The Cultivated Wild, Natures Authenticity Versus Human Control

“ The "call of the wild," where the love of flowers is concerned, has an attraction which is not the less powerful because it is difficult to explain. The charm of the garden may be strong, but it is not so strong as that which draws us to seek for wildflowers in their native haunts, whether of shore or water-meadow, field or wood, moorland or mountain. A garden is but a "zoo" (with the cruelty omitted) ; and just as the true natural history is that which sends us to study animals in the wilds, not to coop them in cages, so the true botany must bring man to the flower, not the flower to man. ”

“ For it is as friends, not garden captives or herbarium specimens, that the flower-lover desires to be acquainted with flowers. It is not their uses that attract him; that is the business of the herbalist. Nor is it their structure and analysis; the botanist will see to that. What he craves is a knowledge of the loveliness, the actual life and character of plants in their relation to man—what may be called the spiritual aspect of flowers—and this is seen and felt much more closely when they are sought in their free wild state than when they are cultivated on rockery or in parterre. ”

“ And yet, to the true lover of Nature, wild flowers have a charm which no garden can equal. Cultivated plants are but a living herbarium. They surpass, no doubt, the dried specimens of a museum; but, lovely as they are, they can be no more compared with the natural vegetation of our woods and fields, than the captives in the Zoological Gardens with the same wild species in their native forests and mountains. ”

“ The modern accepted view of all floral display is that it serves the purpose of attracting insects, and acts as a contrivance by means of which the fertilization of a flower by its own pollen is prevented. Botanists of earlier days did not force this truth upon the attention of others, and many persons better qualified to judge of human than natural history arrived at the erroneous, if not somewhat selfish, conclusion that floral forms and colors were primarily to beautify the earth and render it a pleasant habitation for man. ”

“ Each delicate flower has about two days of life. During rainy weather the petals fold over the green stigmas and the yellow stamens to protect them from moisture. The blossom closes with the last rays of daylight and reopens as the sun dispels the darkness, so that only the careful observer and the early riser realize that it “draws the drapery of its couch about it and lies down to pleasant dreams.” It is true that some wild roses may be found open at night, but these are the ones whose seeds are fertilized and whose pollen is carried off, so that rain and dew are no longer to be feared. ”

“ As I passed up the glen on the right of the brook beyond Hemlock Island, so called, carpeted with partridge-berry vines bearing a wondrous crop (“See the berries!” my notebook says) , I began to find here and there the large trillium (T. grandiflorum) , some of the blossoms clear white, others of a delicate rosy tint. The rosy ones had been open longer than the others, it appeared; for the flowers blush with age,—a very modest and graceful habit. Like the spurred violet, the trillium is a plant also of northern New England, but happily for my present enjoyment I had never seen it there. ”

“ Ages before men cultivated gardens, they had tiny helpers they knew not of. Gardeners win all the glory of producing a Lawson pink or a new chrysanthemum; but only for a few seasons do they select, hybridize, according to their own rules of taste. They take up the work where insects left it off after countless centuries of toil. Thus it is to the night-flying moth, long of tongue, keen of scent, that we are indebted for the deep, white, fragrant Easter lily, for example, and not to the florist ”

“ Along life's dusty thoroughfare I see the world, but not as I saw it once: sickness and sorrow have given me another pair of eyes.
Gentle breezes, balmy breezes,
There is vigor in your breath,
But ye cannot bring the roses
To the leaden cheeks of death!
The soil that produces the rankest weeds would by proper care and cultivation produce the richest crops: so will the human heart when regenerated by grace and truth.
The violet cannot become the rose, the daisy cannot be the lily; and if they could all be the loveliest flower, earth would lose half its beauty. ”

“ The domestication of plants, as of animals, is a concern of such practical importance that in most minds it quite transcends whatever interest may be felt in the beauty of wildflowers. But the many delights of the garden ought not to blind us to the fact that there is in the wild a peculiar quality which the domesticated can never reproduce, and that the plant which is free, even if it be the humblest and most common, has a charm for the nature-lover which the more gorgeous captives of the garden must inevitably lack. If much is gained by domestication, much is also lost. ”

