broad-leaved English thyme; that next, summer savory, used in cooking,
she said. Then followed common sage and its scarlet-flowered cousin
that we know as salvia; next came rue and rosemary, Ophelia's flower of
remembrance, with stiff leaves. Little known or grown, or rather
capricious and tender here, I take it, for I find plants of it offered
for sale in only one catalogue. Marigolds were here also, why I do not
know, as I should think they belonged with the more showy flowers; then
inconspicuous pennyroyal and several kinds of mints--spearmint,
peppermint, and some great plants of velvet-leaved catnip.
Borage I saw for the first time, also coriander of the aromatic seeds,
and a companion of dill of vinegar fame; and strangely enough, in
rotation of Bible quotation, cumin and rue came next.
Caraway and a feathery mass of fennel took me back to grandmother's
Virginia garden; balm and arnica, especially when I bruised a leaf of
the latter between my fingers, recalled the bottle from which I soothe
the Infant's childish bumps, the odour of it being also strongly
reminiscent of my own childhood.
Angelica spoke of the sweet candied stalks, but when we reached a spot
of basil, Martin Cortright's tongue was loosed and he began to recite
from Keats; and all at once I seemed to see Isabella sitting among the
shadows holding between her knees the flower-pot from which the
strangely nourished plant of basil grew as she watered it with her
tears.
A hedge of tall sunflowers, from whose seeds, Mrs. Puffin said, a
soothing and nourishing cough syrup may be made, antedating cod-liver
oil, replaced the lilacs on this side, and with them blended boneset and
horehound; while in a springy spot back toward the barn-yard the long
leaves of sweet flag or calamus introduced a different class of foliage.
On the garden side the border was broken every ten feet or so with great
shrubs of our lemon verbena, called lemon balm by Mrs. Puffin. It seemed
impossible that such large, heavily wooded plants could be lifted for
winter protection in the cellar, yet such Mrs. Puffin assured us was the
case. So I shall grow mine to this size if possible, for what one can do
may be accomplished by another,--that is the tonic of seeing other
gardens than one's own. Between the lemon verbenas were fragrant-leaved
geraniums of many flavours--rose, nutmeg, lemon, and one with a sharp
peppermint odour, also a skeleton-leaved variety; while a low-growing
plant with oval leaves and half-trailing habit and odd odour, Mrs.
Puffin called apple geranium, though it does not seem to favour the
family. Do you know it?
Bee balm in a blaze of scarlet made glowing colour amid so much green,
and strangely enough the bluish lavender of the taller-growing sister,
wild bergamot, seems to harmonize with it; while farther down the line
grew another member of this brave family of horsemints with almost pink,
irregular flowers of great beauty.
Southernwood formed fernlike masses here and there; dwarf tansy made the
edging, together with the low, yellow-flowered musk, which Aunt Lavinia,
now quite up in such things, declared to be a "musk-scented mimulus!"
whatever that may be! Stocks, sweet sultan, and tall wands of evening
primrose graded this border up to another shrubbery.
Of mignonette the garden boasts a half dozen species, running from one
not more than six inches in height with cinnamon-red flowers to a tall
variety with pointed flower spikes, something of the shape of the white
flowers of the clethra bush or wands of Culver's root that grow along
the fence at Opal Farm. It is not so fragrant as the common mignonette,
but would be most graceful to arrange with roses or sweet peas. Aunt
Lavinia says that she thinks that it is sold under the name of Miles
spiral mignonette.
Close to the road, where the fence angle allows for a deep bed and the
lilacs grade from the tall white of the height of trees down to the
compact bushes of newer French varieties, lies the violet bed, now a
mass of green leaves only, but by these Aunt Lavinia's eye read them out
and found here the English sweet wild violet, as well as the deep purple
double garden variety, the tiny white scented that comes with
pussy-willows, the great single pansy violet of California, and the
violets grown from the Russian steppes that carpeted the ground under
your "mother tree."
From this bed the lilies-of-the-valley start and follow the entire
length of the front fence, as you preach on the sunny side, the fence
itself being hidden by a drapery of straw-coloured and pink Chinese
honeysuckle that we called at home June honeysuckle, though this is
covered with flower sprays in late August, and must be therefore a sort
of monthly-minded hybrid, after the fashion of the hybrid tea-rose.
