Part 2

Gardening readers will remember Dean Hole's story of the enthusiastic flower-loving navvy who, obtaining the post of gatekeeper on the railway, was provided with nothing but a barren gravel pit as apology for a garden. "Twelve months afterwards," says the Dean, "I came near the place again--was it a mirage which I saw on the sandy desert? There were vegetables, fruit-bushes and fruit-trees, all in vigorous health; there were flowers, and the flower-queen in her beauty, 'Why, Will,' I exclaimed, 'what have you done to the gravel-bed?' 'Lor' bless yer,' he replied, grinning, 'I hadn't been here a fortnight afore I swopped it for a pond!' He had, as a further explanation informed me, and after an agreement with a neighbouring farmer, removed with pick and barrow his sandy stratum to the depth of three feet, wheeled it to the banks of an old pond, or rather to the margin of a cavity where a pond once was, but which had been gradually filled up with leaves and silt; and this rich productive mould he had brought home a distance of two hundred yards, replacing it with the gravel, and levelling as per contract."

That man's garden was a real living creation: it was indeed a "great work." And it is in everything true that great natural possessions, though they may render life more comfortable and possibly more apparently successful, yet make the battle the tamer and less interesting. Indeed the greater the odds to be overcome, the more magnificent will every victory appear, and the gardener who creates a flowery Eden out of a piece of bare and starving desert has scored a greater success than his who but grows beautiful flowers and delicious fruits where soil and site and surroundings have been entirely on his side.

I am writing in a garden which is as remarkable an example of difficulties overcome as was the garden of Dean Hole's navvy. Those who are familiar with the sand-dunes or towans which form so pronounced a feature of much of the northern coast-line of Cornwall, will realize that these scarcely afford ideal spots for easily made gardens. A thin coating of poor grass, reeds, wild thyme and occasional sea-hollies form the only drapery for the blown sand which makes up the whole body of soil.

Yet it was on such a spot that a friend of mine pitched his camp, or rather built his cottage, and set to work to create a garden. His aim in life being to kill care, he desired nothing more eagerly than to be constantly occupied. For three years he spent fully one half of his days in bringing into his territory leafmould and soil, clay and manure. He soon had a good protective screen of pines, euonymus, privet and hazel, and only then did he seriously begin to plant his garden. He had, during those three years, raised crops of clover, trifolium and the like, digging them again into the newly created soil from whence they came.

He read all the gardening books on which he could lay hands, he saw all the gardens within walking distance, and he studied the wants of every flower before he sowed or planted it, just as though it were an honoured guest whom he were inviting. He had no rule-and-compass scheme before his eyes, and planted his shrubs and flowers in those situations where they might most healthily yield their beauty and their fragrance. Such paths as his garden has are merely gravelled developments of the beaten tracks which usage indicated as necessary or convenient; and I am afraid that they would meet with the disapproval of that great authority, Mr Reginald Bloomfield, who has said that a garden "should be laid out in an equal number of rectangular plots where everything is straightforward and logical."

My friend is nearly twenty years older than when he began to create his garden, and it has already acquired much of the character of an old house to which successive additions have been made. The year through, the earth is draped and decorated with beautiful plants, Aconites, Snowdrops, Crocuses, Primroses, Violets, Fritillaries, Columbines, Pinks, Roses, Lilies, Sunflowers and all the host of old-fashioned flowers.

The great problems of "architectural" gardening, "landscape" gardening, and the rest, did not interest him. So simple and unpretentious was his little house that an attempt at terraces, clipped evergreens, and the like, would have struck a jarring note at once. Therefore, it is quite in keeping that beautiful flowers and beautiful shrubs border one's way right up to the entrance door; nor does Nature end there, for over all the outer walls are trained lovely and fragrant climbers--Clematis, Rose, and Honeysuckle--which give the idea that the cottage does indeed "nestle" in the garden.

Through the open windows also, at almost any time of the year, pours the delicious scent of leaf and flower--of Winter Sweet, Violets, or Sweet Peas; of Stocks, or Mignonette; of Wallflowers, or Roses. Just to name a few of the plants whose scent fill the rooms, what glories are thereby called up:--Honeysuckle and Jasmine, Lily of the Valley, Lilac and Narcissus, Carnation, Syringa and Heliotrope, Thyme, Bergamot, and Aloysia! These, and a hundred other fragrances mingled together in infinitely varying combinations, give sensuous joys which even the most jaded can but appreciate. For there is probably no pleasure so democratic as that which is yielded by the fragrance of flowers and leaves. The colour and form of plants require a little attention for their appreciation, but their odour overwhelms our senses whether we attend or no. The variety of perfumes yielded by plants is almost as great as their forms, for blossom of Apple and of Jonquil, leaf of Strawberry, Currant and Sweet Gale gives each an æsthetic pleasure peculiar to itself.

