THE YEW ARBOUR, LYDEFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMr. George E. B. Wrey
THE YEW ARBOUR, LYDEFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMr. George E. B. Wrey
THE YEW ARBOUR, LYDE
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMr. George E. B. Wrey
Itis not in large gardens only that hardy flowers are to be seen in perfection. Often the humblest wayside cottage may show such a picture of plant-beauty as will put to shame the best that can be seen at the neighbouring squire’s. And where labouring folk have a liking for clipped yews, their natural good taste and ingenuity often turns them into better forms than are seen among the examples of more pretentious topiary work.
The cottager has the undoubted advantage that, as his tree is usually an isolated one, he can see by its natural way of growth the kind of figure it suggests for his clipping; whereas the gardener in the large place usually has to follow a fixed design. So it is that one may see in a cottage garden such a handsome example as the yew in the picture.
The lower part of the tree is nearly square in plan, with a niche cut out for a narrow seat. There is space enough between the top of this and the underside of the great mushroom-shaped canopy, to allow the upper surface of the square base to be green and healthy. The great rounded top proudly carries its handsome crest, that is already a good ornament and will improve year by year. The garden is raised above the road and only separated from it by a wall which is low on the garden side and deeper to the road. It passes by the side of the yew, so that the occupier of the seat commands a view of the road and all that goes along it, and can exchange greetings and gossip with those who pass by.
The cottagers of the neighbourhood—it is in Herefordshire, about four miles from Hereford—have a special fancy for these clipped yews; many examples may be met with in an afternoon’s walk. Not very farfrom this is a capital peacock excellently rendered in conventional fashion. It stands well above a high pedestal, one side of which is hollowed out for a little seat.
One may well understand what a pride and pleasure and amusing interest these clipped trees are to the cottage folk; how after each year’s clipping they would discuss and criticise the result and note the progress of the growth towards the hoped-for form. A pile of cheeses is a favourite pattern, sometimes on a square base, with the topmost ornament cut into a spire or even a crown.
The English peasant has a love for ornament that always strives to find some kind of expression. In many parts the thatcher makes a kind of basket ornament on the top of his rick; and the pattern of crossed laths, pegged down with the hazel “spars” that finishes the thatched cottage roof near the eaves, is of true artistic value. The carter loves to dress his horses for town or market, and a fine team, with worsted ribbons in mane and headstall, and quantities of gleaming highly-polished brasses, is indeed a pleasant sight upon the country high road.
Now, alas! when cheap rubbish, misnamed ornamental, floods village shops and finds its way into the cottages, the cottager’s taste, which was always true and good as long as it depended on its own prompting and instinct, and could only deal with the simplest materials, is rapidly becoming bewildered and debased. All the more, therefore, let us value and cherish these ornaments of the older traditions; the bright little gardens and the much-prized clipped yew.
A usual feature of these cottage yews is that the seat is for one person alone. The labourer sits in his little retreat enjoying his evening pipe after his day’s work, while the wife puts the children to bed and gets the supper. Probably he has been harvesting all day, and his strong frame is tired, with that feeling of almost pleasant fatigue that comes to a wholesome body after a good day’s work well done; and when the hardly-earned rest is thoroughly enjoyed. So he sits quite quiet, with one eye on the possible interests of his outer world, the road, and the other on the beauty of his flower-border. And what a pretty double border it is, with its grand mass of pink Japan Anemone and well-flowered clump ofGoldilocks (one of the few yellow-bloomed Michaelmas Daisies), looking at its near relation in purple over the way.
A graceful little Plum-tree shoots up through the flowers; its long free shoots of tender green seem to laugh at the rigid surface of the clipped yew beyond. Don’t be too confident about your freedom, little Plum; it is more than likely that you will be severely pruned next winter. But you need not mind, for if you lose one kind of beauty, you will gain others; the pure white bloom of spring-time, and the autumn burden of purple fruit; and be both handsome and useful, like your neighbour the old yew.
Howstout and strong and full of well-being they are—the autumn flowers of our English gardens! Hollyhocks, Tritomas, Sunflowers, Phloxes, among many others, and lastly, Michaelmas Daisies. The flowers of the early year are lowly things, though none the less lovable; Primroses, Double Daisies, Anemones, small Irises, and all the beautiful host of small Squill and Snow-Glory and little early Daffodils. Then come the taller Daffodils and Wallflowers, Tulips, and the old garden Peonies and the lovely Tree Peonies. Then the true early summer flowers.