“ In the former the flowers are broken from their stems and stuck into the ground; they are beautiful to the eye and fragrant to the sense, but their colours soon fade, and their odour is transient as the smile of the planter;—while the meadow may be visited again and again with renewed delight; its beauty is innate in the soil, and its bloom is of the freshness of nature. ”

“ One would gladly leave {248} this old world, whose surface is disfigured all over by man’s patched drilled deformities, and pass on to a new one, where inviolated nature has produced and reared her own children after her own fashion, where every plant occupies its own place and blossoms in its own time. ”

“ The flower falls apart so easily that when in full bloom it will hardly bear transportation, but with a touch the stem stands naked, a bare gold-tipped sceptre amid drifts of snow. And the contradiction of its hues seems carried into its habits. One of the most shy of wild plants, easily banished from its locality by any invasion, it yet takes to the garden with unpardonable readiness, doubles its size, blossoms earlier, repudiates its love of water, and flaunts its great leaves in the unnatural confinement until it elbows out the exotics. ”

“ Some wild flowers will live, and what a delight they are in spring. We have a Jack-in-the-pulpit who comes up just as jauntily there as in the wild woods; Dog-tooth Violet and our common wild Violet also bloom. A city neighbor has Trillium which blossoms each year; our Trillium shows leaves, but no blossoms, and does not increase in spread of roots. Bloodroot, a flower so shy when gathered in the woods, and ever loving damp sites, flourishes in the dryest flower bed, grows coarser in leaf and bloom, and blossoms earlier, and holds faster its snowy petals. ”

“ Culture brings the flower up, erect on the stem, makes it radically symmetrical, restores the rudiment to a perfect stamen, prunes the flower of its eccentricities, and makes it regular—just as it does with a man.
Nature is, in the plant, what her name implies, "natura," a something about to be, a continual becoming. We see what changes are going on in the garden. Changes the same in kind are going on in the fields and the woods. A stroll over Goat Island on any May day will show the observant eye how variable in size and color and even in structure is the Trillium grandiflorum. ”

“ The wild Roses of the world, had we no other plants, would alone make beautiful wild gardens. The unequalled grace of the Wild Rose is as remarkable as the beauty of bloom for which the Rose is grown in gardens. The culture is mostly of a kind which tends to conceal or suppress the grace of shoot and foliage of the Rose. Therefore the wild garden may do good work in bringing before the many who love gardens, but have fewer chances of seeing the Roses in their native haunts, the native grace of the well–loved Rose, which even in its obesity, and trained into the form of a mop, still charms us. ”

“ Cultivation has its limits. After we have produced it, we find that the biggest rose even is not the most precious; and lovely as woman is, we instinctively in our admiration put a limit to her size. There being, then, certain laws that ultimately fetch us all up standing, so to speak, it does seem probable that the chrysanthemum rage will end in a gorgeous sunset of its splendor; that fashion will tire of it, and that the rose, with its secret heart of love; the rose, with its exquisite form; the rose, with its capacity of shyly and reluctantly unfolding its beauty ”

“ The old gentleman replied that the mode could be described in three words, “cultivate, cultivate, cultivate.” After the same manner, we would impress the importance [Pg 99] of these three words upon all those who love well-grown and beautiful roses. They are, indeed, multum in parvo—the very essence of successful culture. The soil cannot be plowed, dug, or stirred too much; it should be dug and hoed, not merely to keep down the weeds, but to ensure the health and prosperity of the plant. Cultivation is to all plants and trees manure, sun, and rain. ”

“ Then, as now, there was a danger of over cultivation of certain plants and flowers, so that a man might have more pride in the number and curiosity of his flowers, than in the beauty and colour of them. It is a certain fault in modern gardeners that they do not study the grouping and massing of colours, but do, more generally, take pride in over-large specimens, great collections, and rare varieties. But this age and that are times of collecting, of connoisseurship, ages that produce us great art of their own but have an extraordinary knowledge of the arts and devices of the past. ”

“ Our artificially evolved domesticated plants are more subject to disease than their wild prototypes, because they are not natural survivals of the fittest. They are survivals only by virtue of the art of man, inducing special properties pleasing to man's senses, and therefore profitable for sale; but in the development of some such special excellence, ability to elaborate protective defence is generally neglected, and the special excellence produced may possibly be antagonistic to the really sound constitution of the plant. ”

