TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—Bold text has been rendered as =bold text=.
—Table of Contents items do not refer to chapters or section, but to
the arguments treated on the pages referred to.
THE
ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN.
[Illustration: LOGO]
THE
ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN
WITH ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES
BY
HENRY A. BRIGHT
AUTHOR OF “A YEAR IN A LANCASHIRE GARDEN.”
London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1881.
_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved._
LONDON:
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
BREAD STREET HILL.
PREFACE.
IT is just a year ago since this Essay on “The English Flower Garden”
was published in the _Quarterly Review_.
It was written with a twofold object: to give in the smallest compass
an outline history of English gardens, and to show once again what
makes the true charm and happiness of a garden. Many—perhaps too
partial—friends have urged me to reprint this article. They have
reminded me that, when the immediate circulation of any one number of
a Review has ceased, its articles are virtually lost and buried, and
they assure me that there are readers who may not have already seen,
and who would yet care to read, this Essay. I hardly know how this may
be, but I do know how very much I am indebted to the proprietor of the
_Quarterly_ for his great kindness in allowing me the opportunity of
this reprint. Should this little book succeed in retaining the friends
that _A Year in a Lancashire Garden_ was happy enough to make, it will
indeed be fortunate. It has been to me a matter of no little surprise
(as, naturally, of pleasure) to find from the generous notices of the
Press and from numerous private letters from owners of gardens, to
whom I am entirely a stranger, that the views I have expressed as to
the necessity of a reform in our gardens are very widely held. So long
as a garden is only regarded as a means for displaying masses of gay
colouring, half the delight and all the real interest of it are gone.
It is only when we learn to make friends of individual plants, and
recall their history and associations, that a garden becomes a pleasure
for the intellect as well as for the senses. But I do not wish to
carry my opinions to any extravagant length. It is Voltaire, I think,
who says that “a man may have preferences but no exclusions,” and I
certainly would exclude nothing that is good in the present system.
Bedding-out is occasionally very effective and sometimes necessary;
and, on the other hand, a garden—such as I saw suggested somewhere the
other day—which should contain only flowers known to Chaucer, would
be extremely disappointing. However, bedding-out can take very good
care of itself, and Chaucerian gardens will not be largely popular.
Meanwhile, I sincerely hope that flowering shrubs and hardy herbaceous
plants may be far more generally grown and cared for than they are at
present.
It has seemed on the whole best to leave this Essay as it was written.
I have made a few verbal corrections and inserted one or two short
sentences, and that is all. I have, however, added illustrative Notes
on points which seemed of some little interest.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
LOVE OF GARDENING 1
EARLY ENGLISH GARDENS 3
TOPIARIAN WORK 8
LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 11
BEDDING-OUT 16
CARPET-BEDDING 23
SPRING GARDENING 26
THE SEMI-TROPICAL GARDEN 27
THE ALPINE GARDEN 29
FOUNTAINS 31
THE WILD GARDEN 32
THE SHRUBBERY 35
HARDY SHRUBS 39
THE WALLED GARDEN 43
OLD HERBALS 45
FLOWERS OF WINTER 47
SPRING FLOWERS 49
ROSES 51
SUMMER FLOWERS 52
BIRDS AND BUTTERFLIES 55
EXPLORERS 57
BOTANISTS 60
GARDEN ASSOCIATIONS 65
FLOWER PAINTING 67
FLOWER SHOWS 71
THE INTEREST OF THE GARDEN 74
NOTES.
I. THE GARDENER BOWER-BIRD 78
II. ARS TOPIARIA 82
III. A POET’S FLOWER-BED 86
IV. THE EVENING PRIMROSE 87
V. THE CHRISTMAS ROSE 92
THE
ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN.
THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN.
AS spring comes on, the fancy of any man who cares about a garden,
“lightly turns to thoughts” of flowers and the gardens where they grow.
Never, perhaps, was the art of gardening so popular,—I wish we could
say so intelligent,—as at present. The stately homes of England,
the villas that line the roads of suburban districts, the cottages
clustering round a village green, often even a back yard or window-sill
in the heart of some manufacturing town, all testify in their different
ways to the desire of having an adornment of flowers. Indeed this
desire, as Bacon long ago pointed out, in his famous and often-quoted
essay, is as old as man himself; or, if any one prefer to trace back
the instinct, not to the Garden of Eden, but to the habits of a bird,
he may be reminded of the Gardener Bower-bird (_Amblyornis inornata_)
of New Guinea, who, making a bower for the pleasure of his mate, will
decorate the front of it with flowers carefully stuck into the sod.[1]
Nothing more strikingly shows the interest that is now taken in
gardening than the number of books that are published on the subject.
Besides those that deal less with the craft of the gardener than with
the flowers themselves, we have Manuals of gardening, with their
annual and monthly calendars of gardening operations, their practical
advice and technical knowledge. Then there are the almost countless
catalogues of the nurserymen and seedsmen, which often add excellent,
and sometimes coloured, engravings, and always supply much useful
information. Moreover, in addition to the gardening articles
that appear in the _Field_ and elsewhere, there are no less than six
weekly newspapers, and five monthly periodicals, all devoted to
gardening. Lastly, from time to time some publication comes out in
parts, as a monograph on some particular species or group of plants,
which, with its beautifully-painted illustrations, will one day take
its place among other magnificent folios in the botanical libraries of
the world.