In Elizabethan times, a royal visit seems to have been preceded by a process of sweeting the house, which consisted in filling the rooms with scent of crushed leaves and flowers, scattering also extracts and essences of fragrant plants. This sweeting of the rooms is a continuous process through the open windows of the cottage, and no queenly visit would induce any augmentation of it.

Through the trees, which now have grown to moderate size, may always be seen the most beautiful setting which a beautiful garden can have--the ever restless sea. The contrast is good and effective, and is calculated to prevent any undue development of horticultural vanity.

I thought of Ruskin's statement that "the path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers, but they rise behind her steps, not before them," when one day I sat on a quaint old seat under a pear tree in this little flowerful garden; for it is literally behind his steps, not before them, that all the beauty of my friend's garden has sprung up. Each beautiful leaf and stem and flower are products of his labour and care almost as much as of sun and rain. Yet to a stranger the garden shows no sign of human fingers, human muscles, or human interference.

To many, possibly to most, there is attractiveness in a garden of well-kept, straight-bordered paths, of tidy beds symmetrical beyond reproach, of plants arranged like soldiers under review; but to me such gardens--however pleasant to look at--seem unsuited to repose and impossible to sit and dream in.

This garden is very different. It has no trees cut to the shape of peacocks or wind-mills, no hideous collection of stakes and raffia, which goes by the name of "the carnation bed" (after the manner of Thackeray's "library where the boots are kept"). It is merely a bit of enclosed and humanised natural beauty, a place where one may quietly enjoy delightful flowers and delightful fragrance without the jarring condition of viewing behind the scenes all the time that the performance is being enacted. Every flower in the garden was originally planted by my friend, and has been regularly watched over and tended by him ever since, yet not one but looks as though it had been planted at the creation of the world and had been subject only to the forces of Nature all its life. There is a suggestion of woodland, a suggestion of hedgerow, a suggestion of hillside, yet, of course, the garden differs from them all. It is the absence of bare earth--for scarcely one inch of soil lies undraped by plants--which partly gives the garden that feeling of settled-down-ness. A half-dressed person, a half-papered wall, a half-filled bookcase, a half-finished house--all these things hinder the feeling of repose. So it is that nearly all gardens, looking, as they do, to be in a state of preparation and incompleteness, make restfulness out of the question. But in this garden repose seems the natural emotion, and to sit there beneath a tree and read or chat is always the appropriate thing.

It is not, however, that the earth is all draped which alone causes the feeling of rest. This is due very largely to the fact that the garden is not a "show-garden," was not created for show, but for the satisfaction of its creator.

The "comfortable feel" of the garden is largely assisted also by the nature of the flowers and plants which he has elected to cultivate: Gilly-flowers, Pinks and Purple Columbines, Sweet Carnations, Daffodils and lovèd Lilies. To quote Korumushi, a poet of the race which has the spirit of flower-worship in its heart--

"No man so callous, but he heaves a sigh When o'er his head the withered Cherry-flowers Come fluttering down."

And no man is so devoid of feeling as to be unmoved by the sight of the flowers associated with the ideals of the race--the flowers which Chaucer loved, and Shakspere.

I have seen a beautiful garden, containing none but flowers mentioned by Shakspere. This, however, was after all but a piece of pretty pedantry, and necessitated the absence of Foxgloves, Forget-me-Nots, Snowdrops, and other beautiful flowers. It is indeed strange that he, the greatest poet of gardens as of other things, never mentions these flowers, although they must have been well known to him. Speaking of the Snowdrop, Gerard, who was a contemporary of Shakspere, said: "These plants doe grow wilde in Italy, and the parts adjacent, notwithstanding our London gardens have taken possession of most of them many years past." This rather indicates that the Snowdrop then held a very different place in the gardener's heart, from the place which it since has won; and doubtless the same holds good of the other flowers which Shakspere left unmentioned. If Shakspere were writing now, using the names of flowers as he used them--"not to show his own knowledge," but because the particular flowers supplied the appropriate simile or key to sentiment--he could scarcely fail to mention the Foxgloves or Lady's Fingers, the sweet Forget-Me-Nots, and, more beautiful still, the chaste, unflinching Snowdrops. A flower takes time--generations even, it may be--really to eat its way into the heart of man; for it is not enough that it be merely beautiful or merely fragrant--attractive to our senses though these properties are--in order that we may really become incorporate with a flower. But it must, in addition, be full of association, and have been long watched and lovingly studied. There is one book, difficult now to obtain, containing a record of the truest appreciation and most careful study of flowers, and of the beauty of flowers, which we have in the language. That book is called "Flowers and Gardens," by Dr Forbes Watson, and the following passage from its pages beautifully explains the sentiment of the gardener who grows mainly old-fashioned flowers, or, at any rate, flowers with which he has been long familiar--