If you notice, as the seasons progress, the average of the flowering plants advances in stature. By June this average has risen again, with the Sea Hollies and Flag Irises, the Chinese Peonies and the earlier Roses. And now there are some quite tall things. Mulleins seven and eight feet high, some of them from last year’s seed, but the greater number from the seed-shedding of the year before; the great white-leaved Mullein (Verboscum olympicum), taking four years to come to flowering strength. But what a flower it is, when it is at last thrown up! What a glorious candelabrum of branching bloom! Perhaps there is no other hardy plant whose bulk of bloom on a single stem fills so large a space. And what a grand effect it has when it is rightly planted; when its great sulphur spire shows, half or wholly shaded, against the dusk of a wood edge or in some sheltered bay, where garden is insensibly melting into woodland. This is the place for these grand plants (for their flowers flag in hot sunshine), in company with white Foxglove and the tall yellow Evening Primrose, another tender bloom that is shy of sunlight. Four o’clock of a June morning is the time to see these fine things at their best, when thebirds are waking up, and but for them the world is still, and the Cluster-Roses are opening their buds. No one can know the whole beauty of a Cluster-Rose who has not seen it when the summer day is quite young; when the buds of such a rose as the Garland have just burst open and the sun has not yet bleached their wonderful tints of shell-pink and tenderest shell-yellow into their only a little less beautiful colouring of full midday.
By July there are still more of our tall garden flowers; the stately Delphiniums, seven, eight, and nine feet high; tall white Lilies; the tall yellow Meadow-Rues, Hollyhocks, and Sweet Peas in plenty.
By August we are in autumn; and it is the month of the tall Phloxes. There are some who dislike the sweet, faint and yet strong scent of these flowers; to me it is one of the delights of the flower year.
No garden flower has been more improved of late years; a whole new range of excellent and brilliant colouring has been developed. I can remember when the only Phloxes were a white and a poor Lilac; the individual flowers were small and starry and set rather widely apart. They were straggly-looking things, though always with the welcome sweet scent. Nowadays we all know the beauty of these fine flowers; the large size of the massive heads and of the individual blooms; the pure whites, the good Lilacs and Pinks, and that most desirable range of salmon-rose colourings, of which one of the first that made a lively stir in the world of horticulture was the one calledLothair. In its own colouring of tender salmon-rose it is still one of the best. Careful seed-saving among the brighter flowers of this colouring led to the tints tending towards scarlet, among whichEtnawas a distinct advance, to be followed, a year or two later, by the all-conqueringCoquelicot. Some florists have also pushed this docile flower into a range of colouring which is highly distasteful to the trained colour-eye of the educated amateur; a series of rank purples and virulent magentas; but these can be avoided. What is now most wanted, and seems to be coming, is a range of tender, rather light Pinks, that shall have no trace of the rank quality that seems so unwilling to leave the Phloxes of this colouring.
Garden Phloxes were originally hybrids of two or three NorthAmerican species; for garden purposes they are divided into two groups, the earlier, blooming in July, much shorter in stature and more bushy, being known as thesuffruticosagroup, the later, taller kinds being classed as thedecussata. They are a little shy of direct sunlight, though they can bear it in strong soils where the roots are always cool. They like plenty of food and moisture; in poor, dry, sandy soils they fail absolutely, and even if watered and carefully watched, look miserable objects.
But where Phloxes do well, and this is in most good garden ground, they are the glory of the August flower-border.
In the teaching and practice of good gardening the fact can never be too persistently urged nor too trustfully accepted, that the best effects are accomplished by the simplest means. The garden artist or artist gardener is for ever searching for these simple pictures; generally the happy combination of some two kinds of flowers that bloom at the same time, and that make either kindly harmonies or becoming contrasts.
In trying to work out beautiful garden effects, besides those purposely arranged, it sometimes happens that some little accident—such as the dropping of a seed, that has grown and bloomed where it was not sown—may suggest some delightful combination unexpected and unthought of. At another time some small spot of colour may be observed that will give the idea of the use of this colour in some larger treatment.
It is just this self-education that is needed for the higher and more thoughtful gardening, whose outcome is the simply conceived and beautiful pictures, whether they are pictures painted with the brush on paper or canvas, or with living plants in the open ground. In both cases it needs alike the training of the eye to observe, of the brain to note, and of the hand to work out the interpretation.
The garden artist—by which is to be understood the true lover of good flowers, who has taken the trouble to learn their ways and wants and moods, and to know it all so surely that he can plant with the assured belief that the plants he sets will do as he intends, just as the painter can
PHLOX AND DAISYFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFLady Mount-Stephen
PHLOX AND DAISYFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFLady Mount-Stephen
PHLOX AND DAISY
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFLady Mount-Stephen
compel and command the colours on his palette—plants with an unerring hand and awaits the sure result.
