OLD FLOWER FAVORITES
"God does not send us strange flowers every year.
When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces;
The Violet is here.
"It all comes back; the odor, grace, and hue
Each sweet relation of its life repeated;
No blank is left, no looking-for is cheated;
It is the thing we knew."
--ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY, 1861.
Not only do I love to see the same dear things year after year, and to
welcome the same odor, grace, and hue; but I love to find them in the
same places. I like a garden in which plants have been growing in one
spot for a long time, where they have a fixed home and surroundings. In
our garden the same flowers shoulder each other comfortably and crowd
each other a little, year after year. They look, my sister says, like
long-established neighbors, like old family friends, not as if they had
just "moved in," and didn't know each other's names and faces. Plants
grow better when they are among flower friends. I suppose we have to
transplant some plants, sometimes; but I would try to keep old friends
together even in those removals. They would be lonely when they opened
their eyes after the winter's sleep, and saw strange flower forms and
unknown faces around them.
[Illustration: Larkspur and Phlox.]
For flowers have friendships, and antipathies as well. How Canterbury
Bells and Foxgloves love to grow side by side! And Sweet Williams, with
Foxgloves, as here shown. And in my sister's garden Larkspur always
starts up by white Phlox--see a bit of the border on this page. Whatever
may influence these docile alliances, it isn't a proper sense of fitness
of color; for Tiger Lilies dearly love to grow by crimson-purple Phlox,
a most inharmonious association, and you can hardly separate them. If a
flower dislikes her neighbor in the garden, she moves quietly away, I
don't know where or how. Sometimes she dies, but at any rate she is
gone. It is so queer; I have tried every year to make Feverfew grow in
this bed, and it won't do it, though it grows across the path. There is
some flower here that the pompous Feverfew doesn't care to associate
with. Not the Larkspur, for they are famous friends--perhaps it is the
Sweet William, who is rather a plain fellow. In general flowers are very
sociable with each other, but they have some preferences, and these are
powerful ones.
[Illustration: Sweet William and Foxglove.]
It is amusing to read in no less than five recent English
"garden-books," by flower-loving souls, the solemn advice that if you
wish a beautiful garden effect you "must plant the great Oriental Poppy
by the side of the White Lupine."
"Thou say'st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way."
The truth is, you have very little to do with it. That Poppy chooses to
keep company with the White Lupine, and to that impulse you owe your
fine garden effect. The Poppy is the slyest magician of the whole
garden. He comes and goes at will. This year a few blooms, nearly all in
one corner; next year a blaze of color banded across the middle of the
garden like the broad sash of a court chamberlain. Then a single grand
blossom quite alone in the pansy bed, while another pushes up between
the tight close leaves of the box edging:--the Poppy is _queer_.
[Illustration: Plume Poppy.]
Some flowers have such a hatred of man they cannot breathe and live in
his presence, others have an equal love of human companionship. The
white Clover clings here to our pathway as does the English Daisy across
seas. And in our garden Ladies' Delights and Ambrosia tell us, without
words, of their love for us and longing to be by our side; just as
plainly as a child silently tells us his love and dependence on us by
taking our hand as we walk side by side. There is not another gesture of
childhood, not an affectionate word which ever touched my heart as did
that trustful holding of the hand. One of my children throughout his
brief life never walked by my side without clinging closely--I think
without conscious intent--with his little hand to mine. I can never
forget the affection, the trust of that vanished hand.
I find that my dearest flower loves are the old flowers,--not only old
to me because I knew them in childhood, but old in cultivation.
"Give me the good old weekday blossoms
I used to see so long ago,
With hearty sweetness in their bosoms,
Ready and glad to bud and blow."
Even were they newcomers, we should speedily care for them, they are so
lovable, so winning, so endearing. If I had seen to-day for the first
time a Fritillaria, a Violet, a Lilac, a Bluebell, or a Rose, I know it
would be a case of love at first sight. But with intimacy they have
grown dearer still.
The sense of long-continued acquaintance and friendship which we feel
for many garden flowers extends to a few blossoms of field and forest.
