Gertrude Jekyll

“ The early days of October bring with them the best bloom of the Michaelmas Daisies, the many beautiful garden kinds of the perennial Asters. They have, as they well deserve to have, a garden to themselves. Passing along the wide path in front of the big flower border, and through the pergola that forms its continuation, with eye and brain full of rich, warm colouring of flower and leaf, it is a delightful surprise to pass through the pergola's last right-hand opening, and to come suddenly upon the Michaelmas Daisy garden in full beauty. ”

“ The rest of the background above eye-level is of the warm bud-colour of the summer-leafing trees, and, below, the fading rust of the now nearly flattened fronds of last year's Bracken, and the still paler drifts of leaves from neighbouring Oaks and Chestnuts. The sunlight strikes brightly on the silver stems of the Birches, and casts their shadows clear-cut across the grassy woodland ride. The grass is barely green as yet, but has the faint winter green of herbage not yet grown and still powdered with the short remnants of the fine-leaved, last-year-mown heath grasses. ”

“ This quantity of Yew and Box clipped into an endless variety of fantastic forms has often been criticised as childish. Would that all gardens were childish in so happy a way! Is not the joy and perfectly innocent delight that the true lover of flowers feels in a good garden in itself akin to childishness, and is not a fine old English garden such as this, with its numberless incidents that stir and gratify the imagination, and its abundance of sweet and beautiful flowers, just the one that can give that happiness in the greatest degree? ”

“ Perhaps the most delightful of all flower scents are those whose tender and delicate quality makes one wish for just a little more. Such a scent is that of Apple-blossom, and of some small Pansies, and of the wild Rose and the Honeysuckle. Among Roses alone the variety and degree of sweet scent seems almost infinite. To me the sweetest of all is the Provence, the old Cabbage Rose of our gardens. When something approaching this appears, as it frequently does, among the hybrid perpetuals, I always greet it as the real sweet Rose smell. ”

“ The play of light and variety of colour of the green surfaces of the clipped evergreens is a delight to the trained colour-eye. Sometimes in shadow, cold, almost blue, reflecting the sky, with a sunlit edge of surprising brilliancy of golden-green—often all bright gold-green when the young shoots are coming, or when the sunlight catches the surface in one of its many wonderful ways. For the trees, clipped in so many diversities of form, offer numberless planes and facets and angles to the light, whose play upon them is infinitely varied. ”

“ Those who have had the luck to see this grand plant at Tangley, two feet high and a mass of bloom, can understand the admiration of others who have met with it in its North American home, and their description of how surprisingly beautiful it is when seen rising, with its large rose and white flowers, and fresh green pleated leaves, from the pools of black peaty mud of the forest openings. But it seems scarcely possible that it can be finer in its own home than it is in this good garden. ”

“ But the best of all climbing or rambling plants, whether for wall or arbour or pergola, is undoubtedly the Grape-Vine. Even when trimly pruned and trained for fruit-bearing on an outer wall it is an admirable picture of leafage and fruit-cluster; but to have it in fullest beauty it must ramp at will, for it is only when the fast-growing branches are thrown out far and wide that it fairly displays its graceful vigour and the generous magnificence of its incomparable foliage. ”

“ The red Rose does not flower so freely here as on a pillar in sunlight, but its fewer stems clamber high into the Holly and the bloom shows in thin natural wreaths that are even more pleasing to an artist's eye than the more ordered abundance of the flowery post. At the foot of the Hollies hardy Ferns grow luxuriantly in the constant shade. A little later a few clumps of Lilies will spring up from among them; the lovely pink rubellum, the fine yellow szovitzianum, and the buff testaceum. ”

“ It is a good plan, when they are in beds or large groups, to plant the dark-flowered Wallflowers among them, their colour making a rich harmony with the reds of the young Pæony growths.
There are balmy days in mid-April, when the whole garden is fragrant with Sweetbriar. It is not "fast of its smell," as Bacon says of the damask rose, but gives it so lavishly that one cannot pass near a plant without being aware of its gracious presence. Passing upward through the copse, the warm air draws a fragrance almost as sweet, but infinitely more subtle, from the fresh green of the young birches ”

“ There is nothing like the true gardening for training the eye and mind to the habit of close observation; that precious acquirement that invests every country object both within and without the garden’s bounds with a living interest, and that insensibly builds up that bulk of mentally noted incident or circumstance that, taken in and garnered by that wonderful storehouse the brain, seems there to sort itself, to distribute, to arrange, to classify, to reduce into order, in such a way as to increase the knowledge of something of which there was at first only a mental glimpse ”

