Wood and Garden Part 10

[Ill.u.s.tration: PATHWAY ACROSS THE SOUTH BORDER IN JULY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUTSIDE VIEW OF THE BRICK PERGOLA SHOWN AT PAGE 214, AFTER SIX YEARS' GROWTH.]

Next along the wall is _Solanum crispum_, much to be recommended in our southern counties. It covers a good s.p.a.ce of wall, and every year shoots up some feet above it; indeed it is such a lively grower that it has to endure a severe yearly pruning. Every season it is smothered with its pretty cl.u.s.ters of potato-shaped bloom of a good bluish-lilac colour.

After these I wanted some solid-looking dark evergreens, so there is a Loquat, with its splendid foliage equalling that of _Magnolia grandiflora_, and then Black Laurustinus, Bay, and j.a.pan Privet; and from among this dark-leaved company shoots up the tender green of a Banksian Rose, grown from seed of the single kind, the gift of my kind friend Commendatore Hanbury, whose world-famed garden of La Mortola, near Ventimiglia, probably contains the most remarkable collection of plants and shrubs that have ever been brought together by one man. This Rose has made good growth, and a first few flowers last year--seedling Roses are slow to bloom--lead me to expect a good show next season.

In the narrow border at the foot of the wall is a bush of _Raphiolepis ovata_, always to me an interesting shrub, with its thick, roundish, leathery leaves and white flower-cl.u.s.ters, also bushes of Rosemary, some just filling the border, and some trained up the wall. Our Tudor ancestors were fond of Rosemary-covered walls, and I have seen old bushes quite ten feet high on the garden walls of Italian monasteries.

Among the Rosemaries I always like, if possible, to "tickle in" a China Rose or two, the tender pink of the Rose seems to go so well with the dark but dull-surfaced Rosemary. Then still in the wall-border comes a long straggling ma.s.s of that very pretty and interesting herbaceous Clematis, _C. Davidiana_. The colour of its flower always delights me; it is of an unusual kind of greyish-blue, of very tender and lovely quality. It does well in this warm border, growing about three feet high. Then on the wall come _Pyrus Maulei_ and _Chimonanthus_, Claret-Vine, and the large-flowered _Ceanothus_ Gloire de Versailles, hardy _Fuchsia_, and _Magnolia Soulangeana_, ending with a big bush of _Choisya ternata_, and rambling above it a very fine kind of _Bignonia grandiflora_.

Then comes the archway, flanked by thick b.u.t.tresses. A Choisya was planted just beyond each of these, but it has grown wide and high, spreading across the face of the b.u.t.tress on each side, and considerably invading the pathway. There is no better shrub here than this delightful Mexican plant; its long whippy roots ramble through our light soil with every sign of enjoyment; it always looks clean and healthy and well dressed, and as for its lovely and deliciously sweet flowers, we cut them by the bushel, and almost by the f.a.ggot, and the bushes scarcely look any the emptier.

Beyond the archway comes the shorter length of wall and border. For convenience I planted all slightly tender things together on this bit of wall and border; then we make one job of covering the whole with fir-boughs for protection in winter. On the wall are _Piptanthus nepalensis_, _Cistus ladaniferus_, _Edwardsia grandiflora_, and another Loquat, and in the border a number of Hydrangeas, _Clerodendron foetidum_, _Crinums_, and _Nandina domestica_, the Chinese so-called sacred Bamboo. It is not a Bamboo at all, but allied to _Berberis_; the Chinese plant it for good luck near their houses. If it is as lucky as it is pretty, it ought to do one good! I first made acquaintance with this beautiful plant in Canon Ellacombe's most interesting garden at Bitton, in Gloucesters.h.i.+re, where it struck me as one of the most beautiful growing things I had ever seen, the beauty being mostly in the form and colouring of the leaves. It is not perhaps a plant for everybody, and barely hardly; it seems slow to get hold, and its full beauty only shows when it is well established, and throws up its wonderfully-coloured leaves on tall bamboo-like stalks.

There is nothing much more difficult to do in outdoor gardening than to plant a mixed border well, and to keep it in beauty throughout the summer. Every year, as I gain more experience, and, I hope, more power of critical judgment, I find myself tending towards broader and simpler effects, both of grouping and colour. I do not know whether it is by individual preference, or in obedience to some colour-law that I can instinctively feel but cannot pretend even to understand, and much less to explain, but in practice I always find more satisfaction and facility in treating the warm colours (reds and yellows) in graduated harmonies, culminating into gorgeousness, and the cool ones in contrasts; especially in the case of blue, which I like to use either in distinct but not garish contrasts, as of full blue with pale yellow, or in separate cloud-like harmonies, as of lilac and pale purple with grey foliage. I am never so much inclined to treat the blues, purples, and lilacs in gradations together as I am the reds and yellows. Purples and lilacs I can put together, but not these with blues; and the pure blues always seem to demand peculiar and very careful treatment.