It is felt to an inexplicable degree by all New Englanders for the
Trailing Arbutus, our Mayflower; and it is this unformulated sentiment
which makes us like to go to the same spot year after year to gather
these beloved flowers. I am sensible of this friendship for Buttercups,
they seem the same flowers I knew last year; and I have a distinct
sympathy with Owen Meredith's poem:--
"I pluck the flowers I plucked of old
About my feet--yet fresh and cold
The Buttercups do bend;
The selfsame Buttercups they seem,
Thick in the bright-eyed green, and such
As when to me their blissful gleam
Was all earth's gold--how much!"
We have little of the intense sentiment, the inspiration which filled
flower-lovers of olden times. We admire flowers certainly as beautiful
works of nature, as objects of wonder in mechanism and in the profusion
of growth, and we are occasionally roused to feelings of gratitude to
the Maker and Giver of such beauty; but it is not precisely the same
regard that the old gardeners and "flowerists" had, which is expressed
in this quotation from Gerarde of "the gallant grace of violets":--
"They admonish and stir up a man to that which is comelie and
honest; for flowers through their beautie, varietie of colour and
exquisite forme doe bring to a liberall and gentlemanly mind, the
remembrance of honestie, comelinesse and all kinds of virtues."
It was a virtue to be comely in those days; as it is indeed a virtue
now; and to the pious old herbalists it seemed an impossible thing that
any creation which was beautiful should not also be good.
[Illustration: Meadow Rue.]
All flowers cannot be loved with equal warmth; it is possible to have a
wholesome liking for a flower, a wish to see it around you, which would
make you plant it in your borders and treat it well, but which would not
be at all akin to love. For others you have a placid tolerance; others
you esteem--good, virtuous, worthy creatures, but you cannot warm toward
them. Sometimes they have been sung with passion by poets (Swinburne is
always glowing over very unresponsive flower souls) and they have been
painted with fervor by artists--and still you do not love them. I do not
love Tulips, but I welcome them very cordially in my garden. Others have
loved them; the Tulip has had her head turned by attention.
Some flowers we like at first sight, but they do not wear well. This is
a hard truth; and I shall not shame the garden-creatures who have done
their best to please by betraying them to the world, save in a single
case to furnish an example. In late August the Bergamot blossoms in
luxuriant heads of white and purplish pink bloom, similar in tint to the
abundant Phlox. Both grow freely in the garden of Sylvester Manor. When
the Bergamot has romped in your borders for two or three years, you may
wish to exile it to a vegetable garden, near the blackberry vines. Is
this because it is an herb instead of a purely decorative flower? You
never thus thrust out Phlox. A friend confesses to me that she exiled
even the splendid scarlet Bergamot after she had grown it for three
years in her flower-beds; such subtle influences control our
flower-loves.
Beautiful and noble as are the grand contributions of the nineteenth
century to us from the garden and fields of Japan and China, we seldom
speak of loving them. Thus the Chinese White Wistaria is similar in
shape of blossom to the Scotch Laburnum, though a far more elegant, more
lavish flower; but the Laburnum is the loved one. I used to read
longingly of the Laburnum in volumes of English poetry, especially in
Hood's verses, beginning:--
"I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,"
Ella Partridge had a tall Laburnum tree at her front door; it peeped in
the second-story windows. It was so cherished, that I doubt whether its
blooms were ever gathered. She told us with conscious pride and
rectitude that it was a "yellow Wistaria tree which came from China"; I
saw no reason to doubt her words, and as I never chanced to speak to my
parents about it, I ever thought of it as a yellow Wistaria tree until I
went out into the world and found it was a Scotch Laburnum.
Few garden owners plant now the Snowberry, _Symphoricarpus racemosus_,
once seen in every front yard, and even used for hedges. It wasn't a
very satisfactory shrub in its habit; the oval leaves were not a
cheerful green, and were usually pallid with mildew. The flowers were
insignificant, but the clusters of berries were as pure as pearls. In
country homes, before the days of cheap winter flowers and omnipresent
greenhouses, these snowy clusters were cherished to gather in winter to
place on coffins and in hands as white and cold as the berries. Its
special offence in our garden was partly on account of this funereal
association, but chiefly because we were never permitted to gather its
berries to string into necklaces. They were rigidly preserved on the
stem as a garden decoration in winter; though they were too closely akin
in color to the encircling snowdrifts to be of any value.