“ Gypsophila paniculata is one of the most useful plants of this time of year; its delicate masses of bloom are like clouds of flowery mist settled down upon the flower borders. Shooting up behind and among it is a tall, salmon-coloured Gladiolus, a telling contrast both in form and manner of inflorescence. Nothing in the garden has been more satisfactory and useful than a hedge of the white everlasting Pea. The thick, black roots that go down straight and deep have been undisturbed for some years, and the plants yield a harvest of strong white bloom for cutting that always seems inexhaustible. ”

“ The flower garden, as it is to-day, is quite modern. The finest of the hardy flowers are well grown in bold groups. Luxuriant are the masses of Phlox and tall Pyrethrum, of towering Rudbeckia, of Bocconia, now in seed-pod but scarcely less handsome than when in bloom; of the bold yellow Tansy and Japan Anemones; all telling, by their size and vigour, of a strong loamy soil.
Many are the arches of cluster and other climbing Roses; at one point in the kitchen garden coming near enough together to make a tunnel-like effect. ”

“ Merely having them, or having them planted unassorted in garden spaces, is only like having a box of paints from the best colourman, or, to go one step further, it is like having portions of these paints set out upon a palette. This does not constitute a picture; and it seems to me that the duty we owe to our gardens and to our own bettering in our gardens is so to use the plants that they shall form beautiful pictures; and that, while delighting our eyes, they should be always training those eyes to a more exalted criticism ”

“ In the evening the scent seems to pour out of the great white trumpets, and is almost overpowering, but gains a delicate quality by passing through the air, and at fifty yards away is like a faint waft of incense. In the evening light, when the sun is down, the great heads of white flower have a mysterious and impressive effect when seen at some distance through the wood, and by moonlight have a strangely weird dignity. ”

“ Whether it is the putting together of two or three kinds of plants, or even of one kind only in some happy setting, or whether it is the ordering of a much larger number of plants, as in a flower-border of middle and late summer, the intention is always the same. Whether the arrangement is simple and modest, whether it is obvious or whether it is subtle, whether it is bold and gorgeous, the aim is always to use the plants to the best of one's means and intelligence so as to form pictures of living beauty. ”

“ All this garden of pool and fountain, easy way of step and gravel, and ornament of flower and sculpture, is bounded by the massive walls of yew, and all beyond is sheltering quietude of ancient trees. From several points around the highest pool, as well as from the rising lawns to right and left of the theatre, straight grass-edged paths, bordered by clipped hornbeam, lead through the heavily wooded ground. From distant points the main walks converge; and here, in a circular green-walled court, stands a tall pedestal bearing a handsome stone vase. ”

“ Surely my fruit garden would be not only a place of beauty, of pleasant sight and pleasant thought, but of leisurely repose, a repose broken only faintly and in welcome fashion by its own interests—in July, August and September a goodly place in which to wander and find luscious fruits in quantity that can be gathered and eaten straight from the tree. There is a pleasure in searching for and eating fruit in this way that is far better than having it picked by the gardener and brought in and set before one on a dish in a tame room. ”

“ With the wind in the south-west and soft rain about, the twigs of the birches look almost crimson, while the dead bracken at their foot, half-draggled and sodden with wet, is of a strong, dark rust colour. Now one sees the full value of the good evergreens, and, rambling through woodland, more especially of the Holly, whether in bush or tree form, with its masses of strong green colour, dark and yet never gloomy. ”

“ SUMMER FLOWERS The end of June and beginning of July—when the days are hot and long, and the earth is warm, and our summer flowers are in fullest mass and beauty—what a time of gladness it is, and of that full and thankful delight that is the sure reward for the labour and careful thoughtfulness of the last autumn and winter, and of the present earlier year! ”

“ A brilliant garden, visible from the house, dressed for spring and dressed for early autumn, is exactly what is wanted—not necessarily from any special love of flowers, but as a kind of bright and well-kept furnishing of the immediate environment of the house. The gardener delights in it; it is all routine work; so many hundreds or thousands of scarlet Geranium, of yellow Calceolaria, of blue Lobelia, of golden Feverfew, or of other coloured material. ”

“ A light cloud of Clematis Flammula peeps over the bushes through the balusters. Stonework so good as this can just bear such a degree of clothing with graceful flowery growth; no doubt it is watched and not allowed to hide too much with an excess of overgrowth. Where garden architecture is beautiful in proportion and detail it is not treating it fairly to smother it with vegetation. ”

“ The Thorns stand some singly, some in close companionship, impenetrable masses of short-twigged prickly growth, with here and there a wild Rose shooting straight up through the crowded branches. One thinks how lovely it will be in early June, when the pink Rose-wreaths are tossing out of the foamy sea of white Thorn blossom. The Hollies are towering masses of health and vigour. Some of the groups of Thorn and Holly are intermingled; all show beautiful arrangements of form and colour, such as are never seen in planted places. ”

