Frances A. Bardswell

“ The roofs of English houses are not shaped well for gardening, and if there happen to be a back-yard, it is often more like a well than a garden; not a dripping well lined with fern and soft with moss, but a well walled round with smoke-black bricks, and not much of a sky above it. Yet garden-lovers do make their little plots somehow, even in London’s heart, and live there happily tending their flowers. ”

“ In the morning it has been dim with early dew, at noon a carpet all alive with shadows flung from leaves, and in the evening warm and smooth and barred by sunshine. The lawn has been as good as a sun-dial for telling the hours; the trees are the pointers, here a Willow and there an Oak, and the dial-plate is the grass itself. Whether in shade or sunshine, the lawn is always soft to the foot and pleasant to the eye.
In this garden grass was made the keynote. Turf is the favourite bordering for the shrubbery—a good wide border, that makes a handsome edge and is pretty for flowers to tumble over ”

“ For a town wall-plant nothing can surpass the Winter Jasmine, whose yellow blossoms cheer the dullest months, and in summer we welcome its long green trails, which we must not forget to cut back every autumn, or it will get too straggly. It is always the year’s young [Pg 21] shoots that are wanted for beauty. Forsythia, with its golden flowers of February and March, delight us sometimes on the fronts of London houses in very early spring, but the foliage is not so decorative afterwards, and for the balcony we must have summer beauty. ”

“ You take a Lily-of-the-Valley from its vase, attracted irresistibly by its scent, and find it fast set in a corsetière of steel—each leaf and stalk, almost each separate blossom, wired. This gives you a horrid feeling; you idly untwist the cruel bonds, and then the poor flower droops or falls to pieces.
In the ballroom dreadful things are suffered by the Roses. Fancy a curtain all made of these lovely flowers, wired together in long trails to match the festoons that wave softly overhead! ”

“ Arranging flowers is one of those things that every woman in the world thinks nobody can do but herself; she is as much addicted to self-esteem in this direction as a man is over mending the fire; and who does not enjoy the pleasing excitement of setting out the flowers for a ball or dinner-party? The very smell of the wet moss, the cool feel of the stalks, the bunches of pliant fern, the baskets ready to be unpacked, every circumstance is in itself a pleasure, but it is not so nice if you are hurried and interrupted. ”

“ Nor is it altogether unpleasing to have a garden near the busy haunts of men; the roar and rattle of the streets, that sound like the humming of innumerable bees, the strange glow of lights in the distance, the pealing of bells and the striking of many clocks, the thunder and whistle of the trains that link us with friends far off, the stir and throb of human life, that chimes in, not inharmoniously with the calmer life of Nature—all these things combine in making up the unexpressed enjoyments of the dwellers in gardens that lie close to the heart of towns. ”

“ We all get more fond of small gardens than we do of large ones—great lawns and shrubberies are for the crowd—the brilliant crowd; we crave a niche in which to work and live, a little corner of our very own, to plan, to perfect, and to stamp with our own impress. So if we happen to have “grounds” instead of gardens, why, then, to put things right, we make a garden within a garden, and it is in this small spot we feel at home; it is familiar, and it fits us, like the old friend or the long-worn glove, and in our eyes it is beautiful as Corisande’s own garden when she picked the Rose. ”

“ FOG, FLOWERS, AND FOLIAGE
“Air, air, fresh life-blood, thin and searching air,
The clear, dear breath of God that loveth us.”
Air is invisible, and earth a very tangible thing indeed, which makes us forget sometimes how much air does for us, to feed and nourish. We do not only live in it, we live of it; and by we I mean all breathing creatures, whether men or lower animals or plants. What brings the truth most home to us is having to do without air—in a London fog, for instance. ”

“ Cold winds of wintry spring may blow, but, wrapped in folds of pale green tissue (which sets them off amazingly) , bright yellow Daffodils, purple Violets, white Narcissus, or branches of the almond-sweet Mimosa, are carried through the streets by thousands.
All this is delightful; but cut flowers, lovely and decorative as they are, can never satisfy the deeper necessities of the soul. We admire them, we enjoy them, but it can hardly be said we love them; they are too strange to us, like new friends that we have not had time to cultivate, but must let go ere we know them. ”

“ In October the brown and yellowing fronds, with green and gold and red and crimson leaves behind them, are splendid. Our ugly patch is now the best part of the garden—the flower-beds on the turf a little formal, perhaps, but always bright either with spring or summer flowers. Both grass and blossoms are in clover here; they get a sideways benefit from the constant spraying of the bank, and the close-cut turf grows very fine and soft, keeping its greenness through the hottest weather. ”

“ Many will not attempt the task, and rely wholly on the cut flowers of the florist or the daintily filled pots and baskets he sells us, the blossoms in which last hardly longer than those we buy by handfuls. What are the inhabitants of flats and tall town tenements to do when they long for the joys of a little gardening—real gardening—and have not so much as a bit of a back-yard to call their own? Well, even in towns and cities, where there is a will there is a way. One or two alternatives are open to us; one is the Window-box, another is the Roof-garden, and there is the Balcony. ”

“ All town gardeners must make up their mind to contend with difficulties. The worst of them are smoke and smuts. Smoke, however, is not nearly so bad in summer as in winter, nor are there then so many flying children of the soot. We must wash and sponge and syringe, and we must use soft water. Oh, the magic of soft water in the plant-world! but how often the dry and panting flowers sigh for it in vain. We forget or omit to store the water heaven sends us, though nothing is simpler to arrange than a pipe leading from the gutter on the roof down to the ground. ”

