LEVENS

RAMSCLIFFE: ORANGE LILIES & MONKSHOODFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMr. C. E. Freeling

RAMSCLIFFE: ORANGE LILIES & MONKSHOOD

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMr. C. E. Freeling

the Dutch, because they bloom at the time of the herring harvest—six and seven feet high, and with them the Monkshood, with its tall spikes of hooded bloom. In poorer soils or with worse culture these fine flowers are of much lower growth, the Monkshood often only half the height, with its deeply-cut leaves yellowing before their time with the weakness of too-early maturity. The pleasure with which one sees this fine old garden flower is, however, always a little lessened by the knowledge of the dangerously poisonous nature of the whole plant, and especially of the root. It is the deadly Aconite of pharmacy. Another of the same family is grouped with it; the yellow Aconite of the Austrian mountains, with branched heads of sulphur-coloured bloom and singularly handsome leaves—large, dark green, glistening and persistently enduring—for, long after the bloom is past, they are beautiful in the border.

How well an artist knows the value of grey-leaved plants, and their use in pictorial gardening in the way of giving colour-value by close companionship, to tender pinks and lilacs, and, above all, to whites! A patch of white bloom is often too hard and sudden and inharmonious to satisfy the trained eye, but led up to and softened and sweetened by masses of neighbouring tender grey it takes its proper place and comes to its right strength in the well-ordered scheme. Lavender, Lavender-cotton (Santolina), Catmint, Pinks and Carnations, and the Woolly Woundwort (Stachys) with some other plants of hoary foliage, do this good work. In this garden the Woundwort, there known by its old Midland name of “Our Saviour’s Blanket,” throws up its grey-pink heads of bloom from a thick carpet of rather large leaves, silvery soft with their thick coating of long white down. Here a groundwork of it leads to the group of white Peach-leaved Bell-flower on the right and to the tall white Gnaphalium, a plant of kindred woolliness, on the left, while the precious grey quality runs through the left-hand flower-group by means of the downy-coated pods of the earlier-blooming Lupins, purposely left among the later flowers for this and for their handsome form.

How finely the Orange Lilies tell against the background of the holly hedge, at the path-end cut into an arbour, may well be seen inthe picture, and how kindly and gracefully the Greengage Plum-tree bends over and plays its appointed part.

Such a flower border makes many a picture in the hands of a garden-artist. His knowledge of the plants, their colours, seasons, habits and stature, enables him to use them as he uses the colours on his palette.

How grandly the tall Delphiniums grow in this strong soil. A little of the colour has been lost owing to technical difficulties of reproduction, for the blue is purer and stronger in effect both in the original picture and in nature than is here shown. They are grouped, as blue flowers need, with contrasts of yellow and orange; with yellow Daisies and the feathery Meadow-rue (Thalictrum), and the tall yellow Aconite and nearly white Campanulas, woolly Stachys and purple Bell-flowers beyond. Only one small patch of brighter colour, the scarlet of Lychnis chalcedonica, is allowed here. On the other side is the loose-growing and always pictorial white Mallow (Sidalcea candida), taking some weeks to produce its crop of flowers that, like Foxgloves and most of the flowers of the tall-spiked habit of growth, begin to bloom below, following upward till they finish at the top.

Some sort of garden knowledge is so generally professed in these days, and so much more gardening of the better kind is being attempted, that people are gradually learning the advantage of planting in good groups of one thing at a time. The older way of putting one each of the same plant at regular intervals along a border—like buttons on a waistcoat—is now no longer tolerated, but a great deal has yet to be learnt. Even planting in bold groups, however good the plants, will be ineffective if not absolutely unfortunate, if relationships of colouring are not understood. The safest plan is to plant in harmonies more or less graduated as to the warm colours, such as full yellow with orange and scarlet, and to plant blues with contrasts of yellows and any white flowers. Then delightful effects may be obtained with masses of grey foliage, such as Lavender, Lavender-cotton, and Stachys, and white Pink, with flowers that have colourings of tender pink, white, lilac and purple. To acquire a colour eye is an education in itself, founded on the needful natural aptitude, a gift that is denied to some people even if they are not actually colour-blind. But it is a precious possession where it occurs, and all the better

RAMSCLIFFE: LARKSPURFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMiss Kensit

RAMSCLIFFE: LARKSPUR

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMiss Kensit

when it has been so well trained that the eye is enabled to appreciate the utmost refinements of colour-values, and when this education has been carried to the point necessary for the artist, of justly estimating the colouras it appears to be. This is the most difficult thing to learn; to see colour as it is, is quite easy; any one not colour-blind can do this; but to see it as it appears to be needs to be learnt, for upon this acquired proficiency depends the power of the artist to interpret the colours of objects and to represent them in their right relation to each other.

