Part 1

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Handbooks of Practical Gardening--Iv

Edited by Harry Roberts

THE BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS

THE BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS

And Other Plants Which Thrive in the Open-Air of England

by

HARRY ROBERTS

Author of "The Chronicle of a Cornish Garden"

With Numerous Illustrations Reproduced from Drawings by Ethel Roskruge

John Lane: The Bodley Head London and New York. MCMI

Turnbull & Spears, Printers, Edinburgh.

TO HOMELY UNAFFECTED PEOPLE WHO APPRECIATE HOMELY UNASSUMING FLOWERS

"_The precious metals are not often found at the surface of the earth._"--SIR ARTHUR HELPS

"_I speak with the lowliest of the meadow flowers as readily as with the highest fir-trees._"--HEINE

CONTENTS

PAGE

THANKS xiii

SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS 1

OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 4

A GARDEN BY THE SEA 12

COTTAGE GARDENS 24

THE GARDEN IN WINTER 28

THE GARDEN IN SPRING 37

THE GARDEN IN JUNE 48

HOW TO GROW ROSES 52

THE GARDEN IN JULY 57

NIGHT IN THE GARDEN 62

THE GARDEN IN AUGUST 69

THE GARDEN IN AUTUMN 73

SHELTER AND SHADE 81

SOILS AND THEIR PREPARATION 86

MANURES 94

SEED-SOWING AND TRANSPLANTING 96

LAYERS AND CUTTINGS 101

WEEDS 103

INSECT AND OTHER PESTS 107

POINTS 111

ILLUSTRATIONS

AN OLD-FASHIONED GARDEN _Frontispiece_

PAGE

POPPY ANEMONES 13

FRITILLARIES 29

COLUMBINES 41

HONESTY 53

MACARTNEY ROSES 65

WHITE WOOD LILIES 75

FOXGLOVES 89

SHIRLEY POPPIES 99

THANKS

To that distinguished and generous gardener, Canon Ellacombe, I wish to express my appreciation of his kindness in giving me the freedom of his collection of old garden books, though few are so good, interesting, or useful as his own "Plant Lore of Shakspere" and "A Gloucestershire Garden."

To Mr Folkard I am obliged for the loan of his interesting book on "Plant Lore and Legend."

To the Editors of the _Morning Leader_, _Gardeners' Chronicle_ and _Gardeners' Magazine_ I am obliged for the right to republish such parts of the following book as have appeared in their several papers as essays from my pen.

To Messrs Kelway, of Langport, I am indebted for many presents of beautiful Delphiniums, Pæonies and Pyrethrums, which they grow as few others can.

SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS

Many years ago an ingenious writer compiled a book dealing with a subject with which he had no practical acquaintance. The whole of his alleged observations were second-hand, being derived from previous writings on the subject. In order, however, to hoodwink the public, this author laid great stress on the uselessness of mere book knowledge, saying that an ounce of experience was worth a stone of theory.

Like many other foolish sayings, this one has been regarded as an inspired utterance, and has been copied by nine-tenths of all subsequent writers of handbooks. As a matter of fact, whilst a certain amount of practical experience is absolutely essential to the proper understanding of nearly all subjects, an intelligent reader can learn more in an hour from a sensible book than from many weeks of intercourse with merely "practical" people, and many weeks of so-called experience.

This little book, forming one of a series of handbooks with an aim purely practical, has itself an entirely practical object. This object is to teach those who are comparatively new to gardening the general principles which they must observe if they wish to grow successfully those flowering plants which are able to live their whole lives in the open air of this country. By old-fashioned flowering plants are meant those which we may class with the herbaceous, bulbous and other hardy plants which one always expects to find in the old cottage gardens, old vicarage gardens and old farmhouse gardens of romance, and occasionally in those of reality. One is continually discovering fresh old-fashioned people, and in like manner we are continually having additions made to our list of old-fashioned flowers. Many newly discovered or newly introduced plants, therefore, are treated of in this book, which is not intended merely as a "Book of Old Flowers." Still, as a matter of fact, most of the flowers named in these pages are old favourites, and have long been grown and sentimentalised over by English gardeners and poets.

No attempt has been made to render this a complete handbook of hardy flowers. In the first place, the pages at disposal would barely serve even to enumerate them, and, in the second place, the compilation of a reference encyclopædia of hardy flowers has been done, and done admirably, by our greatest gardening writer, Mr William Robinson, whose book, "The English Flower Garden," is in many ways the most important work on gardening which has appeared since the time of Parkinson.

The flowers here named are but a few of those which are worth growing, for to the present writer nearly every plant, when allowed to develop freely and naturally, is full of interest and full of beauty. Everyone should decide for himself what he will grow in the particular environment he may have to offer, for, once the art of properly growing the flowers here named has been mastered, little difficulty need be anticipated in growing such other hardy plants as may be thought desirable additions to the list.

