thrust upon him may have been, was undoubtedly a lusty worker. But
the Great Clearance was too great a task for one man. It was thus, by
the way, that Caliban ‹likewise now “the late”› was introduced as
labouring assistant, and, from the nature of his labours, known as the
Woodman.
The elimination of underwoods, however, was by no means the most arduous
task. Let once the good light of day and the free airs penetrate to the
ground hitherto obscured and choked, and in a given time grass will make
its appearance. And it will spread healthily if the lower branches of
all standing trees are lopped, up to a suitable height. But we wanted
grass not only in the glades, but, if possible, upon every stretch of
soil not devoted to flowering beds or ornamental bush. And, to that end,
the Heather and the Gorse had likewise to be banished in perpetuity.
With miles of Heather and Gorse-clad moors about one, Ericas of any
kind, and certainly Ulex, however delightful in themselves and in their
native habitat, are distinctly _de trop_ in the garden.
[Illustration: leafy branches]
Seen in wide masses, and whether in the brown, green, or purple stage,
Heather, as we know, is an ever beautiful cloak to the earth. But except
at the height of its flowering richness, when it occurs in scattered
patches, its effect is apt to be rusty and unkempt. As for the
Gorse—gorgeous as it undoubtedly be at its full golden time when seen in
clumps on down or roadside—it has, at close quarters, a ragged, dusty,
almost leprous appearance which quite unfits it for cultivation. It
would seem as though all its vital beauty were driven out to the
flowering tops: its inner and lower portions are always dried up, and
scabby as from some withering sickness. Such, at least, is always the
case with the full-grown plant; though, when very young, or when
springing anew from a shorn stump, it remains for some time pleasingly
green all over.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE PROBLEM OF GRASS]
To the uninitiated it may appear simple enough to pluck up the Heather;
but how soon will he be brought face to face with the dismal fact that,
for grass-growing purposes, this superficial treatment is of no avail
whatsoever! The peaty soil, product of untold generations of Heather,
spongy to a depth of many inches, matted with the fibrils of roots, is
absolutely antagonistic to grass of any description. The roots of the
Furze, on their side, deep-reaching, far-spreading and tenacious, are
simply rejuvenated and rejoiced by the lopping of the plant above
ground. You may think you have done with it: behold! within a very few
weeks saucy spriglets of brightest green Gorse will merrily make their
appearance and claim the land again as their own!
[Illustration: men working in field]
Any seed sown on such a bed is merely so much food offered to the fowls
of the air. The Master of the House had to learn that lesson
practically, and lost a couple of seasons in so doing. ‹As may plainly
be seen, he was a thoroughgoing ignoramus in that quarter; and he was
not likely to be set right by Mr. Grinder!› It was only when Adam
supervened and pointed out the necessity of trenching the ground,
ridding it of its centuries-old tangle of fibre, overturning and
pressing it, that the desired green result could at length be obtained.
But the overturning demanded the combined work of pickaxe, fork, and
cutting spade. It produced an incredible amount of underground wood,
tough, sappy, and seemingly incombustible; and it kept Caliban occupied
for many a long week.
* * * * *
We have now many promising verdant roods, destined in time to be
improved into lawns, where hitherto Heath and Whin held their sway. But
the spaces lately freed from underwoods, which we so fondly hoped would
turn of themselves into grassy glades and dells, provided us with new
Heraclean labours.
[Sidenote: WAR ON BRACKEN]
Have I named Bracken?—Bracken! an everlasting problem on such a piece of
land as ours, which less than a century back was undoubtedly part of the
wild moorland itself. Nothing, it seems, but thorough overturning will
really and finally rid the soil of the unconscionable Bracken—the
ubiquitous, the imperishable, the exasperating Pteris Aquilina!
* * * * *
This knowledge has been impressed on us by the experience of successive
years. Our first inkling of it was when, returning to the Villino after
a few months’ absence and fondly anticipating to find our precious
glades ‹which, after the Great Clearance, had been generously sown with
grass› covered with a tender-green, thickly-piled carpet, we were
confronted with waving fields of lusty Brake already breast high.
In itself the sight was not displeasing; the young verdure was cool to
the eye and did not greatly impede the view. But what we wanted was
Grass. Grass which, in course of time and at their proper seasons,
Crocus Vernus, Primrose, Blue-bell and Daffodil, Foxglove, and Colchicum
Autumnale would star and illumine with colour.
Now, where the Brake thrives, it takes unto itself the whole bounty of
the sun, and stifles all plant-life of lesser height than itself.