In country homes in olden times were found several universal winter
posies. On the narrow mantel shelves of farm and village parlors, both
in England and America, still is seen a winter posy made of dried stalks
of the seed valves of a certain flower; they are shown on the opposite
page. Let us see how our old friend, Gerarde, describes this plant:--
"The stalkes are loden with many flowers like the
stocke-gilliflower, of a purple colour, which, being fallen, the
seede cometh foorthe conteined in a flat thinne cod, with a sharp
point or pricke at one end, in fashion of the moone, and somewhat
blackish. This cod is composed of three filmes or skins whereof the
two outermost are of an overworne ashe colour, and the innermost,
or that in the middle whereon the seed doth hang or cleave, is thin
and cleere shining, like a piece of white satten newly cut from the
peece."
In the latter clause of this striking description is given the reason
for the popular name of the flower, Satin-flower or White Satin, for the
inner septum is a shining membrane resembling white satin. Another
interesting name is Pricksong-flower. All who have seen sheets of music
of Elizabethan days, when the notes of music were called pricks, and the
whole sheet a pricksong, will readily trace the resemblance to the seeds
of this plant.
Gerarde says it was named "Penny-floure, Money-floure, Silver-plate,
Sattin, and among our women called Honestie." The last name was commonly
applied at the close of the eighteenth century. It is thus named in
writings of Rev. William Hanbury, 1771, and a Boston seedsman then
advertised seeds of Honestie "in small quantities, that all might have
some." In 1665, Josselyn found White Satin planted and growing
plentifully in New England gardens, where I am sure it formed, in garden
and house, a happy reminder of their English homes to the wives of the
colonists. Since that time it has spread so freely in some localities,
especially in southern Connecticut, that it grows wild by the wayside.
It is seldom seen now in well-kept gardens, though it should be, for it
is really a lovely flower, showing from white to varied and rich light
purples. I was charmed with its fresh beauty this spring in the garden
of Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright; a photograph of one of her borders
containing Honesty is shown opposite page 174.
[Illustration: Money-in-both-pockets.]
At Belvoir Castle in England, in the "Duchess's Garden," the
Satin-flower can be seen in full variety of tint, and fills an important
place. It is carefully cultivated by seed and division, all inferior
plants being promptly destroyed, while the superior blossoms are
cherished.
The flower was much used in charms and spells, as was everything
connected with the moon. Drayton's Clarinax sings of Lunaria:--
"Enchanting lunarie here lies
In sorceries excelling."
As a child this Lunaria was a favorite flower, for it afforded to us
juvenile money. Indeed, it was generally known among us as Money-flower
or Money-seed, or sometimes as Money-in-both-pockets. The seed valves
formed our medium of exchange and trade, passing as silver dollars.
Through the streets of a New England village there strolled, harmless
and happy, one who was known in village parlance as a "softy," one of
"God's fools," a poor addle-pated, simple-minded creature, witless--but
neither homeless nor friendless; for children cared for him, and
feeble-minded though he was, he managed to earn, by rush-seating chairs
and weaving coarse baskets, and gathering berries, scant pennies enough
to keep him alive; and he slept in a deserted barn, in a field full of
rocks and Daisies and Blueberry bushes,--a barn which had been built by
one but little more gifted with wits than himself. Poor Elmer never was
able to understand that the money which he and the children saved so
carefully each autumn from the money plants was not equal in value to
the great copper cents of the village store; and when he asked gleefully
for a loaf of bread or a quart of molasses, was just as apt to offer the
shining seed valves in payment as he was to give the coin of the land;
and it must be added that his belief received apparent confirmation in
the fact that he usually got the bread whether he gave seeds or cents.
[Illustration: Box Walk in Garden of Frederick J. Kingsbury, Esq.
Waterbury, Connecticut.]