If I were to tell of the tea-roses grown here, they would fill a
chronicle by itself, though only a few of the older kinds, such as
safrano, bon silene, and perle, are favourites. Mrs. Puffin says that
some of them, the great shrubs, are wintered out-of-doors, and others
are lifted, like the lemon balms, and kept in the dry, light cellar in
tubs.
But oh! Mrs. Evan, you must go and see Mrs. Marchant's lilies! They are
growing as freely as weeds among the uncut grass, and blooming as
profusely as the bell-lilies in Opal Farm meadows! And all the spring
bulbs are also grown in this grass that lies between the shorn grass
paths, and in autumn when the tops are dead and gone it is carefully
burned over and the turf is all the winter covering they have.
Does the grass look ragged and unsightly? No, because I think that it is
cut lightly with a scythe after the spring bulbs are gone and that the
patient woman, whose life the garden is, keeps the tallest seeded
grasses hand trimmed from between the lily stalks!
Ah, but how that garden lingers with me, and the single glimpse I caught
of the deep dark eyes of its mistress as they looked out of a vine-clad
window toward the sky!
I have made a list of the plants that are possible for my own permanent
bed of fragrant flowers and leaves, that I may enjoy them, and that the
Infant may have fragrant memories to surround all her youth and bind her
still more closely to the things of outdoor life.
I chanced upon a verse of Bourdillon's the other day. Do you know it?
"Ah! full of purest influence
On human mind and mood,
Of holiest joy to human sense
Are river, field, and wood;
And better must all childhood be
That knows a garden and a tree!"
XV
THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS
(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose)
_Oaklands, September 1._ So you have been away and in going discovered
the possibilities of growing certain pinks and carnations out-of-doors
that, in America at least, are usually considered the winter specialties
of a cool greenhouse!
We too have been afield somewhat, having but now returned from a driving
trip of ten days, nicely timed as to gardens and resting-places until
the last night, when, making a false turn, ten o'clock found us we did
not know where and with no prospect of getting our bearings.
We had ample provisions for supper with us, including two bottles of
ginger ale; no one knew that we were lost but ourselves and no one was
expecting us anywhere, as we travel quite _con amore_ on these little
near-by journeys of ours. The August moon was big and hot and late in
rising; there was a rick of old hay in a clean-looking field by the
roadside that had evidently been used as winter fodder for young
cattle, for what remained of it was nibbled about the base, leaving a
protruding, umbrella-like thatch, not very substantial, but sufficient
shelter for a still night. Then and there we decided to play gypsy and
camp out, literally under the sky. Evan unharnessed the horse, watered
him at a convenient roadside puddle, and tethered him at the rear of the
stack, where he could nibble the hay, but not us! Then spreading the
horse-blanket on some loose hay for a bed, with the well-tufted seat of
the buggy for a pillow, and utilizing the lap robe for a cover against
dew, we fell heavily asleep, though I had all the time a half-conscious
feeling as if little creatures were scrambling about in the hay beneath
the blanket and occasionally brushing my face or ears with a batlike
wing, tiny paws, or whisking tail. When I awoke, and of course
immediately stirred up Evan, the moon was low on the opposite side of
the stack, the stars were hidden, and there was a dull red glow among
the heavy clouds of the eastern horizon like the reflection of a distant
fire, while an owl hooted close by from a tree and then flew with a
lurch across the meadow, evidently to the destruction of some small
creature, for a squeal accompanied the swoop. A mysterious thing, this
flight of the owl: the wings did not flap, there was no sound, merely
the consciousness of displaced air.
We were not, as it afterward proved, ten miles from home, and yet, as
far as trace of humanity was concerned, we might have been the only
created man and woman.
Do you remember the old gypsy song?--Ben Jonson's, I think--
"The owl is abroad, the bat, the toad,
And so is the cat-a-mountain;
The ant and the mole both sit in a hole,
And frog peeps out o' the fountain;
The dogs they bay and the timbrels play
And the spindle now is turning;
The moon it is red, and the stars are fled
But all the sky is a-burning."
But we were still more remote, for of beaters of timbrels and turners of
spindles were there none!