So much has been written about the old English or Elizabethan garden,
that I need hardly enter into great detail on the subject. Bacon has
told us what his ideal garden was—the outside lawn, the enclosed
garden, and the wilderness. Of course few gardens can ever have
approached the perfection of which he dreams, but his general type was
the type of the garden of his day. He does not approve of “the making
of knots or figures with divers coloured earths” near the house; but
in the garden proper, which is enclosed by hedges with green alleys
running past them, he will allow of “variety of device.” Each month
is to have its own flowers, and he values flowers, as Milton seems
to have done, more for fragrance than for colour. And the variety of
flowers of the old garden was, even in comparatively small places, far
greater than we might at first suppose. Thomas Tusser, who was then a
Suffolk farmer, published his _Points of Husbandry_ in 1557, and he
gives a long list of the plants he grew for the kitchen, for salads,
for physic, and of flowers for “windows and pots.” The New Shakespeare
Society, too, has lately been reprinting Harrison’s _Description of
England_, first printed in 1577, and he, in a chapter on gardening,
describes his own “little plot, void of all cost in keeping,” as
having, “in the varietie of simples,” “verie neere three hundred of
one sort and other contained therein, no one of them being common or
usually to be had.”
Two of the most celebrated gardens of those days were Nonsuch and
Cobham. Nonsuch seems to have had a number of statues, and a wonderful
fountain, with Diana and Actæon; and its lilac-trees are particularly
mentioned. Of Cobham, in Kent, then belonging to Lord Cobham, but now
to Lord Darnley, Holinshed says, “No varietie of strange flowers and
trees do want, which praise or price maie obtaine from the furthest
part of Europe or from other strange countries, whereby it is not
inferior to the Garden of Semiramis.” A little later, Lord Fairfax’s
garden at Nun-Appleton was glorified by Andrew Marvell. It was built,
as was supposed to be appropriate for a soldier’s garden, in the form
of a fort with five bastions, and
“the flowers as on parade
Under their colours stand displayed,
Each regiment in order grows,
That of the tulip, pink, and rose.”
Later on still (in 1685) Sir William Temple, in his celebrated essay,
described the gardens in his day as not often exceeding six or eight
acres, enclosed by walls, and “laid out in a manner wholly for
advantage of fruits, flowers, and the product of kitchen gardens.” He
goes on to say, that
“In every garden four things are necessary to be provided for,
flowers, fruit, shade and water, and whoever lays out a garden
without all these must not pretend to any perfection. It ought to lie
to the best parts of the house, so as to be but like one of the rooms
out of which you step into another. The part of your garden next your
house (besides the walls that go round it) should be a parterre for
flowers, and grass-plots bordered with flowers; or if, according to
the newest mode, it be cast all into grass-plots and gravel walks, the
dryness of these should be relieved with fountains, and the plainness
of those with statues.”
He then quotes the garden at Moor Park, made by the Countess of
Bedford, as “the perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw.” He
says, “the length of the house, where the best rooms or of most use
or pleasure are, lies upon the breadth of the garden:” the “great
parlour” opens upon a broad terrace walk, and then three flights of
steps descend to a very large parterre, with its standard laurels, its
fountains, and its statues. This garden must obviously have been a
garden of an architectural rather than of a horticultural character,
and was not at all the ordinary garden of the ordinary country house.
But the garden, which we properly associate with those described by
the poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was the garden
“enclosed by walls,” within which were flower-beds and herb and
kitchen gardens, divided by flowering shrubs, and green walks, and
verdant alleys. It was in such a garden that Spenser’s butterfly met
its untimely end, and such were
“The gardens of Adonis, fraught
With pleasures manifold.”
It was in the “pleached bower” of such a garden, where the ripe
honeysuckles obscured the sun, that Shakespeare’s Beatrice was to hide.
Of such a garden Andrew Marvell was thinking when he described the
lilies and roses, on which Sylvio’s fawn was wont to feed. In these old
gardens Cowley wrote his essays; and Herrick gathered the fancies of a
poet, or the warnings of a moralist, with his early violets and fading
daffodils.
And so, with but few changes, these Elizabethan gardens grew on from
year to year, till a certain modification occurred when William III.
introduced a taste for whatever was characteristic of Holland: statues
were fewer, and hedges of box or yew, clipped into fantastic shapes,
became all the fashion. These clipped hedges, indeed, were no new
invention, as Sir Walter Scott appears to have thought, for Bacon had
denounced them. He did “not like images cut out in juniper or other
garden stuff, they be for children.” Earlier still, Leland, in his
_Itinerary_, speaks of the Castle of Wrexhill, and says that outside
“the mote” were orchards, and “in the orchards were mountes _opere
topiario_.”[2]
But the most famous specimen of Topiarian work in England is probably
that at Levens Hall in Westmoreland. It was the work of Beaumont, a
well-known gardener of his day, and dates from 1701, the last year of
William III.’s reign. Colonel Graham was at that time owner of Levens,
and some curious letters from his steward still exist, describing the
laying-out of the grounds and the planting of the yews, of which one
group was clipped into the shape of Queen Elizabeth with her maids of
honour.