The western end of the flower-border begins with the low bank of Yuccas, then there are some rather large ma.s.ses of important grey and glaucous foliage and pale and full pink flower. The foliage is mostly of the Globe Artichoke, and nearer the front of _Artemisia_ and _Cineraria maritima_. Among this, pink Canterbury Bell, Hollyhock, Phlox, Gladiolus, and j.a.pan Anemone, all in pink colourings, will follow one another in due succession. Then come some groups of plants bearing whitish and very pale flowers, _Polygonum compactum_, _Aconitum lycoctonum_, Double Meadowsweet, and other Spiraeas, and then the colour pa.s.ses to pale yellow of Mulleins, and with them the palest blue Delphiniums. Towards the front is a wide planting of _Iris pallida dalmatica_, its handsome bluish foliage showing as outstanding and yet related ma.s.ses with regard to the first large group of pale foliage.

Then comes the pale-yellow _Iris flavescens_, and meanwhile the group of Delphinium deepens into those of a fuller blue colour, though none of the darkest are here. Then more pale yellow of Mullein, Thalictrum, and Paris Daisy, and so the colour pa.s.ses to stronger yellows. These change into orange, and from that to brightest scarlet and crimson, coming to the fullest strength in the Oriental Poppies of the earlier year, and later in Lychnis, Gladiolus, Scarlet Dahlia, and Tritoma. The colour-scheme then pa.s.ses again through orange and yellow to the paler yellows, and so again to blue and warm white, where it meets one of the clumps of Yuccas flanking the path that divides this longer part of the border from the much shorter piece beyond. This simple procession of colour arrangement has occupied a s.p.a.ce of a hundred and sixty feet, and the border is all the better for it.

The short length of border beyond the gateway has again Yuccas and important pale foliage, and a preponderance of pink bloom, Hydrangea for the most part; but there are a few tall Mulleins, whose pale-yellow flowers group well with the ivory of the Yucca spikes and the clear pink of the tall Hollyhocks. These all show up well over the ma.s.ses of grey and glaucous foliage, and against the rich darkness of dusky Yew.

Dahlias and Cannas have their places in the mixed border. When it is being dismantled in the late autumn all bare places are well dug and enriched, so that when it comes to filling-up time, at the end of May, I know that every spare bit of s.p.a.ce is ready and at the time of preparation I mark places for special Dahlias, according to colour, and for groups of the tall Cannas where I want grand foliage.

There are certain cla.s.ses of plants that are quite indispensable, but that leave a bare or shabby-looking place when their bloom is over. How to cover these places is one of the problems that have to be solved. The worst offender is Oriental Poppy; it becomes unsightly soon after blooming, and is quite gone by midsummer. I therefore plant _Gypsophila paniculata_ between and behind the Poppy groups, and by July there is a delicate cloud of bloom instead of large bare patches. _Eryngium Oliverianum_ has turned brown by the beginning of July, but around the group some Dahlias have been planted, that will be gradually trained down over the s.p.a.ce of the departed Sea-Holly, and other Dahlias are used in the same way to mask various weak places.

There is a perennial Sunflower, with tall black stems, and pale-yellow flowers quite at the top, an old garden sort, but not very good as usually grown; this I find of great value to train down, when it throws up a short flowering stem from each joint, and becomes a spreading sheet of bloom.

One would rather not have to resort to these artifices of sticking and training; but if a certain effect is wanted, all such means are lawful, provided that nothing looks stiff or strained or unsightly; and it is pleasant to exercise ingenuity and to invent ways to meet the needs of any case that may arise. But like everything else, in good gardening it must be done just right, and the artist-gardener finds that hardly the placing of a single plant can be deputed to any other hand than his own; for though, when it is done, it looks quite simple and easy, he must paint his own picture himself--no one can paint it for him.