He lost his life through his poor simple notion. In the village he was
kindly treated by all, clothed, fed, and warmed; but one day there came
skulking along the edge of the village what were then rare visitors, two
tramps, who by ill-chance met poor Elmer as he was gathering chestnuts.
And as the children lingered on their way home from school to take toll
of Elmer's store of nuts, they heard him boasting gleefully of his
wealth, "hundreds and hundreds of dollars all safe for winter." The
children knew what his dollars were, but the tramps did not. Three days
of heavy rain passed by, and Elmer did not appear at the store or any
house. Then kindly neighbors went to his barn in the distant field, and
found him cruelly beaten, with broken ribs and in a high fever, while
scattered around him were hundreds of the seeds of his autumnal store of
the money plant; these were all the silver dollars his assailants found.
He was carried to the almshouse and died in a few weeks, partly from the
beating, partly from exposure, but chiefly, I ever believed, from
homesickness in his enforced home. His old house has fallen down, but
his well still is open, and around it grows a vast expanse of Lunaria,
which has spread and grown from the seeds poor Elmer saved, and every
year shoots of the tender lilac blooms mingle so charmingly with the
white Daisies that the sterile field is one of the show-places of the
village, and people drive from afar to see it.
[Illustration: Lunaria in Garden at Waldstein.]
There grow in profusion in our home garden what I always called the
Mullein Pink, the Rose Campion (_Lychnis coronaria_). I never heard any
one speak of this plant with special affection or admiration; but as
a child I loved its crimson flower more than any other flower in the
garden. Perhaps I should say I loved the royal color rather than the
flower. I gathered tight bunches without foliage into a glowing mass of
color unequalled in richness of tint by anything in nature. I have seen
only in a stained glass window flooded with high sunlight a crimson
approaching that of the Mullein Pink. Gerarde calls the flower the
"Gardener's Delight or Gardner's Eie." It was known in French as the Eye
of God; and the Rose of Heaven. We used to rub our cheeks with the
woolly leaves to give a beautiful rosy blush, and thereby I once skinned
one cheek.
Snapdragons were a beloved flower--companions of my childhood in our
home garden, but they have been neglected a bit by nearly every one of
late years. Plant a clump of the clear yellow and one of pure white
Snapdragons, and see how beautiful they are in the garden, and how fresh
they keep when cut. We had such a satisfying bunch of them on the dinner
table to-day, in a milk-white glazed Chinese jar; yellow Snapdragons,
with "borrowed leaves" of Virgin's-bower (_Adlumia_) and a haze of
Gypsophila over all.
A flower much admired in gardens during the early years of the
nineteenth century was the Plume Poppy (_Bocconia_). It has a pretty
pinkish bloom in general shape somewhat like Meadow Rue (see page 164
and page 167). A friend fancied a light feathery look over certain of
her garden borders, and she planted plentifully Plume Poppy and Meadow
Rue; this was in 1895. In 1896 the effect was exquisite; in 1897 the
garden feathered out with far too much fulness; in 1901 all the combined
forces of all the weeds of the garden could not equal these two flowers
in utter usurpment and close occupation of every inch of that garden.
The Plume Poppy has a strong tap-root which would be a good symbol of
the root of the tree Ygdrassyl--the Tree of Life, that never dies. You
can go over the borders with scythe and spade and hoe, and even with
manicure-scissors, but roots of the Plume Poppy will still hide and send
up vigorous growth the succeeding year.
We have grown so familiar with some old doubled blossoms that we think
little of their being double. One such, symmetrical of growth, beautiful
of foliage, and gratifying of bloom, is the Double Buttercup. It is to
me distinctly one of our most old-fashioned flowers in aspect. A hardy
great clump of many years' growth is one of the ancient treasures of our
garden; its golden globes are known in England as Bachelor's Buttons,
and are believed by many to be the Bachelor's Buttons of Shakespeare's
day.
[Illustration: Dahlia Walk at Ravensworth.]