There is another good double flower-border in this pleasant garden. In the sunny month of August the fine Summer Daisies (Chrysanthemum maximum), Phloxes and Lavender are in beauty, and some bloom remains upon the climbing Roses. The Box-edging, stout and strong, can withstand the temporary encroachments of some of the border flowers, for in such a garden, rule is relaxed whenever such latitude tends to beauty. Here and there, where the little edging shrub showed signs of unusual vigour, it has been allowed to grow up on the understanding that it shall submit to the shears, which clip it into rounded ball-shapes of two sizes, one upon another, like loaves of bread.

A garden like this, of moderate size, and needing no troublesome accessories of glasshouses, or even frames, and very little outside labour, is probably the very happiest possession of its kind. As the seasons succeed each other new pictures of flower beauty are revealed in constant succession. After the day’s work in the best of the daylight is over, its owner turns to it for pleasant labour or any such tending as it may need. Every group of plants meets him with a friendly face, for each one was planted by his own hands. His watchful eye observes where anything is amiss and the needful aid is immediately given.

In a great garden this vigilant personal care of plants as individuals is impossible. However able a man the head gardener may be, or however much he may love and wish to cherish the flowers under his care, his duties and responsibilities are too many and too onerous to admit of his being able to enjoy this intimate fellowship; but in the humbler garden the close relationship of man and flowers, with all its beneficent and salutary serviceableness to both, seems to be exactly adjusted.

Such a garden it is that fulfils its highest purpose; that giving of thepleasure—the rich reward of the loving toil and care that have gone to its making; every plant or group in it doing its appointed work in its due season—that giving of “sweet solace” according to the well-fitting wording of our far-away ancestors.

And when the day’s work is done, and the light just begins to fail, no one knows better than the artist that then is the best moment in the garden—when the colours acquire a wonderful richness of “subdued splendour” such as is unmatched throughout the lighter hours of the long summer day. Then it is that the flowers of delicate texture that have grown faint in the full heat, raise their heads and rejoice; that the tall evening Primrose opens its pale wide petals and gives off its faint perfume; that the little lilac cross-flowers of the night-scented Stock open out and show their modest prettiness and pour forth their enchanting fragrance. This early evening hour is indeed the best of all; the hour of loveliest sight, of sweetest scent, of best earthly rest and fullest refreshment of body and spirit.

LEVENSFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMajor Longfield

LEVENS

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMajor Longfield

Thereis perhaps no garden in England that has been so often described or so much discussed as that at Levens in Westmorland, the home of Captain Jocelyn Bagot.

It was laid out near the beginning of the eighteenth century by a French gardener named Beaumont. There is nothing about it of the French manner, as we know it, for it is more in the Dutch style of the time, and has become in appearance completely English; according perfectly with the beautiful old house, and growing with it into a complete harmony of mellow age, whose sentiment is one of perfect unison both within and without.

Forward of the house-front, in a space divided by intersecting paths into six main compartments, is the garden. Flower-borders, box-edged on both sides, form bordering ornaments all round these divisions. The inner spaces are of turf. At the angles and at equal points along the borders are strange figures cut in yew and box. Some are like turned chessmen; some might be taken for adaptations of human figures, for one can trace a hat-covered head—one of them wears a crown—shoulders and arms and a spreading petticoat. Some of the yews, and these mostly in the more open spaces of grass or walk, rise four-square as solid blocks, with rounded roof and stemless mushroom finial. These have for the most part arched recesses, forming arbours. One of the tallest, standing clear on its little green, is differently shaped, being round in plan above and the stems bared all round below, with an encircling seat.