Long rows of trees, moreover, were now formed on the several sides of
great houses, and at
Cobham (the varied fortune of whose garden is singularly instructive)
a semicircle of trees was planted near the west front, from which
radiated five avenues. But the Dutch fashions and the Topiarian work
and the long avenues were to be of no long duration. It is more than
probable that political feeling, as well as mere fashion, may have had
something to do with the change in many cases; but, however this may
be, those who set themselves up as men of taste began to find fault
with the existing style. Pope was among the first to discover that
there was a monotony when grove nodded to grove and each alley had
its brother, and he insisted that nature must “never be forgot,” and
that one must “consult the genius of the place in all.” So he set to
work to consult the genius of his own villa at Twickenham, and this
genius certainly prevented anything monotonous. He had flower-beds,
and slopes, and mounds, and vistas, and a cypress-grove, and a
shell-temple, and an orangery, and a bowling-green, and, above all, a
wonderful grotto, “finished with shells, and interspersed with pieces
of looking-glass in angular forms.”
And it was about this time that Batty Langley, also of Twickenham,
wrote his _New Principles of Gardening, or the Laying-out and Planting
Parterres, Groves, Wildernesses, Labyrinths, Avenues, Parks, &c., after
a more Grand and Rural manner than has been done before_. This “grand
_and_ rural manner” expresses pretty clearly the confusion we find
all through his book. He must have known Pope’s villa, and probably
the poet himself, and it is evident that he too intended to consult
nature and the “genius” of a place. He says there is not “anything more
_shocking_ than a _stiff regular garden_, where, after we have seen
one quarter thereof, the very same is repeated in all the remaining
parts, so that we are tired, instead of being further entertained with
something new as expected.” He thinks “our gardens much the worst of
any in the world, some few excepted,” and is severe on the late Mr.
London and Mr. Wise for having laid out gardens for the nobility “in
a regular, stiff, and stuft-up manner,” with crowded evergreens and
“trifling flower-knots.” But the compliments which he pays to nature
are, after all, not much more than lip-homage. His principles seem
very right, but his designs, of which we have very many, show that the
“grand” had quite got the better of the “rural.” Even the design of
“a rural garden after the new manner” consists of “a fine large plain
parterre, environed with an easy, agreeable slope,” and “adorned with
Apollo, Minerva, and Pallas (_sic_), the Seven Liberal Arts, Mercury,
and Pytho;” then there is an octagon basin, with Neptune, and avenues
and canals and more statues, and “we can never know when we have seen
the whole.”
And now the period of the so-called “landscape gardeners” began, though
in reality their business was rather with the _grounds_ than with the
garden proper.
Of these Kent was the first of eminence. Their idea was to destroy
all the old-fashioned formalities, at the sacrifice of a certain
stateliness which the style possessed, and to bring the scenery of an
English park up to the house itself. But they were constantly haunted
and harassed by the word “picturesque.” Was Nature more picturesque
when closely followed or carefully improved? Was it the duty of the
landscape gardener to arrange his clumps and belts of trees in the way
in which they would look best in a _picture_? This was evidently Kent’s
idea, and Daines Barrington, speaking of him, says it was reserved for
him “to realize these beautiful descriptions [in the _Faery Queen_],
for which he was peculiarly adapted by being a painter, as the true
test of perfection in a modern garden is that a landscape painter
would choose it as a composition.” Kent’s great work seems to have
been the carrying out of the alterations at Stowe, on which Bridgeman
had been originally employed, and much of the beauty of those famous
grounds—which, however, were at least as artificial as natural—was
owing to his taste. The two peculiarities now generally associated with
his name are the planting of _dead trees_ to look picturesque, and the
constant use of _Ha-ha’s_ (or sunk fences), which he is often said to
have originated, though, as matter of fact, Batty Langley also (and I
think previously) advocates their adoption.[3] “Capability Brown” was
perhaps the next most noted landscape gardener. His idea was always to
improve nature, and he was particularly strong in artificial lakes and
canals, with rather formal clumps of trees. He had many disciples, and
it seemed as if half the fine places in England were to be reformed on
the new principles.
But two formidable critics came into the field, Knight and Price. Their
plan was to leave Nature as much as possible to herself, to let the
stream wind about as a stream should, instead of being dammed into a
canal, and to allow trees to grow as they liked. Price’s famous _Essay
on the Picturesque_ is still full of interest, and shows good sense in
the exceptions he allows to his general rule, as, for instance, where
he admits “architectural ornaments” in the garden round the house. He
speaks, too, with regret of having once destroyed a beautiful old
garden, “sacrificed to undulations of ground only.” But he certainly
seems to carry his general rule to very considerable length. He thinks
that “many of the circumstances that give variety and spirit to a wild
place might successfully be imitated in a dressed place;” and although
he cannot advocate modelling a carriage-drive after a cart-rut, or
having water-docks or thistles before one’s door, he still thinks
the cart-rut and the thistles might furnish useful hints. In another
chapter he discusses “the connection between picturesqueness and
deformity,” and explains how large heaps of stones or mould may at
first be considered as deformities and afterwards appear picturesque.