I have no dogmatic views about having in the so-called hardy flower-border none but hardy flowers. All flowers are welcome that are right in colour, and that make a brave show where a brave show is wanted. It is of more importance that the border should be handsome than that all its occupants should be hardy. Therefore I prepare a certain useful lot of half-hardy annuals, and a few of what have come to be called bedding-plants. I like to vary them a little from year to year, because in no one season can I get in all the good flowers that I should like to grow; and I think it better to leave out some one year and have them the next, than to crowd any up, or to find I have plants to put out and no s.p.a.ce to put them in. But I nearly always grow these half-hardy annuals; orange African Marigold, French Marigold, sulphur Sunflower, orange and scarlet tall Zinnia, Nasturtiums, both dwarf and trailing, _Nicotiana affinis_, Maize, and Salpiglossis. Then Stocks and China Asters. The Stocks are always the large white and flesh-coloured summer kinds, and the Asters, the White Comet, and one of the blood-red or so-called scarlet sorts.

Then I have yellow Paris Daisies, _Salvia patens_, Heliotrope, _Calceolaria amplexicaulis_, Geraniums, scarlet and salmon-coloured and ivy-leaved kinds, the best of these being the pink Madame Crousse.

[Ill.u.s.tration: END OF FLOWER-BORDER AND ENTRANCE OF PERGOLA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOUTH BORDER DOOR AND YUCCAS IN AUGUST.]

The front edges of the border are also treated in rather a large way. At the shadier end there is first a long straggling bordering patch of _Anemone sylvestris_. When it is once above ground the foliage remains good till autumn, while its soft white flower comes right with the colour of the flowers behind. Then comes a long and large patch of the larger kind of _Megasea cordifolia_, several yards in length, and running back here and there among taller plants. I am never tired of admiring the fine solid foliage of this family of plants, remaining, as it does, in beauty both winter and summer, and taking on a splendid winter colouring of warm red bronze. It is true that the flowers of the two best-known kinds, _M. cordifolia_ and _M. cra.s.sifolia_, are coa.r.s.e-looking blooms of a strong and rank quality of pink colour, but the persistent beauty of the leaves more than compensates; and in the rather tenderer kind, _M. ligulata_ and its varieties, the colour of the flower is delightful, of a delicate good pink, with almost scarlet stalks. There is nothing flimsy or temporary-looking about the Megaseas, but rather a sort of grave and monumental look that specially fits them for a.s.sociation with masonry, or for any place where a solid-looking edging or full-stop is wanted. To go back to those in the edge of the border: if the edging threatens to look too dark and hard, I plant among or just behind the plants that compose it, pink or scarlet Ivy Geranium or trailing Nasturtium, according to the colour demanded by the neighbouring group. _Heuchera Richardsoni_ is another good front-edge plant; and when we come to the blue and pale-yellow group there is a planting of _Funkia grandiflora_, whose fresh-looking pale-green leaves are delightful with the brilliant light yellow of _Calceolaria amplexicaulis_, and the farther-back planting of pale-blue Delphinium, Mullein, and sulphur Sunflower; while the same colour of foliage is repeated in the fresh green of the Indian Corn. Small s.p.a.ces occur here and there along the extreme front edge, and here are planted little jewels of colour, of blue Lobelia, or dwarf Nasturtium, or anything of the colour that the place demands.

The whole thing sounds much more elaborate than it really is; the trained eye sees what is wanted, and the trained hand does it, both by an acquired instinct. It is painting a picture with living plants.

I much enjoy the pergola at the end of the sunny path. It is pleasant while walking in full suns.h.i.+ne, and when that sunny place feels just a little too hot, to look into its cool depth, and to feel that one has only to go a few steps farther to be in shade, and to feel that little air of wind that the moving summer clouds say is not far off, and is only unfelt just here because it is stopped by the wall. It feels wonderfully dark at first, this gallery of cool greenery, pa.s.sing into it with one's eyes full of light and colour, and the open-sided summer-house at the end looks like a black cavern; but on going into it, and sitting down on one of its broad, low benches, one finds that it is a pleasant subdued light, just right to read by.

The pergola has two openings out of it on the right, and one on the left. The first way out on the right is straight into the nut-walk, which leads up to very near the house. The second goes up two or three low, broad steps made of natural sandstone flags, between groups of Ferns, into the Michaelmas Daisy garden. The opening on the left leads into a quiet s.p.a.ce of gra.s.s the width of the flower and wall border (twenty feet), having only some peat-beds planted with Kalmia. This is backed by a Yew hedge in continuation of the main wall, and it will soon grow into a cool, quiet bit of garden, seeming to belong to the pergola.

Now, standing midway in the length of the covered walk, with the eye rested and refreshed by the leafy half-light, on turning round again towards the border it shows as a brilliant picture through the bowery framing, and the value of the simple method of using the colours is seen to full advantage.