No doubt many of the yews have taken forms other than those that were originally designed; the variety of shape would be otherwise toodaring; but these recklessly defiant escapes from rule only add to the charm of the place, presenting a fresh surprise at every turn. The play of light and variety of colour of the green surfaces of the clipped evergreens is a delight to the trained colour-eye. Sometimes in shadow, cold, almost blue, reflecting the sky, with a sunlit edge of surprising brilliancy of golden-green—often all bright gold-green when the young shoots are coming, or when the sunlight catches the surface in one of its many wonderful ways. For the trees, clipped in so many diversities of form, offer numberless planes and facets and angles to the light, whose play upon them is infinitely varied. Then the beholder, passing on and looking back, sees the whole thing coloured and lighted anew. This quantity of Yew and Box clipped into an endless variety of fantastic forms has often been criticised as childish. Would that all gardens were childish in so happy a way! Is not the joy and perfectly innocent delight that the true lover of flowers feels in a good garden in itself akin to childishness, and is not a fine old English garden such as this, with its numberless incidents that stir and gratify the imagination, and its abundance of sweet and beautiful flowers, just the one that can give that happiness in the greatest degree? Does not the oldest of our legends, so closely bound up with our youngest apprehension of religious teaching, tell us of the earliest of our race of whom we have any record or even tradition, living happily in a garden in a state of childish innocence? Why should a garden not be childish?—perhaps when it truly deserves such a term it is the highest praise it could possibly have!

However this may be the fact remains that those who own this garden of many wonders, and watch and tend it with unceasing love and reverence, and others who have had the happiness of working in it for many days together, find it a place that never wearies, but only continues day by day to disclose new beauties and new delights. Doubtless it is a garden that cannot be fairly judged from a hasty glance or a few hours’ visit. Like many of the places and things that we call inanimate—though to one who knows and loves a garden nothing is more vitally living—such a place has its moods and can frown upon an unsympathetic beholder.

The garden is filled with many Roses and well-grown hardy plants;

LEVENS: ROSES AND PINKSFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMrs. Archibald Parker

LEVENS: ROSES AND PINKS

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMrs. Archibald Parker

those especially of tall stature making a fine effect. The Rose garden has White Pinks in its outer beds. Immediately beyond the garden’s bounds is wild ground of a beautiful character. The river Kent, a rock-strewn stream with steep wooded banks, flows within fifty yards of the house. The contrast is a great and a delightful one. Wild parkland and untamed river without; and within the walls ordered restraint; then again, the quiet of the wide bowling-green, with its dark clipped hedges, and beyond it a long, tree-shaded walk.

Precious, indeed, are the few remaining gardens that have anything of the character of this wonderful one of Levens; gardens that above all others show somewhat of the actual feeling and temperament of our ancestors. They show personal discrimination combining happily with common-sense needs; walls and masses of yew and box to make shelter from the violence of wind, and yet to admit the welcome sunlight; so to provide the best conditions in the inner spaces for the growing of lovely flowers. Then the shaping of some of the yews into strange forms, shows perhaps the whimsical humour of some one of a line of owners, preserved, with careful painstaking, by his descendants.

A garden many generations old may thus be a reflection of the minds of several of such possessors—men who have not only thankfully paced its green spaces and delighted in its flowery joys, but who have held it in that close and friendly fellowship whose outcome is sure to be some living and lasting addition either to its comfort, its interest, or its beauty. The original design may have become in some degree lost, but unless the doings of the several owners have been in the way of destruction or radical alteration, or something of obvious folly or bad taste, the garden will have gained in a remarkable degree that quality of human interest that is not easy to define but that is clearly perceptible, not only to a trained critic but to any one who has knowledge of its most vital needs and sympathy with its worthiest expression. This precious utterance is not confined to this or to any one special kind of gardening, but may pervade and illuminate almost any one of the many ways in which men find their pleasure and delight in ordering the sheltered seclusion of their home grounds, and enjoying the varied beauty of tree and bush and flower.

It is only in gardens of the most rigidly formal type, such as are full of architectural form and detail and admit of no alteration of the original plan, that personal influence can least be exercised. This is no doubt the reason why such gardens, correctly beautiful though they may be, are those that give in smallest measure that wonderful sense of the purest and most innocent happiness, that of all earthly enjoyments seems to be the most directly God-given.

Yet, even in such gardens, it is not impossible that some impress of the personal influence may be beneficently given, but the range of operation is extremely limited, the greatest knowledge and ability are needed, with the sure action of the keenest and most restrained judgment.

InEastern Suffolk, within a few miles of the sea, is this, the country home of the Hon. William Lowther.

The house, replacing an older one that occupied the same site, is of brick and stone, built in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. A moat, inclosing an unusually large area, and formerly entirely encompassing the house and garden, is now partly filled up; but one long arm remains, running the greater part of the length of the house and garden; a shorter length bounding the inclosed garden on the opposite side. The longer length of moat approaches the house closely on its eastern face, and then forms the boundary of a large and beautifully-kept square lawn, with fine old cedars and other trees. Following this southward is a double walled garden, with the main paths, especially those of the nearer division, bordered with flowers. Beyond these again is the portion of the garden that forms the subject of the picture—a small parterre of box-edged beds with a row of old clipped yews beyond. This leads westward to a grove of trees, with a statue also girt with trees standing in an oval in the midmost space.

