Part 2

But these other books, this literature on gardening! They are generally better than the garden itself. Practical they are not, but why ask it of them? They are the seductive catalogue turned into finest art. One wanders with some sweet, madonna-like lady of smooth fair hair, mild eyes and broad-brimmed hat, or with a courtly parson of the old school, in a garden where the sun always shines. Green stretches of lawn (no plantains), trees grouped from their infancy to adorn and shade and be the necessary background to masses of flowering shrubs. Through rockeries, ferneries, nut-groves, copses we wander as in a fairy dream. Borders laid out to catch the sun, sheltered by old red brick walls where fruit ripens in luscious clusters. Rose gardens, sunk gardens, water gardens lead on to copses where all wild things of beauty are met together to entrance the eye. Broad walks between herbaceous borders, containing every flower loved from the time of Eve; sheltered patches where seedlings thrive, a nursery of carefully-reared young. And in this heaven of gardening land gardeners galore flit to and fro, ever doing their master's behest, and manure and water, and time and money may be considerations but are not anxieties. I ought to have begun years ago; seven, nine, fifteen, and even twenty-five years are talked of but as yesterday. I felt out of it in every sense. My garden lay out there in the cold, grey mist; it had been neglected, it held no rippling stream, no nut-grove, it ran upward into no copse or land of pine and bracken and heather. It had a hedge one side and a sloping field the other. The straight kitchen garden was bounded by no red brick wall, and the birds from the convenient hedges ate all the fruit, unless gooseberries and currants were so plentiful that we also were allowed a share. Griggs talked of an 'urbrageous' border. But what a border! Evening primroses, the common yellow marigold, a few clusters of golden-rod, and other weed-like flowers that persist in growing of themselves, with Griggs, five pounds a year and an Ignoramus to work it!

Oh! why had I so cheerfully undertaken such an apparently hopeless task?

But my honour was now at stake. I had said I would have flowers on five pounds a year, and I could not draw back. Let me clear away the mists that had arisen. After all, that tree down there was a pink chestnut, and beneath it lay my sheet of snowdrops and blue scillas. Before it burst into beauty they would have done their share of rejoicing the eye. At that corner, where the field sloped so prettily downwards, daffodils were hidden, and under the clump just over the fence more and more daffodils. A row of stately limes, dismally bare now, carried the eye down to the next field. There, where it was always shady, I pictured future ferns and early wild-flowers, and maybe groups of foxgloves.

I turned again to my gardening books. I too would have a garden "to love," to "work in"; if not a "Gloucestershire garden," or a "German garden," or a "Surrey" one, still a garden. Months with me, also, should be a successive revelation of flowers; though I knew not a Latin name I would become learned in the sweet, simple, old-fashioned flowers that cottagers loved, and though I could not fit poetry on to every plant, I would have a posy for the study table right through the year.

That was my dream!

* * * * *

The first, the very first produce of the opening year in my garden was a winter aconite.

The little dead-looking roots had been planted in a sunny shrubbery border and had quickly thrust up their golden crowns, circled with the tender green collar. Have you ever noticed how a winter aconite springs from its bed? Its ways are most original. The sturdy little stem comes up like a hoop; at one end is the root, at the other the blossom, with its green collar drooped carefully over the yellow centre. Gradually it raises itself, shakes off the loosened mould--you may help it here if you like--lays back its collar and opens its golden eye.

I picked every one I could find. It seemed sinful, but occasionally pride overcomes the most modest of us.

"There," I cried, "my garden is beginning already. Just look at them! Are they not lovely?"

"What, buttercups?" asked one of the Others.

"No, oh, ignorant one! they are not buttercups. They are winter aconite; note the difference."

"Let's look!" and the brown little fist of one of the youngest of the Others was thrust forth.

"All that fuss about those! You wait a minute!"

He ran off, returning shortly with quite a big bunch of my yellow treasures in his hand.

"Where did you get them? Jim, you bad boy! you must not pick my flowers," I exclaimed.