Dahlias afford a striking example of the beauty of single flowers when
compared to their doubled descendants. Single Dahlias are fine flowers,
the yellow and scarlet ones especially so. I never thought double
Dahlias really worth the trouble spent on them in our Northern gardens;
so much staking and tying, and fussing, and usually an autumn storm
wrenches them round and breaks the stem or a frost nips them just as
they are in bloom. A Dahlia hedge or a walk such as this one at
Ravensworth, Virginia, is most stately and satisfying. I like, in
moderation, many of the smaller single and double Sunflowers. Under the
reign of _Patience_, the Sunflower had a fleeting day of popularity, and
flaunted in garden and parlor. Its place was false. It was never a
garden flower in olden times, in the sense of being a flower of ornament
or beauty; its place was in the kitchen garden, where it belongs.
Peas have ever been favorites in English gardens since they were brought
to England. We have all seen the print, if not the portrait, of Queen
Elizabeth garbed in a white satin robe magnificently embroidered with
open pea-pods and butterflies. A "City of London Madam" had a delightful
head ornament of open pea-pods filled with peas of pearls; this was worn
over a hood of gold-embroidered muslin, and with dyed red hair, must
have been a most modish affair. Sweet Peas have had a unique history.
They have been for a century a much-loved flower of the people both in
England and America, and they were at home in cottage borders and fine
gardens; were placed in vases, and carried in nosegays and posies; were
loved of poets--Keats wrote an exquisite characterization of them. They
had beauty of color, and a universally loved perfume--but florists have
been blind to them till within a few years. A bicentenary exhibition of
Sweet Peas was given in London in July, 1900; now there is formed a
Sweet Pea Society. But no societies and no exhibitions ever will make
them a "florist's flower"; they are of value only for cutting; their
habit of growth renders them useless as a garden decoration.
We all take notions in regard to flowers, just as we do in regard to
people. I hear one friend say, "I love every flower that grows," but I
answer with emphasis, "I don't!" I have ever disliked the Portulaca,--I
hate its stems. It is my fate never to escape it. I planted it once to
grow under Sweet Alyssum in the little enclosure of earth behind my city
home; when I returned in the autumn, everything was covered, blanketed,
overwhelmed with Portulaca. Since then it comes up even in the grass,
and seems to thrive by being trampled upon. The Portulaca was not a
flower of colonial days; I am glad to learn our great-grandmothers were
not pestered with it; it was not described in the _Botanical Magazine_
till 1829.
I do not care for the Petunia close at hand on account of its sickish
odor. But in the dusky border the flowers shine like white stars (page
180), and make you almost forgive their poor colors in the daylight. I
never liked the Calceolaria. Every child in our town used to have a
Calceolaria in her own small garden plot, but I never wanted one. I care
little for Chrysanthemums; they fill in the border in autumn, and they
look pretty well growing, but I like few of the flowers close at hand.
By some curious twist of a brain which, alas! is apt not to deal as it
is expected and ought to, with sensations furnished to it, I have felt
this distaste for Chrysanthemums since I attended a Chrysanthemum Show.
Of course, I ought to love them far more, and have more eager interest
in them--but I do not. Their sister, the China Aster, I care little for.
The Germans call Asters "death-flowers." The Empress of Austria at the
Swiss hotel where she lodged just before she was murdered, found the
rooms decorated with China Asters. She said to her attendant that the
flowers were in Austria termed death-flowers--and so they proved. The
Aster is among the flowers prohibited in Japan for felicitous occasions,
as are the Balsam, Rhododendron, and Azalea.
[Illustration: Petunias.]
Those who read these pages may note perhaps that I say little of Lilies.
I do not care as much for them as most garden lovers do. I like all our
wild Lilies, especially the yellow Nodding Lily of our fields; and the
Lemon Lily of our gardens is ever a delight; but the stately Lilies
which are such general favorites, Madonna Lilies, Japan Lilies, the
Gold-banded Lilies, are not especially dear to me.
I love climbing vines, whether of delicate leaf or beautiful flower. In
a room I place all the decoration that I can on the walls, out of the
way, leaving thus space to move around without fear of displacement or
injury of fragile things; so in a limited garden space, grass room under
our feet, with flowering vines on the surrounding walls are better than
many crowded flower borders. A tiny space can quickly be made delightful
with climbing plants. The common Morning-glory, called in England the
Bell-bind, is frequently advertised by florists of more encouragement
than judgment, as suitable to plant freely in order to cover fences and
poor sandy patches of ground with speedy and abundant leafage and bloom.