It is impossible not to be reminded of Mrs. Rafferty’s description of
her garden in Miss Edgeworth’s _Absentee_: “‘Yes,’ she said, ‘she hated
everything straight; it was so formal and _unpicturesque_. Uniformity
and conformity,’ she observed, ‘had their day, but now, thank the
stars of the present day, irregularity and deformity bear the bell and
have the majority.’”
Another novelist, Miss Austen, in her _Mansfield Park_, preserves the
name of Repton, who was the last of the noted landscape gardeners of
the last century: “Repton, or anybody of that sort,” says a certain
Mr. Rushworth, “would certainly have the avenue at Sotherton down;
the avenue that leads from the west front to the top of the hill, you
know.” And this is just what Repton would have done. He was for ever
cutting down avenues, and out of the five beautiful lime avenues at
Cobham, which must have given such a stately appearance to the place,
no less that four fell victims to his axe. The idea was of course that
avenues prevented the ground from being picturesque and natural, and
Mason, in his _English Garden_, urges “the cruel task, yet needful,” of
breaking “th’ obdurate line” of trees, though
“A chosen few,—and yet, alas! but few—
Of these, the old protectors of the plain,
May yet be spared.”
The next marked development in gardening refers more particularly
to the flower-garden itself. It was between the years 1835 and 1840
that the mode which we call “bedding-out” began to came into general
fashion. John Caie, who was gardener to the Duke of Bedford, and
afterwards at Inverary Castle, is often said to have originated the
system; but Mr. Frost, writing from Dropmore to the editor of the
_Gardener’s Chronicle_, says:
“I helped to fill the beds here in the spring of 1823, long before Mr.
Caie had charge of the Campden Hill gardens. It was Lady Grenville who
began the bedding system in the first place, but she quite abhorred
both ribbon and carpet bedding. The dowager Duchess of Bedford used to
visit the grounds here, and much admired the garden, and when she went
to Campden Hill to live she sent Mr. Caie here to see the place, and
very probably to take notes of what he saw.”
It would thus appear that to Lady Grenville in her Dropmore gardens
the credit of being the first to bed-out may fairly belong. But some
fifteen years passed before the system was generally adopted. It then
grew rapidly in favour, and before long it was clear that the whole
character of the English garden would be changed. One of the first
plants to be bedded-out extensively was the “Tom Thumb” pelargonium, or
geranium as it was then more commonly called; it was a dwarf scarlet,
and was considered to be of great beauty till the better varieties were
introduced. Then followed verbeneas, calceolarias, and other flowers,
which could be kept as cuttings through the winter, and then be planted
out when summer weather made it safe to do so. And there were many
advantages in bedding-out. In large public gardens, where a glow of
colour only was wanted, where no one stopped to look at any particular
plant, and where a certain uniformity of growth was essential, it
answered extremely well. In gardens which are, as it were, the
approaches of great houses, and which seem laid out rather by the
architect than the gardener, the bedding-out system was both convenient
in itself and striking in its effect. Nothing for instance, in its way,
can be more beautiful than to look down from the long gallery at Crewe
Hall upon the formal garden with its curves of variegated gravel and
its thick box edging, its broad terraced walks and flights of steps,
guarded by quaintly-carved balustrades and strange heraldic monsters.
But it hardly strikes one as a garden; it is rather an appendage to
the house itself, adding to its stateliness, and recalling, by its
prevailing colours of buff and blue, the old traditions of the family.
But what is all very well for public parks and very important mansions
is out of place in smaller country houses, and becomes absurd in small
villa gardens. However, the fashion had seized hold of gardeners and
masters both, and every one must have what was called an Italian
garden. But to make their Italian garden they must do one of two
things. They must either root up the old herbaceous plants, which
year after year had blossomed and scented the air in the old walled
garden; or they must take a piece of their lawn, and, cutting it up
into segments, then plant out their nurslings of the greenhouse. It so
chanced, moreover, that a few years after the new fashion came in,
the duty on glass was taken off, and greenhouses, which had once been
a luxury, now became a supposed necessary of life. Hence, bedding-out,
instead of being an expensive form of gardening, became a singularly
easy and not a very costly method of having a certain show of bright
and effective colouring. But this colouring was all. In the old walled
garden, instead of the plants, which so long had had their home there,
each of which knew its season and claimed welcome as an old friend,
there were bare beds till June, and then, when the summer was hottest,
a glare of the hottest, brightest, colours. But the walled garden was
better than the newly-cut circles on the lawn. In the garden there
would at least be the shade of one of the garden walls. In the outside
Italian garden, where, with the smooth old turf, trees had been cut
away, there would be no shade whatever. Nobody would really care to
walk there, and probably no one would be allowed to gather flowers, for
fear of spoiling the symmetry of the beds. Nor can any one feel the
slightest interest about the hundred little pelargoniums in one bed,
or the fifty calceolarias in the next. Each plant is exactly like its
neighbour. All individuality has gone, and it is impossible to forget
that some four months is the limit of their short lives, and that
the next year a new “crop” of pelargoniums and calceolarias, equally
without interest or character, will appear in their place. Then too the
bedded-out plants are plants with no associations as regards the past.