"_Your_ flowers! and you hadn't an idea that they grew there. These are from _my_ garden, and no one has given _me_ a fiver to raise them with. Come, Mary, I shall cry halves. You had better square me!"

"Oh, Jim, where did you find them?" was all I could gasp.

I did square Jim, but it was in "kind," and then he showed me much winter aconite hidden away in an unfrequented shrubbery, where his quick little eyes had spied it. I thought of moving it to where it would show. Everything with me was for show in those early days; but these surprises hold their own delight, and I learnt to encourage them.

I suffered many things at the hands of the Others for spending five pounds on winter aconite when already the garden held "such heaps "--that was their way of putting it.

I began to hope that more surprises of such sort might be in store for me. It is wonderful how one may avoid seeing what is really just under one's nose. The Others might laugh, but I doubt if they even knew winter aconite as the yellow buttercup-looking thing before that morning.

Another yellow flower tried to relieve the monotony of that dead season of the year. Struggling up the front of the house, through the virginian creeper and old Gloire de Dijon rose, were the bare branches of a yellow jasmine. From the end of December on through January and February it did its poor best to strike a note of colour in the gloom. But why was it not more successful? Judging from its performance, I had formed the meanest opinion of its capabilities, until one bright day in January my eye had been caught by a mass of yellow--I say advisedly a mass--thrown over the rickety porch of old Master Lovell's abode. Yellow jasmine! yes, there was no mistake about it, but the bare greenish stems were covered with the brilliant little star-flowers, shining and rejoicing as in the full tide of summer. I thought of my bare straggling specimen and stopped to ask for the recipe for such blossoming. Old Lovell and old Griggs had both lived in Fairleigh all their lives, and there was an old-timed and well-ripened feud between the pair.

"A purty sight I calls that," said old Lovell, surveying his porch, "an' yourn ain't loike it, ain't it? Ah! and that's not much of a surprise to me. Ever see that old Griggs up at th' Rectory working away wi' his shears? Lor' bless you, he's a 'edging and ditching variety of gardener, that's wot I calls 'im. Clip it all, that's 'is motive, autumn and spring, one with another, an' all alike, and then you 'spects winter blooming things to pay your trouble! But they don't see it, they don't."

"Oh! it's the clipping, is it? Well, then, how do you manage yours? It is quite beautiful." I always dealt out my praise largely in return for information.

"Leaves it to Natur', I do. You wants a show? 'Ave it then and leave interfering with Natur'. She knows 'er biz'ness."

I did not feel quite convinced of this axiom; gardening seemed to be a continual assistance or interference with Nature in her most natural moods. So I said dubiously,

"Yellow jasmine should never be cut at all, then?"

"Look you 'ere, miss, at them buds all up the stem. If I cuts the stem wot becomes of them buds, eh?"

Unanswerable old Lovell! But as I looked at the thick matted trailings that covered his porch, it dawned on me that perhaps a judicious pruning out of old wood at the right season would help and not hinder the yellow show.

"Does it bloom on the new wood?" I asked with a thought most laudable in an Ignoramus.

"Blooms! why, it blooms all over. Look at it!" And having sounded the depth of old Lovell's knowledge, I left him with more words of praise.

So that was it! And my yellow jasmine might be blooming like that if left alone, or better, if rightly handled; and doubtless the poverty-stricken appearance of the white jasmine, the small and occasional flowers of the clematis, were due to the same cause. Here was a new and important department of my work suddenly opened up. I determined Nature should have a free hand until I could assist her properly. Until I knew the how, when and why of the clipping process, the edict should go forth to old Griggs, "Don't _touch_ the shears."

