The wind this morning was excruciatingly cold, with a hungry whistle,
that belied the pale sunrays, which were doing their best to redeem the
situation. On such a morning the good gardener’s thoughts, even before
going out, fly to the younger and weaklier amongst his plants, and his
imagination towards devising new shelters, and, if possible, more
efficient ones. Creepers are, as a rule, easily protected; either there
is a wall, against which mats can be laid, or, at worst, some post that
they can be fastened to. It is shrubs in the open that present the
greatest difficulty; nightcaps of sacking, or tents of matting not
adding to the picturesqueness even of a winter garden.
Our more recently planted rhododendrons look anything but happy, and I
have just been begging Cuttle to bestow a good shovelful of nourishment
about the roots of each of them. It is not protection that they need,
for they are hardy enough, but they sicken in this thin, dry soil,
which seems to reach them through their two-foot blanket of peat.
Even when well grown and long established, rhododendrons hardly seem to
me to be quite the ideal thing for these rustling oak copses of ours. We
plant them, partly for the sake of their colour in its season, partly
because we need evergreens, and the common ponticum is one of the best
of evergreens, but they seem to me to remain exotics, and not altogether
happy ones. There are two distinct varieties of scenery with both of
which rhododendrons consort magnificently. One is heavy, boggy ground,
deep, dark, and oozy, under large trees, into the recesses of which they
can settle, spreading out in all directions, re-rooting themselves as
they choose in the black earth; their flowers catching the divided
sunrays, and turning every hollow place into a pool of colour. Another,
and a yet more ideal place is a steep hillside, provided that it is
furnished with boulders, and provided that the said boulders are not of
limestone. There is one such hillside above the Bay of Dublin which I
find it difficult to believe might not be able to hold its own, even
though confronted with any similar extent of ground amongst the
Himalayas themselves. It begins as a ravine, rising out of a rather thin
wood. As one mounts the ravine opens, and the trees fall back. The
boulders, with which the slopes are covered, rise higher and higher, and
larger and larger, till they tower into the air over one’s head, perfect
monoliths. In and out, above, behind, and between them grow the
rhododendrons, in their flowering season an absolute feast of colour,
the sort of thing that in a cultivated age pilgrimages will be formed to
venerate. To see them in such a place is to get a new impression of the
possibilities of heroic gardening. One’s eyes are caught, one’s whole
mind and spirit is swept away upon a tide of colour; the grey micaceous
granite of the ravine, the heather looking down over its top, the long
blue river of sky, even the sea and its ships, seeming to be merely so
many adjuncts and accessories of the central picture.
Such conditions are not to be found every day in the week, or in
everybody’s back garden. We have to work out our own redemption, each of
us as we best can, with such materials as the Fates have lent us.
Happily, as regards natural conditions, here in West Surrey, the
garden-lover, whatever other difficulties he may have to contend with,
has much to be grateful for. Thanks to its blessed unproductiveness, the
harrow has literally in many cases never passed over its soil; its very
weeds being mostly those of Nature’s own introduction, not imported
ones. Her handiwork is still plainly visible on every side. She looks
up at him out of the bracken with an aspect not very different from what
she wore at the Prime, and if he wishes to spoil her--well, he has to do
it for himself! This to many excellent gardeners would seem a poor
compensation for a sadly unproductive soil, and a deplorable lack of
summer moisture. There are others, however, to whom a certain sense of
indwelling peace, a certain feeling of underlying harmony, are the first
of all requirements. Now both of these are more easily _found_ than
made.