When one says “the simplest means,” it does not always mean the easiest. Many people begin their gardening by thinking that the making and maintaining of a handsome and well-filled flower-border is quite an easy matter. In fact, it is one of the most difficult problems in the whole range of horticultural practice—wild gardening perhaps excepted. To achieve anything beyond the ordinary commonplace mixture, that is without plan or forethought, and that glares with the usual faults of bad colour-combinations and yawning, empty gaps, needs years of observation and a considerable knowledge of plants and their ways as individuals.
For border plants to be at their best must receive special consideration as to their many and different wants. We have to remember that they are gathered together in our gardens from all the temperate regions of the world, and from every kind of soil and situation. From the sub-arctic regions of Siberia to the very edges of the Sahara; from the cool and ever-moist flanks of the Alps to the sun-dried coasts of the Mediterranean; from the Cape, from the great mountain ranges of India; from the cool and temperate Northern States of America—the home of the species from which our garden Phloxes are derived; from the sultry slopes of Chili and Peru, where the Alströmerias thrust their roots deep down into the earth searching for the precious moisture.
So it is that as our garden flowers come to us from many climes and many soils, we have to bear in mind the nature of their places of origin the better to be prepared to give them suitable treatment. We have to know, for instance, which are the few plants that will endure drought and a poor, hot soil; for the greater number abhor it; and yet such places occur in some gardens and have to be provided with what is suitable. Then we have to know which are those that will only come to their best in a rich loam, and that the Phloxes are among these, and the Roses; and which are the plants and shrubs that must have lime, or at least must have it if they are to do their very best. Such are the Clematises and many of the lovely little alpines; while to some other plants, many of the alpines that grow on the granite, and nearly all the Rhododendrons, lime is absolute poison; for, entering the system and being drawn up into thecirculation, it clogs and bursts their tiny veins; the leaves turn yellow, the plant dies, or only survives in a miserably crippled state.
An experienced gardener, if he were blindfolded, and his eyes uncovered in an unknown garden whose growths left no soil visible, could tell its nature by merely seeing the plants and observing their relative well-being, just as, passing by rail or road through an unfamiliar district, he would know by the identity and growth of the wild plants and trees what was the nature of the soil beneath them.
The picture, then, showing autumn Phloxes grandly grown, tells of good gardening and of a strong, rich loamy soil. This is also proved by the height of the Daisies (Chrysanthemum maximum). But the lesson the picture so pleasantly teaches is above all to know the merit of one simple thing well done. Two charming little stone figures ofamorinistand up on their plinths among the flowers; the boy figure holds a bird’s nest, his girl companion a shell. They are of a pattern not unfrequent in English gardens, and delightfully in sympathy with our truest home flowers. The quiet background of evergreen hedge admirably suits both figures and flowers.
It is all quite simple—just exactly right. Daisies—always the children’s flowers, and, with them, another of wide-eyed innocence, of dainty scent, of tender colouring. Quite simple and just right; but then—it is in the artist’s own garden.
Atthe time the picture was painted, Mynthurst was in the occupation of Mrs. Wilson, to the work of whose niece, Miss Radcliffe, the garden owes much of its charm.
It lies in the pleasant district between Reigate and Dorking, on a southward sloping hill-side. The house is a modern one of Tudor character, standing on a terrace that has a retaining wall and steps to a lower level. The garden lies open to the south and south-westerly gales, the prevalent winds of the district, but it is partly sheltered by the walls of the kitchen garden, and by a yew hedge which runs parallel with one of the walls; the space so inclosed making a sheltered place for the rose garden. Here Roses rise in ranks one above the other, and have a delightful and most suitable carpet of Love-in-a-mist. This pretty annual, so welcome in almost any region of the garden, is especially pretty with Roses of tender colouring; whites, pale yellows, and pale pinks. A picture elsewhere shows it combined with RoseViscountess Folkestone.
Beyond the rose garden, a path leads away at a right angle between the orchard and the kitchen-garden wall. Here is the subject of the picture. A broad border runs against the wall, as long as the length of the kitchen garden. A border so wide is difficult to manage unless it has a small blind alley at the back rather near the wall, to give access to what is on the wall and to the taller plants in the back of the border. But here it is arranged in another way. The front edge of the border is not continuous, but has little paths at intervals cutting across it and reaching nearly to the wall. This method of obtaining easy access alsohas its merits, though it involves a large amount of edging. Mynthurst has a strong soil, an advantage not always to be had in this district, so that Roses can be well grown, and some of the Lilies. Here the Tiger Lily, that fine autumn flower, does finely. It is one of the Lilies that is puzzling, or as we call it, capricious, which only means that we gardeners are ignorant and do not understand its vagaries. For in some other heavy soils it refuses to grow, and in some light ones it luxuriates; but it is so good a plant that it should be tried in every garden.