No poet ever sang their beauty, and no legend tells the origin of their
birth. Again, they are almost entirely destitute of scent, and to our
forefathers at least the scent of flowers was their chief attraction.
Often too it is questionable whether a number of small beds cut out
of the green turf really looks well; in nine cases out of ten it has
a make-shift appearance; flowers were wanted, and the lawn has been
sacrificed.
“Nothing,” says Bacon, “is more pleasant to the eye than green grass
nicely shorn,”—a sentiment which Mason, in that somewhat tiresome
poem of his from which I have already quoted, has sense enough to
approve—
“For green is to the eye, what to the ear
Is harmony, or to the smell the rose.”
But green lawns all over England were being destroyed. The
flower-borders, where there had been no walled garden, had hitherto
generally followed the line of the shrubberies and plantations, and the
windings of garden walks; but these and the flowers that grew there
were now neglected.
Still worse was the effect on the smaller villa-gardens. They had had
their flowers on the sunny side of the garden wall, their pleasant bit
of lawn with specimen trees, their fence of scented shrubs. The trees
were destroyed, the lawn was cut up; and all for the sake of red and
yellow patches during four summer months. Even the cottagers in many
places seem to have forgotten the old English flowers, such as grew in
Perdita’s garden, the “hot lavender,” the marygold, the crown-imperial
and the lily, and have taken to slips of pelargonium and the like.
Nor even yet had the abuse of the bedding-out system done its worst.
There were still, as we have said, in many gardens, strips of border
which, not being in the form of rounded beds, were allowed, half under
protest as it were, to harbour some of the old flowers. Unfortunately
for them, ribbon borders were invented, and the last sanctuary of
herbaceous plants was often ruthlessly destroyed. Pelargoniums again,
and calceolarias, with lobelias in front, and dark-leaved perillas
in the background, made up the new ribbon border. It was no doubt
effective enough in its way, but we have now seen it almost everywhere,
and for the last fifteen years at least. Of course there are happy
variations of it in great places, and where the gardener is a man of
taste and ability; but it sometimes appears to us that such gardeners
must be very rare exceptions. Such a ribbon border as I have described,
and extremely badly grown moreover, is, or was a year or two ago,
supposed to be the appropriate adornment of Shakespeare’s garden at New
Place in Stratford.
A further modification in the round beds has been introduced still more
recently. It is the bedding-out of zonal pelargoniums, of echeverias,
and of other plants, whose beauty lies in the foliage rather than the
blossom. No doubt they give softer tints to the general effect, but
they are a poor substitute for the varied beauty of an old garden. It
may be difficult to find interest in the ordinary “bedding-out stuff,”
but they are poetry itself compared to plants which chiefly remind one
of the last days of the garden of “the Sensitive Plant,” when, instead
of all odorous flowers, there were only growths
“Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck
Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back.”
And this latest fancy is itself falling into the further degradation
of _carpet_-bedding. That a carpet should imitate a flower-bed is one
thing; years ago in _Casa Guidi Windows_, Mrs. Browning wrote of some
carpets, where
“your foot
Dips deep in velvet roses.”
This may be well enough; but who wants flower-beds to look like
carpets? They may strike you at first as being ingenious, and even
pretty, but the feeling is at once followed by a sense of their
essential debasement as regards gardening. No flower is permitted, and
the glorification of stonecrops and houseleeks is the chief result.
But indeed the geometrical figures of the carpet-bedding are not the
worst. The gardeners are now trying their skill in designs on their
carpet-beds, and names, mottoes, coats of arms, and other frivolities,
are becoming common. The most stupid follies of the Topiarian age were
graceful and sensible compared to this. It is less childish to trim a
yew-tree into a peacock than to arrange your sedums and alternantheras
to look like animals on a badly-woven carpet. Nor has the absurdity
even the merit of being original. It is really an old French invention,
and about the time of Henry IV. the gardens at Fontainebleau and
Chantilly were known for their quaint devices in flowers, their ships,
armorial bearings, and cyphers interlaced. The whole matter has been
well summed up by Sir Joseph Hooker, who writes:
“It is indeed astonishing that the asters, helianthus, rudbeckias,
silphiums, and numberless other fine North American plants, all so
easily grown and so handsome, should be entirely neglected in English
gardens, and this in favour of carpets, hearthrugs, and ribbons,
forming patterns of violent colours, which, though admired for being
the fashion on the lawn and borders of our gardens and grounds, would
not be tolerated on the floor of a drawing-room or boudoir.”[4]
Well, as we can do nothing worse in this direction, we may at last hope
for a reaction, in which a new school, with some regard to nature, but
without the extravagance of the old “picturesque” gardeners, may bring
us back to good taste and common sense.
It is of course absolutely impossible to form even an estimate of
the number of bedding-out plants used in our gardens during a single
season, to be discarded when the season ends. It must be something
enormous. One single florist in the neighbourhood of London sends to
market annually more than 80,000 plants of one description
of pelargonium alone. It is calculated that the bedding-out of a
single good-sized garden will take at least 100,000 plants to make it
effective.
