Part 5
How grandly the scarlet Tropæolum (_T. speciosum_) grows in these northern gardens is well known; indeed, in many places it has become almost a pest. It is much more difficult to grow in the South, where it is often a failure; in any case, it insists on a northern or eastern exposure. Where it does best in gardens in the English counties is in deep, cool soil, thoroughly enriched. When well established, the running roots ramble in all directions, fresh growths appearing many feet away from the place where it was originally planted. It looks perhaps best when running up the face of a yew hedge, when the bright scarlet bloom, and leaves of clear-cut shape, are seen to great advantage, and many of the free growths of the plant take the form of hanging garlands.
KELLIE CASTLE
Kellie Castle in Fifeshire, very near Balcaskie, is another house of the finest type of old Scottish architecture. The basement is vaulted in solid masonry, the ground-floor rooms have a height of fourteen feet; the old hall, now the drawing-room, is nearly fifty feet long. A row of handsome stone dormers to an upper floor, light a set of bedrooms, which, as well as the main rooms below, have coved plaster ceilings of great beauty.
There is no certain record of the date of the oldest part of the castle. It is assigned to the fourteenth century, but may be older. The earliest actual date found upon the building is 1573, and it is considered that the mass of the castle, as we see it now, was completed by that date, though another portion bears the date 1606. It belonged of old to the Oliphants, a family that held it for two and a half centuries, when it passed by sale to an Erskine, who, early in the seventeenth century, became Earl of Kellie. In 1797, after the death of the seventh Earl, it was abandoned by the family and soon showed signs of deterioration from disuse. About thirty years later the Earldom of Kellie descended to the Earl of Mar, and the family seat being elsewhere, Kellie was allowed to go to ruin.
In 1878 the ruined place was taken, to its salvation, on a long lease by Mr. James Lorimer, whose widow is the present occupier. It has undergone the most careful and reverent reparation. The broken roofs have been made whole, the walls are again hung with tapestries, and the rooms furnished with what might have been the original appointments.
The castle stands at one corner of the old walled kitchen garden, a door in the north front opening directly into it. The garden has no architectural features. There are walks with high box edgings and quantities of simple flowers. Everywhere is the delightful feeling that there is about such a place when it is treated with such knowledge and sympathy as have gone to the re-making of Kellie as a delightful human habitation. For two sons of the house are artists of the finest faculty--painter and architect--and they have done for this grand old place what boundless wealth, in less able hands, could not have accomplished.
Close to the house on its western side is a little glen, and in it a rookery. When strong winds blow in early spring the nests in the swaying tree-tops come almost within hand reach of the turret windows of the north-west tower.
How the flowers grow in these northern gardens! Here they must needs grow tall to be in scale with the high box edging. But Shirley Poppies, when they are autumn sown, will rise to four feet, and the grand new strains of tall Snapdragons will go five and even over six feet in height.
As the picture shows, this is just the garden for the larger plants--single Hollyhocks in big free groups, and double Hollyhocks too, if one can be sure of getting a good strain. For this is just the difficulty. The strains admired by the old-fashioned florist, with the individual flowers tight and round, are certainly not the best in the garden. The beautiful double garden Hollyhock has a wide outer frill like the corolla of the single flowers in the picture. Then the middle part, where the doubling comes, should not be too double. The waved and crumpled inner petals should be loosely enough arranged for the light to get in and play about, so that in some of them it is reflected, and in some transmitted. It is only in such flowers that one can see how rich and bright it can be in the reds and roses, or how subtle and tender in the whites and sulphurs and pale pinks. Other flowers beautiful in such gardens are the taller growing of the Columbines, the feathery herbaceous Spiræas, such as _S. Aruncus_, that displays its handsome leaves, and waves its creamy plumes, on the banks of Alpine torrents, and its brethren the lovely pale pink _venusta_, the bright rosy _palmata_ and the cream-white _Ulmaria_, the
garden form of the wild Meadow-sweet of our damp meadow-ditches. Then the tall Bocconia, with its important bluish leaves and feathery flower-beads, which shows in the picture in brownish seed-pod; and the Thalictrums, pale yellow and purple, and Canterbury Bells, and Lilies yellow and white, and the tall broad-leaved Bell-flowers.