It is a pretty plan to have the orchard in connexion with the flower-borders; though from the point of view of good gardening the wisdom is doubtful of having clumps of flowers round the trunks of the fruit-trees. Shallow-rooted annuals for a season or two may do no harm, but the disturbance of the ground needful for constant cultivation, with the inevitable consequence of worry and irritation of the fruit-trees’ roots, can hardly fail to be harmful, though the effect meanwhile is certainly pretty. The evil may not show at once, but is likely to follow.
One does not often see so strong a Canterbury Bell in the autumn as the one in the picture. It must have been a weak or belated plant of last year that made strong growth in early summer. Sometimes one sees such a plant that had remained in the kitchen-garden reserve bed; left there because it was weaker than the ones taken for planting out in autumn. It is not generally known that these capital plants will bear potting when they are almost in bloom, so that when a few are so left, they can be used as highly decorative room plants, and have the advantage of lasting much longer than when in the open border, exposed to the sun. One defect these good plants have, which is the way the dying flowers suddenly turn brown. Instead of merely fading and falling, and so decently veiling their decadence, the brown flowers hang on and are very unsightly. It is only, however, a challenge to the vigilance of the careful gardener; they must be visited in the morning garden-round and the dead flowers removed. It is like the care needed to arrest the depredations of the mullein caterpillar. It is no use wondering whether it will come, or hoping it will not appear;it always comeswhere there are mulleins, about the second week of June. When the first tiny enemy is seen, any mulleins there may be should be visited twice a day.
MYNTHURSTFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMiss Radcliffe
MYNTHURSTFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMiss Radcliffe
MYNTHURST
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
Miss Radcliffe
In the front of the picture, just under the red rose, is a patch ofMimulus, one of the larger variations of the brilliant littleM. cardinalis. All the kinds like a cool, strong soil; they are really bog plants, and revel in moisture. The old Sweet Musk, so favourite a plant in cottage windows, likes a half-shady place at the foot of a cool wall. Many a dull, sunless yard might be brightened by this sweet and pretty plant. The Welsh Poppy, with its bright pale-green leaves and good yellow bloom, is also excellent for the same use, but is best sown in place from a just-ripened pod.
Ina picturesque, but little-known district in Queen’s County, Ireland, lies Abbey Leix, the residence of Lord de Vesci. It is a land of vigorous tree-growth and general richness of vegetation. Hedge-rows show an abundance of well-grown ash timber, and the park is full of fine oaks, a thing that is rare in Ireland, and that makes it more like English parkland of the best character. This impression is accentuated in spring-time when the oaks are carpeted with the blue of wild Hyacinths, and when the broad woodland rides are also rivers of the same Blue-bells.
In this favoured land the common Laurel is a beautiful tree, thirty feet high; the mildness of the winter climate allowing it to grow unchecked. Only those who have seen it in tree form in the best climates of our islands, or in Southern Europe, know the true nature of the Laurel’s growth, or the poetry and mystery of its moods and aspects. The long grey limbs shoot upward and bend and arch in a manner almost fantastic. Sometimes a stem will incline downwards and run along the ground, followed by another. In the evening half-light they might be giant silver-scaled serpents, writhing and twisting and then springing aloft and becoming lost to sight in the dim masses of the crowning foliage. Seen thus one can hardly reconcile its identity with that of the poor, tamed, often-clipped bush of every garden. The Laurel is so docile, so easily coerced to the making of a quickly-grown hedge or useful screen, that its better qualities as an unmutilated tree in a mild district are usually lost sight of.
The house at Abbey Leix is a stone building of classical design of the middle of the eighteenth century. On the northern front is the entrance
ABBEY-LEIXFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFSir James Whitehead, Bart.
ABBEY-LEIXFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFSir James Whitehead, Bart.
ABBEY-LEIX
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
Sir James Whitehead, Bart.
forecourt; on the southern, the garden. Here, next the house, is a wide terrace, bounded on the outer side by the parapet of a retaining wall, and next the building, by a runningguillocheof box-edged beds filled with low-growing plants. The terrace has a semi-circular ending, near the eastern wall of the house, formed of an evergreen hedge, with a wooden seat following the same line, and a sundial at the radial point. At the other end, the terrace ends in a flight of downward steps leading to large green spaces, with fine trees and flowering shrubs, and eventually to the walled gardens. Straight across the terrace from the house is the parterre, whose centre ornament is an unusually well-proportioned fountain of the same date as the house. It is circular in plan, with a wide lower basin and two graduated superimposed tazzas. From this, four cross-paths radiate; the quarters are filled mainly with half-hardy flowers such as Gladiolus; the design being accentuated at several points by the upright growing Florence Court Yews. The parterre is inclosed by a low wall, backed by a clipped evergreen hedge; on the wall stand at intervals graceful stone figures ofamorini, identical in character with those shown in the picture of Phlox and Daisy, and apparently designed by the same hand.