I do not like a mean pergola, made of stuff as thin as hop-poles. If means or materials do not admit of having anything better, it is far better to use these in some other simple way, of which there are many to choose from--such as uprights at even intervals, braced together with a continuous rail at about four feet from the ground, and another rail just clear of the ground, and some simple trellis of the smaller stuff between these two rails. This is always pretty at the back of a flower-border in any modest garden. But a pergola should be more seriously treated, and the piers at any rate should be of something rather large--either oak stems ten inches thick, or, better still, of fourteen-inch brickwork painted with lime-wash to a quiet stone-colour.

In Italy the piers are often of rubble masonry, either round or square in section, coated with very coa.r.s.e plaster, and lime-washed white. For a pergola of moderate size the piers should stand in pairs across the path, with eight feet clear between. Ten feet from pier to pier along the path is a good proportion, or anything from eight to ten feet, and they should stand seven feet two inches out of the ground. Each pair should be tied across the top with a strong beam of oak, either of the natural shape, or roughly adzed on the four faces; but in any case, the ends of the beams, where they rest on the top of the piers, should be adzed flat to give them a firm seat. If the beams are slightly curved or cambered, as most trunks of oak are, so much the better, but they must always be placed camber side up. The pieces that run along the top, with the length of the path, may be of any branching tops of oak, or of larch poles. These can easily be replaced as they decay; but the replacing of a beam is a more difficult matter, so that it is well to let them be fairly durable from the beginning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STONE-BUILT PERGOLA WITH WROUGHT OAK BEAMS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PERGOLA WITH BRICK PIERS AND BEAMS OF ROUGH OAK. (_See opposite page 202._)]

The climbers I find best for covering the pergola are Vines, Jasmine, Aristolochia, Virginia Creeper, and Wistaria. Roses are about the worst, for they soon run up leggy, and only flower at the top out of sight.

A sensible arrangement, allied to the pergola, and frequent in Germany and Switzerland, is made by planting young Planes, pollarding them at about eight feet from the ground, and training down the young growths horizontally till they have covered the desired roof-s.p.a.ce.

There is much to be done in our better-cla.s.s gardens in the way of pretty small structures thoroughly well-designed and built. Many a large lawn used every afternoon in summer as a family playground and place to receive visitors would have its comfort and usefulness greatly increased by a pretty garden-house, instead of the usual hot and ugly, crampy and uncomfortable tent. But it should be thoroughly well designed to suit the house and garden. A pigeon-cote would come well in the upper part, and the face or faces open to the lawn might be closed in winter with movable shutters, when it would make a useful store-place for garden seats and much else.

CHAPTER XVII

THE PRIMROSE GARDEN

It must be some five-and-twenty years ago that I began to work at what I may now call my own strain of Primroses, improving it a little every year by careful selection of the best for seed. The parents of the strain were a named kind, called Golden Plover, and a white one, without name, that I found in a cottage garden. I had also a dozen plants about eight or nine years ago from a strong strain of Mr. Anthony Waterer's that was running on nearly the same lines; but a year later, when I had flowered them side by side, I liked my own one rather the best, and Mr.

Waterer, seeing them soon after, approved of them so much that he took some to work with his own. I hold Mr. Waterer's strain in great admiration, and, though I tried for a good many years, never could come near him in red colourings. But as my own taste favoured the delicately-shaded flowers, and the ones most liked in the nursery seemed to be those with strongly contrasting eye, it is likely that the two strains may be working still farther apart.

They are, broadly speaking, white and yellow varieties of the strong bunch-flowered or Polyanthus kind, but they vary in detail so much, in form, colour, habit, arrangement, and size of eye and shape of edge, that one year thinking it might be useful to cla.s.sify them I tried to do so, but gave it up after writing out the characters of sixty cla.s.ses!

Their possible variation seems endless. Every year among the seedlings there appear a number of charming flowers with some new development of size, or colour of flower, or beauty of foliage, and yet all within the narrow bounds of--white and yellow Primroses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EVENING IN THE PRIMROSE GARDEN.]

Their time of flowering is much later than that of the true or single-stalked Primrose. They come into bloom early in April, though a certain number of poorly-developed flowers generally come much earlier, and they are at their best in the last two weeks of April and the first days of May. When the bloom wanes, and is nearly overtopped by the leaves, the time has come that I find best for dividing and replanting.