On examining my own decapitated climbers I found that Griggs had indeed been hedging and ditching in the brutal way in which the keepers of our country lanes perform their task. It had often grieved my spirit to see the beautiful tangle late autumn produces in the hedges ruthlessly snipped and snapped by the old men, told off by some of the mysterious workings of the many councils under which we now groan, to do their deed of evil. That it ever recovers, that spring again clothes the hedges brilliantly, that the wild rose riots, the wild clematis flings itself, the honeysuckle twines, all again within the space of six or eight months, is an ever-recurring miracle. But my creepers and climbers did not so recover; their hardy brethren in the hedges outstripped them. Griggs impartially clipped the face of the house in the autumn when ivy is trimmed, and, now that I noticed it, the results overpowered me with wrath. How extraordinary that people should let such things go on, should live apathetically one side of the wall when flowers were being massacred on the other; should have streamers of yellow glory within their reach in December and January, and should sit placidly by the fire when the iron jaws were at work and never shout to the destroyer, "Hold!" Well, it was no use carrying every tale of woe to his Reverence or the Others. Jim was fully informed, and being, as I have often noticed, a person of immense resource, he very shortly afterwards whispered to me that the "old guffoon" would have great difficulty in finding his shears again. If I would obtain proper advice on the point it was a department, he thought, peculiarly suited to his abilities. I might grow giddy on a ladder, but as the navy was to be his profession he thought the opportunity one to be taken.

There was nothing to cut of the yellow jasmine; it must grow first, and then the older stems might be judiciously trimmed after its flowering time is over. A year to wait for that, to Jim's disgust, but toward the end of February we cautiously trimmed the Japanese variety of "old man's beard," called by the learned "clematis flamulata." It grew on the verandah, and one of the Others had driven Griggs off when he approached with his shears. She said he looked like murder, and whether it was right or not it should not be done. I had to give her chapter and verse for it that this variety of clematis ought to have a very mild treatment, a sort of disentanglement, and thus help it to long streamers before she would allow Jim and me and a modest pair of scissors to do ever so little work. Jim sighed for the shears, and I had to warn him against the first evidence of the murderous spirit of old Griggs.

* * * * *

In one garden book of the most precious description I read of "hellebore." Now I am writing for Ignoramuses. Do you know what "hellebore" is? No! of course not, nor did I, but it was spoken of as forming "a complete garden full of flowers in the months of February and March," so of course I wanted it. Out-door flowers are scarce in February, but I learned as time went on that most flowers announced for an early appearance generally arrive a month late, at least it is so with me.

None of the Others, not even his Reverence, had heard of hellebore. It continued to haunt me for some time. February was near and I sighed for that "complete garden."

* * * * *

I was encouraging my snowdrops with welcoming smiles as they pierced through the damp grass, and dreaming of hellebore, for the name attracted me strongly, when his Reverence's Young Man joined me. He has not much to do with the garden, though he often strayed into it--very often, in fact--so he ought to be mentioned. As my book is about my garden, only the people who either help or hinder there need be introduced. His Reverence's Young Man was really his curate. Our parish was not a large one, but very scattered, and a little distant hamlet with a tiny chapel necessitated a Young Man. He was a great favourite with his Reverence, who would often walk about with him, leaning on his arm, and this had caused old Master Lovell, the village wit, to call him his Young Man. Of course he had to see his Reverence occasionally, and if he did not find him in the study he generally looked for him in the garden.

"What is growing here?" he asked.

"Look!" I answered.

"Grass? It is grass, isn't it?"

"It is a comfort to find some people, and clever people withal, even more ignorant than I am. Snowdrops and scillas."

"Oh! I see, you are making progress, at least, I beg pardon, _they_ are. I positively see some white."

"Now can _you_ tell me what are hellebores?"

"Ask another!"

"That is worthy of Jim. You don't know?"

"But wait a bit, I have heard of them, I really have. Isn't it deadly nightshade, or something like that?"

I shook my head.

"It is worse to know wrong than not at all."

"But if you don't know, how do you know I am wrong?"

"Because they form a complete garden in February and March--there!"

"A complete garden! How wonderful. Doesn't anyone know? Doesn't Griggs?"

"I haven't asked him, of course he wouldn't know. Here he is, we will see what he says. Griggs, do you know what flower is called hellebore?"

Griggs had no spade and no mud handy; he was very much nonplussed.