The steps at the western end of the terrace are wide and handsome, and are also ornamented with sculpturedamorini. The path leads onward, at first directly forward, but a little later in a curved line through a region of lawn and stream, with trees and groups of flowering shrubs. Here and there, on the grass by itself, is one of the free-growing Roses, rightly left without any support, and showing the natural fountain-like growth that so well displays the beauty of many of the Roses of the old Ayrshire class and of some of the more modern ramblers. The path passes one end of an avenue of large trees, and, after a while, turning to the left, reaches the kitchen gardens, consisting of several walled inclosures. One of these, of which one wall is occupied by vineries, has been made into a flower garden, where hardy flowers, grandly grown, are in the wide borders next the wall. A portion of such borders, in an adjoining compartment of the garden, forms the subject of the picture.
The inner space is divided into two squares, one having as acentre a rustic summer-house almost hidden by climbing plants; from this radiating grass paths pass between beds of flowers. The outer borders in the next walled compartment are ten feet wide, and are finely filled with all the best summer plants, perennial, annual and biennial. The fine pale yellowAnthemis tinctoriais here grown in the way this good plant deserves, and its many companions, Hollyhocks, Delphiniums, Japan Anemones, Phloxes and Lavender; annual Chrysanthemums, Gladiolus, Carnations, Tritomas, and all such good things, are cleverly and worthily used, and, with the graceful arches of free Roses and white Everlasting Pea, make delightful garden pictures in all directions.
The garden of Abbey Leix is one of those places that so pleasantly shows the well-directed intention of one who is in close sympathy with garden beauty; for everywhere it reflects the fine horticultural taste and knowledge of Lady de Vesci, who made the garden what it is.
Earlyin September, when the autumn flowers are at their finest, some of the Starworts are in bloom. Even in August they have already begun, with the beautiful low-growingAster acris, one of the brightest of flowers of lilac or pale purple colouring. From the time this pretty plant is in bloom to near the end of October, and even later, there is a constant succession of these welcome Michaelmas Daisies. The number of kinds good for garden use is now so great that the growers’ plant lists are only bewildering, and those who do not know their Daisies should see them in some good nursery or private garden and make their own notes. As in the case of Phloxes, the improvement in the garden kinds is of recent years, for I can remember the time when it was a rare thing to see in a garden any other Michaelmas Daisy than a very poor form ofNovi-Belgii, a plant of such mean quality that, if it came up as a seedling in our gardens to-day, it would be sent at once to the rubbish heap.
When the learner begins to acquire a Daisy-eye he will see what a large proportion of the garden kinds are related to this sameNovi-Belgii, the Starwort of New England. The greater number of the garden varieties are derived from North American species, but they hybridise so freely that it is now impossible to group the garden plants with any degree of botanical accuracy. But the amateur may well be content with a generally useful garden classification, and he will probably learn to know hisNovi-Belgiifirst. Then he will come to thoseNovi-Belgiithat are from the specieslævis, rather wider and brighter green of leaf and only half the height. Then, once known, he cannot mistakeNovæ-Angliæ, withits hairy and slightly viscid stem and foliage, and strong smell, and its two distinct colourings—rich purples and reddish pinks. Then again, if he observes his plants in early summer, he can never mistake the heart-shaped root-leaves ofcordifoliusfor any other. This is one of the most beautiful of the mid-season Starworts, with its myriads of small flowers gracefully disposed on the large spreading panicles. Of this the best known and most useful areA. cordifolius elegansand a paler-coloured and most dainty variety calledDiana.
Once seen he can never forget the low-growing earlyA. acrisor the good garden varieties ofA. Amellus, both from European species. Several other kinds, both tall and short, early and late, will be added to those named, but these may be taken as perhaps the best to begin with.
Where space can be given, it is well to set apart a separate border for these fine plants alone. This is done in the garden where Mr. Elgood found his subject. Here the Starworts occupy a double border about eight feet wide and eighty feet long. They are carefully but not conspicuously staked with stiff, branching spray cut out the winter before from oaks and chestnuts that had been felled. The spray is put in towards the end of June, when the Asters are making strong growth. The borders are planted and regulated with the two-fold aim of both form and colour beauty. In some places rather tall kinds come forward; in the case of some of the most graceful, such ascordifolius Diana, the growths being rather separated to show the pretty form of the individual branch. In others it was thought that their best use was as a flowery mass. Each kind is treated at the time of staking according to its own character, and so as best to display its natural form and most obvious use. Like all the best flower gardening it is the painting of a picture with living plants, but, unlike painting, it is done when the palette is empty of its colours. Still the good garden-planter who has intimate acquaintance and keen sympathy with his plants, can plant by knowledge and faith; by knowledge in his certainty of recollection of the habit and stature and colour of his plants; by faith in that he knows that if he does his part well the growing thing will be docile to his sure guidance.