* * * * *
Your last chronicle interested us all. In the first place father
remembers Mrs. Marchant perfectly, for he and the doctor used to
exchange visits constantly during that long-ago summer when they lived
on the old Herb Farm at Coningsby. Father had heard that she was
hopelessly deranged, but nothing further, and the fact that she is
living within driving distance in the midst of her garden of fragrance
is a striking illustration both of the littleness of the earth and the
social remoteness of its inhabitants.
Father says that Mrs. Marchant was always a very intellectual woman, and
he remembers that in the old days she had almost a passion for fragrant
flowers, and once wrote an essay upon the psychology of perfumes that
attracted some attention in the medical journal in which it was
published by her husband. That the perfume of flowers should now have
drawn the shattered fragments of her mind together for their comfort and
given her the foretaste of immortality, by the sign of the consciousness
of personal presence and peace, is beautiful indeed.
Your declaration that henceforth one garden is not enough for your
ambition, but that you crave several, amuses me greatly. For a mere
novice I must say that you are making strides in seven-league
horticultural boots, wherein you have arrived at the heart of the
matter, viz.:--one may grow many beautiful and satisfactory flowers in a
mixed garden such as falls to the lot of the average woman sufficiently
lucky to own a garden at all, but to develop the best possibilities of
any one family, like the rose, carnation, or lily, that is a bit
whimsical about food and lodging, each one must have a garden of its
own, so to speak, which, for the amateur, may be made to read as a
special bed in a special location, and not necessarily a vast area.
This need is always recognized in the English garden books, and the
chapter headings, The Rose Garden,--Hardy Garden,--Wall Garden,--Lily
Garden,--Alpine Garden, etc., lead one at first sight to think that it
is a great estate alone that can be so treated; but it is merely a
horticultural protest, born of long experience, against mixing races to
their mutual hurt, and this precaution, together with the climate, makes
of all England a gardener's paradise!
What you say of the expansiveness of the list of fragrant flowers and
leaves is also true, for taken in the literal sense there are really few
plants without an individual odour of some sort in bark, leaf, or flower
usually sufficient to identify them. In a recent book giving what
purports to be a list of fragrant flowers and leaves, the chrysanthemum
is included, as it gives out an aromatic perfume from its leaves! This
is true, but so also does the garden marigold, and yet we should not
include either among fragrant leaves in the real sense.
Hence to make the right selection of plants for the bed of sweet odours
it is best, as in the case of choosing annuals, to adhere to a few tried
and true worthies.
But at your rhapsody on the bed of carnations, I am also tempted to
launch forth in praise of all pinks in general and the annual flowering
garden carnation, early Marguerite, and picotee varieties in particular,
especially when I think what results might be had from the same bits of
ground that are often left to be overrun with straggling and unworthy
annuals. For to have pinks to cut for the house, pinks for colour masses
out-of-doors, and pinks to give away, is but a matter of understanding,
a little patience, and the possession of a cold pit (which is but a
deeper sort of frame like that used for a hotbed and sunken in the
ground) against a sunny wall, for the safe wintering of a few of the
tenderer species.
In touching upon this numerous family, second only to the rose in
importance, the embarrassment is, where to begin. Is a carnation a pink,
or a pink a carnation? I have often been asked. You may settle that as
you please, since the family name of all, even the bearded
Sweet-William, is _Dianthus_, the decisive title of Linnæus, a word from
the Greek meaning "flower of Jove," while the highly scented species
and varieties of the more or less pungent clove breath remain under the
old subtitle--_Caryophyllus_.
To go minutely into the differences and distinctions of the race would
require a book all to itself, for in 1597, more than three hundred years
ago, Gerarde wrote: "There are, under the name of _Caryophyllus_,
comprehended diuers and sundrie sorts of plants, of such variable
colours and also severall shapes that a great and large volume would not
suffice to write of euery one in particular." And when we realize that
the pink was probably the first flower upon which, early in the
eighteenth century, experiments in hybridization were tried, the
intricacy will be fully understood.
For the Garden, You, and I, three superficial groups only are necessary:
the truly hardy perennial pinks, that when once established remain for
years; the half-hardy perennials that flower the second year after
planting, and require protection; and the biennials that will flower the
first year and may be treated as annuals.