The plants then seem willing to divide, some almost falling apart in one's hands, and the new roots may be seen just beginning to form at the base of the crown. The plants are at the same time relieved of the crowded ma.s.s of flower-stem, and, therefore, of the exhausting effort of forming seed, a severe drain on their strength. A certain number will not have made more than one strong crown, and a few single-crown plants have not flowered; these, of course, do not divide. During the flowering time I keep a good look-out for those that I judge to be the most beautiful and desirable, and mark them for seed. These are also taken up, but are kept apart, the flower stems reduced to one or two of the most promising, and they are then planted in a separate place--some cool nursery corner. I find that the lifting and replanting in no way checks the growth or well-being of the seed-pods.

I remember some years ago a warm discussion in the gardening papers about the right time to sow the seed. Some gardeners of high standing were strongly for sowing it as soon as ripe, while others equally trustworthy advised holding it over till March. I have tried both ways, and have satisfied myself that it is a matter for experiment and decision in individual gardens. As nearly as I can make out, it is well in heavy soils to sow when ripe, and in light ones to wait till March.

In some heavy soils Primroses stand well for two years without division; whereas in light ones, such as mine, they take up the food within reach in a much shorter time, so that by the second year the plant has become a crowded ma.s.s of weak crowns that only throw up poor flowers, and are by then so much exhausted that they are not worth dividing afterwards.

In my own case, having tried both ways, I find the March sown ones much the best.

The seed is sown in boxes in cold frames, and p.r.i.c.ked out again into boxes when large enough to handle. The seedlings are planted out in June, when they seem to go on without any check whatever, and are just right for blooming next spring.

The Primrose garden is in a place by itself--a clearing half shaded by Oak, Chestnut, and Hazel. I always think of the Hazel as a kind nurse to Primroses; in the copses they generally grow together, and the finest Primrose plants are often nestled close in to the base of the nut-stool.

Three paths run through the Primrose garden, mere narrow tracks between the beds, converging at both ends, something like the lines of longitude on a globe, the ground widening in the middle where there are two good-sized Oaks, and coming to a blunt point at each end, the only other planting near it being two other long-shaped strips of Lily of the Valley.

Every year, before replanting, the Primrose ground is dug over and well manured. All day for two days I sit on a low stool dividing the plants; a certain degree of facility and expertness has come of long practice.

The "rubber" for frequent knife-sharpening is in a pail of water by my side; the lusciously fragrant heap of refuse leaf and flower-stem and old stocky root rises in front of me, changing its shape from a heap to a ridge, as when it comes to a certain height and bulk I back and back away from it. A boy feeds me with armfuls of newly-dug-up plants, two men are digging-in the cooling cow-dung at the farther end, and another carries away the divided plants tray by tray, and carefully replants them. The still air, with only the very gentlest south-westerly breath in it, brings up the mighty boom of the great s.h.i.+p guns from the old seaport, thirty miles away, and the pheasants answer to the sound as they do to thunder. The early summer air is of a perfect temperature, the soft coo of the wood-dove comes down from the near wood, the nightingale sings almost overhead, but--either human happiness may never be quite complete, or else one is not philosophic enough to contemn life's lesser evils, for--oh, the midges!

CHAPTER XVIII

COLOURS OF FLOWERS

I am always surprised at the vague, not to say reckless, fas.h.i.+on in which garden folk set to work to describe the colours of flowers, and at the way in which quite wrong colours are attributed to them. It is done in perfect good faith, and without the least consciousness of describing wrongly. In many cases it appears to be because the names of certain substances have been used conventionally or poetically to convey the idea of certain colours. And some of these errors are so old that they have acquired a kind of respectability, and are in a way accepted without challenge. When they are used about familiar flowers it does not occur to one to detect them, because one knows the flower and its true colour; but when the same old error is used in the description of a new flower, it is distinctly misleading. For instance, when we hear of golden b.u.t.tercups, we know that it means bright-yellow b.u.t.tercups; but in the case of a new flower, or one not generally known, surely it is better and more accurate to say bright yellow at once. Nothing is more frequent in plant catalogues than "bright golden yellow," when bright yellow is meant. Gold is not bright yellow. I find that a gold piece laid on a gravel path, or against a sandy bank, nearly matches it in colour; and I cannot think of any flower that matches or even approaches the true colour of gold, though something near it may be seen in the pollen-covered anthers of many flowers. A match for gold may more nearly be found among dying beech leaves, and some dark colours of straw or dry gra.s.s bents, but none of these when they match the gold are bright yellow. In literature it is quite another matter; when the poet or imaginative writer says, "a field of golden b.u.t.tercups," or "a golden sunset," he is quite right, because he appeals to our artistic perception, and in such case only uses the word as an image of something that is rich and sumptuous and glowing.