In these borders of Michaelmas Daisies one other flowering plant is
MICHAELMAS DAISIES, MUNSTEAD WOODFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMr. T. Norton Longman
MICHAELMAS DAISIES, MUNSTEAD WOODFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMr. T. Norton Longman
MICHAELMAS DAISIES, MUNSTEAD WOOD
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
Mr. T. Norton Longman
admitted, and well deserves its place, namely, that fine white DaisyPyrethrum uliginosum, otherwiseChrysanthemum serotinum. There can be no doubt that it is a daisy flower and that it blooms at Michaelmas; facts that alone would give it a right to a place among the Michaelmas Daisies. But it has all the more claim to its place among them in that it is the handsomest of the large white Daisies, and, though there are white kinds and varieties of the perennial Asters, not one of them can approach it for size or pictorial effect. There is also the still tallerChrysanthemum leucanthemumorLeucanthemum lacustre, but this is a plant that has an element of coarseness, and unless the spaces are large, and the Asters are thrown up to an unusual size by a strong and rich soil, it looks heavy and out of proportion.
Towards the front of the main portions of the Aster borders are rather bold, but quite informal edgings of grey-leaved plants such as white Pink, Stachys and Lavender-cotton; in places only a few inches wide, as where the rich purple, gold-eyedAster Amelluscomes to within a few inches of the path, in the white Pink’s region, or again, where the grey, bushy masses of Lavender-cotton run in a yard deep among the Daisies.
About fifteen sorts are used in this double border; very early and very late ones are excluded, so as to have a good display from the third week of September for a month onward. They are mostly in rather large groups of one kind together.
There is a more than usual pleasure in such a Daisy garden, kept apart and by itself; because the time of its best beauty is just the time when the rest of the garden is looking tired and overworn—evidently dying for the year. Some trees are already becoming bare of leaves; the tall sunflowers look bedraggled; Dahlias have been pinched by frost and battered by autumn gales, and it is impossible to keep up any pretence of well-being in the borders of other hardy flowers.
Then with the eye full of the warm colouring of dying vegetation and the few remaining blooms of perennial Helianthus and half-hardy marigolds of the fading borders, to pass through some screening evergreens to the fresh, clean, lively colouring of the lilac, purple and white Daisies, is like a sudden change from decrepit age to thebrightness of youth, from the gloom of late autumn to the joy of full springtide.
Another excellent way of growing the perennial Asters is among shrubs, and preferably among Rhododendrons, whose rich green forms a fine background for their tender grace, and whose stiff branches give them the support they need.
THE ALCOVE, ARLEYFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMrs. Campbell
THE ALCOVE, ARLEYFROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OFMrs. Campbell
THE ALCOVE, ARLEY
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
Mrs. Campbell
Throughoutthe length and breadth of England it would be hard to find borders of hardy flowers handsomer or in any way better done than those at Arley in Cheshire. The house, an old one, was much enlarged by the late Mr. R. E. Egerton-Warburton, and the making of the gardens, now come to their young maturity, was the happy work of many years of his life. Here we see the spirit of the old Italian gardening, in no way slavishly imitated, but wholesomely assimilated and sanely interpreted to fit the needs of the best kind of English garden of the formal type, as to its general plan and structure. It is easy to see in the picture how happily mated are formality and freedom; the former in the garden’s comfortable walls of living greenery with their own appropriate ornaments, and the latter in the grandly grown borders of hardy flowers.
The subject of the picture is the main feature in the garden plan. A path some fifteen feet wide, with grassy verges of ample width, and deep borders of hardy flowers. What is shown is about one fourth of the whole length. At the back of the right-hand border is the high old wall of the kitchen garden; on the left, as grand a wall of yew, ten feet high and five feet thick, its straight line pleasantly broken and varied by shaped buttresses of clipped yew, whose forms take that distinct light and shade, and strong variations of solidity of green colouring, that make the surfaces of our clipped English yew so valuable a ground-work for masses of brilliant flowers.