The Margaret carnations, though biennials, are best treated as annuals,
for they may be had in flower in three to four months after the sowing
of the seed, and the English perennial border carnations, bizarres, and
picotees will live for several years, but in this climate must be
wintered in a _dry wooden_ cold pit, after the manner of the perennial
varieties of wallflowers, tender roses, and the like.
I emphasize the words _dry wooden_ in connection with a cold pit from my
experience in seeking to make mine permanent by replacing the planks,
with which it was built and which often decayed, by stone work, with
most disastrous results, causing me to lose a fine lot of plants by
mildew.
The truly hardy pinks (_dianthus plumarius_), the fringed and
clove-scented species both double and single of old-time gardens, that
bloom in late spring and early summer, are called variously May and
grass pinks. Her Majesty is a fine double white variety of this class,
and if, in the case of double varieties, you wish to avoid the risk of
getting single flowers, you would better start your stock with a few
plants and subdivide. For myself, every three or four years, I sow the
seed of these pinks in spring in the hardy seed bed, and transplant to
their permanent bed early in September, covering the plants lightly in
winter with evergreen boughs or corn stalks. Leaf litter or any sort of
covering that packs and holds water is deadly to pinks, so prone is the
crown to decay.
In the catalogues you will find these listed under the names of
Pheasant's Eye, Double Scotch pinks (_Scotius_), and Perpetual Pink
(_semperflorens_). With this class belongs the Sweet-William (_dianthus
barbatus_), which should be sown and treated in a like manner. It is
also a hardy perennial, but I find it best to renew it every few years,
as the flowers of young plants are larger, and in spite of care, the
most beautiful hybrids will often decay at the ground. There is no
garden flower, excepting the Dahlia, that gives us such a wealth of
velvet bloom, and if you mean to make a specialty of pinks, I should
advise you to buy a collection of Sweet-Williams in the separate
colours, which range from white to deepest crimson with varied markings.
Directions for sowing the biennial Chinese and Japanese pinks were given
in the chronicle concerning the hardy seed bed. These pinks are not
really fragrant, though most of them have a pleasant apple odour that,
together with their wonderful range of colour, makes them particularly
suitable for table decoration.
In addition to the mixed colours recommended for the general seed bed,
the following Japanese varieties are of special beauty, among the single
pinks: Queen of Holland, pure white; Eastern Queen, enormous rose-pink
flowers, Crimson Belle, dark red. Among the double, Fireball, an intense
scarlet; the Diadem pink, Salmon Queen, and the lovely Oriental Beauty
with diversely marked petals of a crêpy texture.
The double varieties of course are more solid and lasting, if they do
not insist upon swelling so mightily that they burst the calyx and so
have a dishevelled and one sided look; but for intrinsic beauty of
colour and marking the single Chinese and Japanese pinks, particularly
the latter, reign supreme. They have a quality of holding one akin to
that of the human eye and possess much of the power of individual
expression that belongs to pansies and single violets.
By careful management and close clipping of withered flowers, a bed of
these pinks may be had in bloom from June until December, the first
flowers coming from the autumn-sown plants, which may be replaced in
August by those sown in the seed bed in late May, which by this time
will be well budded.
"August is a kittle time for transplanting border things," I hear you
say. To be sure; but with your water-barrel, the long-necked water-pots,
and a judicious use of inverted flower-pots between ten A.M.
and four P.M., there is no such word as fail in this as in many
other cases.
[Illustration: SINGLE AND DOUBLE PINKS.]
Upon the second and third classes you must depend for pinks of the
taller growth ranging from one to two feet in height and flourishing
long-stemmed clusters of deliciously clove-scented flowers. The hardy
Margarets might be wintered in the pit, if it were worth the while, but
they are so easily raised from seed, and so prone literally to bloom
themselves to death in the three months between midsummer and hard
frost, that I prefer to sow them each year in late March and April and
plant them out in May, as soon as their real leaves appear, and pull
them up at the general autumnal garden clearance. Upon the highly
scented perpetual and picotee pinks or carnations (make your own choice
of terms) you must depend for fragrance between the going of the May
pinks and the coming of the Margarets; not that they of necessity cease
blooming when their more easily perfected sisters begin; quite the
contrary, for the necessity of lifting them in the winter gives them a
spring set-back that they do not have in England, where they are the
universal hardy pink, alike of the gardens of great estates and the
brick-edged cottage border.