“ What time is left to help with work in their own little garden-patches? These lie neglected, while vegetables and garden-produce are purchased by mother from the travelling market-cart, dearer and less fresh than if home-grown. When the boys come home they pore over a borrowed book, or practice sums and easy drawing. Every one of them “means to go to London,” and live by his brains, not at all by his hands; and he is no more at home with a spade or a pitchfork than if he came out of a London slum. ”

“ Even the Holly fern, and the Hay-scented, and the pretty Polystichum-proliferum [Pg 87] that most people consider a greenhouse plant, come up every year, punctual as the morning sunshine, and want nothing but water, and some fresh leaf-mould to grow into, now and then. Sometimes in the autumn we scatter them with dead leaves, and always leave the fronds to wither as they will; no tidying up is allowed. Here Nature holds her sway, and the touch of wildness in an otherwise well-ordered garden is refreshing. ”

“ Next day new growth begins to show, and the fernery, so far from being cross at so much teasing, puts on its fairest smiles, and looks prettier than ever.
But one of the greatest delights of a fernery in London or suburban gardens is the opportunity it gives of growing wild flowers. There are so many of these one longs to have, but there is no room for them. In the herbaceous border they would be pulled up as weeds, and on the rockery they would overgrow the other things. What the dear weeds want is a place where they can rest harmless and unmolested. The outdoor fernery is their Promised Land ”

“ I have often wished that every nursery-window in London might have its window-box for simple flowers. A child’s delight in the first shoot above the ground is a pretty thing to see, and after that there is the miracle of the bud and bloom. ”

“ People seem to think grass has no roots. I have seen the jobbing gardener, as well as the amateur, lay his squares of new turf on anything that came first! This is to court disaster. Turf wants feeding as much as anything else. It is, of course, useless to expect it to do well right under the shadow of a house, or under most trees; but I love grass so much that I consider it indispensable even in the smallest garden, and would not begrudge the trifling expense of laying down fresh turves, where wanted, every season. ”

“ Since Londoners have learned that life without scent and colour is not worth living, England’s capital has become a City of Flowers. It is not only Covent Garden and the great floral shops of the West End that blaze with blossoms ”

“ There is many a quaint touch about these gardens of the suburbs. They are often, like blouses and children’s frocks after sale-time, made of remnants. Some large old holding is cut into blocks. Block A gets bits of orchard; Block B, a piece of garden-ground with Roses and blossoming trees, Block C may have nothing but Briars and Blackberries. Or in another place a stately avenue has been cut down for building, and some magnificent Elm or Oak or Cedar has been spared, and is stranded, a forlorn-looking prisoner, in the back garden of some modern villa. Well, he is a blessing to somebody ”

“ Some town-folk tell me they think Carnations really like smoke, so well they thrive in it. Pyrethrums, both single and double, are among our best town flowers, and will grow almost anywhere and in any ordinary garden soil. The one drawback to their well-being is slugs, who find the young growths too enticing; but we can circumvent this enemy if in autumn we sprinkle ashes, soot, or lime around the crowns. In London it is never difficult to get soot, though, oddly enough, every chimney-sweeper considers our own home-made soot his perquisite, and makes us pay for it. ”

“ It generally consists of a neat row of palings with a realistic stile or gateway in the middle, and bubbles over with Creeping-Jenny and Nasturtiums; the man in the street who passes the costly window-gardens of the rich, how he must sympathize with them, and revel in the sights we give him! This is the best of window-gardening, it is such an unselfish pleasure. Every passer-by is made happier by it. In the love of Nature and of flowers we all join hands, meeting on common ground. ”

“ Lilies and all bulbous plants show unexpected hardiness. Our parks both east and west familiarize us with Snowdrop, Crocus, Jonquil, Narcissus, and Daffodil; and to see how happy Valley-lilies can make themselves within earshot of the bustling Strand, we need only turn our footsteps towards the dim green gardens of the Temple, where banks and parterres of them unfold their verdant cloaks beneath every April sky. ”

“ Earle when she says, “I am all for reducing lawns and turf except for paths in small gardens;” and elsewhere we are advised to have red gravel or a bricked or tiled square to sit on while we admire a wide border of flowers all round the edge. I should not like such a garden as this at all, and could never feel at home in it. Fancy no kindly turf to throw one’s self down upon in the noonday heat, with a book in hand and a tree overhead, or if not a tree, a parasol. ”

“ It is better not to arrange the Fern-box for a very conspicuous room; people get impatient during the resting-time of the plants, and want to turn them out, which is too bad. Nothing and nobody can be always at its best, not even human beings. The only remedy is a second box, and to put the Fern-box away to go through its dormant stage unseen. The danger of this is that it may be forgotten, like canaries are sometimes; but the Fern-box is worth trying for. In summer it is a treat, and its fresh green never looks prettier than in a case of pale blue tiles ”

“ Even these can be improved by a broad edging of grass to every bed. Herbaceous borders are delightful; we cannot live without them, but we do want beds too, they are so brilliant, so useful, and so well-behaved. “Bedders” are the good children of the garden, herbaceous plants the wayward. To manage them is like playing a game of croquet with Wonderland Alice’s [Pg 79] live flamingoes for hoops and mallets; the plants have the same habit of taking their way, not ours, and this puts us more than ever in conceit with our little plots of green enamel, set with coloured flowers like jewels. ”

“ No one will deny for a moment that there is more real joy to be felt over one plant that we have grown for ourselves than over ninety and nine bought ones; and this is not only because attending to its needs has made us love the flower as we love children and other pets and dear dependents—there is another reason. In shop-flowers the method of growth (one of a plant’s greatest beauties) is a charm left out. Sweet Peas, for instance; we buy them squeezed up in tight bunches, all pink ones massed together, or all white or purple. ”