The garden has beautiful incidents in abundance, but is somewhat bewildering. Traces of the older gardening constantly appear; but their original cohesion has been lost. The moat, always an important feature, ends suddenly at four points. Garden-houses and gazebos, that usually come at salient points with determinate effect, seem to have strayed into their places. Sections of the park seem to have broken loose and lost themselves in the garden. The garden is not the less charming in detail, but is impossible to gather together or hold in a clear mental grasp, from the absence of general plan.

Besides the old clipped yews in the picture, others, apparently of the same age, inclose an oval bowling-green. In form they are as if they had been at first cut as a thick hedge with a roof-like sloping top. From this, at fairly regular intervals, spring great rounded masses, that, with the varying vigour of the individual trees and the continual clipping without reference to a fixed design, have asserted themselves after their own fashion. Though symmetry has been lost, the place has gained in pictorial value. Four ways lead in; the larger bosses guarding the entrances.

So it is throughout this charming but puzzling garden. Ever a glimpse of some delightful old-world incident, and then the baffled effort to fit together the disjointed members of what must once have been a definite design.

The portion of the garden that is simplest and clearest is a broad walk opposite the house, on the further side of the moat, and raised some ten feet above it; backed by an old yew hedge some twenty feet high, of irregular outline. Just opposite the middle of the house the line of the hedge is interrupted to give a view into the park, with a vista between groups of fine elms; but the hedge stretches away southward the whole length of the long arm of the moat and the walled gardens. At regular intervals along the old hedge are ranged, on column-shaped pedestals, busts that came from an Italian villa. About half way along steps lead down to the moat, where there is a ferry-punt propelled by an endless rope, such as is commonly used in the fenlands. At the end of the long walk is a curious seat with a high carved back, that looks as if it had once formed part of an old ship or state barge, in the bygone days of two hundred years ago, when a fine style of bold and free wood-carving was lavishly used about their raised poops and stern-galleries.

Towards the end of the second division of the walled garden is an old orangery or large garden house, that probably was in connexion with the scheme of the yew hedges. It has the usual piercing with large lights but no top-light. The original purpose of these buildings was the housing of orange and other tender trees in tubs, and the fact of its presence might possibly throw some light on the mystery of the garden’s former planning.

THE YEW HEDGE, CAMPSEY ASHEFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMr. H. W. Search

THE YEW HEDGE, CAMPSEY ASHE

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. H. W. Search

Good hardy flowers are everywhere in abundance. Specially beautiful in the later summer is a grand pink Hollyhock of strong free habit, with the flowers of that best of all shapes—with wide, frilled outer petals and centres not too tightly packed.

It would be interesting work for some one with a knowledge of the garden design of the past three centuries in England to try to reconstruct the original plan of some one time. Though on the ground the various remaining portions of the older work cannot be pieced together, yet, if these were put on paper to proper scale, it might be possible to come to some general conclusions as to the way in which the garden was originally, and again perhaps subsequently, laid out. Some of the remaining portions of the older work of quite different dates may now seem to be of the same age, but the expert would probably be able to discriminate. The result of such a study would be worth having even if actual reconstruction were not contemplated.

Neara quiet village in Warwickshire, and in close relation to its accompanying farm buildings, is this charming old manor house. It is not upon a main road, but stands back in its own quiet place on rising ground above the Avon. Everything about it is interesting and quite unspoilt. The wooden hand-gate, with its acorn-topped posts, that stands upon two semi-circular steps may not have been of the pattern of the original gate—it has an eighteenth-century look—but it is just right now. It leads into a half dark, half light, double arcade of splendid old clipped yews. Looking from the gate they seem to be tall walls of yew to right and left, showing the projecting porch of the house at the end; but, passing along, there are seen to be openings between every two trees, each of which gives a charming picture of the lawns and simple flower beds to right and left. The path is paved with stone flags; the garden is bounded with a low wall of the local oolite limestone that rock-plants love. A few thin-topped old fruit-trees, their stems clothed with ivy, are another link between the past and present, and the somewhat pathetic evidence of their having long passed their prime and being on the downward path, is in striking contrast with the robust vigour of the ancient yews, already some centuries old, and looking as if they must endure for ever.