“ Like all the best flower gardening it is the painting of a picture with living plants, but, unlike painting, it is done when the palette is empty of its colours. Still the good garden-planter who has intimate acquaintance and keen sympathy with his plants, can plant by knowledge and faith; by knowledge in his certainty of recollection of the habit and stature and colour of his plants; by faith in that he knows that if he does his part well the growing thing will be docile to his sure guidance. ”

“ I call it Pink Beauty. The wide outer petal (a heresy to the florist) makes the flower infinitely more beautiful than the all-over full-double form that alone is esteemed on the show-table. I shall hope in time to come upon the same shape of flower in white, sulphur, rose-colour, and deep blood-crimson, the colours most worth having in Hollyhocks.
Lavender has been unusually fine; to reap its fragrant harvest is one of the many joys of the flower year. If it is to be kept and dried, it should be cut when as yet only a few of the purple blooms are out on the spike ”

“ The colour of the leaves is a fresh, lively green, and in autumn they are prettily marbled with yellow. Where a very large-leaved Vine is wanted nothing is handsomer than the North American Vitis Labrusca or the Asiatic Vitis Coignettii, whose autumn leaves are gorgeously coloured. For a place that demands more delicate foliage there is the Parsley-Vine, that has a delightful look of refinement, and another that should not be forgotten is the Claret-Vine, with autumnal colouring of almost scarlet and purple, and abundance of tightly clustered black fruit, nearly blue with a heavy bloom. ”

“ An experienced gardener, if he were blindfolded, and his eyes uncovered in an unknown garden whose growths left no soil visible, could tell its nature by merely seeing the plants and observing their relative well-being, just as, passing by rail or road through an unfamiliar district, he would know by the identity and growth of the wild plants and trees what was the nature of the soil beneath them. ”

“ How well an artist knows the value of grey-leaved plants, and their use in pictorial gardening in the way of giving colour-value by close companionship, to tender pinks and lilacs, and, above all, to whites! A patch of white bloom is often too hard and sudden and inharmonious to satisfy the trained eye, but led up to and softened and sweetened by masses of neighbouring tender grey it takes its proper place and comes to its right strength in the well-ordered scheme. ”

“ I much enjoy the pergola at the end of the sunny path. It is pleasant while walking in full sunshine, and when that sunny place feels just a little too hot, to look into its cool depth, and to feel that one has only to go a few steps farther to be in shade, and to feel that little air of wind that the moving summer clouds say is not far off, and is only unfelt just here because it is stopped by the wall. ”

“ He becomes more and more aware of what great and enduring happiness may be enjoyed in a garden, and how all that he can learn of it in the leisure intervals of his earlier maturity, and then in middle life, will help to brighten his later days, when he hopes to refine and make better the garden of the old home by a reverent application of what he has learnt. He thinks of the desecrated old bowling-green, cut up to suit the fashion of thirty years ago into a patchwork of incoherent star and crescent shaped beds ”

“ There is no village or public road. The house is approached by a long green forecourt inclosed by walls. Between this and the kitchen garden is the quiet, low, stone-roofed church, in a churchyard that occupies such another parallelogram as the forecourt. The pathway to the church passes across the forecourt into the restful churchyard with its moss-grown tombs and bushes of old-fashioned Roses, and the grassy mounds that mark the last resting-place of generations of long-forgotten country folk. ”

“ AUTUMN FLOWERS How stout and strong and full of well-being they are—the autumn flowers of our English gardens! Hollyhocks, Tritomas, Sunflowers, Phloxes, among many others, and lastly, Michaelmas Daisies. The flowers of the early year are lowly things, though none the less lovable; Primroses, Double Daisies, Anemones, small Irises, and all the beautiful host of small Squill and Snow-Glory and little early Daffodils. Then come the taller Daffodils and Wallflowers, Tulips, and the old garden Peonies and the lovely Tree Peonies. ”

“ Iris stylosa, in sheltered nooks open to the sun, when well established, gives flower from November till April, the strongest rush of bloom being about the third week in March. It is a precious plant in our southern counties, delicately scented, of a tender and yet full lilac-blue. The long ribbon-like leaves make handsome tufts, and the sheltered place it needs in our climate saves the flowers from the injury they receive on their native windy Algerian hills, where they are nearly always torn into tatters. ”

“ Some Quinces planted about eight years ago are now perfect pictures, their lissome branches borne down with the load of great, deep-yellow fruit, and their leaves turning to a colour almost as rich and glowing. The old English rather round-fruited kind with the smooth skin is the best both for flavour and beauty—a mature tree without leaves in winter has a remarkably graceful, arching, almost weeping growth. ”