NOVELTY AND VARIETY
When I look back over thirty years of gardening, I see what an
extraordinary progress there has been, not only in the introduction of
good plants new to general cultivation, but also in the home production
of improved kinds of old favourites. In annual plants alone there has
been a remarkable advance. And here again, though many really beautiful
things are being brought forward, there seems always to be an undue
value assigned to a fresh development, on the score of its novelty.
Now it seems to me, that among the thousands of beautiful things already
at hand for garden use, there is no merit whatever in novelty or variety
unless the thing new or different is distinctly more beautiful, or in
some such way better than an older thing of the same class.
And there seems to be a general wish among seed growers just now to
dwarf all annual plants. Now, when a plant is naturally of a diffuse
habit, the fixing of a dwarfer variety may be a distinct gain to
horticulture--it may just make a good garden plant out of one that was
formerly of indifferent quality; but there seems to me to be a kind of
stupidity in inferring from this that all annuals are the better for
dwarfing. I take it that the bedding system has had a good deal to do
with it. It no doubt enables ignorant gardeners to use a larger variety
of plants as senseless colour-masses, but it is obvious that many, if
not most, of the plants are individually made much uglier by the
process. Take, for example, one of the dwarfest Ageratums: what a silly
little dumpy, formless, pincushion of a thing it is! And then the
dwarfest of the China Asters. Here is a plant (whose chief weakness
already lies in a certain over-stiffness) made stiffer and more
shapeless still by dwarfing and by cramming with too many petals. The
Comet Asters of later years are a much-improved type of flower, with a
looser shape and a certain degree of approach to grace and beauty. When
this kind came out it was a noteworthy novelty, not because it was a
novelty, but because it was a better and more beautiful thing. Also
among the same Asters the introduction of a better class of red
colouring, first of the blood-red and then of the so-called scarlet
shades, was a good variety, because it was the distinct bettering of the
colour of a popular race of garden-flowers, whose red and pink
colourings had hitherto been of a bad and rank quality.
It is quite true that here and there the dwarf kind is a distinctly
useful thing, as in the dwarf Nasturtiums. In this grand plant one is
glad to have dwarf ones as well as the old trailing kinds. I even
confess to a certain liking for the podgy little dwarf Snapdragons; they
are ungraceful little dumpy things, but they happen to have come in some
tender colourings of pale yellow and pale pink, that give them a kind of
absurd prettiness, and a certain garden-value. I also look at them as a
little floral joke that is harmless and not displeasing, but they cannot
for a moment compare in beauty with the free-growing Snapdragon of the
older type. This I always think one of the best and most interesting and
admirable of garden-plants. Its beauty is lost if it is crowded up among
other things in a border; it should be grown in a dry wall or steep
rocky bank, where its handsome bushy growth and finely-poised spikes of
bloom can be well seen.
[Illustration: TALL SNAPDRAGONS GROWING IN A DRY WALL.]
[Illustration: MULLEINS GROWING IN THE FACE OF DRY WALL. (_See "Old
Wall," page 116._)]
One of the annuals that I think is entirely spoilt by dwarfing is
Love-in-a-Mist, a plant I hold in high admiration. Many years ago I came
upon some of it in a small garden, of a type that I thought extremely
desirable, with a double flower of just the right degree of fulness, and
of an unusually fine colour. I was fortunate enough to get some seed,
and have never grown any other, nor have I ever seen elsewhere any that
I think can compare with it.
The Zinnia is another fine annual that has been much spoilt by its
would-be improvers. When a Zinnia has a hard, stiff, tall flower, with a
great many rows of petals piled up one on top of another, and when its
habit is dwarfed to a mean degree of squatness, it looks to me both ugly
and absurd, whereas a reasonably double one, well branched, and two feet
high, is a handsome plant.
I also think that Stocks and Wallflowers are much handsomer when rather
tall and branching. Dwarf Stocks, moreover, are invariably spattered
with soil in heavy autumn rain.
An example of the improver not knowing where to stop in the matter of
colouring, always strikes me in the Gaillardias, and more especially in
the perennial kind, that is increased by division as well as by seed.
The flower is naturally of a strong orange-yellow colour, with a narrow
ring of red round the centre. The improver has sought to increase the
width of the red ring. Up to a certain point it makes a livelier and
brighter-looking flower; but he has gone too far, and extended the red
till it has become a red flower with a narrow yellow edge. The red also
is of a rather dull and heavy nature, so that instead of a handsome
yellow flower with a broad central ring, here is an ugly red one with a
yellow border. There is no positive harm done, as the plant has been
propagated at every stage of development, and one may choose what one
will; but to see them together is an instructive lesson.
No annual plant has of late years been so much improved as the Sweet
Pea, and one reason why its charming beauty and scent are so enjoyable
is, that they grow tall, and can be seen on a level with the eye. There
can be no excuse whatever for dwarfing this, as has lately been done.
There are already plenty of good flowering plants under a foot high, and
the little dwarf white monstrosity, now being followed by coloured ones
of the same habit, seems to me worthy of nothing but condemnation. It
would be as right and sensible to dwarf a Hollyhock into a podgy mass a
foot high, or a Pentstemon, or a Foxglove. Happily these have as yet
escaped dwarfing, though I regret to see that a deformity that not
unfrequently appears among garden Foxgloves, looking like a bell-shaped
flower topping a stunted spike, appears to have been "fixed," and is
being offered as a "novelty." Here is one of the clearest examples of a
new development which is a distinct debasement of a naturally beautiful
form, but which is nevertheless being pushed forward in trade: it has no
merit whatever in itself, and is only likely to sell because it is new
and curious.
And all this parade of distortion and deformity comes about from the
grower losing sight of beauty as the first consideration, or from his
not having the knowledge that would enable him to determine what are the
points of character in various plants most deserving of development, and
in not knowing when or where to stop. Abnormal size, whether greatly
above or much below the average, appeals to the vulgar and uneducated
eye, and will always command its attention and wonderment. But then the
production of the immense size that provokes astonishment, and the
misapplied ingenuity that produces unusual dwarfing, are neither of them
very high aims.
And much as I feel grateful to those who improve garden flowers, I
venture to repeat my strong conviction that their efforts in selection
and other methods should be so directed as to keep in view the
attainment of beauty in the first place, and as a point of honour; not
to mere increase of size of bloom or compactness of habit--many plants
have been spoilt by excess of both; not for variety or novelty as ends
in themselves, but only to welcome them, and offer them, if they are
distinctly of garden value in the best sense. For if plants are grown or
advertised or otherwise pushed on any other account than that of their
possessing some worthy form of beauty, they become of the same nature as
any other article in trade that is got up for sale for the sole benefit
of the seller, that is unduly lauded by advertisement, and that makes
its first appeal to the vulgar eye by an exaggerated and showy pictorial
representation; that will serve no useful purpose, and for which there
is no true or healthy demand.
No doubt much of it comes about from the unwholesome pressure of trade
competition, which in a way obliges all to follow where some lead. I
trust that my many good friends in the trade will understand that my
remarks are not made in any personal sense whatever. I know that some of
them feel much as I do on some of these points, but that in many ways
they are helpless, being all bound in a kind of bondage to the general
system. And there is one great evil that calls loudly for redress, but
that will endure until some of the mightiest of them have the energy and
courage to band themselves together and to declare that it shall no
longer exist among them.