Eight yews stand on either side—sixteen in all. They are known as the twelve Apostles and the four Evangelists. The names may have belonged to them from the time of their planting, for the whole place belonged in old days to Evesham Abbey, and is pervaded with monastic memory and tradition. This may also account for the excellence of the

THE TWELVE APOSTLES, CLEEVE PRIORFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFSir Frederick Wigan

THE TWELVE APOSTLES, CLEEVE PRIOR

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Sir Frederick Wigan

buildings, for the old monks were grand constructors, and their structures were not only solid but always beautiful.

One of the older of these at Cleeve Prior is a large circular dovecote of stone masonry with tiled roof and small tiled cupola. Such buildings were not unfrequent in the old days, and many of them remain. Sometimes they are round in plan, sometimes four-, sometimes eight-sided. Occasionally there is a central post inside, set on pivots to revolve easily, with lateral arms carrying a ladder that reaches nearly to the walls, so that any one of the many pigeon-holes can be reached.

To the left of the Apostles’ Garden, as you stand facing the house, a little gate leads into the vegetable garden. It has narrow grass paths bordered with old-fashioned flowers. A further gate leads into the orchard. Behind the house is the home close with some fine trees; on two other sides are the farm buildings, yard and rickyard.

How grandly the flowers grow in these old manor and farm gardens! How finely the great masses of bloom compose, and how beautifully they harmonise with the grey of the limestone wall and the wonderful colour of the old tiled roof; both of them weather and lichen-stained; each tile a picture in itself of grey and orange and tenderest pink.

The yews have got over their paler green colour of the early summer when the young shoots are put forth, and have settled into the deep green dress that they will wear till next May. For the time is September; wheat harvesting is going on and the autumn flowers are in full vigour. There are Dahlias, the great annual Sunflowers and the tall autumn Daisy; Lavender and Michaelmas Daisies, with sweet herbs for the kitchen, just as it should be in such a garden.

Some of these old pot-herbs are beautiful things deserving a place in any flower garden. Sage—for instance—a half shrubby plant with handsome grey leaf and whorled spikes of purple flowers; a good plant both for winter and summer, for the leaves are persistent and the plant well clothed throughout the year. Hyssop is another such handsome thing, of the same family, with a quantity of purple bloom in the autumn, when it is a great favourite with the butterflies and bumble bees. This is one of the plants that was used as an edging plant in gardens in Tudor days, as we read in Parkinson’s “Paradisus,” whereLavender-cotton, Marjoram, Savoury and Thyme are also named as among the plants used for the same purpose. Rue, with its neat bluish-green foliage, is also a capital plant for the garden where this colour of leafage is desired. Fennel, with its finely-divided leaves and handsome yellow flower, is a good border plant, though rarely so used, and blooms in the late autumn. Lavender and Rosemary are both so familiar as flower-garden plants that we forget that they can also be used as neat edgings, if from the time they are young plants they are kept clipped. Borage has a handsome blue flower, as good as its relation the largerAnchusa. Tansy, best known in gardens by the handsomeAchillea Eupatorium, was an old inmate of the herb garden. Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odorata) has beautiful foliage, pale green and fern-like, with a good umbel of white bloom, and is a most desirable plant to group with and among early blooming flowers. And we all know what a good garden flower is the common Pot Marigold.

The old farm buildings at Cleeve Prior are scarcely less beautiful than the manor-house itself, and are remarkable for the timber erections, open at the sides but with tiled roofs, that give sheltered access, by outside stairways, to the lofts.

Throughout England the older farmhouses and buildings are full of interest, not only to architects, but to many who are in sympathy with good and simple construction, and have taken the pleasant trouble to learn enough about it to understand how and why the buildings were reared. And in these restless days of hurry and strain and close competition in trades, and bad, cheap work, it is good to pass a quiet hour in wandering about among structures set up four or even five centuries ago by these grand building monks. The present writer had just such a pleasure not long ago in the South of England, where a large group of monastic farm buildings stands within sound of the wash of the sea. They are on sloping ground, inclosing three sides of a square; a wall, backed with trees, forming the fourth side. On the upper level is a great barn; a much greater, the tithe barn, being opposite it on the lower. Buildings containing stables, cattle-sheds and piggeries connect the two. Between these and the wall opposite is a spacious yard; across the middle is a raised causeway dividing the yard into two levels.