All these should be in these good gardens, besides the many kinds of Scotch Briers, and big bushes of the old, almost forgotten garden Roses of a hundred years ago, many of which are no longer to be found, except now and then in these old gardens of Scotland. For here some gardens seem to have escaped that murderously overwhelming wave of fashion for tender bedding plants alone, that wrought such havoc throughout England during three decades of the last century.
Here, too, are Roses trained in various pretty simple ways. Our garden Roses come from so many different wild plants, from all over the temperate world, that there is hardly an end to the number of ways in which they can be used. Some of them, like the Scotch Briers, grow in close bushy masses; some have an upright habit; some like to rush up trees and over hedges; others again will trail along the ground and even run downhill. Some are tender and must have a warm wall; some will endure severe cold; some will flower all the summer; others at one season only. So it is that we find in various gardens, Roses grown in many different ways. In one as small bushes in beds, or budded on standards, in another as the covering of a pergola, or as fountain roses, throwing up many stems which arch over naturally. Some of the oldest garden Roses, such as _The Garland_, _Dundee Rambler_ and _Bennett’s Seedling_ are the best for this kind of use.
The Himalayan _R. polyantha_ will grow in this way into a huge bush, sometimes as much from thirty to forty feet in diameter, and many of the beautiful modern garden Roses that have _polyantha_ for a near ancestor, will do well in the same way, though none of them attain so great a size. Roses grown like this take a form with, roughly speaking, a semi-circular outline, like an inverted basin. If they are wanted to take a shape higher in proportion they must be trained through or over some simple framework. This is called balloon-training. Some roses are grown in this fashion at Kellie, the framework being a central post from which hoops are hung one above the other. The Rose grows up inside the framework and hangs out all over. If this kind of training is to be on a larger scale, long half-hoops have their ends fixed in the ground, and pass across and across one another at a central point, where they are fixed to a strong post, thus forming ten or twelve ribs. Horizontal wires, like lines of latitude upon a globe, pass all round them at even intervals. Then Roses can be trained to any kind of trellis, either a plain one to make a wall of roses or a shaped one, whose form they will be guided to follow. Then again, there may be rose arches, single, double or grouped; or in a straight succession over a path; or alternate arches and garlands, a pretty plan where paths intersect; the four arches kept a little way back from the point of intersection, with garlands connecting them diagonally in plan. Then there are Roses, some of the same that serve for several of these kinds of free treatment, for making bowers and arbours.
And there are endless possibilities for the beautiful treatment of Rose gardens, though seldom does one see them well done. There are many who think that a Rose garden must admit no other flowers but Roses. This may be desirable in some cases, but the present writer holds a more elastic view. Beds and clumps of Roses where no other flower is allowed, often look very bare at the edges, and might with advantage be under-planted with Pinks and Carnations, Pansies, London Pride, or even annuals. And any Lilies of white and pink colouring such as _candidum_, _longiflorum_, _Brownii_, _Krameri_, or _rubellum_ suit them well, also many kinds of Clematis. The gardener may perhaps, object that the usual cultivation of Roses, the winter mulch and subsequent digging in and the frequent after-hoeing precludes the use of other plants; but all these rules may be relaxed if the Rose garden is on a fairly good rose soil. For the object is the showing of a space of garden ground made beautiful by garden Roses--not merely the production of a limited number of blooms of exhibition quality.
The way the bushes of garden Roses grow and bloom in close companionship with other strong-growing plants, at Kellie and in thousands of other gardens, shows how amicably they live with their near neighbours; and often by a happy accident, they tell us what plants will group beautifully with them.
The Roses that are best kept out of the Rose garden, are those delightful ones of the end of June; the Damasks, and the Provence, the sweet old Cabbage Rose of English gardens. These, and the Scotch Briers of earlier June, bloom for one short season only. Of late years the possibilities of beautiful Rose gardening have been largely increased by the raising of quantities of beautiful Roses of the Hybrid Tea class that bloom throughout the summer, and that, with the coming of autumn, seem only to gain renewed life and strength.
HARDWICK
Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, one of the great houses of England, is, with others of its approximate contemporaries of the later half of the sixteenth century, such as Longleat, Wollaton, and Montacute, an example of what was at the time of its erection an entirely new aspect of the possibilities of domestic architecture.