There is no doubt that the Morning-glory will do all this and far more
than is promised. It will also spread above and below ground from the
poor strip of earth to every other corner of garden and farm. This it
has done till, in our Eastern states, it is now classed as a wild
flower. It will never look wild, however, meet it where you will. It is
as domestic and tame as a barnyard fowl, which, wandering in the wildest
woodland, could never be mistaken as game. The garden at Claymont, the
Virginia home of Mr. Frank R. Stockton, afforded a striking example of
the spreading and strangling properties of the Morning-glory, not under
encouragement, but simply under toleration. Mr. Stockton tells me that
the entire expanse of his yards and garden, when he first saw them, was
a solid mass of Morning-glory blooms. Every stick, every stem, every
stalk, every shrub and blade of grass, every vegetable growth, whether
dead or alive, had its encircling and overwhelming Morning-glory
companion, set full of tiny undersized blossoms of varied tints. It was
a beautiful sight at break of day,--a vast expanse of acres jewelled
with Morning-glories--but it wasn't the new owner's notion of a flower
garden.
In my childhood flower agents used to canvass country towns from house
to house. Sometimes they had a general catalogue, and sold many plants,
trees, and shrubs. Oftener they had but a single plant which they were
"booming." I suspect that their trade came through the sudden
introduction of so many and varied flowers and shrubs from China and
Japan. I am told that the first Chinese Wistarias and a certain Fringe
tree were sold in this manner; and I know the white Hydrangea was, for I
recall it, though I do not know that this was its first sale. I remember
too that suddenly half the houses in town, on piazza or trellis, had the
rich purple blooms of the _Clematis Jackmanni_; for a very persuasive
agent had gone through the town the previous year. Of course people of
means bought then, as now, at nurseries; but at many humble homes, whose
owners would never have thought of buying from a greenhouse, he sold his
plants. It gave an agreeable rivalry, when all started plants together,
to see whose flourished best and had the amplest bloom. Thoreau recalled
the pleasant emulation of many owners in Concord of a certain
Rhododendron, sold thus sweepingly by an agent. The purple Clematis
displaced an old climbing favorite, the Trumpet Honeysuckle, once seen
by every door. It was so beloved of humming-birds and so beautiful, I
wonder we could ever destroy it. Its downfall was hastened by its being
infested by a myriad of tiny green aphides, which proceeded from it to
our Roses. I recall well these little plant insects, for I was very fond
of picking the tubes of the Honeysuckle for the drop of pure honey
within, and I had to abandon reluctantly the sweet morsels.
We have in our garden, and it is shown on the succeeding page, a vine
which we carefully cherished in seedlings from year to year, and took
much pride in. It came to us with the Ambrosia from the Walpole garden.
It was not common in gardens in our neighborhood, and I always looked
upon it as something very choice, and even rare, as it certainly was
something very dainty and pretty. We called it Virgin's-bower. When I
went out into the world I found that it was not rare, that it grew wild
from Connecticut to the far West; that it was Climbing Fumitory, or
Mountain Fringe, _Adlumia_. When Mrs. Margaret Deland asked if we had
Alleghany Vine in our garden, I told her I had never seen it, when all
the while it was our own dear Virgin's-bower. It doesn't seem hardy
enough to be a wild thing; how could it make its way against the fierce
vines and thorns of the forest when it hasn't a bit of woodiness in its
stems and its leaves and flowers are so tender! I cannot think any
garden perfect without it, no matter what else is there, for its
delicate green Rue-like leaves lie so gracefully on stone or brick
walls, or on fences, and it trails its slender tendrils so lightly over
dull shrubs that are out of flower, beautifying them afresh with an
alien bloom of delicate little pinkish blossoms like tiny
Bleeding-hearts.
[Illustration: Virgin's-bower.]