CLEEVE PRIOR: SUNFLOWERSFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMr. James Crofts Powell

CLEEVE PRIOR: SUNFLOWERS

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. James Crofts Powell

The barns are of grand masonry. Some of the stones, next above the plinth—a feature that adds so much to the dignity of the building, and by its additional width, to its solidity—measure as much as four feet six inches in length by twenty inches in height. In every fifth course is a row of triangular holes for ventilation, such as every brick or stone-built barn must have. They are cleverly arranged as to the detail of the manner of their building, and though only intended for use have a distinctly ornamental value. Where the walls rise at the gable ends they are corbelled out at the eaves and carried up some two feet above the line of the rafters, finishing in a wrought stone capping, thus stopping the thatch. For the buildings are, and always have been, thatched with straw, the ground around being good corn-land, a rich calcareous loam.

There is a delightful sense of restfulness about these fine solid buildings, built for the plainest needs of the community of the material nearest to hand, in the simply right and therefore most beautiful way. With no intentional ornament, they have the beauty of sound, strong structure and unconsciously right proportion. There is also a satisfaction in the plain evidence of delight in good craftsmanship, and in the unsparing use of both labour and material.

Condover Hallnear Shrewsbury is a stately house of important size and aspect—one of the many great houses that were reared in the latter half of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Its general character gives the impression of severity rather than suavity, though the straight groups of chimneys have handsome heads, and the severe character is mitigated on the southern front by an arcade in the middle space of the ground floor. The same stern treatment pervades the garden masonry. No mouldings soften the edges of the terrace steps; parapets and retaining walls, with the exception of the balustrade of the main terrace, are without ornament of light and shade; plainly weathered copings being their only finish. Only here and there, a pier that carries a large Italian flower-pot has a little more ornament of rather massive bracket form.

The garden spaces are large and largely treated, as befits the place and its environment of park-land amply furnished with grand masses of tree-growth. On the southern side of the house, where the ground falls away, are two green flats and slopes, leading to a lower walk parallel with their length and with the terrace above. The steps in the picture are the top flight of a succession leading to these lower levels. The lower and narrower grassy space has a row of clipped yews of a rounded cone-shape. The upper level has a design of the same, but of different patterns.

The balustrade in the picture is old, probably of the same date as the house; much of the other stonework is modern. The circular seat on a raised platform, with its stone-edged flower-beds, has a very happy effect, and its yew-hedge backing joins well into the older yews that

CONDOVER: THE TERRACE STEPSFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMiss Austen Leigh

CONDOVER: THE TERRACE STEPS

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Miss Austen Leigh

overlap the parapet of the steps; their colour contrasting distinctly with that of the more distant Ilex, a magnificent example of a tree that deserves more general use in English gardens. The parterre above the steps and on a level with the house has box hedges, after the Italian manner, three feet high and two feet wide. These, with some of the yew hedges, were planted a hundred years ago, though much of the garden, with its ornaments of fine Italian flower-pots, was the work of the former owner, the late Mr. Reginald Cholmondeley, a man of powerful personality and fine taste.

The most important part of the garden lies to the west of the house, where there is a double garden of stiff pattern with high box borders and clipped evergreens. At a right angle to this, the spectator, standing at some distance westward, and looking back towards the east and straight with the space between the pair of gardens of angular design, sees a broad space flanked on either side by a row of handsome upright yews. The ground between is a flower garden of large diamond-shaped beds in two sizes, with cleverly-arranged green edgings. But now that the large Irish yews have grown to their early maturity, dominating the garden and insisting on their own strong parallel lines, it is open to question whether it would not have been better to have had a wide, clear middle space of green straight down the length, with the flowers in shapely, ordered masses to right and left. The close succession of large beds gives the impression of impediments to comfortable progress.

It was wise to leave the Irish yews unclipped. Though the common English yew is the tree that is of all others the most docile to the discipline of training and shearing, the upright growing variety will have none of it. In some fine English gardens they are clipped, always with disastrous effect. They will only take one form: that of an ugly swollen bottle, or lamp-chimney with a straight top. Their own form is quite symmetrical enough for use in any large design.

Thereare, alas! but few now remaining of the timber buildings of the sixteenth century that are either so important in size or so well-preserved as this beautiful old Lancashire house.

They were built at a time when the country had settled down into a peaceable state; when houses need no longer be walled and loopholed against the probable raids of enemies; when their windows might be of ample size and might look abroad without fear. Many of them, however, were still moated, for a moat was of use not only for defence but as a convenient fish-pond, and as a bar to the depredations of wolves, foxes and rabbits.