“ The children do not stop to think that at the base of the bright, fragrant blossoms grow the seed that will make the flowers of the next year. Nature can spare the seed of a part of the blossoms, for she grows many more than she needs; but if we pick them all, what can she do for the coming year?
The wild flowers are living things struggling for a place in the world, just as are the animals and birds. We cannot abuse and destroy too many of them if we would have them stay and add to the beauty of our homes. ”

“ But there is a sad tale to tell of the plant which once the chief pride of these shingles, the starry-headed trefoil, a very lovely pink flower fringed with silky hairs, which, though not a native, has been naturalized near the bank of the harbour since 1804, but now, owing to the enclosures made for ship-building works, has been all but exterminated. "This," wrote the author of the Flora of Sussex (1907) "is one of the most beautiful of our wildflowers, and is found in Britain at Shoreham only. ”

“ If it expands, its centre and its cradle dies, and on the outer borders only do we find green shoots. But it is not impossible, only difficult, for man, without renouncing the advantage of culture itself, one day to make reparation for the injury which he has inflicted: he is appointed lord of creation. True it is that thorns and thistles, ill-favoured and poisonous plants, well named by botanists rubbish plants, mark the track which man has proudly traversed through the earth. Before him lay original Nature in her wild but sublime beauty. ”

“ Equally striking results take place under the influence of man without his design or selection. There are a great many indigenous plants which are rarely found outside of the influence of human cultivation. They emerge from their obscure natural retreats at the approach of civilization, spread rapidly over fields and pastures, and often become formidable enemies of the farmer and the gardener. Under the general name of weeds they are proscribed and pursued, and no effort is spared for their extermination. ”

“ The packet of Flower Seeds for the "Wild Garden" consists of more than a hundred varieties, sufficient for a square rod of ground. There must needs be a peculiar charm in the "Wild Garden." When one wearies of the monotonous ribbon beds and geometrical designs so long in fashion, they can turn to the spot where flowers run riot at their own sweet will, and give daily surprises because sown broadcast without any regard to their names and location. [18] Multitudes there are, who, with abundance of land at their command, can have one on a large scale, others can have, but a small spot. ”

“ There are many who have ground specially adapted by its wildness for the blending of the cultivated flowers with those which grow in their native dells or woods. Wild shrubs, wild flowers, wild climbers, can be transplanted to situations quite like their own. There can be ferneries and rockeries, beds of violets and wild evergreens, and combined with careless grace, such tropical plants and brilliant annuals as would give the most pleasing effect and afford a beauty wholly unique. ”

“ Usually flower beds and borders are in the full sun—a very proper arrangement in a cool country. But even in our climate, there are in the warm months many days in which the woodland shade is sought in preference to the open lawn, and when the fully–exposed garden is deserted. Therefore, it is clearly desirable that we have flowers in shady as well as sunny places. Many plants, too, love the shade, and we only require to plant the most suitable of these to enjoy a charming wild garden. It need not be pointed out to Americans that a vast number of herbaceous plants naturally inhabit woods. ”

“ And not only may we be assured of numbers of the most beautiful plants of other countries thriving in deep ditches and in like positions, but also that not a few of them, like the white wood lily, will thrive much better in them than in any position in garden borders. This plant, when in perfection, has a flower as fair as any white lily, while it is seldom a foot high; but, in consequence of being a shade–loving and wood plant, it usually perishes in the ordinary garden bed or border, while in a shady dyke or any like position it will be found to thrive as well as in its native woods ”

“ Put in them the plants you like. Perhaps the greater part of them should be perennials that come up of themselves every spring, and that are hardy and reliable. Wild flowers are particularly effective. Every one knows that many of the native herbs of woods and glades are more attractive than some of the most prized garden flowers. The greater part of these native flowers grow readily in cultivation, sometimes even in places which, in soil and exposure, are much unlike their native haunts. ”

“ Neither the woodman's axe nor the fire could take the vitality out of that redwood stump, for the saplings have sprung out of its clefts, and the old roots are sending these new spires up toward the heavens. As little does the destruction of a nation affect the genesis of the race, or its everlasting succession. The orchard is the symbol of peace, abundance, the mellowness of life. It is the sign of a gentle civilization grafted on to the wildness of nature. The wild blackberry and strawberry, which grow along the fences and hedgerows, have an aboriginal flavor. ”