The Herbaceous Beds--Pulmonaria--Wallflowers--Polyanthus--
Starch Hyacinths--Sweet Brier--Primula Japonica--Early
Annuals and Bulbs--The Old Yellow China Rose.
_April 4._--Is any moment of the year more delightful than the present?
What there is wanting in glow of colour is more than made up for in
fulness of interest. Each day some well-known, long-remembered plant
bursts into blossom on the herbaceous borders, and brings with it
pleasant associations of days that are no more, or of books that cannot
die. It is, I think, Alphonse Karr who says we should watch closely and
rejoice greatly over the slow procession of the flowers, as one by one
they appear, bloom, and fade; if we are past middle life, it is a sight
which, at best, we can only see some twenty or thirty times again.
The common double Daffodils are already past, but we have still the
variety which, from its blended hues of dark orange and pale citron, the
children call--as they call the wild Linaria--"the butter-and-egg
flower." Here is the Saxifraga crassifolia, with its huge broad leaves
and its thick spikes of pink bell-blossom. It is almost too coarse
growing, however, for the border, and does better on a rude rockery, or
rather "loggery," which I have elsewhere.
Here is the Pulmonaria or Lungwort, with its varied bloom of red and
blue, and with the white markings on its leaves, which were supposed to
look like lungs, and from which it takes its name. This Pulmonaria is
one of the large class of plants, which, it was believed, had a healing
power, and indicated that healing power by the form of leaf, or root, or
blossom. These herbs of grace--and it is doubtful whether any plant
would be entirely excepted--bore about with them, plain for all to see,
outward and visible signs of their secret and subtle virtue. Thus the
Liverwort (Hepatica) had the shape of a liver in its leaves, the
Eyebright (Euphrasia) looked up to you with an eye like your own--and
each had potency of healing for that part of the human body, of which
the image was expressed in its own frail form.
Farther on are close green tufts of the Corydalis, with its delicate
lilac flowers. Then come bushes of Wallflower of the richest red-brown
colour--a colour like nothing else, and indeed without a name, that
would convey the depth and beauty of the dark tawny hue. What a contrast
to the little wild yellow flower, which draws its scanty life from the
wall of some grey old castle like that of Conway! Few scents are more
delicious than that of Wallflowers. Bacon says of them that they "are
very delightful, to be set under a parlour or lower chamber window." It
is an old controversy whether the Wallflower and the Gillyflower are the
same; but it seems tolerably clear that the latter name was rather
loosely used, and meant sometimes the Wallflower, but sometimes also the
Stock or the Clove Carnation. The Polyanthus on the borders has done
better than those on the separate bed; the pretty _tortoise-shell_
blossoms (to use a good expression of Forbes Watson) are just now in
full perfection, and I have also a perfectly white Hose-in-hose
Polyanthus, which is really charming. There is a droll passage in one of
Sterne's love-letters to his future wife, in which he says--and he means
to be sentimental and pathetic--
"The kindest affections will have room to shoot and expand in our
retirement.--Let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a
distance, the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L. [the
lady's name was Lydia] has seen a Polyanthus blow in December!
Some friendly wall has sheltered it from the biting wind.--No
planetary influence shall reach us but that which presides over and
cherishes the sweetest flowers."
There is still one other flower of which I must speak. It grows so
abundantly, it flowers so luxuriantly with me;--it comes up like a weed
on almost every border, and I have given it one entire bed to itself. It
is the Starch or Grape Hyacinth, known also, I believe, as the Plum or
Cluster Hyacinth. Its lower bells are of the darkest indigo, but towards
the top it melts into the softest sky-blue tints, and when in masses it
is beautiful. Ruskin says it is "as if a cluster of Grapes and a hive of
honey had been distilled and compressed together into one small boss of
celled and beaded blue."
Upon the wall by the vinery a Corchorus (Kerria) japonica is laden with
wreaths of golden blossom. An Almond-tree near the front door is just
shedding its pink petals. The double Gorse will be in flower in a week.