Another old favorite was the Balloon-vine, sometimes called Heartseed
or Heart-pea, with its seeds like fat black hearts, with three lobes
which made them globose instead of flat. This, too, had pretty compound
leaves, and the whole vine, like our Virgin's-bower, lay lightly on what
it covered; but the Dutchman's-pipe had a leafage too heavy save to make
a thick screen or arch quickly and solidly. It did well enough in
gardens which had not had a long cultivated past, or made little
preparation for a cherished future; but it certainly was not suited to
our garden, where things were not planted for a day. These three are
native vines of rich woods in our Central and Western states. The
Matrimony-vine was an old favorite; one from the porch of the Van
Cortlandt manor-house, over a hundred years old, is shown on the next
page. Often you see a straggling, sprawling growth; but this one is as
fine as any vine could be.
Patient folk--as were certainly those of the old-time gardens, tried to
keep the Rose Acacia as a favorite. It was hardy enough, but so
hopelessly brittle in wood that it was constantly broken by the wind and
snow of our Northern winters, even though it was sheltered under some
stronger shrub. At the end of a lovely Salem garden, I beheld this June
a long row of Rose Acacias in full bloom. I am glad I possess in my
memory the exquisite harmony of their shimmering green foliage and rosy
flower clusters. Miss Jekyll, ever resourceful, trains the Rose Acacia
on a wall; and fastens it down by planting sturdy Crimson Ramblers by
its side; her skilful example may well be followed in America and thus
restore to our gardens this beautiful flower.
[Illustration: Matrimony-vine at Van Cortlandt Manor.]
One flower, termed old-fashioned by nearly every one, is really a recent
settler of our gardens. A popular historical novel of American life at
the time of the Revolution makes the hero and heroine play a very pretty
love scene over a spray of the Bleeding-heart, the Dielytra, or
Dicentra. Unfortunately for the truth of the novelist's picture, the
Dielytra was not introduced to the gardens of English-speaking folk
till 1846, when the London Horticultural Society received a single plant
from the north of China. How quickly it became cheap and abundant; soon
it bloomed in every cottage garden; how quickly it became beloved! The
graceful racemes of pendant rosy flowers were eagerly welcomed by
children; they have some inexplicable, witching charm; even young
children in arms will stretch out their little hands and attempt to
grasp the Dielytra, when showier blossoms are passed unheeded. Many tiny
playthings can be formed of the blossoms: only deft fingers can shape
the delicate lyre in the "frame." One of its folk names is "Lyre
flower"; the two wings can be bent back to form a gondola.
We speak of modern flowers, meaning those which have recently found
their way to our gardens. Some of these clash with the older occupants,
but one has promptly been given an honored place, and appears so allied
to the older flowers in form and spirit that it seems to belong by their
side--the _Anemone Japonica_. Its purity and beauty make it one of the
delights of the autumn garden; our grandmothers would have rejoiced in
it, and have divided the plants with each other till all had a row of it
in the garden borders. In its red form it was first pictured in the
_Botanical Magazine_, in 1847, but it has been commonly seen in our
gardens for only twenty or thirty years.
[Illustration: White Wistaria.]
These two flowers, the _Dielytra spectabilis_ and _Anemone Japonica_,
are among the valuable gifts which our gardens received through the
visits to China of that adventurous collector, Robert Fortune. He went
there first in 1842, and for some years constantly sent home fresh
treasures. Among the best-known garden flowers of his introducing are
the two named above, and _Kerria Japonica_, _Forsythia viridissima_,
_Weigela rosea_, _Gardenia Fortuniana_, _Daphne Fortunei_, _Berberis
Fortunei_, _Jasminum nudiflorum_, and many varieties of Prunus,
Viburnum, Spiraea, Azalea, and Chrysanthemum. The fine yellow Rose known
as Fortune's Yellow was acquired by him during a venturesome trip which
he took, disguised as a Chinaman. The white Chinese Wistaria is regarded
as the most important of his collections. It is deemed by some
flower-lovers the most exquisite flower in the entire world. The Chinese
variety is distinguished by the length of its racemes, sometimes three
feet long. The lower part of a vine of unusual luxuriance and beauty is
shown above. This special vine flowers in full richness of bloom every
alternate year, and this photograph was taken during its "poor year";
for in its finest inflorescence its photograph would show simply a mass
of indistinguishable whiteness. Mr. Howell has named it The Fountain,
and above the pouring of white blossoms shown in this picture is an
upper cascade of bloom. This Wistaria is not growing in an
over-favorable locality, for winter winds are bleak on the southern
shores of Long Island; but I know no rival of its beauty in far warmer
and more sheltered sites.