We disconsolately took advice from presumably competent persons.
“Oh,” said Everybody, with confidence, “you can get rid of Bracken if
you cut it twice in the same year.”
“Can you?”—and here the Master of Villino Loki, in a state of inveteracy
and resentment foreign to his usually placid character, feels he must
again speak in the first person—“Can you?” ‹this is sarcastic› “I tell
you, sir, that for the last three years I have cut that infernal
Bracken, not twice in the twelvemonth, but four times and more—and look
at it!”
You may imagine me pointing, with an indignation difficult to repress,
to some corner of the cleared ground that does not happen to have been
visited _quite_ lately by the spud or the furze-cutter.
“This,” I say with emphasis, “I myself purged of all visible Bracken
only last month!”
Now, as a matter of fact, the space in question, if not actually covered
with the pertinacious fronds, is dotted with scores, nay hundreds, of
forceful shoots; some still cosily curled up in their “crosier” stage,
others impudently stretching themselves under the sun and persisting, in
spite of all edicts, in screening its rays from the hard-struggling
grass. What chance has humble grass against a thing that will sprout
three inches in one night? And, if you look closer, you perceive a host
of baby offshoots cheerfully pushing from some deep-burrowing ancient
subterranean body, its innumerable little bald heads between the sorely
tried, recently established grass settlements.
Twice cut, forsooth!—Why, to this day, in the very middle of paths made
three years ago ‹“Three—years-ago—sir!”›, you will discover here, there,
and there again, a healthy shoot, sappy and erect, balancing its bright
green plume right in the way, as if in defiance of all extermination.
No—the most that can be claimed as a result of the war which is still
being waged upon the Brake is that, perhaps, this pertinacious growth is
beginning to betray some signs of discouragement. The ranks of the
legions, as they make their periodical reappearance with an obstinacy
worthy of a better cause, grow a trifle thinner year by year.
“If you only cut them young,” says Adam, consolingly but with cruel
imagery, “they say the roots will bleed to death.”
This—Corporal Nym would hint—is as may be. As in the case of our
wonderful forbears, bloodletting in the Spring, if not really conducive
to better health, seems to interfere little with their thriving.
Meanwhile, happily, as no scion of Pteris Aquilina ‹if it cannot really
be prevented from cropping up where it chooses› is now allowed ever to
reach its baleful maturity, the desired and much-petted grass is
gradually establishing itself. And, with that eager optimism in
gardening matters which is a characteristic of the family at Villino
Loki, we look forward, in a few years, to the prospect of a succession
of grassy carpets from crest to foot on our hillside.
But this consummation, much desired, can, we are aware, only be secured
by unremitting labour. Sometimes the Master of the House ‹who, having
rashly vowed to achieve the task, considers himself bound to see it
through himself› is assailed by something very like misdoubt as he rests
awhile upon his spud, blunted by some two hours’ punching at sporadic
croziers, and computes the remaining roods, nay, the acres, still to be
dealt with ...
If seven men, with seven spuds
Should punch for half a year ...
...?
Rock of Sisyphus!—Cask of the Danaides!—Hydra of Argolis, with the
unquenchable heads!—these and others are similes that fatally drift into
his meditations.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: HAUNTING RHYMES]
When engaged upon work of protracted and futile iteration—such as
“Bracken-chivvying”—tags of inane rhymes are apt to invade the
hypnotized brain: of the kind that sometimes rise in accompaniment to
the steady bumping of railway wheels on certain slow journeys. A
particularly haunting one—to be conjured off if possible—is the
“Nightmare” jingle, Mark Twain’s, I believe:
Punch/, conduc/tor, punch/with care,
A green/trip-slip/for a two/cent fare,
A pink/trip-slip/for a three/cent fare,
Punch/, punch/, punch with care ...
and so on relentlessly.
If these are not the exact horrid words, this is the way they come back
to me, giving a lilt to vindictive spud work.
At another time, the apparent futility of all efforts to come even with
the task at hand will evoke some such iterative lines as Cyrano’s dying
vision of eternally resurging enemies:
_Je sais/bien qu’à/la fin/vous me/mettrez/à bas
N’impor/te, je/me bats/, je me/bats, je/me bats!_
[Illustration: stairs in garden]
This sort of absolutely incongruous haunting is an instance of what
Hoffmann would have fondly called the _Zusammeverhängniss der Dinge_ or
“fatally-concatenated-mutual-interdependency” of things! Mythological
images rising vaguely from the clouds of school memories; the lilt of
that Walrus and Carpenter verse parodied a thousand times; an American
jingle never recalled since it was first casually read and dismissed on
a railway journey; and the magniloquent _panache_ lines of Rostand—all
dropping in irrelevantly from some distant and forgotten corner of the
past into this garden, all à propos of spud work and linking itself with
it!