The same yew buttresses are against the wall on the right, placed symmetrically with the ones opposite. Near the end, as shown in the picture, the last pair of buttresses come forward the whole widthof the border, each buttress ending in an important shaped finial to the front. Between these and the well-designed alcove in stone masonry that so satisfactorily ends the walk, is a space of turf, leading on the left, through an arch cut in the ten-foot-high yew hedge, to the bowling-green. Nothing can make a more effective shelter than such grand yew hedges; the solid wall itself is scarcely better. Even on the roughest days, with a storm of wind of destructive power outside, the space within is calm and sheltered, and the flowers escape that cruel battering from fierce blasts that add so much to the difficulty of gardening in exposed places. But the planting and thus providing this much-needed shelter is just good gardening, and when, in addition, it is done to a design of happy invention and true proportion, with just such refinements of detail and ornament as are suited to the garden’s calibre and the owner’s endowment, then, with the addition of splendid masses of good flowers grandly grown, do we find gardening at its best.
The time of year of this picture is in or near the second week of July, when the White Lily is at its finest, and the Orange Lily is in bloom, with the Blue Delphinium and many another good garden flower. One can see how all the best garden flowers are utilised here. There is the White Sidalcea at the front of the border, one of the many plants of the Mallow family that are so important in our borders; for our grand Hollyhocks are Mallows too. This White Sidalcea has much the same value as the large White Snapdragon, one good variety of which, the precursor of the many good large kinds now grown, was the only one of its kind at the time the picture was painted. Of late their numbers have greatly increased, and also their stature and the variety of their beautiful colourings, so that now they can be used as tall plants of great effect. Six feet two inches was the measurement of one grand spike of soft, rosy colouring in the writer’s own garden last autumn. These capital plants have been “fixed,” as gardeners say, in ranges of different heights; tall, intermediate, and the quite dwarf little cushions whose form is perhaps as little suited to the character of the plant as the foolish little dwarf Sweet Peas, that are only wilfully wanton, freakish distortions of a beautiful and graceful plant, whose duty it is to climb and bring its pretty blooms up to the level of our admiring eyes and appreciative noses. A good strong
THE ROSE GARDEN, ARLEYfrom the picture in the possession ofMrs. Huth
THE ROSE GARDEN, ARLEYfrom the picture in the possession ofMrs. Huth
THE ROSE GARDEN, ARLEY
from the picture in the possession of
Mrs. Huth
soil is shown by the well-being of the White Lily and Phlox, Sweet Williams and double Scarlet Potentilla. Carnations are largely grown in the borders; the great Orange Lily (L. croceum) has just given place to the White; Canterbury Bells are in grand masses, and the sturdier plants are interspersed with graceful fragilities, such as the long-spurred yellow Californian Columbine.
To the left of the alcove an archway cut in the yew hedge leads to the bowling-green. This also is inclosed and sheltered by yew hedges. There is a terrace all round, from which it is pleasant to watch the game. Next to this, and following along the line of the yew hedge, is a square inclosure of turf, with a few clipped yews. This is a kind of ante-room to the rose-garden. High walls of yew are all around except to this garden, where they are low and shaped. The middle space of the rose-garden has beds concentrically arranged, leaving spandrils of beds of other shape. At the end is a garden-house, and a wide way out to lawn spaces with fine trees and flowering shrubs. A broad gravel walk at the boundary of the lawn, with a wide grass outer verge and the knee-high top of the wall of a sunk fence, that separates it from the park, leads leftwards to the house. From this walk there is a very beautiful view across the steeply-falling gradient of the park to the lake. The park has grand old oak trees that fall into picturesque groups. Beyond the lake again are fine masses of timber. The lake is a sheet of water that takes a winding course and disappears among the trees.
The kitchen-garden walls are interesting survivals of an old way of treating fruit-trees. They are three feet thick and honeycombed with flues for heating. It was a clumsy and unmanageable expedient practised in the days before the circulation of water in pipes heated from one boiler was understood. The modern orchard-house is much more convenient and its working absolutely under control.
The kitchen garden lies between the house and the newer gardens that have been described. The maze should not be forgotten. It is at the back of the alcove and the bowling-green. These old garden toys are very seldom planted now. Perhaps people have not time for them. Also they are costly of labour; the area of green wall of a maze of even moderate size, that has to be clipped yearly, if computed wouldamount to an astonishing figure. Now that the possibilities of other forms of garden delight are so much widened, it is small wonder that the maze should have fallen into disuse. It must have been amusing in the older days when people’s lives were simpler and more leisured; but there are puzzles and difficulties enough in our more complicated days, and the influences that we now want in a garden are soothing tranquillities rather than bewildering perplexities. Near the maze and alcove is a group of three great Lombardy Poplars that tells with extremely fine effect from many parts of the garden.
On one side of the house is an old parterre of the kind now but seldom seen out of Italy; with elaborate scrolls and arabesques of clipped box; the more characteristically Italian form of the “knotted” gardens of our Tudor ancestors. The English patterns were much nearer akin to those used so lavishly on gala clothing in the form of needlework of cording and braiding, and the strap-work of wood-carving, while the Italian parterre designs were drawn more freely in flowing lines and less rigid forms.