"El-bore!--did you say? Whoi, el-bore? Don't seem to have 'eeurd of 'em before; not by that name leastways. You never can tell in these days; lot o' noo-fangled words they call 'em. Oi might know it right 'nuff if you could show me. Dessay it's a furriner. I must be goin'."

He wandered down the garden. There was not much I could give him to do, but I knew from my gardening books that he should be trimming trees, or marking those to come down, or cutting stakes, and lots of other useful things. I possessed no woods, or groves, or copses, however, so I gave Griggs over unreservedly to his Reverence, and he dug and banked up celery.

"Shall I write and ask my mother?" said the Young Man. "She is quite a gardener, you know; and when they divide up roots--as they do, don't they?--she would send you some, I am sure. Geraniums and fuchsias and--and lilies. They always divide them up, don't they? and throw away half."

"I don't think they throw away half, not always. But would she really? It would be awfully kind; and I might send her things when I had anything to send. Only I don't want geraniums; I can't bear them, and old Griggs has filled our one and only frame with nothing else. They seem to me a most unnecessary flower."

I spoke in my ignorance, and I learnt the use of geraniums later on.

His Reverence's Young Man never smiled when I spoke of sending things back to his mother; perhaps he did inside him, for she had a lovely garden and half a dozen gardeners, but still was chief there. I was overcome when I paid her a visit and remembered my offer; but again I spoke in my ignorance and thought it showed the right gardener's spirit, and perhaps it did.

His Reverence's Young Man grew to take the greatest interest in gardening. He was one of my first converts; but I learnt about hellebore from someone else.

* * * * *

And now the Master must be introduced. I cannot tell what particular month he came into my garden, but I remember when I first went into his.

He had a genius for flowers. I do not know if he looked at children and animals with that light of fatherly love in his eyes, but I think it must have been there for all things that needed his care and protection. Flowers, however, were his "dream children."

His was no ideal garden, and he had never written about it. It was scarcely larger or more blessed by fate than mine, but was as perfect as could be. He knew each flower intimately; he had planted each shrub, and I never met a weed or a stone on his borders. He had but little glass, and no groves and copses and woods, or heather, or pine, or any unfair advantages in that way; but when I looked at his herbaceous border in the autumn I could not help thinking of harvest decorations. Such a wealth of colour was piled up, it hardly seemed possible it could all be growing on the spot. From early spring to late autumn a succession of brilliant blooms reigned one after another in that border; to look upon it was indeed "seeing of the labour of one's hands and being satisfied."

And he had said, "There is no reason why you should not have it too."

I think that border sowed the first seeds of gardening love in my heart.

"But when you came here was it like this?" I asked.

"It was a pretty bad wilderness," he said with a look round.

"Oh! things take _such_ a time," I groaned.

"I have been here twenty-five years. I have planted nearly everything you see, except the big trees."

"Twenty-five years! But I!--I can't begin planting things for twenty-five years hence. It is too bad of one's predecessors to leave one nothing but weeds and stones and Griggs!"

"Yes. Well, you have got to make things better for your successors. Not but what you can get results of some sort under twenty-five years. All this"--and he waved his hand to that wonderful border--"comes, at least comes in part, with but eighteen months' careful tending."

Even eighteen months seemed to my impatient spirit too long; I wished for a fairy wand. But fairy effects have a way of vanishing like the frost pictures on the window pane.

"Well, if ever I try to make our wilderness blossom like the rose I will just grow perennial things and pop them in and have done with it."

At which the Master laughed.

"Oh, will you? I don't think I shall come to admire your garden then. Why are you so afraid of time? You are young. But I suppose that is the reason."

After I had made the plunge we talked again on this matter.

"Most of these people who write of their gardens own them. They have lived there and will live there always. But in a Rectory garden one is but a stranger and a pilgrim. Don't you feel this?"

"No. We are growing old together, and perhaps it will be given me to stay here; anyway, my garden is better than I found it. Is not that something?"

"Oh, yes," I said discontentedly.

