Gardening Blunders--The Walled Garden and the Fruit Walls--
Spring Gardening--Christmas Roses--Snowdrops--Pot Plants.
_January 5._--What wonderful notions some people have about gardens! In
a clever novel I have just been reading, there occurs this
description:--"The gardens at Wrexmore Hall were in a blaze of beauty,
with Geraniums and Chrysanthemums of every hue." In the published
letters of Mr. Dallas, who was formerly United States' Minister here,
there is something still more marvellous. He had been staying with Lord
Palmerston at Broadlands in the end of September, and he speaks of "the
glowing beds of Roses, Geraniums, Rhododendrons, Heliotropes, Pinks,
Chrysanthemums." I shall have to make a pilgrimage to Broadlands.
Meanwhile, why should we not more often bed out Chrysanthemums in
masses, as in the Temple Gardens? A "winter garden" is generally nothing
more than a garden of small evergreens, which, of course, is an
improvement on bare soil, but which is in itself not singularly
interesting.
Since last I wrote, we have had storms of wind and rain, and some little
snow and frost, but the weather has, on the whole, been very genial for
the time of year. I have finished my planting, and am now busy
re-sodding the grass terrace which runs along the south and east of the
house; the grass had become full of weeds, and in places was bare and
brown. But my most important work has been within the walled garden.
This garden is entered by a door in the south-east wall, and two walls,
facing south-west and north-east, run at right angles to it. A thick
hedge, guarded by wire netting to keep out the rabbits, is at the
further or north-west side, and divides us from the home-croft. Along
the south-east wall we have two vineries, and between them a small range
of frames and hotbeds. Against the sheltered wall between the vineries
we have a Magnolia grandiflora, which flowered with me last year; a
Banksian Rose, which has done no good as yet; and a General Jacqueminot,
which is always beautiful. A Camellia (Woodsii), which flowered
abundantly last spring, I have moved elsewhere, and have planted a
Marechal Niel in its place. Beyond the vineries on both sides are my
best Peaches and Nectarines. On the south-west wall are Peaches and
Nectarines, Apricots, Plums and Pears, and on the north-east Cherries
and Currants. In front of the Vine border is a broad gravel walk, which
reaches along the whole breadth of the garden, and on the other side of
it are the flower-beds. There are about forty of them in all, of
different shapes and sizes, and divided from each other by little
winding walks of red Jersey gravel. As you come upon them all at once,
but cannot see the whole at a glance, I have no temptation to sacrifice
everything to monotonous regularity and a mere effect of colour. I take
bed by bed, and make each as beautiful as I can, so that I have a
constant variety, and so that at no season of the year am I entirely
bare of flowers. Box hedges three feet high and some two and a half feet
thick, and a screen of Rhododendrons, separate the flower garden from
the kitchen garden, which is beyond; and right through both flower
garden and kitchen garden, from the front of the Vine border to the far
hedge by the croft, we have just been extending a grass walk, and
planting, along the part that skirts the kitchen garden, Pears, Plums,
and (for sake of a very uncertain experiment) a Walnut and a Medlar.
My spring gardening is on no great scale. A bed of mixed Hyacinths,
another of single Van Thol Tulips, and another of Golden Prince Tulips,
two beds of Wallflowers, one of red Daisies edged with white, and one of
Polyanthus, are all I have at present planted. There will be more by and
by. Meanwhile the spring flowers I really care about are those that come
up every year on the mixed borders,--the outside borders of the flower
garden. They are old friends that never fail us; they ask only to be
left alone, and are the most welcome "harbingers of spring," bringing
with them the pleasant memories of former years, and the fresh promise
of the year that is to come.