The advance of civilisation also brought with it a greater desire for home comforts, and the genius of the country, unspoilt, unfettered, undiluted by that mass of half-digested knowledge of many styles that has led astray so many of the builders of modern days, by a natural instinct cast these dwellings into forms that we now seek out and study in the effort to regain our lost innocence, and that in many cases we are glad to adopt anew as models of what is most desirable for comfort and for the happy enjoyment of our homes.

Still, in these days we cannot build such houses anew without a suspicion of strain or affectation. When they were reared, oak was the building material most readily to be obtained, and carpenters’ work, already well developed in the construction of roofs, now given free scope in outer walls as well, seemed to revel in the new liberty, and oak-framed houses grew up into beautiful form and ornament in such a way as has never been surpassed in this country.

SPEKE HALLFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMr. George S. Elgood

SPEKE HALL

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. George S. Elgood

It was satisfying and beautiful because every bit of ornamental detail grew out of the necessary structure. The plainer framing of cottage and farmhouse became enriched in the manor-house into a wealth of moulding and carving and other kinds of decoration. External panel ornament gained a rich quality by the repetition of symmetrical form, while the overhanging of the successive stories and the indentations between projecting wings and porches threw the various faces of the building into interesting masses of light and shade. Then, in delightful and restful contrast to the “busy” wall-spaces, are the roofs, with their long quiet lines of ridge and their covering of tile or stone, painted by the ages with the loveliest tinting of moss and lichen.

Within, these fine old wooden houses show the good English oak as worthily treated as without. For the whole structure is of wood from end to end, built as soundly and strongly as were the old wooden ships. The inner walls, where they were not panelled with oak, were hung with tapestry. Ceilings of the best rooms were wrought with plaster ornament; lesser rooms showed the beams and often the thick joists that fitted into them and upheld the floor above. Where, as was usual, there was a long gallery in the topmost floor, its ceiling would show a tracery of oak with plaster filling, partly following the line of the roof. The whole structure, blossoming out in its more important parts into beautiful decorative enrichment, showed the worker’s delight in his craft, and his mastery of mind and hand in conceiving and carrying out the possibilities offered by what was then the most usual building material of the country.

Such another house as Speke is Moreton Old Hall in Cheshire, but the latter is still more richly decorated, with carved strings, some of which were painted, and wood and plaster panels of great elaboration, and lead-quarried windows of large size and beautiful design.

The destruction of large numbers of these timber buildings in the eighteenth century can never be sufficiently deplored. There was a time when the fashion for buildings of classical form was spreading over England, when they were considered barbarous relics of a bygone age, and when the delightful gardens that had grown up around them were alike condemned and in many cases destroyed.

There is not a large garden at Speke, but just enough of simple groups of flowers to grace the beautiful timber front. The picture shows that the gardening is just right for the place; not asserting itself overmuch but doing its own part with a restful, quiet charm that has a right relation to the lovely old dwelling.

Thosewho follow the developments of taste in modern gardening, cannot fail to perceive how great has been the recent increase in the numbers of Roses that are for true beauty in the garden.

It is only some of the elders among those who take a true and lively interest in their gardens who know what a scarcity of good things there was thirty years ago, or even twenty, compared with what we have now to choose from. Still, of the Roses commonly known as garden Roses, there were even then China Roses, Damask, Cabbage and Moss, Sweetbriars and Cinnamon Roses, and the free-growing Ayrshires, which are even now among the most indispensable.

But the wave of indifferent taste in gardening that had flooded all England with the desire for summer bedding plants, to the almost entire exclusion of the worthier occupants of gardens, had for a time pushed aside the older garden Roses. For whereas in the earlier half of the nineteenth century these good old Roses were much planted and worthily used, with the coming of the fashion for the tender bedding plants they fell into general disuse; and, with the accompanying neglect of many a good hardy border plant, left our gardens very much the poorer, and, except for special spring bedding, bare of flowers for all the earlier part of the year.

Now we have learnt the better ways, and have come to see that good gardening is based on something more stable and trustworthy than any passing freak of fashion. And though the foolish imp fashion will always pounce upon something to tease and worry over, and to set up on a temporary pedestal only to be pulled down again before long, so also itassails and would make its own for a time, some one or other point of garden practice. Just now it is the pergola and the Japanese garden; and truly wonderful are the absurdities committed in the name of both.

