THE BEDDING FASHION AND ITS INFLUENCE
It is curious to look back at the old days of bedding-out, when that and
that only meant gardening to most people, and to remember how the
fashion, beginning in the larger gardens, made its way like a great
inundating wave, submerging the lesser ones, and almost drowning out the
beauties of the many little flowery cottage plots of our English
waysides. And one wonders how it all came about, and why the bedding
system, admirable for its own purpose, should have thus outstepped its
bounds, and have been allowed to run riot among gardens great and small
throughout the land. But so it was, and for many years the fashion, for
it was scarcely anything better, reigned supreme.
It was well for all real lovers of flowers when some quarter of a
century ago a strong champion of the good old flowers arose, and fought
strenuously to stay the devastating tide, and to restore the healthy
liking for the good old garden flowers. Many soon followed, and now one
may say that all England has flocked to the standard. Bedding as an
all-prevailing fashion is now dead; the old garden-flowers are again
honoured and loved, and every encouragement is freely offered to those
who will improve old kinds and bring forward others.
And now that bedding as a fashion no longer exists, one can look at it
more quietly and fairly, and see what its uses really are, for in its
own place and way it is undoubtedly useful and desirable. Many great
country-houses are only inhabited in winter, then perhaps for a week or
two at Easter, and in the late summer. There is probably a house-party
at Easter, and a succession of visitors in the late summer. A brilliant
garden, visible from the house, dressed for spring and dressed for early
autumn, is exactly what is wanted--not necessarily from any special love
of flowers, but as a kind of bright and well-kept furnishing of the
immediate environment of the house. The gardener delights in it; it is
all routine work; so many hundreds or thousands of scarlet Geranium, of
yellow Calceolaria, of blue Lobelia, of golden Feverfew, or of other
coloured material. It wants no imagination; the comprehension of it is
within the range of the most limited understanding; indeed its
prevalence for some twenty years or more must have had a deteriorating
influence on the whole class of private gardeners, presenting to them an
ideal so easy of attainment and so cheap of mental effort.
But bedding, though it is gardening of the least poetical or imaginative
kind, can be done badly or beautifully. In the _parterre_ of the formal
garden it is absolutely in place, and brilliantly-beautiful pictures
can be made by a wise choice of colouring. I once saw, and can never
forget, a bedded garden that was a perfectly satisfying example of
colour-harmony; but then it was planned by the master, a man of the most
refined taste, and not by the gardener. It was a _parterre_ that formed
part of the garden in one of the fine old places in the Midland
counties. I have no distinct recollection of the design, except that
there was some principle of fan-shaped radiation, of which each extreme
angle formed one centre. The whole garden was treated in one harmonious
colouring of full yellow, orange, and orange-brown; half-hardy annuals,
such as French and African Marigolds, Zinnias, and Nasturtiums, being
freely used. It was the most noble treatment of one limited range of
colouring I have ever seen in a garden; brilliant without being garish,
and sumptuously gorgeous without the reproach of gaudiness--a precious
lesson in temperance and restraint in the use of the one colour, and an
admirable exposition of its powerful effect in the hands of a true
artist.
I think that in many smaller gardens a certain amount of bedding may be
actually desirable; for where the owner of a garden has a special liking
for certain classes or mixtures of plants, or wishes to grow them
thoroughly well and enjoy them individually to the full, he will
naturally grow them in separate beds, or may intentionally combine the
beds, if he will, into some form of good garden effect. But the great
fault of the bedding system when at its height was, that it swept over
the country as a tyrannical fashion, that demanded, and for the time
being succeeded in effecting, the exclusion of better and more
thoughtful kinds of gardening; for I believe I am right in saying that
it spread like an epidemic disease, and raged far and wide for nearly a
quarter of a century.
Its worst form of all was the "ribbon border," generally a line of
scarlet Geranium at the back, then a line of Calceolaria, then a line of
blue Lobelia, and lastly, a line of the inevitable Golden Feather
Feverfew, or what our gardener used to call Featherfew. Could anything
be more tedious or more stupid? And the ribbon border was at its worst
when its lines were not straight, but waved about in weak and silly
sinuations.
And when bedding as a fashion was dead, when this false god had been
toppled off his pedestal, and his worshippers had been converted to
better beliefs, in turning and rending him they often went too far, and
did injustice to the innocent by professing a dislike to many a good
plant, and renouncing its use. It was not the fault of the Geranium or
of the Calceolaria that they had been grievously misused and made to
usurp too large a share of our garden spaces. Not once but many a time
my visitors have expressed unbounded surprise when they saw these plants
in my garden, saying, "I should have thought that you would have
despised Geraniums." On the contrary, I love Geraniums. There are no
plants to come near them for pot, or box, or stone basket, or for
massing in any sheltered place in hottest sunshine; and I love their
strangely-pleasant smell, and their beautiful modern colourings of soft
scarlet and salmon-scarlet and salmon-pink, some of these grouping
beautifully together. I have a space in connection with some formal
stonework of steps, and tank, and paved walks, close to the house, on
purpose for the summer placing of large pots of Geranium, with sometimes
a few Cannas and Lilies. For a quarter of the year it is one of the best
things in the garden, and delightful in colour. Then no plant does so
well or looks so suitable in some earthen pots and boxes from Southern
Italy that I always think the best that were ever made, their shape and
well-designed ornament traditional from the Middle Ages, and probably
from an even more remote antiquity.