The country had settled down into a peaceful state. A house was no longer a castle needing external defence. Hitherto the homes of England had been either fortresses, or had needed the protection of moats and walls. They had been poorly lighted; only the walls looking to an inner court, or to a small walled garden could have fair-sized openings. No spacious windows could look abroad upon open country, field or woodland. But by this time such restriction was a thing of the past, and we see in these great houses, and in Hardwick especially, immense window spaces in the outer walls. The architects of the time, John Thorpe, the Smithsons and others, ran riot with their great windows, as if revelling in their exemption from the older bonds. The new freedom was so tempting that they knew not how to restrain themselves, and it was only later, when it was found that the amount of lighting was overmuch for convenience, that the relation of degree of light to internal comfort came to be better understood and more reasonably adjusted.
The famous Countess of Shrewsbury (Bess of Hardwick), to whose initiative this great house owes its origin, set an imperishable memorial of her imperious arrogance upon the balustrading that crowns the square tower-like projections at the angles and ends of the building, where the
stone is wrought into lace-like fretwork of arabesque, whereof the chief features are her coronet and the initials of her name.
A spacious forecourt occupies the ground upon the western--the main entrance front. It stretches the whole length of the house, and projects as much forward; its outer sides being inclosed with a wall that bears in constant succession an ornament of a _fleur-de-lys_ with tall pyramidal top, a detail imported direct from Italy, from the Renaissance gardens of earlier date. Such an ornament occurs at the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, crowning a retaining wall. The entrance to the inclosed forecourt is by a handsome stone gateway. This gateway forms the background of the picture, which shows one of the well-planted flower borders that abound at Hardwick, and that strike that lightsome and cheerful note of human care and delight that is so welcome in this place whose scale is rather too large, and somewhat coldly forbidding, in relation to the more ordinary aspects of daily comfort.
Indeed--for all the good planting--the long wall-backed flower border facing south, whose wall is in part of its length that of the house itself, looks as if, in relation to the great building towering above it--its occupants were still too small, although they include flowering plants seven to nine feet high, such as Gyneriums and the larger herbaceous Spiræas. A well-directed effort has evidently been made to have the planting on a scale with the lordly building, but the items want to be larger still and the grouping yet bolder, to overcome the dwarfing effect of the towering structure. In such a place the Magnolias, both evergreen and deciduous, would have a fine effect, though possibly they would hardly thrive in the midland climate.
Within the forecourt, along the wall parallel to the house and furthest from it, this need is not so apparent. In the subject of the picture, the Honeysuckle, the magnificently grown purple Clematis upon the wall, the Mulleins, Bocconia and Japan Anemones, are in due proportion; the Tufted Pansies and Mignonette bringing their taller brethren happily down to the grassy verge. Approaching the pathway from the right, stretch some of the long loose growths of one of the two large Cedars that are such prominent objects in the forecourt garden.
The main open spaces of this garden repeat in flower beds on grass the big E.S. of the self-asserting founder. It is not pretty gardening nor particularly dignified. No doubt it is only a modern acquiescence in the dominating tradition of the place. Even making allowance for, and retaining this sentiment, a better design might have been made, embodying these already too-often-repeated letters. Moreover, the servile copying of the lettering in its stone form only serves to illustrate the futility of reproducing a form of ornament designed for one material in another of totally different nature.
There is some excellent gardening in a long flower-border outside the forecourt wall. Here the size of the house is no longer oppressive, and it comes into proper scale a little way beyond the point where the broad green ways, bounded by noble hedges of ancient yews, swing into a wide circle as they cross, and show the bold niches cut in the rich green foliage where leaden statues are so effectively placed.
By the kindness of the owner, the Duke of Devonshire, Hardwick Hall, illustrating as it does a distinct form of architectural expression with much of historical interest, is open to the public.
MONTACUTE
Montacute in Somersetshire, built towards the end of the sixteenth century by Sir Edward Phelips, is another of that surprising number of important houses built on a symmetrical plan that arose during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
As the house was then, so we see it now; unaltered, and only mellowed by time. The gardens, too, are of the original design, including a considerable amount of architectural stonework.
The large entrance forecourt is inclosed by a high balustraded wall, with important and finely-designed garden houses on its outer angles. The length of the side walls is broken midway on each side by a small circular pillared pavilion with a boldly projecting entablature, crowned with an openwork canopy and a topmost ornament of two opposite and joining rings of stone.
The piers of the balustrade are surmounted by stone obelisks, and the large paved landing, forming a shallow court at the top of the flight of steps a hundred feet wide, that gives access to the house on this side has tall pillars that now carry lamps, though they appear to have been designed merely as a stately form of ornament.