Many of the Deutzias and Spiraeas which beautify our spring gardens were
introduced from Japan before Fortune's day by Thunberg, the great
exploiter of Japanese shrubs, who died in 1828. The Spiraea Van Houtteii
(facing page 190) is perhaps the most beautiful of all. Dean Hole names
the Spiraeas, Deutzias, Weigelas, and Forsythias as having been brought
into his ken in English gardens within his own lifetime, that is within
fourscore years.
In New England gardens the Forsythia is called 'Sunshine Bush'--and
never was folk name better bestowed, or rather evolved. For in the eager
longing for spring which comes in the bitterness of March, when we cry
out with the poet, "O God, for one clear day, a Snowdrop and sweet air,"
in our welcome to fresh life, whether shown in starting leaf or frail
blossom, the Forsythia shines out a grateful delight to the eyes and
heart, concentrating for a week all the golden radiance of sunlight,
which later will be shared by sister shrubs and flowers. _Forsythia
suspensa_, falling in long sweeps of yellow bells, is in some favorable
places a cascade of liquid light. No shrub in our gardens is more
frequently ruined by gardeners than these Forsythias. It takes an
artist to prune the _Forsythia suspensa_. You can steal the sunshine for
your homes ere winter is gone by breaking long sprays of the Sunshine
Bush and placing them in tall deep jars of water. Split up the ends of
the stems that they may absorb plentiful water, and the golden plumes
will soon open to fullest glory within doors.
There is another yellow flowered shrub, the Corchorus, which seems as
old as the Lilac, for it is ever found in old gardens; but it proves to
be a Japanese shrub which we have had only a hundred years. The little,
deep yellow, globular blossoms appear in early spring and sparsely
throughout the whole summer. The plant isn't very adorning in its usual
ragged growth, but it was universally planted.
It may be seen from the shrubs of popular growth which I have named that
the present glory of our shrubberies is from the Japanese and Chinese
shrubs, which came to us in the nineteenth century through Thunberg,
Fortune, and other bold collectors. We had no shrub-sellers of
importance in the eighteenth century; the garden lover turned wholly to
the seedsman and bulb-grower for garden supplies, just as we do to-day
to fill our old-fashioned gardens. The new shrubs and plants from China
and Japan did not clash with the old garden flowers, they seemed like
kinsfolk who had long been separated and rejoiced in being reunited;
they were indeed fellow-countrymen. We owed scores of our older flowers
to the Orient, among them such important ones as the Lilac, Rose, Lily,
Tulip, Crown Imperial.
[Illustration: Spiraea Van Houtteii.]
We can fancy how delighted all these Oriental shrubs and flowers were to
meet after so many years of separation. What pleasant greetings all the
cousins must have given each other; I am sure the Wistaria was glad to
see the Lilac, and the Fortune's Yellow Rose was duly respectful to his
old cousin, the thorny yellow Scotch Rose. And I seem to hear a bit of
scandal passing from plant to plant! Listen! it is the Bleeding-heart
gossiping with the Japanese Anemone: "Well! I never thought that Lilac
girl would grow to be such a beauty. So much color! Do you suppose it
can be natural? Mrs. Tulip hinted to me yesterday that the girl used
fertilizers, and it certainly looks so. But she can't say much
herself--I never saw such a change in any creatures as in those Tulips.
You remember how commonplace their clothes were? Now such extravagance!
Scores of gowns, and all made abroad, and at _her_ age! Here are you and
I, my dear, both young, and we really ought to have more clothes. I
haven't a thing but this pink gown to put on. It's lucky you had a white
gown, for no one liked your pink one. Here comes Mrs. Rose! How those
Rose children have grown! I never should have known them."