But now, leaving the question of summer bedding-out, we are glad
to note signs of real advance in other directions. It is something
that within the last ten or fifteen years our gardeners should have
discovered that bare earth, all spring, is not particularly beautiful,
and should have taken to what is called Spring gardening. All
flowers are welcome in spring, and even masses of double daisies are
acceptable. But indeed in all the most elaborate bedding-out of summer,
there is nothing that can give greater pleasure for colouring than a
blue lake of _Myosotis dissitiflora_, or of autumn-sown _Nemophila
insignis_. Then again, owing to our more rapid and easy intercourse
with Holland and Belgium, tulips and hyacinths, which, however, were
always in favour, are more used than they were some years ago. The
quantities sent over by the gardeners of the Low Countries must be very
great. Not only do the choicer bulbs go to our own nurserymen, but
they are now sent direct to many private gardens; while large auction
sales in London, Liverpool, and elsewhere, clear off the inferior roots
or those exported by the less well-known growers. Mr. Burbidge tells us
that the value of the flower-roots sent from Holland a year or two ago
was nearly 60,000_l._, and one English grower imports annually 160,000
tulip bulbs. A certain proportion of these will be required for forcing
purposes for the house and the conservatory, but many more will be used
in the open garden. A bed of well-grown tulips is certainly a very
beautiful object, and there are some at least who believe in the rich
fragrance of the tulip, which a living poet says “might be the very
perfume of the sun.”
Besides the spring garden, there is in some places the Semi-tropical
garden, and in others the Alpine garden. No one has done more than has
Mr. W. Robinson[5] to call up an interest in
the broad-foliaged plants which are the chief ornament in the gardens
of Paris, and in the delicate tufts of flowers which nestle in the
crevices of our rockeries. But there is much still to be done. It
is, after all, only occasionally that either Semi-tropical or Alpine
gardening is to be seen in any perfection. For the former, Battersea
and Victoria Parks are extremely good, and for the latter the Messrs.
Backhouse’s nursery, near York, has a deserved reputation. Many very
handsome semi-tropical plants are all but hardy, and require at most
only a protection during the winter months. The canna was known to
Gerard and to Cowley, and needs no more care than a dahlia. The Pampas
grass and _Arundo conspicua_ are perfectly hardy. The _Arundinaria
falcata_ is rather more tender, but unless it flowers, when, like the
American aloe, it will die, it will generally spring up from the root,
even when its long canes themselves are cut by the frost. The aralia,
ricinus, and others, are no doubt safer for being housed during the
winter, and then plunged, either as centres for flower-beds, or as
separate shrubs in the outside garden. Nothing gives greater character
to any garden than the occasional introduction of plants like these.
They are now indeed all the more needed since the old plan of having
orangeries has so nearly disappeared. And yet how well worth the
trouble—the very little trouble—that it cost, the orangery always
was. Nothing could be more stately than a broad walk, along the sides
of which were ranged the orange-trees, each in its huge tub, and each
fruit-bearing and flowering together. And with the orange-trees would
be the white-blossoming myrtles and the _Clethra arborea_, with its
scented sprays, like lily-of-the-valley.
As regards the Alpine garden, the first thing to be remembered is,
that the rockwork on which it is to be formed should look as natural
as possible. Nothing can be more hideous than the usual varieties of
suburban rockeries, where the intention seems to be to make everything
as unnatural and distorted as can well be imagined How well one knows
the jagged fragments of red sandstone standing on end, or the blocks
of various formations heaped up together, with bits of green glass,
coarse coral, and big shells stuck in at different corners, and with
cement between to keep all in place.[6] The rocks used should, if
possible, be the rocks of the country; they should appear to crop up
from the soil; and they should be so laid that plants should really be
able to grow in their fissures and interstices. Scarcely less important
is the choice of a site, for if the rock-garden is placed under the
drip of trees it is hopeless to expect that any of the more delicate
and beautiful Alpine plants can thrive. Most ferns, on the other
hand, will of course do better in moist, shady places; so that it is
impossible successfully to combine the Alpine garden and the fernery,
as is very often attempted. Let the Alpine plants have sun and light,
and give the ferns the cool shade in which they are most at home.
Aquilegias and a few other woodland flowers may be planted in among
the osmunda, the hart’s-tongue, and other hardy ferns; and rare mosses
and lichens may be taught to cling to the darker clefts and hollows
of the rock, as in one rockery which I know, where the “shining moss”
(_Schistostega pennata_) catches and refracts the sunlight with a
metallic lustre like that of the humming-bird’s breast.
One of the greatest ornaments to a garden is a fountain, but many
fountains are curiously ineffective. A fountain is most beautiful when
it leaps high into the air, and you can see it against a background of
green foliage. To place a fountain among low flower-beds, and then to
substitute small fancy jets, that take the shape of a cup, or trickle
over into a basin of gold-fish, or toy with a gilded ball, is to do all
that is possible to degrade it. The real charm of a fountain is, when
you come upon it in some little grassy glade of the “pleasaunce,” where
it seems as though it sought, in the strong rush of its waters, to vie
with the tall boles of the forest-trees that surround it. Such was the
fountain in Leigh Hunt’s _Story of Rimini_, which shot up “beneath a
shade of darksome pines,”
“And ’twixt their shafts you saw the water bright,
Which through the tops glimmered with show’ring light.”