These are the carnations of Mrs. Marchant's garden that filled you with
such admiration, and also awoke the spirit of emulation. Lavinia
Cortright was correct in associating them with the lavish bloom of the
gardens of Hampton Court, for if anything could make me permanently
unpatriotic (which is impossible), it would be the roses and picotee
pinks of the dear old stupid (human middle-class, and cold
bedroom-wise), but florally adorable mother country!
The method by which you may possess yourself of these crowning flowers
of the garden, for _coro_nations is one of the words from which
_car_nation is supposed but to be derived, is as follows:--
Be sure of your seed. Not long ago it was necessary to import it direct,
but not now. You may buy from the oldest of American seed houses fifty
varieties of carnations and picotees, in separate packets, for three
dollars, or twenty-five sorts for one dollar and seventy-five cents, or
twelve (enough for a novice) for one dollar, the same being undoubtedly
English or Holland grown, while a good English house asks five
shillings, or a dollar and a quarter, for a single packet of mixed
varieties!
Moral--it is not necessary that "made in England" should be stamped upon
flower seeds to prove them of English origin!
If you can spare hotbed room, the seeds may be sown in April, like the
early Margarets, and transplanted into some inconspicuous part of the
vegetable garden, where the soil is deep and firm and there is a free
circulation of air (not between tall peas and sweet corn), as for the
first summer these pinks have no ornamental value, other than the
pleasurable spectacle made by a healthy plant of any kind, by virtue of
its future promise. Before frost or not later than the second week in
October the pinks should be put in long, narrow boxes or pots
sufficiently large to hold all the roots comfortably, but with little
space to spare, watered, and partly shaded, until they have recovered
themselves, when they should be set in the lightest part of the cold
pit. During the winter months they should have only enough water to keep
the earth from going to dust, and as much light and air as possible
without absolutely freezing hard, after the manner of treating lemon
verbenas, geraniums, and wall-flowers.
By the middle of April they may be planted in the bed where they are to
bloom, and all the further care they need will be judicious watering and
the careful staking of the flower stalks if they are weak and the buds
top-heavy,--and by the way, as to the staking of flowers in general, a
word with you later on.
In the greenhouse, pinks are liable to many ailments, and several of
these follow them out-of-doors, three having given me some trouble, the
most fatal being of a fungoid order, due usually to unhealthy root
conditions or an excess of moisture.
_Rust_ is one of these, its Latin name being too long for the simple
vocabulary of The Garden, You, and I. It first shows itself in a brown
spot that seems to have worked out from the inner part of the leaf.
Sometimes it can be conquered by snipping the infected leaves, but if it
seizes an entire bed, the necessary evil of spraying with Bordeaux
mixture must be resorted to, as in the case of fungus-spotted
hollyhocks.
_Thrip_, the little transparent, whitish fly, will sometimes bother
border carnations in the same way as it does roses. If the flowers are
only in bud, I sprinkle them with my brass rose-atomizer and powder
slightly with helebore. But if the flowers are open, sprinkling and
shaking alone may be resorted to. For the several kinds of underground
worms that trouble pinks, of which the wireworm is the chief, I have
found a liberal use of unslaked lime and bone-dust in the preparation of
the soil before planting the best preventive.
Other ailments have appeared only occasionally. Sometimes an apparently
healthy, full-grown plant will suddenly wither away, or else swell up
close to the ground and finally burst so that the sap leaks out and it
dies like a punctured or girdled tree. The first trouble may come from
the too close contact of fresh manure, which should be kept away from
the main roots of carnations, as from contact with lily bulbs.
As to the swelling called _gout_, there is no cure, so do not temporize.
Pull up the plant at once and disinfect the spot with unslaked lime and
sulphur.
Thus, Mary Penrose, may you have either pinks in your garden or a garden
of pinks, whichever way you may care to develop your idea. "A deal of
trouble?" Y-e-s; but then only think of the flowers that crown the work,
and you might spend an equal amount of time in pricking cloth with a
steel splinter and embroidering something, in the often taken-in-vain
name of decorative art, that in the end is only an elaborated
rag--without even the bone and the hank of hair!
XVI
THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE
VINES AND SHRUBS
(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)