I never saw such Christmas Roses as I have just now. Clustering beneath
their dark serrated leaves rise masses of bloom,--bud and blossom,--the
bud often tinged with a faint pink colour, the blossom a snowy white
guarding a centre of yellow stamens. I have counted from thirty to forty
blooms upon a single root, and I sometimes think the Eucharis itself is
not a finer flower. The Christmas Rose, the Helleborus niger, has been
celebrated by Pliny, by Spenser, and by Cowley; but I confess my own
favourite association with it is of a later date. I never see it without
recalling the description poor Anne Bronte gives in her strange wild
story of _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_. Just at the end, when Helen,
after her sad unhappy life, is free at last, and wishes to tell Gilbert
that what remains of her life may now be his, she turns to "pluck that
beautiful half-blown Christmas Rose that grew upon the little shrub
without, just peeping from the snow that had hitherto, no doubt,
defended it from the frost, and was now melting away in the sun." And
then, "having gently dashed the glittering powder from its leaves," she
says, "This Rose is not so fragrant as a summer flower, but it has stood
through hardships none of them could bear: the cold rain of winter has
sufficed to nourish it, and its faint sun to warm it; the bleak winds
have not blanched it, or broken its stem, and the keen frost has not
blighted it. Look, Gilbert, it is still fresh and blooming as a flower
can be, with the cold snow even now on its petals. Will you have it?"
Nowhere in the whole of the Bronte novels (so far as I remember) is a
flower described as this one is.
It is suggestive enough of dark and drowsy winter, that the two flowers
which most enliven it should bear the deadly names of black Hellebore
and winter Aconite (though, indeed, the Eranthis is itself allied
rather to the Hellebores than to the Aconites); as yet, however, my
Aconites are still below the sod.
_January 20._--It is St. Agnes's Eve, and never was there a St. Agnes's
Eve so unlike that one which witnessed the happy adventure of young
Porphyro. _Then_
"St. Agnes' Eve; ah! bitter chill it was;
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold."
_Now_ the weather is soft, and almost warm.
I always seem to connect the idea of a Snowdrop with St. Agnes; and
Tennyson speaks of "the first Snowdrop of the year" lying upon her
bosom. This year our first Snowdrop appeared on the 18th, and now each
day brings out fresh tufts on the herbaceous borders, where the sun
strikes most warmly. Another week will pass, and, under the Lime trees
which shade the orchard, I shall find other tufts of the double variety,
planted in bygone years I know not by whom, and now springing up half
wild and quite uncared for. And these Snowdrops gave me a hint a year or
two ago. I found that my gardener was in the habit of throwing away his
old bulbs--Hyacinths and Tulips--which had served their turn and lived
their season. There was, of course, no good in keeping them for garden
purposes; but this throwing them away seemed sadly wasteful. We now,
therefore, plant them in the orchard grass, and each year they come up
half wild like the Snowdrops, and each year they will be more numerous
and more effective. But the best way of growing Snowdrops is, I believe,
on a lawn itself. I have planted several hundreds of them in groups and
patches, in a corner, where I can see them from the library window. The
green spears are now piercing the grass, and in a few days there will be
a broken sheet of snowy white, which will last for at least a fortnight,
and which, from a distance, will seem like the lingering relic of some
snowdrift still unmelted by the sun.[1] By the way, was it not Mrs.
Barbauld who spoke of the Snowdrop as "an icicle changed into a flower?"
The conceit is not a particularly happy one, for the soft white petals
have nothing in common with the hard sparkle of the icicle.
[1] As matter of fact, the Snowdrops were less abundant this year than
they usually are.--Has it ever been noticed that the colour of the
winter flowers, as that of the Arctic animals, is almost always white?
We have not been fortunate this winter with the pot-plants which we
require for the house. The Primulas have been singularly shabby. We had
got some white sand from an excavation in the road near us, and it seems
to have checked the growth of several of our plants. The Roman
Hyacinths, too, have done less well than usual with us. There was a
gummy look about many of the bulbs, which made us fear at the time that
they were not properly ripened, and the result has proved that we were
right. For dinner-table decoration can anything be prettier at this
season than small Orange-trees--Japanese Oranges, I think they
are--laden with their wealth of green and golden fruit? I have only just
taken to them, and certainly I have seen nothing of the kind I like so
well.