Bacon speaks of a “heath or desert” as a part of the garden, and
says it is “to be framed as much as may be to a natural wilderness.”
There are to be no trees there, but thickets of honeysuckle and
other trailing plants, and heaps like molehills, set with pinks or
periwinkles, or violets, or various “sweet and sightly” flowers, and
on some of the heaps little bushes of juniper or rosemary, or other
low-growing shrubs, are to be planted. Such a garden would hardly
seem to be one of “natural wildness”; but Bacon’s theory that there
should be a “wild garden” is, with certain modifications, carried out
in various places. But to _cultivate_ a wild garden almost involves
a paradox. The plants should grow of their own accord, and as their
vagrant fancy takes them. The prettiest of all wild gardens is when the
bluebells are so thick that they seem a reflection of the sky, or the
celandine lies in sunny patches on a bank, or the primrose and violet
come up here and there at the foot of old forest-trees. Sometimes,
too, less common flowers, which have been planted years ago, and have
spread as it has pleased them, give an effect of even greater beauty.
We remember one large shrubbery all blue with hepaticas, and another
golden with the winter aconite. Other plants, such as the anchusa or
the _Petasites fragrans_, may be trusted to take care of themselves,
and are well worth some half-wild corner. On the other hand, it is not
well to attempt to grow native plants when the conditions of their new
life would be unfavourable. It is almost sad to see some bee-orchis, or
grass of Parnassus, or mountain auricula, or other rare British plant,
transplanted into a shrubbery border. It is far better to leave these
“wildings of nature,” as Campbell calls them, in their native haunts,
and to experience for oneself a new pleasure in finding them growing
wild and vigorous on down, or bog, or hilly slope. Occasionally a
garden flower which has sprung up from some stray seed will add a
certain unexpected charm to a walk or grass plot. Such flowers are in
a sense weeds no doubt, but “weeds of glorious feature,” and there are
few who, like Lady Byron—and the story is characteristic—would at
once order the gardener to uproot them. One beautiful form of semi-wild
garden is where, on some piece of rich peat soil, rhododendrons have
been thickly planted. There is a fine example of this at Knowsley,
where thousands of large shrubs are growing in the greatest luxuriance,
and where, as the slight irregularity of the ground permits, you pass
between banks and slopes and hollows, quite purple with the clustered
blossoms.
It is of course impossible to lay down any code of rules which would be
equally applicable to every garden. As I have already said, there will
always be a certain amount of bedding-out necessary, especially for the
architectural gardens that surround a stately house; but we may hope
that in all bedding-out more attention will be given than at present
to the proper harmony of colours. It really would sometimes appear that
half our English gardeners must be colour-blind. The gaudiest and most
glaring contrasts pain instead of gratifying the eye, with their crude
patches of pink and red and blue and yellow. In France the bedded-out
borders have more generally a variety of plants mixed on the same bed,
and this certainly tends to soften the general effect.
But both in the outside lawns and shrubberies, and in the walled inner
garden, there is much room for improvement. A great principle in laying
out the lawns is the old principle of Batty Langley’s (a principle
which he himself parodied rather than illustrated) of so arranging your
grounds that everything cannot be seen at once, and that each turn of
the walks excites some fresh interest. The curved lines of a shrubbery,
now approaching and now receding, the grass running up into little bays
and recesses among deodaras and groups of rhododendrons, specimen trees
occasionally breaking a formal line, but never dotted about at regular
intervals,—these are the features that lend attraction to a lawn. We
would allow of no flower-bed whatever except the shrubbery border,
though an occasional clump of tritomas, of cannas, or of Pampas grass,
may take the place of flowering shrubs, and start up from corners of
the grass. Their height and general aspect enables them to form part
of the picture. But—one cannot repeat it too often—the expanse of
the lawn should be rarely broken except by shrubberies; and that the
lawn itself should be carefully kept and free from weeds is of course
essential.
One of the most beautiful gardens I ever knew depended almost entirely
on the arrangement of its lawns and shrubberies. It had certainly been
most carefully and adroitly planned, and it had every advantage in the
soft climate of the west of England. The various lawns were divided
by thick shrubberies, so that you wandered on from one to the other,
and always came on something new. In front of these shrubberies was a
large margin of flower border, gay with the most effective plants and
annuals. At one corner of the lawn a standard _Magnolia grandiflora_ of
great size held up its chaliced blossoms; at another a tulip-tree was
laden with hundreds of yellow flowers. Here a magnificent _Salisburia_
mocked the foliage of the maiden-hair; and here an old cedar swept the
grass with its huge pendent branches. But the main breadth of each
lawn was never destroyed, and past them you might see the reaches of a
river, now in one aspect, and now in another. Each view was different,
and each was a fresh enjoyment and surprise.