The forecourt has a wide expanse of gravel with a large fountain basin in the middle. Next the wall there are flower-borders; then the wide gravelled path, and, following this, a broad strip of turf with Irish yews at regular intervals. The general severity of the planning is pleasantly relieved by the bright flower-border, the subject of the picture. To right and left are openings in the wall leading to other garden spaces. The one of these to the left, just behind the spectator as in the picture, leads by an upward flight of steps to one side of a wide terrace walk, that encompasses on all four sides a large sunk garden of formal design. This garden runs the whole length of the forecourt and depth of the house, and has a width equal to some two-thirds of its length. A large middle fountain-basin, with shaped outline of angles and segments of circles, has a balustraded kerb with a stone obelisk on every pier. In the centre is a handsome tazza in which the water plays. Wide paths lead down flights of balustraded steps from all four sides to the gravelled area within which the fountain stands. The spaces between, and the banks rising to the level of the upper terraces, are of turf. Rows of Irish yews stand ranged on both levels. It is all extremely correct, stately--dare one say a trifle dull? Opposite the forecourt the garden is bounded by a good yew hedge protecting it from wind from the valley below. Midway in the length is an opening where a low wall and seats give a welcome outlook. The same yew hedge returns eastward to the south-east angle of the house; the garden’s opposite boundary being a low wall with a sunk fence outside, giving a view into the park.
There is an entrance from the garden to the house on its southern side by a flight of balustraded steps, and niches with seats are on either side of the door.
Wonderful are these great stone houses of the early English Renaissance--wonderful in their bold grasp and sudden assertion of the new possibilities of domestic architecture! For it may be repeated that it was only of late that a man’s house had ceased to be a place of defence, and that he might venture to have windows looking abroad all round, and yet feel perfectly safe without even an inclosing moat.
In the present day it is somewhat difficult to account for the designer’s attitude of mind when deciding on such a lavish employment of the obelisk-shaped finials. One can only regard it as the outcome of the taste or fashion of the day, when he borrowed straight from the Italians everything except their marvellous discernment. One accepts the many obelisks at Montacute as showing the reflection of Italian influence on the Tudor mind; to-day and new, they would be inadmissible. The modern mind, with the vast quantity of material at hand, and the easy access to all that has been said and done on the subject, should
accept nothing but the best and purest in this as in any other branch of fine art.
There is one other possible way of accounting for the prevalence of these all-pervading obelisks. The name of the place is taken from a conical wooded hill (_mons acutus_). The same play on a word, a favourite fashion of Elizabethan times, and a custom in heraldry from a remoter antiquity, is seen in the shield of the ancient Montacute family, where the three sharp peaks denote that the surname had the same origin. The connexion of this name with the acute peak or obelisk form would therefore the more readily commend itself to the Elizabethan mind.
The house has never gone into other hands, the present owner, Mr. W. R. Phelips, being the descendant of the founder.
RAMSCLIFFE
It would seem to be a law that the purest and truest human pleasure in a garden is attained by means whose ratio is exactly inverse to the scale or degree of the garden’s magnificence. The design, for instance, of a Versailles impresses one with a sense of ostentatious consciousness of magnitude; out of scale with living men and women; whose lives could only be adapted to it, as we know they were, by an existence full of artificial restraints and discomforts; the painful and arbitrarily imposed conditions of a tyrannical and galling etiquette.
So we think also of our greatest gardens, such as Chatsworth. It is visited by a large number of people who go to see it as a large expensive place to gape at, but surely not for the truest love of a garden. So it is with many a large place; the size and grandeur of the garden may suit the great house as a design; it may be imposing and costly, it may be beautifully kept, and yet it may lack all the qualities that are needed for simple pleasure and refreshment. It is not till we come to some old garden of moderate size that has always been cherished and has never been radically altered, that the true message of the garden can be received and read; and it is from thence downward in the scale of grandeur that we find those gardens that are the happiest and best of all for true delight and close companionship; the simple borders of hardy flowers, planted and tended with constant watchfulness and loving care by the owner’s own hands.
Such a garden is this of Mr. Elgood’s; in a midland county, and on a strong soil that throws up good hardy plants in vigorous luxuriance. Here grow the great Orange Lilies--the Herring Lilies of
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.