He laughed. "Ah! the spirit will grow; you are cultivating it just as surely as you are the seeds."

"There are plenty of weeds and stones to choke all the seeds everywhere," I answered. "Old Griggs's way of weeding is to chop off the heads, dig everything in again, and for a fortnight smile blandly over his work. Then he says that it is no use weeding, 'Just look at 'em again.'"

"Old Griggs seems to afford you plenty of parables from Nature, anyhow. He is instructive in his way. But can't he be retired?"

"Alas, no! he is a fixture."

"And you the pilgrim! Well, go ahead. And now come and see what the nurseries contain; there is always to spare in the nurseries."

Many of his spare children found their way to my garden, and it grew quite a matter of course to turn to him in any dilemma. But Ignoramuses must learn, in gardens as in everything else, to work out their own salvation. So in fear and trembling, and a good deal of hope, too, I made my own experiments; for hill and dale divided the Master's garden from mine, and I doubt if even he could grasp the utter ignorance of the absolutely ignorant.

* * * * *

Ice and snow and thaw, and again thaw and ice and snow had held their sway through January and early February, and my garden slept. Another year I would have violets growing in the narrow border under the verandah, and tubs--big green tubs--of Christmas roses under its shelter. Were they expensive, I wondered? And thus I found out, by the simple process of asking at a florist, that for one shilling and sixpence or two shillings a root I could buy--why, hellebores! But for me they will always be "Christmas roses." At present the verandah was bare, oh, so bare! It needed more roses to climb up the trellis and the newness of its two years' existence to be hidden. It held attraction for the birds, however, this cold winter time; crumbs and scraps were expected by them as regularly as breakfast and dinner by us. The pert sparrow came by dozens, of course, but out of our four robins one knew himself to be master of the ceremony. He came first, at a whistle, the signal for crumbs, and he allowed the sparrows to follow, really because he could not help himself. But should another robin come--his wife or their thin-legged son--he made for them and spent the precious moments pecking them away while the sparrows gobbled. His is not a beautiful disposition, I fear, but oh! how gladly one forgives him for the sake of his bold black eye, cheering red breast and persistent joyfulness of song. The colder weather brought other pensioners, chaffinch, bullfinch, even hawfinch, and, of course, the thrush and blackbird; a magpie eyed the feast from afar, but the starlings waddled boldly up, not hopping as birds, but right-left, right-left like wobbling geese; and the tom-tits and blue and black-tits, came and continued to come as long as they found a cocoa-nut swinging for their benefit. None of the other birds would touch it. Next winter they shall have hellebore for their table decoration.

* * * * *

Oh! how lucky men are, they have so many things we women seem forever to miss.

Very thick, sensible boots that won't get wet through; no skirts to get muddy when gardening; the morning paper first, of course, because they are men and politics are for them; voting powers, too, which on occasions give them a certain very much appreciated weight; and money, even if poor, always more money than their wives and daughters.

These reflections, and I notice you may reflect on most irrelevant matter in a garden, were called forth by a boy-man who kindly took me in to dinner one evening. I soon discovered he had a little "diggings" and was going in for gardening "like anything." Yet was my soul not drawn to him. "Bulbs, oh, rather! Had a box over from Holland the other day, just a small quantity, you know. Mine isn't a large place, but five thousand or so ought to fill it up a bit; make a mass of colour, that's what I go in for. Told my man to plant 'em in all over, thick as bees. Then I had great luck. Dropped in at an auction in the City just in the nick of time, got a box-load of splendid bulbs for half-a-crown--worth a guinea at the very least--shoved them all in too. I shall have a perfect blaze, I tell you. Like you to come and look me up in April if you go in for that kind of thing."

But I hated the boy-man. Five thousand bulbs! without a second thought. And then--according to the rule that works so invariably among material goods, "to him that hath shall be given"--this aggressive youth also buys a guinea's worth of bulbs for half-a-crown. Think what I would have given to be at that auction. But women can't "drop in" in the City.

* * * * *