For instance, to-day ‹one of the three longest in the year, for, in the
coming morn, about five o’clock, our summer solstice will have taken
place›, as I spudded away at the fern, thirstily and perspiringly, my
haunting iteration was alternately of images wide as the poles asunder.
One was of those puzzling lines, in Boileau’s heroicomic poem _Le
Lutrin_, anent the barber who
... _d’une main legère
Tient un verre de vin qui rit dans la fougère._
[Sidenote: FERN SEED]
The other was of Gadshill boast: “We steal as in a castle, cock-sure: we
have the receipt of fern-seed”—which irresistibly, by concatenation,
brought in the image of my dear if disreputable old friend Falstaff and
how he would have “larded the lean earth” as he spudded along. Now it
occurs to me that if the receipt of fern-seed as handed down by
tradition is in any way correct, this is the last day when this fern
massacre can be of any use, as far as Villino Loki is concerned, to
prevent its propagation for this year. Is not to-morrow St. John’s Eve;
and is not that the date upon which the invisible seed—which once
successfully gathered will confer upon the gatherer the power of
invisibility—drops upon the soil?
The harvest, it seems, must be made “in the dark of the moon,” at the
exact turning of midnight, and received in a pewter plate; without
regard to the beguiling pranks of fairy or goblin, who, naturally
enough, are jealous of the acquisition by mere mortals of this essential
attribute of their order. The receipt does not state how the
pewter-harvested seed, being invisible, is to be bottled up or otherwise
preserved for use when required.
This, by the way, is a fairly typical instance of the manner in which
our mediæval superstitions were shrouded in cryptic conditions, the
failure of any one of which in the smallest particular would plausibly
explain away the failure of the whole charm.—We can easily understand
the paucity of invisible mortals at all times.
Well, I for one have no desire for such a charm. The temptation to use
it would be distracting. And conceive the endless trouble, picture to
yourself the misconceptions, you would raise into your own mind if you
possessed the power at any moment of prying, invisible, into the
innermost life of your best friends, or your enemies ... and of hearing
what they might happen to say about you!
No. Yet I would some power gave me the gift to gather all the invisible
seed at Villino Loki: I would burn it once and for all.
[Sidenote: _CROSSES DE FOUGERE, A LA JAPONAISE_]
One cannot help wondering that so little use should be made of all this
vegetable wealth. There it is, covering square leagues of common land,
to be harvested by whosoever list. In former days, indeed, it was
gathered in and burnt for “potashes”—chiefly for glass-making. And
therein lies the explanation of the wine “laughing in the _fougère_”;
ash of _fougère_, or Bracken, had in the “grand Roy’s” days become
synonymous with glass itself. Again, in its dry condition, Brake was
once extensively used for thatching and for litter; in some parts of the
country the young plant was given as fodder to cattle and horses. Now,
however, county councils forbid the building of thatch, our up-to-date
cattle and horses are too fastidious as to litter and fodder, and we
import our potashes. Meanwhile, Bracken threatens everywhere to stifle
the Heather on our moors.
If I remember right, in some parts of France the poorer people make use
of young Brake as food. And this reminds me that, some years ago, I
heard the last Japanese Ambassador remark at dinner—à propos of the
Asparagus that was just going round—that he wondered we should not make
use in the kitchen of the Bracken he had noticed growing in such
enormous and neglected quantities in England. In his country, he assured
us, they eat the young shoots, when still in their folded “crozier”
stage, precisely as we over here eat Asparagus, and consider them not
only as delicacies, but as particularly wholesome and nutritious.
The recipe for cooking them is simple. The croziers, cut just short of
the roots, are to be parboiled in strongly salted water; the first
water, which extracts some unpleasantly bitter principle, is to be
quickly poured off; then the shoots, thoroughly drained of this first
water, are boiled in a large quantity of fresh water, drained again
carefully and served with oil or butter, very much like our Sprue.
I must some day make the experiment. I wonder if the joy, now, of eating
tender young Bracken would be like that of the savage devouring his
declared enemy?
Meanwhile, for the sake of the desired grass, the hecatomb must be
repeated daily.
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