In the matter of garden arrangement, I have neither given dogmatic advice nor stated fixed rules which must be followed; for it is as undesirable that gardens should be stereotyped copies of one another, as it would be in the case of their owners. I have, instead of dogmatising on the rights and wrongs of garden design, described one or two gardens which have yielded me delight, though I fear that I have not been able to conceal my own point of view. What that point of view is I have stated in my "Chronicle of a Cornish Garden," but I am sufficiently broad-minded to recognise that other styles of gardening appeal to other gardeners who are quite as competent to form opinions as myself.

A garden should, as I believe, be an emanation from the spirit of its owner, and, just as some men are formal and some informal, some prim and some Bohemian, some careful and some rash, so should their several gardens vary in style and feeling.

I have laid down no laws as to the arrangement of flowers with a view to producing "colour schemes," for I have never seen colour schemes which surpass those chance effects of the hedgerow and the meadow, or of those pleasant gardens where the gardeners' sole aim is to grow plants from the plants' point of view, that is to say, with the sole aim of growing them healthily and well. Of course, occasionally, a bad colour shows itself, but the remedy is simple and obvious. Occasionally, also, a colour discord will be perceived in bed or border, but a spade will cure the trouble in five minutes. Indeed, there is some small risk at the present moment that the individuality of beautiful plants and flowers may be too frequently sacrificed to the production of "effects." This was the deadly fault of the "bedding" system, and should be guarded against. The bedding system has made such beautiful flowers as geraniums, calceolarias and lobelias stink in the nostrils of some of us; just as the disgusting invention of Dr. Gregory has been successful in making raspberry jam a source of nausea to tens of thousands of English boys and girls.

Let us as gardeners beware of being too clever and "artistic"; Nature may be a hard mistress, but she is not a fool.

OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS

Strictly, of course, the term is indefinite, for old-fashioned flowers and old-fashioned gardens mean to different people different things. Probably to most people--at all events to the present writer--old-fashioned gardening means that system which is in direct opposition to prim geometric beds and to the imitation of carpet patterns by arrangement of flowers. By an old-fashioned garden, the present writer means an informal "garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permit to be noursed up," as Parkinson put it; and by old-fashioned flowers he means sweet williams and gilly flowers, mignonette, sweet peas, roses and honeysuckle, "daffodils, fritillaries, jacinthes, saffron-flowers, lilies, flower-deluces, tulipas, anemones, French cowslips or bearseares, and such other flowers, very beautifull, delightfull and pleasant." After the severe, monotonous, formal arrangements which still too often constitute the gardens around our finest houses, how interesting and restful it is to stroll round a delightful garden such as Canon Ellacombe's "Vicarage Garden" at Bitton, where the shape of the beds or borders is not prearranged, where all the soil is occupied, where every plant looks healthy and at home, where every yard brings one a surprise and a fresh interest, where the old walls have growing from their crevices such plants as the Cheddar Pink, Sedums and Sempervivums; where, too, every plant in its glory hides the decay of its predecessor in bloom and shelters the birth of its successor.

There is a class--and a very large class--of folks who are so constituted that continual prize or applause hunting are essentials to happiness. For such, the topiary-victimised trees, the glaring carpet beds, and the flower show are useful and comparatively harmless instruments for the indulgence of their little weaknesses. But it goes sorely against the grain to give to such the honourable and historic title of gardener, just as one hesitates to describe as a gardener the issuer of that curious "catalogue of greens" which Pope satirically described in No. 173 of _The Guardian_:--

"Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm; Eve and the serpent very flourishing. Noah's Ark in holly, the ribs a little damaged for want of water.

"The tower of Babel not yet finished.

"St George in Box; his arm scarce strong enough, but will be in a condition to stick the dragon by next April.

"A green dragon of the same; with a tail of ground-ivy for the present.

"_N.B._--Those two are not to be sold separately.

"Edward the Black Prince in Cyprus....

"A Queen Elizabeth in Phyllirea, a little inclining to the green sickness, but of full growth.

"An old maid of honour in wormwood.

"A topping Ben Jonson in Laurel.

"Divers eminent modern poets in bays."