"We make the acquaintance of any individual existence under an immense number of different aspects, and it is the sum of all these aspects which constitutes that existence to us. A Snowdrop, for instance, is not to me merely such a figure as a painter might give me by copying the flower when placed so that its loveliness shall be best apparent, but a curious mental combination or selection from the figures which the flower may present when placed in every possible position, and in every aspect which it has worn from birth to grave, and coloured by all the associations which have chanced to cling around it. To the bodily eye which beholds it for the first time it might be of no consequence what lay within the petals, though even then the imagination would be whispering some solution of the secret; but to the eye of mind, when the flower has been often seen, that hidden green and yellow which is necessary to complete the harmony becomes distinctly visible--visible, that is, in that strange, indefinite way in which all things, however apparently incompatible, seem present and blended together when the imaginative faculty is at work. The common Star of Bethlehem (_Ornithogalum umbellatum_) is a good illustration of the working of this principle. When I look at the beautiful silver-white of the inner surface of the petals, my mind is always dwelling upon and rejoicing in the fact that their outer side is green, though of that green outside I cannot see a hair's breadth. Again, we find the same principle at work in the feeling which compelled the old sculptors to finish the hidden side of the statue. They said, 'For the gods are everywhere.'"

There are people of whom we say (indeed, it is possibly true of everyone)--_à bas_ the cynics--that the more intimately we know them, and the longer we know them, the more we see to love and admire. So it is with a really beautiful plant, and for this reason they who would obtain all the possible pleasure and beauty from their gardens should become, not gardeners only, but also botanists and students of poetry and of beautiful form.

In spite of Shakspere's omission, then, I advise everyone to grow many species of Snowdrops; indeed, for a week or two in February, my friend's sea-side garden seems to be all draped with their green leaves and serene green-white "drops," yet not one podgy, graceless double flower is there among them all. For he agrees with Forbes Watson that the "doubling" of beautiful flowers generally results in deformity and the destruction of all beauty and meaning. Double Roses, Pinks, and Carnations, he grows of course; for their fragrance, their history, and, in the case of Roses, their continuous bloom compensate to some extent for the loss of character in the petals, and for the "pen-wiper" appearance which has only too often been given to the individual flowers.

To return to the Shakspere garden, one finds that Shakspere's floral year practically began with the Daffodil.

"When Daffodils begin to peer, With heigh! the doxy o'er the dale, Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year."

The yellow Crocus seems to have been introduced into English gardens whilst Shakspere was writing his plays, and there was then, alas, no _Gardeners' Chronicle_ to bring him the news. Gerard describes it as having "flowers of a most perfect shining yellow colour, seeming afar off to be a hot glowing coal of fire. That pleasant plant was sent unto me from Robinus, of Paris, that painful and most curious searcher of simples." What pictures are summoned before our minds' eyes even by the few words just quoted: "pleasant plant;" "sent unto me from Robinus of Paris;" "that painful and most curious searcher of simples." Each phrase shows a type of mind or a view of life.

The garden of my friend is a "pleasant" garden, and he, too, is a "curious searcher" of beautiful and pleasant plants. That is why his garden seems to be an old-fashioned garden, and not because it is at all like Shakspere's garden, or Mary Arden's garden, or the hideous Elizabethan gardens pictured in the "Hortus Floridus," published in 1614. His, though not by any means a Tottenham Court Road product, is no Wardour Street garden, but is old-fashioned in the sense that some of Heal's bedsteads are old-fashioned, or that beautiful English prose is old-fashioned as contrasted with the English of the yellow press.

He would not be without his Snowdrops, and quite as emphatically would he not be without his Crocuses. Great clumps everywhere, among the shrubs, at roots of trees and by the path-sides, radiate light and beauty like so many fairyland flashes. First come the violet cups of Crocus imperati, often before January has passed; then the brilliant array of yellow Crocus luteus (overwhelming the Snowdrops, by then well past their chief beauty and chief interest), followed by Crocuses of every shade of purple, lavender, and white. These, like the Snowdrops, are left quite undisturbed year after year, and if there be some little falling off in the size of the flowers, which is doubtful, there is more than compensation in the added beauty which the resulting gradation of colour and natural grouping yield. When I think of these glories, I can but reflect on how much beauty that academic "Shakspere-garden" goes lacking. Indeed, we shall all do well to steer clear of formulas and rigidity, as well in our lives as in our garden-beds.

