Frost--The Vineries and Vines--Early Forcing--Orange-trees--
Spring Work--Aconites--The Crocus.
_February 6._--We have had no morning so beautiful this winter. A clear,
bright frost is in the air, and on the grass, and among the trees. Not a
spray but is coated with crystals, white as snow and thick as moss; not
a leaf of Holly or of Ivy but is fringed with frosted fretwork. There is
not a breath of wind, and the birds, that were singing yesterday, have
all vanished out of sight. It is wonderfully beautiful while it lasts,
but it will be over before night.
Meanwhile, I am thankful for any touch of frost, if it will only come
now instead of later. It will help to kill some few of the eggs and
larvae, which, in the different form of noxious insects, will plague us
through the summer. It will keep back the fruit-tree buds, which are
sadly too forward, and which will run a poor chance unless they are
checked betimes. The Apricots especially look almost ready to open, and
I can see colour even on the Nectarines.
We are beginning to force our first vinery. The year before last we had
renewed the Vine border, and last year we did not venture any forcing;
this year I hope we may be repaid. Our Black Hamburghs are old Vines of
rather a good sort, with fine large berries and very few stones. The
Muscats--Canon Hall, Alexandria, and Troveren--are Vines which I planted
some three years ago. In the same house there is also an old Syrian
Vine, bearing big bunches, but otherwise worth but little.
In the second vinery are Black Hamburghs again, Black Princes, Grizzly
Frontignan, and a Sweetwater,--all old Vines; and to these I have added
a Mrs. Pince's Muscat, a Foster's Seedling, and a Madresfield Court.
Both vineries are of old construction, with clumsy flues, and require a
thorough re-arranging, which I must give them some day. Quite the best
grape, so far as flavour goes, is, I contend, the Grizzly Frontignan,
which has now comparatively gone out of fashion. The bunches, it is
true, are not handsome, the berries are not large, and the colour is not
good; but has any Muscat a finer or more aromatic flavour? It was Sir
William Temple who first introduced it, and he speaks of it with pride
as "the noblest of all Grapes I ever ate in England." The Sweetwater is
of value in another way; it is of all Grapes the most grateful and
refreshing to an invalid. Only the autumn before last I was asked by an
old friend whether anywhere in our neighbourhood the Sweetwater was
still grown. He had been very ill, and was longing for Grapes,--but the
rich luscious Muscats, with their highly-flavoured and thickly-sugared
juice, had been forbidden. He had searched in vain among the vineries of
many great houses, where the Sweetwater has been long discarded, and it
was a pleasant surprise to find that in my small vineries this once
favourite old Grape could still be found.
We are now bringing on our Strawberries; the Duc de Malakoff and Sir
Charles Napier are the two we are forcing this year. Last year we had
Oscar as well, but we found it a bad hanger, the first fruit damping
away if it were not at once gathered. We are forcing also French Beans,
Fulmer's Forcing,--and Tomatos, the Orangefield Dwarf. The prettiest
thing in our vinery is a large Orange-tree, laden with last year's
fruit, and soon to be covered with this spring's flowers. The fruit
itself is only good for preserving, but it is wonderfully handsome, and
no Orange-tree could be more prolific. Surely the old plan of having a
separate Orangery is dying out in England, except of course in the very
stately places. Thirty or forty years ago I think these Orangeries
were more common in gardens of less pretension. I recall one, half
green-house, half summer-house, with its large sashed windows
opening to a lawn--windows round which a dozen creepers twined and
blossomed;--inside stood the great Orange-trees in their huge tubs,
waiting till the full summer, when they would be arranged along the
broad terrace walk--in themselves beautiful, and calling up a thousand
fragrant memories of Southern France and Italy. Now, I generally see
trimmed Bays or Laurels arranged in porcelain pots, looking at once
shabby and artificial. Of course I do not suppose Oranges worth growing
except (a rather large exception) for their beauty; with Lemons it is
different--they are certainly worth growing,--but then they do best
trained up against the back of a moderately heated house, and not moved
out in summer.