As a matter of fact, what we understand as old-fashioned gardening has never been a fashion at all. When Addison wrote in _The Spectator_ that he would "rather look upon a tree in all its luxuriancy and diffusion of boughs and branches, than when it is cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure," and that he fancied that "an orchard in flower looks infinitely more delightful than all the little labyrinths of the most finished parterre," he was declaiming against--not with--the fashion of his day. In truth there is no escape from the fact that in old times, as they are at present, real lovers of plants and of flowers for their own sakes were few indeed. In the time of Elizabeth and thenabouts, however, the gardening spirit seems to have been purer and more wholesome than during the succeeding centuries. John Lyly, for instance, was, in sentiment at least, a genuine "old-fashioned" gardener:--"Heere be faire Roses, sweete Violets, fragrant Primroses, heere wil be Jilly-floures, Carnations, sops in wine, sweet Johns, and what may either please you for sight, or delight you with savour." At that time also was written what is perhaps the greatest or at any rate one of the most important pronouncements on gardening ever written--the essay "Of Gardens," by Lord Bacon. Here, indeed, is the real touch, the genuine gardening spirit: "I do hold it in the Royal Ordering of Gardens, there ought to be Gardens for all the Months in the year, in which, severally, things of Beauty may be then in season;" and again, "because the Breath of Flowers is far Sweeter in the Air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of Musick), than in the Hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that Delight, than to know what be the Flowers and Plants that do best perfume the Air. Roses, Damask and Red, are fast Flowers of their Smells, so that you may walk by a whole Row of them and find nothing of their sweetness; yea, though it be in a morning Dew. Bays likewise yield no smell as they grow, Rosemary little, nor Sweet-Marjoram. That, which above all others, yields the sweetest smell in the air, is the violet, especially the white double Violet, which comes twice a year, about the middle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the Musk Rose, then the Strawberry Leaves dying with a most excellent Cordial Smell. Then the Flower of the Vines; it is a little Dust, like the Dust of a Bent, which grows upon the cluster at the first coming forth. Then Sweet-Briar, then Wall-Flowers, which are very delightful to be set under a Parlour, or lower Chamber Window. Then Pinks, especially the Matted Pink, and Clove Gilly-Flower. Then the Flowers of the Lime-Tree. Then the Honey-Suckles, so they be somewhat afar off.... But those which perfume the Air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being Trodden upon and Crushed, are three: that is Burnet, Wild-Time, and Water-Mints. Therefore you are to set whole Alleys of them, to have the Pleasure when you walk or tread." The essence of "old-fashioned" gardening is here expressed.

Our modern "florists" are wont to sneer at the lack of variety possessed by the old gardeners, but they must be curiously unfamiliar with the writings of such men as Gerard, Gilbert and Parkinson. To give but one or two examples, the last named writer, in his "_Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris_," gives a descriptive list of twelve distinct varieties of Fritillaries, eight varieties of Grape-Hyacinths, and no less than twenty-one varieties of Primroses and Cowslips, whilst of Lilies and of Roses the kinds described are even more numerous.

The greatest joy which a garden can yield is a feeling of restfulness and peace, a feeling which no garden of staring beds and ostentatious splendour can afford, but which is yielded--as by nothing else in the world--by a garden of happy, homely, old-fashioned flowers.

To most people, and more particularly to most women, one of the chief uses or functions of a garden is to provide flowers to be cut for the decoration of rooms. But I hold that a flower cut from its plant and placed in a vase is as a scalp on the walls of a wigwam--a trophy showing how one more beautiful plant has been defeated and victimised by its powerful and tasteless owner. The cut flower is no longer part of a manifestation of the will of nature; rather it is a slave--beautiful, it may be, but branded and soul-destroyed.

Regarded as decoration, I consider cut flowers in a house much as fashion now looks on shell ornaments, or picture-frames made of acorns, as things inappropriate and childish. Of course, in a town there is some excuse for them, for even cut flowers carry the mind to beautiful associated conditions; but cut flowers in the country seem ludicrously like lumber, just as bedsteads and toilet-services and cruet-stands placed in a garden would be lumber too.

The love of cut flowers is really but another manifestation of the spirit which hankers after "yews carved into dragons, pagodas, marmosets," and the other tree-monsters scoffed at by Rousseau, who added that he was convinced that "the time is at hand, when we shall no longer have in gardens anything that is found in the country; we shall tolerate neither plants nor shrubs; we shall only like porcelain flowers, baboons, arbour-work, sand of all colours, and fine vases full of nothing."

Indeed, there is in many quarters even now a growing desire for the kind of "new garden," which old William Lawson advocated: "Your Gardiner can frame your lesser wood to the shape of men armed in the field, ready to give battell: or swift running Greyhounds: or of well sented and true running Hounds, to chase the Deere, or hunt the Hare. This kinde of hunting shall not waste your corne, nor much your coyne. Mazes well framed a man's height, may perhaps make your friend wander in gathering of berries, till he cannot recover himselfe without your helpe."

Of course, the cutting of flowers is a long way from this; still it is difficult to see where a line can be drawn once the worship of "gardeners' gardens" has begun.