COTTAGE GARDENS

The term "cottage garden" is an elastic one, and may be made to include all that big class of gardens where, in the words of the flower-show schedule, "no regular gardener is employed." But I think that most people, when they think of cottage gardens, picture to themselves those little wayside plots attached to the homes of working folks which cheer the passer-by nearly as much as they cheer their owners. One thinks of Rose and Clematis climbing over the doorway, of Sweet-Williams, Pæonies, Hollyhocks, Sunflowers and Pansies flowering in bed or border. Old-fashioned herbaceous plants are those which one associates with these cottage gardens, and nearly the year through one expects to find something of interest and of beauty.

Such is the ideal; sometimes such is the reality.

In some of our rural districts, where the local squire is of the resident benevolent feudal school, the cottages are surrounded by little paradises of flowery beauty. Those who have travelled through the Porlock Estate of the Acland family will know what I mean. In many places, however, little pride or interest is taken in gardening, and the yards fronting the cottages are dull and dismal from January to Christmas. Indeed, there are few districts where pretty cottage gardens are the rule.

Yet it were as easy to create a lovely picture within an area of twenty square yards as in the space of a palace garden, though possibly not so imposing or valuable an one. The size of the canvas is a detail; the other limitations are, however, more important. In a little plot we must often do without those lovely backgrounds of tree and shrub and those lovely foregrounds of grass or other dwarf herbage which are such helps in creating great garden pictures. It is at a sonnet that we small gardeners must aim and not at an epic or great narrative poem. Yet I often feel that brevity is of the very essence of fine poetry, and it is possible that limitation of space may be contributory to the finest expression of gardening. At all events, it affords a greater test of one's skill and taste as a gardening craftsman, for, whereas, in a big place, trees, shrubs and lawn almost create a beautiful garden of themselves, in a little garden we have to practise more selection and more rejection, and to exercise greater judgment and care in arrangement, since here every detail counts and every fault jars.

The cottage gardener has usually to employ the simplest flowers wherewith to express himself, but it is probable that this limitation is helpful rather than a source of increased difficulty. He may say, in the spirit of Lewis Carroll:--

"I never loved a dear gazelle, Nor anything that cost me much: High prices profit those that sell, But why should I be fond of such?"

And these old common plants thrive as well and flower as beautifully in the garden of the shepherd as in the grounds of Windsor Castle. The wind blows from the same quarter, the rain falls equally, and the frost is as severe in the one as in the other.

I like each garden to contain some one feature of special and unique interest--some well-grown plant which is not much cultivated in the neighbourhood, or some brilliant floral pageant peculiar to the particular garden. Thus, one garden which I know is always associated in my mind with a little thicket, about ten feet in height, of the White-stemmed Bramble (_Rubus biflorus_), which, on a moon-lit evening, is a most impressive sight, and even in winter is very beautiful. In another little garden I always look for its show of beautiful Pansies, of which its owner--a fisherman--is very naturally and rightly proud. Of course, a special feature of this kind need not interfere with the perennial interest which every garden, even the smallest, should possess. For instance, in the garden with the Nepal Bramble (which, by the way, is surprisingly little known when one recalls the fact that it was introduced many a hundred years ago) are Poppies and Roses, White Musk-Mallows and Columbines, Canterbury Bells and Michaelmas Daisies; and my friend of the Pansies has the earliest Crocuses and Snowdrops in his village, and relies on a hedge of Chrysanthemums and Rosemary to brighten his plot when the Pansies are over.

If our suburban villas were fronted by unpretentious plots cultivated frankly as cottage gardens and bordered by simple palings, how very different would be their aspect, and how much more pleasant would a suburban walk become. For there are numerous plants of great beauty which would thrive even in the suburbs of London, given care and a little knowledge as to the correct preparation of the soil.

In the country, very much may be done by those who care to do so. Country squires, doctors, parsons and others who have money, or time, or influence can very materially alter the appearance of their district by encouraging the gardening spirit among working folks, by helping with advice if they are themselves gardeners, by helping with surplus plants, seeds and cuttings, and by organising competitions and offering prizes for the best kept cottage gardens.

Small gardens are the largest which are at the disposal of most of us, but we need not bemoan our fate on that account. Fully as great pleasure may be extracted from a tiny plot as from broad acres, and a few plants well grown are as productive of satisfaction as is the largest collection. "It was a singular experience that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans," said Thoreau, "but I was determined to know beans." That is the true gardening spirit, and with that as a possession one may pluck as much joy from the cultivation and study of Thistles or Brambles, or even Docks (as Canon Ellacombe reports a friend as growing--his acquaintances, of course, laughing at him for making a Dock-yard), as from the rarest Orchids of the millionaire.

One of the greatest gifts of a perfect garden is the gift of solitude, and that is generally beyond the power of the little cottage plot to offer; but, as a source of infinite pleasure to its owner, as a source of pleasure to all those who pass by, as a cheering feature of English landscape, and as a great force tending towards contentment and peace, the cottage garden is beyond price.

THE GARDEN IN WINTER