But the sober, thoughtful gardener smiles within himself and lets the freaks of fashion pass by. If he has some level place where a straight covered way of summer greenery would lead pleasantly from one quite definite point to another, and if he feels quite sure that his garden-scheme and its environment will be the better for it, and if he can afford to build a sensible structure, with solid piers and heavy oak beams, he will do well to have a pergola. If he has travelled in Japan, and lived there for some time and acquired the language, and has deeply studied the mental attitude of the people with regard to their gardens, and imbibed the traditional lore so closely bound up with their horticultural practice, and is also a practical gardener in England—then let him make a Japanese garden, if he willand can; but he will be the wiser man if he lets it alone. Even with all the knowledge indicated, and, indeed, because of its acquirement, he probably would not attempt it. When a Japanese garden merely means a space of pleasure-ground where plants, natives of Japan, are grown in a manner suitable for an English garden, there is but little danger of going wrong, but such danger is considerable when an attempt is made to garden in the Japanese manner.

This is a wide digression from the subject of garden Roses, and yet excusable in that it can scarcely be too often urged that any attempt to practise anything in horticulture for no better reason than because it is the fashion, can only lead to debasement and can only achieve futility.

Now that there are large numbers of people who truly love their gardens, and who show evidence of it by giving them much care and thought and loving labour, the old garden Roses have been sought for and have been restored to their former place of high favour. And our best nurserymen have not been slow to see what would be acceptable in well-cared-for gardens throughout the length and breadth of the land; so that the last few years have seen an extraordinary activity in the production of good Roses for garden effect. The free-growingRosa polyanthaof the Himalayas has been employed as a seed or pollen-bearing parent, and from it have been developed first the well-known Crimson

“VISCOUNTESS FOLKESTONE”FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMr. R. Clarke Edwards

“VISCOUNTESS FOLKESTONE”

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. R. Clarke Edwards

Rambler, and later a number of less showy but much more refined flowers of just the right kind for free use in garden decoration.

Valuable hybrids have also been raised from the Tea Roses, one of the best known of them beingViscountess Folkestone, the subject of the picture; a grand Rose for grouping in beds or clumps, and one that yields its large, loose, blush-white flowers abundantly and for a long season. This merit of an extended blooming season runs through the greater number of the now long list of varieties of the beautiful hybrid Teas.

Some of the new seedling Tea Roses have nearly single flowers, and are none the less beautiful, as those wise folk well know who growCorallinaand the lovely whiteIrish Beauty, and its free-blooming companionIrish Glory. These also are plants that will succeed, as will most of the hybrid Teas, in some poor hot soils where most Roses fail.

Then for rambling over banks we haveRosa wichuraianaand its descendants; among these the charmingDorothy Perkins, good for any free use.

Those who garden on the strong, rich loams that Roses love will find that many of the so-called show Roses are grand things as garden Roses also; indeed, for purely horticultural purposes there is no need of any such distinction. The way is for a number of Roses to be grown on trial, and for a keen watch to be kept on their ways. It will soon be seen which are those that are happiest in any particular garden, and how, having regard to their colour and way of growth, they may best be used for beauty and delight.

In the garden where the picture was painted,Viscountess Folkestonehas an undergrowth of Love-in-a-mist, that comes up year after year, and with its quiet grey-blue colouring makes a charming companionship with the faint blush of the Roses.

Thegardens that adorn the ancient home of the Sidneys are, as to the actual planting of what we see to-day, with repairs to the house and some necessary additions to fit it for modern needs, the work of the late Lord de L’Isle with the architect George Devey, begun about fifty years ago. It was a time when there was not much good work done in gardening, but both were men of fine taste and ability, and the reparation and alteration needed for the house, and the new planting and partly new designing of the garden could not have been in better hands.

The aspect and sentiment of the garden, now that it has grown into shape—its lines closely following, as far as it went, the old design—are in perfect accordance with the whole feeling of the place, so that there seems to be no break in continuity from the time of the original planting some centuries ago. Such as it is to-day, such one feels sure it was in the old days—in parts line for line and path for path, but throughout, just such a garden as to general form, aspect, and above all, sentiment, as it must have been in the days of old. For when it was first planted the conditions that would have to be considered were always the same; requirement of shelter from prevailing winds; questions relating to various portions, as to whether it would be desirable to welcome the sunlight for the flowers’ delight, or to shut it out for human enjoyment of summer coolness—all such grounds of motive were, just as now, deliberated by the men of old days, whose decisions, actuated by sympathy with both house and ground, would bring forth a result whose character would be the same, whether thought out and planned to-day or four centuries ago.

So it is that we find the old work at Penshurst confirmed and renewed,

Back to Index Next