Through the open windows of house or cottage the eyes should be able to feast on the beauty of freely growing flowers quite as easily as if they were cut and stuck in glass or porcelain vase like so many heads of traitors on the city gates.

It has been said that all children are born scientists, but that only a small number of them ever pass on to the condition of artists; and it has always seemed to me that there is much truth in the statement. Children are ever putting the eternal "why?" to the great confusion of their parents, pastors, and masters; and it is the curious, the gigantic, the rare, which always calls forth their attention and admiration. Struwelpeter is more to a child than all the beauties of a Charles Robinson, and to few men or women is it given to derive as much pleasure from beauty as from that which is usually called "interesting." Hence, the ordinary criticisms of gardens; hence, also, the usual aims of gardeners. So many people desire the gaudy, or the unique, or the curious, that we are apt to look upon gardens merely as appliances for the production of quaint or monstrous flowers.

The analysis of beauty has ever a dissecting-room-feel about it; still, as he who would become a skilful surgeon must be first a practical anatomist, and as he who would be a painter must first study his materials and the "dodges" of his craft, so must the would-be artist in gardening dissect the beauty of perfect gardens, and study such apparently dull materials as earth and manure, and practical garden books.

I have said that the beauty of an old-fashioned garden is due largely to the feeling of repose and settled-down-ness which it yields. Every plant looks as though it "belongs" (as we say in Cornwall) to be where it is, as though it always was there, and as though there is no intention of shifting it in a week or two to some glass-house, store-room, or other site. The plants in most gardens look as though they have merely come to pay an afternoon call, dressed exactly _à la mode_, speaking always "cumeelfo"--like the people of Troy Town, and elsewhere--giving one the certain knowledge that they will only say the right thing, look the right thing, and leave at the right time, unregretted and unmissed. The "comfortably-at-home" effect is produced mainly by three causes--firstly, the presence of abundant deciduous trees and shrubs, giving infinitely varied effects of light and shade; secondly, the arrangement of the plants in bold groups of single species; and, thirdly, the provision of each separate plant with depth of suitable soil, and space to develop its individual form. There is plenty of background, and not too much episode.

Country people often think that the way to enjoy London is to spend day and night in one continuous round of "sight" seeing. In like manner, people often have an idea that the perfect garden is a continuous sheet of wonderful flowers. How great is the fallacy contained in this idea it should be needless to point out. Leaf and stem, light and shade and fragrance, these are quite as essential parts of a garden as are the "blooms" of the gardening showman.

An eye for beauty is largely a product of training and experience. A soul and a brain there must be as a basis, but "taste" is to a large extent cultivated. One must have read much before one is able to appreciate the style of a Ruskin or a Pater, a Maeterlinck or a Le Gallienne; one must have studied many pictures before being able to realise the beauty of the works of the great artists; and in like manner one must needs have loved and watched plants long and steadfastly before the beauty of winter twig and summer leaf comes home to him.

Many a man with a garden looks upon winter as a season to be got through as soon as possible, as a season when nothing short of necessity shall drag him into the garden. I am sure that even in the very heart of December, one should find in the garden more of real beauty than ninety-nine gardens out of a hundred contain in June. I recall in particular one little heather path bordered by large bushes of blue-grey Lavender and green-grey Rosemary, in the bays being great Mullein plants and clumps of Pink and Alyssum. Ferns, Periwinkles, Holly, Satinleaf, Hellebores, Winter Aconites and Barberries are but a few of the plants which help to make this walk bright and pleasant even in the depths of winter; but most important of all in the Christmas display are the Furzes, single and double, than which, according to Mr Alfred Russell Wallace, the tropics can produce nothing more brilliant or more beautiful.

Continuous beauty all the year through, rather than a continuous display of flowers, is a goal at which gardeners might wisely aim, for not only is the result far more restful and suggestive of reserved force and becoming modesty, but also the individual plants are far more likely to have a fair chance of development at the hands of one who appreciates beautiful leaves and healthy growth, than when cultivated by one who looks at plants merely as flower-making machines.

A GARDEN BY THE SEA

It is fortunate that we are not all provided with equally favourable sites and soils. How monotonous would gardening become if one knew that he had but to act, deed for deed, as his neighbour in order to attain exactly the same garden result. We should feel disposed to throw down our spades and trowels if the end of our efforts might be foreseen by looking over our neighbour's boundary. If the difficulties to be overcome could be formally catalogued, the whole art of gardening would be reduced to a wooden system in which there would be little room for surprise or pleasure. But Fate has decreed that our gardens shall differ in spite of the apish copying spirit which still fills so many of our breasts. Our sites vary, our soils vary, and our atmospheric conditions vary to such an extent that any gardener, if he is to produce a result of any worth, must perforce use his native intelligence in order to overcome the specific difficulties peculiar to his plot of earth.