[Illustration: GERANIUMS IN NEAPOLITAN POTS.]
There are, of course, among bedding Geraniums many of a bad, raw quality
of colour, particularly among cold, hard pinks, but there are so many to
choose from that these can easily be avoided.
I remember some years ago, when the bedding fashion was going out,
reading some rather heated discussions in the gardening papers about
methods of planting out and arranging various tender but indispensable
plants. Some one who had been writing about the errors of the bedding
system wrote about planting some of these in isolated masses. He was
pounced upon by another, who asked, "What is this but bedding?" The
second writer was so far justified, in that it cannot be denied that any
planting in beds is bedding. But then there is bedding and bedding--a
right and a wrong way of applying the treatment. Another matter that
roused the combative spirit of the captious critic was the filling up of
bare spaces in mixed borders with Geraniums, Calceolarias, and other
such plants. Again he said, "What is this but bedding? These are bedding
plants." When I read this it seemed to me that his argument was, These
plants may be very good plants in themselves, but because they have for
some years been used wrongly, therefore they must not now be used
rightly! In the case of my own visitors, when they have expressed
surprise at my having "those horrid old bedding plants" in my garden, it
seemed quite a new view when I pointed out that bedding plants were only
passive agents in their own misuse, and that a Geranium was a Geranium
long before it was a bedding plant! But the discussion raised in my mind
a wish to come to some conclusion about the difference between bedding
in the better and worse sense, in relation to the cases quoted, and it
appeared to me to be merely in the choice between right and wrong
placing--placing monotonously or stupidly, so as merely to fill the
space, or placing with a feeling for "drawing" or proportion. For I had
very soon found out that, if I had a number of things to plant
anywhere, whether only to fill up a border or as a detached group, if I
placed the things myself, carefully exercising what power of
discrimination I might have acquired, it looked fairly right, but that
if I left it to one of my garden people (a thing I rarely do) it looked
all nohow, or like bedding in the worst sense of the word.
[Illustration: SPACE IN STEP AND TANK-GARDEN FOR LILIES, CANNAS, AND
GERANIUMS.]
[Illustration: HYDRANGEAS IN TUBS, IN A PART OF THE SAME GARDEN.]
Even the better ways of gardening do not wholly escape the debasing
influence of fashion. Wild gardening is a delightful, and in good hands
a most desirable, pursuit, but no kind of gardening is so difficult to
do well, or is so full of pitfalls and of paths of peril. Because it has
in some measure become fashionable, and because it is understood to mean
the planting of exotics in wild places, unthinking people rush to the
conclusion that they can put any garden plants into any wild places, and
that that is wild gardening. I have seen woody places that were already
perfect with their own simple charm just muddled and spoilt by a
reckless planting of garden refuse, and heathy hillsides already
sufficiently and beautifully clothed with native vegetation made to look
lamentably silly by the planting of a nurseryman's mixed lot of exotic
Conifers.
In my own case, I have always devoted the most careful consideration to
any bit of wild gardening I thought of doing, never allowing myself to
decide upon it till I felt thoroughly assured that the place seemed to
ask for the planting in contemplation, and that it would be distinctly a
gain in pictorial value; so there are stretches of Daffodils in one
part of the copse, while another is carpeted with Lily of the Valley. A
cool bank is covered with Gaultheria, and just where I thought they
would look well as little jewels of beauty, are spreading patches of
Trillium and the great yellow Dog-tooth Violet. Besides these there are
only some groups of the Giant Lily. Many other exotic plants could have
been made to grow in the wooded ground, but they did not seem to be
wanted; I thought where the copse looked well and complete in itself it
was better left alone.
But where the wood joins the garden some bold groups of flowering plants
are allowed, as of Mullein in one part and Foxglove in another; for when
standing in the free part of the garden, it is pleasant to project the
sight far into the wood, and to let the garden influences penetrate here
and there, the better to join the one to the other.
[Illustration: MULLEIN (VERBASCUM PHLOMOIDES) AT THE EDGE OF THE FIR
WOOD.]
[Illustration: A GRASS PATH IN THE COPSE.]
Under the Bracken in both pictures is a wide planting of Lily of the
Valley, flowering in May before the Fern is up. (_See page 61._)