_February 22._--Since I wrote we have had the sharpest and keenest
frost--sharper than we have had all the winter; and an east wind which
at once dried and froze up everything. Now spring has come again, and
(as Horace says) has "shivered" through the trees. The Elders are
already unfolding their leaves, and a Lonicera is in freshest bud. I
remember when, a few years ago, Mr. Longfellow, the American poet, was
in England, he told me that he was often reminded by the tender foliage
of an English spring of that well-known line of Watts, where the fields
of Paradise
"Stand dressed in _living green_;"
and I thought of this to-day when I looked, as I remember he was
looking, at the fresh verdure of this very Lonicera.
But all things are now telling of spring. We have finished our pruning
of the wall-fruit; we have collected our pea-sticks, and sown our
earliest Peas. We have planted our Ranunculus bed and gone through the
herbaceous borders, dividing and clearing away where the growth was too
thick, and sending off hamperfuls of Paeony, Iris, Oenothera, Snowflake,
Japanese Anemone, Day Lily, and many others. On the other hand we have
been looking over old volumes of Curtis's _Botanical Magazine_, and
have been trying to get, not always successfully, a number of old
forgotten plants of beauty, and now of rarity. We have found enough,
however, to add a fresh charm to our borders for June, July, and August.
On the lawn we have some Aconites in flower. They are planted at the
foot of two great Beech trees, and last year they lay there--a soft
yellow light upon the grass. This year they are doing badly. I suspect
they must have been mown away last spring before their tubers were
thoroughly ripe, and they are punishing us now by flowering only here
and there. I know no flower so quaint as this--the little yellow head
emerging from its deeply-cut Elizabethan ruff of green. Then, too, the
Crocuses are bursting up from the soil, like Byron's Assyrian cohorts,
"all gleaming in purple and gold." Nothing is more stupid than the
ordinary way of planting Crocuses--in a narrow line or border. Of course
you get a line of colour, but that is all, and, for all the good it
does, you might as well have a line of coloured pottery or variegated
gravel. They should be grown in thick masses, and in a place where the
sun can shine upon them, and then they open out into wonderful depths
of beauty. I am afraid Dr. Forbes Watson's most charming book on
_Flowers and Gardens_ is too little known. No modern author, not even
excepting Ruskin, has studied the form and the beauty of flowers so
closely and lovingly as he has done, and he entirely bears out my view.
He says--
"This is one of the many plants which are spoilt by too much
meddling. If the gardener too frequently separates the offsets the
individual blooms may possibly be finer, but the lover of flowers
will miss the most striking charms of the humbler and more
neglected plant. The reason is this: the bloom, when first opening,
is of a deeper orange than afterwards, and this depth of hue is
seemingly increased where the blossoms are small from crowded
growth. In these little clusters, therefore, where the flowers are
of various sizes, the colour gains in varieties and depth, as well
as in extent of surface, and vividness of colour is the most
important point in the expression of the yellow Crocus."
Besides the clusters along the shrubberies and the mixed borders, I have
a number on the lawn beneath a large weeping Ash; the grass was bare
there, and, though this is hidden in summer by the heavy curtains of
pendent boughs and crowding leaves, it was well to do something to veil
its desolation in the spring. Nothing can be more successful than a mass
of Crocus, yellow, white, and purple.
I sometimes think that the Crocus is less cared for than it deserves.
Our modern poets rarely mention it; but in Homer, when he would make a
carpet for the gods, it is of Lotus, Hyacinth, and Crocus; and Virgil's
bees find their honey among Cassia and Lime blossoms, and "iron-grey
Hyacinths and glowing Crocus." Virgil speaks, too, of the scent of the
Crocus (whatever that may be), and all Latin authors, when they wish to
express a bright deep orange colour, call it the colour of the Crocus.
Our cool vinery is now gay with stages of Narcissus, Tulips, and
Hyacinths, which have been brought on in heat, and are well rewarding us
for what care we have given to them.