Opposite the porch is a sundial, supported by a kneeling figure of a black slave, of the same design as the one in the gardens of the Inner Temple, that was formerly at Clement’s Inn, and is known as the “Blackamoor.” Like this one the figure is of lead.
LADY COVENTRY’S NEEDLEWORKfrom the picture in the possession ofMrs. Appleton
LADY COVENTRY’S NEEDLEWORKfrom the picture in the possession ofMrs. Appleton
LADY COVENTRY’S NEEDLEWORK
from the picture in the possession of
Mrs. Appleton
Thisis a pretty Midland name for the good garden plant commonly called Red Valerian, or Spur Valerian (Centranthus ruber), that groups so well in the picture with the straw-thatched beehives. How the name originated cannot be exactly stated, but may easily be inferred. There are several estates in the Midland Counties belonging to the Coventry family, and, bearing in mind what we know of the home life of our great-great-grandmothers of the late eighteenth century, it may be assumed that some Lady Coventry of that date was specially fond of the pretty needlecraft so widely practised among the ladies of that time.
Delightful things they are, these old needlework pictures, with a character quite different from that of their predecessors of Jacobean times. These were much stiffer in treatment and usually had figures; a lady and gentleman and a dog being usual subjects, and trees looking like those out of a Noah’s Ark, no doubt interpretations of the stiffly-cut yew and box trees of the gardens of the same times.
But the workers of the flower-pictures of a hundred years later, and into the first quarter of the nineteenth century, for the most part chose flowers alone for their subjects. Sometimes a drawing was made, but many of them look as if they were worked direct from the flowers. It would appear that the worker would begin in the spring, with a Hyacinth; then would come Anemones, Tulips, Auriculas, Lilac, Roses and Lilies; a jumble of seasons but a concord of pretty things, and all done with a simplicity, a sweetness, a directness of intention and absence of strain or affectation, that give them a singular charm. One such picture that I have before me must have been begun in May, andfinished, perhaps, in August and September; for the first flower in the upper left-hand corner, where the work would naturally begin, is a thyrse of Lilac, and the last, low down on the right, is a Nasturtium; while the intermediate flowers, following each other in what would be approximately their natural sequence, come in between. These are Pansy, Rose, Sweet Pea, Love-in-a-Mist, Lily, Larkspur, Convolvulus, Carnation, Jasmine and Passion-flower; and one Daisy-shaped flower, whose identity, considering the numbers of possible Composites and the somewhat vague manner of the rendering, cannot be determined, though all the other flowers are capitally done and could not be mistaken.
The disk of the Daisy-flower is worked in a mass of those little knots that sit closely together, the secret of whose making is known to every good needlewoman. They are a capital direct imitation of the group of anthers in the centre of a flower.
The glory of the picture, and what was evidently the delight of the worker, is the Love-in-a-Mist, which stands above the others in the middle top of the picture. The tender blue of the flower, shading to white, the sharply-jagged edges of the petals, the green upstanding forms in the centre, and, above all, the fennel-like divisions of the involucre and the leaves, all lend themselves to satisfactory portrayal with the needle; while the prominent position given to this charming midsummer flower shows how the worker rejoiced in its beauty and took pleasure in painting its form and colour in tender stitchery upon the white silken ground of her picture. The Jasmine flowers, too, are done with evident enjoyment as well as the neat, clear-cut leaves. The Rose is a Moss-Rose, shown in three stages of bud and half-blown bloom, when this charming Rose is at its best; the mossiness of the calyx being cleverly suggested by short straw-coloured stitches that catch the light upon a ground of dull green. The working material is floss silk, whose silvery, shining surface, dark in some lights, makes a distinct effect of light and shade in the case of the white flowers, even though they are worked upon a ground that is also white.
Sometimes these pictures are of a bunch of flowers without a receptacle, but often there is a basket or vase. In this case there is a basket of very simple form, standing on a darker table worked in thechenilles, which were also much used. They are tiny ropes of silk velvet with an effect of rich short pile, like the old velvets of Genoa.
It is easy to see how the Red Valerian came to be used as a model for needlework. Short stitches and long would easily render the small divisions of the calyx and the long slender spur and single pistil, and a quantity of this, representing the rather crowded flower-head, would have a very good effect on a white or light ground.
The plant itself is a pretty one in any garden. Botanists say that it is not indigenous, but it has taken to the country and acclimatised itself, and now behaves like a native; haunting quarries and railway cuttings in the chalk. It is a capital plant for establishing on or in walls or bold rockwork, as well as in the garden border. It is always thankful for chalk or lime in any form.
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.London & Edinburgh