Had we embarked upon a little stone house, instead of a little red-brick
one, should we, I wonder, have had the energy to bestow upon ourselves a
small flagged and stonewalled garden as an adjunct to it? I doubt it.
For one thing flagged gardens are, I imagine, costly affairs. Moreover I
have never myself seen a new one that appealed to me as quite
satisfactory. An old, grey-walled, and grey-flagged garden, as part of
an old, grey farmhouse, or manor, is one of the most ideal possessions
that the heart of man could sigh after. Like most other ideal
possessions, to have it, it is, unfortunately, necessary as a rule to
have been born to it.
Be this as it may, I have never ceased to rejoice that we had the energy
to embark at once upon our little red-brick garden. The comfort of
knowing that there is always one spot sure to be clean, sure to be dry,
sure to be a satisfaction to step into, even in such weather as we have
of late been afflicted with, is a boon that can hardly be overrated. As
a mere matter of appearance, the red-brick garden seems to be at least
as “natural” an appanage of the red-brick house as the little grey-stone
garden of the grey-stone one. Both require a certain amount of thought
and contrivance, especially as regards proportion, but once this is
attained, they soon learn to wear that inevitable aspect, which in
garden making, as in all the other arts, great and small, is the first,
and surely the least dispensable of all requirements?
That the grey-stone garden is on the whole the higher species of the two
I admit. At the same time the red-brick one has this great advantage
over its stony brother that it is essentially a winter’s day garden,
whereas the stone one may, and in bad weather does, look grim, to the
point of being almost forbidding. In both gardens some amount of
hindrance is apt to arise with regard to the laying down of the walks.
Flagging is a costly process, and where the walks are very narrow, the
laying down of stone flags must be a matter of some difficulty. The same
applies, though not quite to the same extent, to the red-brick garden.
That it ought to be tiled, just as the other ought to be flagged, I feel
sure. At the same time good, red gravel, or even bricks, broken fine,
mixed with sand, and rolled, answers fairly. Another question arises in
the matter of vases. Terra-cotta ones of the right design are not easily
come by in this country, and, when come by, they often cost more than if
imported direct from Italy. These, however, are details, while the
question of what to plant in such gardens is still more obviously an
open one. That the more of glaucous, grey-blue tints--such as that found
in the foliage of carnations--we have the better, is I think certain,
while if small bushes are wanted, lavender will provide the same shade.
Where both walls and walks are of red brick, blue, white and violet seem
to be the right prevailing colours; reds and yellows only to be admitted
slowly, and with precaution. All this, however, savours of dogmatism!
The supreme moment for such little plots is of course their spring-bulb
time. Most people call them Dutch gardens, and whether common in Holland
or not, the tulip undoubtedly seems born to flourish in them. When the
tulips are over, plenty of other things come on however to take their
places. Pansies, for instance, never look better than in such gardens,
whether as a carpet for tea-roses, or in beds by themselves. The smaller
campanulas, especially the white hairbells, the small double daisies,
and a host of other things of the same sort, answer perfectly, while, if
we want to stretch out our bulb season all we can, sparaxis, ixias,
bobartias, the early white gladioli, and others, are all ready to hand,
followed by the various lesser irises, winding up, at perhaps their best
point, with xiphium and xiphioides.
The one indispensable point--here again dogmatism appears!--is that such
gardens should be so close to the house as to keep up the idea of being
merely an adjunct, or flowery courtyard to it. With this idea in our
minds anything like distance is fatal. You must be free to step into
your garden from your door, or with no more interval than two or three
steps, or the breadth of a gravel walk. Garden fanatics as many of us
already are, and--as life increases in strenuousness--more and more will
yearly become, it is our interest obviously to spin out our playtime all
we can. Now nothing so helps us towards this, or so effectually
counteracts our Arch-enemy, as to have some little settled place so
cunningly contrived that even _his_ malignity, backed by its worst
agents--sleet, hail, fierce winds, cutting rains,--fails to reduce it to
a condition of mere despairing sloppiness; mere forlorn, and
death-suggesting desolation.