A few years ago, and I revisited the place; the “improver” had been at
work, and had been good enough to _open up_ the view. Shrubberies had
disappeared, and lawns had been thrown together. The pretty peeps among
the trees were gone, the long vistas had become open spaces, and you
saw at a glance all that there was to be seen. Of course the herbaceous
borders, which once contained numberless rare and interesting plants,
had disappeared, and the lawn in front of the house was cut up into
little beds of red pelargoniums, yellow calceolarias, and the rest.
But we have now to speak of the shrubbery. It will depend on its
situation whether or not it is backed by forest-trees, but in any
case it will have a certain number of evergreens in front. To plant
evergreens alone is generally a mistake. Horace Walpole says that he
was “not fond of total plantations of evergreens,” and he was certainly
right. Shrubberies composed entirely of holly, yew, and pinus must
inevitably have a solid, heavy appearance, and their use in winter
barely compensates for their melancholy monotony during the summer
months. They should, wherever it is possible, have deciduous flowering
shrubs planted in among them. Nothing can be prettier than to see the
dark shades of the evergreens lighted up by the fresh tender green
of lilac or laburnum, while, later in the season, the background of
evergreen will in its turn give effect to the purple plumes and golden
tresses. But there is great art in the laying out of shrubberies and
the arrangement of the shrubs. There is the time of flowering to be
considered, and no less the various colours of the blossoms, while
(very occasionally it is true) the tints of the leaves, as they first
expand, or are touched by the chills of autumn, and even the prevailing
tone of bark and branches, are studied, so that there may be always
some happy effect of colouring. But for the most part all this is
neglected. There are very few gardeners who pay the attention they
should to the shrubbery, and still fewer owners of gardens who care to
interfere in the matter. A pinetum has of late years become something
of a fashion, and is therefore often a subject of interest, but the
shrubbery and the shrubbery border are scarcely regarded. Lilacs and
laburnums, scarlet thorns, and rhododendrons are very beautiful; but to
confine our flowering shrubs to these implies either want of knowledge
or want of taste. There are numbers besides, perfectly hardy, or only
requiring some slight protection in the winter, which are comparatively
but little known. Even many old favourites have been allowed to
become unfamiliar. The white and yellow broom, the Ghent azaleas
(excepting perhaps the yellow one), the barberry with its bunches of
golden blossom and coral fruit, the Buddleia with its glaucous leaves
and honeyed balls like tiny oranges, the Gueldres rose covered with
its large white tufts of snow, the scarlet ribes with its brisk scent
of black currant, are not to be seen as often as they once were. The
Judas-tree (Cercis), whose little clusters of pink pea-blossom come out
so early in the year, and the bladder-senna, whose curious paper-like
bags of seed, hanging late on in autumn, burst as you press them with a
sharp report, are still more rarely to be found. Of later introductions
the Weigelia alone seems to hold its own, but the _Desfontainea
spinosa_, looking like a holly, but throwing out scarlet and yellow
tubes of blossom, or the diplopappus, with its leaves like a variegated
thyme, and its flowers like a minute aster, are hardly ever seen. But
there are many more as good as these.
For covering a house the large magnolia is perhaps more beautiful than
anything. The perfume of its white flowers, though too strong for the
house, fills the air for yards round, and comes in stray whiffs through
the open window. This magnolia will flourish abundantly in most places,
and if it does not, it is probably owing to its roots requiring to be
cabined, cribbed, and confined. Other good shrubs for the outside of
the house are the ceanothus, the escallonia, and the cydonia or _Pyrus
japonica_, and these two last are well worth growing as independent
shrubs. The _Pyrus japonica_, moreover, when trained as a hedge, and
breaking out all along its twisted stems into knots of cherry-coloured
blossom, is extremely beautiful.
And in the more favoured nooks of England greenhouse shrubs, such as
camellias and cytisus, may be seen to flourish and flower abundantly
in the open air. There is a striking example of this as far north as
the Anglesea side of the Menai Straits. Thirty years ago Sir John Hay
Williams determined to build a house and form a garden on a steep field
sloping down to the water’s edge. The excessive steepness of the
ground made it necessary to construct a number of supporting walls to
form terraces; and the entire plan was carried out by the owner without
any professional assistance. Huge fuchsias, myrtles, the _Fabiana
imbricata_, and other beautiful flowering shrubs grow up against the
house, and, sheltered by a terrace-wall, are magnificent camellias and
cytisus. I once saw this garden of Rhianva under rather remarkable
circumstances. It was the Sunday (March 24, 1878) when the ill-fated
_Eurydice_ went down. The snow-storm came on, and the snow-flakes
fell heavily on the red and white camellias, which were then in great
perfection. An hour later, and the sun was again shining, the snow was
melting away, and the blossoms appeared from beneath it as fresh as if
nothing had occurred.
In front of the shrubbery border should be placed strong-growing
hardy plants, which, once planted, will give no further trouble.
The monks-hood, with its quaint indigo blossoms, the large evening
primrose, whose yellow stars come out each night all through the
summer,[7] the foxglove, which will sometimes grow eight feet high and
bear from two to three hundred flowers upon a single stem, herbaceous
phloxes of every variety of red and purple hue, pæonies and irises, and
for late autumn the old Michaelmas daisy, are among the most suitable
plants for this purpose.