But after all there is no flowering shrub, which we care for more just
now than the still unflowering Sweet Brier. Towards the end of the
walled garden I have laid out a miniature herb garden, with its separate
little beds for Thyme and Marjoram, and Sage and Borage, and the rest,
and inclosed it within a hedge of Sweet Brier. This Sweet Brier is now
in leaf, and, after rain especially, it fills all that corner of the
garden with whiffs and snatches of sweetest perfume. The Sweet Brier is
the true Eglantine of the poets, for though Milton seems to confound
"twisted Eglantine" with the Honeysuckle, Shakspeare has it right, and
Titania's bower is, as we all know,
"Quite over-canopied with luscious Woodbine,
With sweet Musk Roses, and with Eglantine."
By the way, is the Musk Rose still found in English gardens, and what is
it? Two years ago I got, with infinite trouble, a root or two, but they
have died down again, and I begin to doubt whether I shall ever know its
scent--a scent which Bacon says comes next to the Violet in perfuming
the garden's air.
_April 25._--The stages in the cool vinery are now gay with Spiraeas and
Cinerarias. The Lilies of the Valley are over, but they have done
exceedingly well this year. I wonder whether the Trillium grandiflorum
or Canadian Wood-Lily is generally known. I believe it to be hardy, but
it was new to me, and I had grown it in a pot in the vinery, and a very
pretty little flower it is, with its three green leaves, its three green
sepals, and its three white petals. I have grown in the same way, for
the first time, the Primula japonica, and surely nothing can be more
beautiful than its five circles of crimson blossoms, one whorl above
another. I have been so pleased with it, that I have just given orders
for an entire bed of it to be made, which shall remain permanently, and
between the plants I am dropping in Gladiolus bulbs, so that the bed
will be in beauty for many weeks.
As I have before explained, you can hardly see the various beds of my
flower-garden at a glance, so that I can go to work independently of the
effects of the colour produced by elaborate bedding out. To tell the
truth, too, I am heartily weary of the monotony of modern gardens, with
their endless Pelargoniums, Calceolarias, and Verbenas. Some few such
beds I cannot of course dispense with, but I am always glad when I can
_reclaim_ a bed for permanent herbaceous plants, as in this case of the
Primula japonica.
Another bed, I trust, may be successful in another way--it is a bed of
the blue Nemophila insignis. Two years ago I saw in the People's Garden
at Dublin, in the beginning of May, two beds, which struck me as being
almost the most effective in their colouring of any I had ever seen. One
was of Nemophila, the other of Virginian stock; one was a mass of the
most brilliant blue, the other a blending of shades of tenderest lilac.
The blooms were thick and close as possible, and the size of the flowers
much finer than that of the ordinary spring-sown annuals. The manager of
these gardens kindly explained to me his secret: the seeds were sown in
autumn, pricked out in spring, protected during the early months, and
then finally bedded out. Last year we tried with the Nemophila, but we
were too soon, and the frost caught us and destroyed our plants. This
year we are later, and, by giving some protection against cold and sun
for a few days longer, I hope to reproduce what I saw in Dublin. Another
year I may make trial of the Virginian Stock as well.
The Hyacinth bed has done fairly well, but there were too many pinks
among the spikes for it to be quite successful. The Van Thol Tulips are
a terrible failure. Some mice got to the bed, and, though we have killed
thirteen of them, they had already eaten away so many of the crowns that
some dozen Tulips, appearing here and there, are all I have. The bed of
Golden Prince Tulips is, however, doing better; this always seems to me
a very handsome Tulip, and I sometimes fancy has a sweetness of scent
beyond all other kinds--a something, which at times half reminds one of
the odour of some Tea Rose.
By the bye, I have had a Tea Rose in blossom in the vinery--of a sort I
rarely see, and of which I really do not know the proper name. It used
to grow over a cottage in Herefordshire, which I knew many years ago,
and the Herefordshire nurseryman, from whom I got my standard, calls it
"the old yellow China." Is this the right name, and is the Rose more
common than I imagine? Its petals are loose and thin, and of a pale
primrose colour, and before it is fully out it is at its best. Its
leaves are large and handsome, and of glossy green. Its blossom has a
certain half-bitter scent of Tea about it, to which the scent of no
other Tea Rose can at all compare--it is so strong and aromatic.
We gathered our first forced Strawberries on the 16th; our first forced
French Beans on the 17th, and our first Asparagus on April 18. This is
early for us, but we are having the finest weather.