W. Robinson

“ Acacia lophantha.—This elegant plant, though not hardy, is one of those which all may enjoy, from the freedom with which it grows in the open air in summer. It will prove more useful for the flower-garden than it has ever been for the houses, and, being easily raised, is entitled to a place here among the very best. The elegance of its leaves and its quick growth in the open air make it quite a boon to the flower-gardener who wishes to establish graceful verdure amongst the brighter ornaments of his parterre. ”

“ Let us here point to the fact, that any garden whatsoever is but Nature idealised, pastoral scenery rendered in a fanciful manner. It matters not what the date, size, or style of the garden, it represents an idealisation of Nature. Real nature exists outside the artist and apart from him. The Ideal is that which the artist conceives to be an interpretation of the outside objects, or that which he adds to the objects. The garden gives imaginative form to emotions the natural objects have awakened in man. The raison d'être of a garden is man's feeling the ensemble. ”

“ Now, I do not hesitate to say that the introduction of the Mushroom into our domestic economy in as great a degree as we have it in our power to produce it, would practically be the addition of a new agent in our cuisine, second to none for its delicacy, and unsurpassed for utility. It is true the Mushroom is plentiful in its season, but it is with us, at all seasons when it is not to be gathered in the open air, a luxury to numbers of owners of gardens who have means to grow it. ”

“ The large and showy blossoms, clasped erect in their own leaf–vases and sparkling in the sun, while the sward and other vegetation around were yet dormant, had a cheerful influence indeed. True, near by in the hollow, the malodorous Skunk Cabbage was rank in leaf and flower, and the Indian Poke was rushing out its plaited, broadly oval leaves, and away in the streamlet a few Marsh Marigolds glittered on the water. But the Blood–root is neither an aquatic nor a bog plant, but most at home in the leaf–mould beds and linings of rich woodlands. ”

“ Picturesque garden of old English house, admitting of charming variety in its vegetation
That a garden is made for plants is what most people who care for gardens suppose. If a garden has any use, it is to treasure for us beautiful flowers, shrubs, and trees. In these days—when our ways of building are the laughing-stock of all who care for beautiful buildings—there is plenty for the architect to do without spoiling our gardens! Most of the houses built in our time are so bad, that even the best gardening could hardly save them from contempt. ”

“ We may be pleased by the wide spread of purple on a heath or mountain, but when we go near and examine it in detail, we find that its most exquisite aspect is seen in places where the long moss cushions itself beside the ling, and the fronds of the Polypody peer forth around little masses of heather. Everywhere we see Nature judicious in the arrangement of her highest effects, setting them in clouds of verdant leafage, so that monotony is rarely produced—a state of things which it is highly desirable to attain as far as possible in the garden. ”

“ But who shall record the beauty and interest of the flowers of the wide–spreading marsh–lands of this globe of ours, from those of the vast wet woods of America, dark and brown, and hidden from the sunbeams, to those of the breezy uplands of the high Alps, far above the woods, where the little bogs teem with Nature’s most brilliant flowers, joyous in the sun? ”

“ Are we, in laying out our gardens, to ignore the house, and to reproduce uncultivated Nature to the best of our ability in the garden? Or are we to treat the house and garden as inseparable factors in one homogeneous whole, which are to co-operate for one premeditated result? ”

“ There is no natural order more wonderful in the variety and singular shapes of its fruit than that to which the melon, cucumber, and vegetable marrow belong. From the writhing Snake-cucumber, which hangs down four or five feet long from its stem, to the round enormous giant pumpkin or gourd, the grotesque variation, both in colour and shape and size, is marvellous. ”

“ In the winter season, or indeed at any other season, one of the most melancholy things to be seen in our parks and gardens are the long, bare, naked shrubberies, extending, as along the Bayswater Road, more or less for a mile in a place; the soil greasy, black, seamed with the mutilated roots of the poor shrubs and trees; which are none the better, but very much the worse, for the cruel annual attention of digging up their young roots without returning any adequate nourishment or good to the soil. Culturally, the whole thing is suicidal, both for trees and plants. ”

“ But those who attack the old English formal garden do not take the trouble to understand its very considerable differences from the Continental gardens of the same period.
No one has "attacked" old English gardens. Part of my work has been to preserve much record of their beauty. The necessary terraces round houses like Haddon may be and are as beautiful as any garden ever made by man. Can anything be more unlike than the delicate veil of beautiful climbers and flowers over the grey walls of the courtyard at Ightham Mote and the walls of some gardens of our own day? ”

“ The Nepaul Barberry is one of those subjects that are too hardy to perish in our climate, yet which do not usually attain perfect development in it. It exists about London in the open air, and flowers in early spring; but the leaves seldom attain one-fourth of their full development, and the plant scarcely ever displays its vigorous grace. In mild parts, principally in the south and south-west, it grows more freely, and when judiciously placed in sheltered positions, in deep and rather sandy soil, it becomes a beautiful object. ”

“ The myriads of Crocus leaves dying off without the indignity of being tied into bundles as is common in gardens, the dense growth of Aconite and Snowdrop leaves, of coloured and common Primroses and Cowslips, suggest the beauty of this wild garden in spring. ”

“ Beneath all art there are laws, however subtle, that cannot be ignored without error and waste; and in garden design there are lessons innumerable both in wild and cultivated Nature which will guide us well if we seek to understand them simply.
These books are made up in great part of quotations from old books on gardening—many of them written by men who knew books better than gardens. Where the authors touch the ground of actuality, they soon show little acquaintance with the subject; and, indeed, they see no design at all in landscape gardening and admit their ignorance of it. ”

“ Here a Clematis, a climbing Rose, a new kind of Ivy, a wild Vine, or a Virginian Creeper, have all they require, a firm support on which they may arrange themselves after their own natural habit, without being mutilated, or without trouble to the planter, and fresh ground free to themselves. What an admirable way, too, of growing the many and varied species of Clematis! as beautiful as varieties with flowers as large as saucers. ”

“ They possess a permanent dignity and interest, always occupying the ground and embellishing it, displaying distinct tints of ever-grateful green in spring and summer, waving majestically before the gusts of autumn, and beautiful when bearing on their deepest green the snows of winter. ”

“ Thus while it may be right to clip a tree to form a wall, dividing-line, or hedge, it is never so to clip trees grown as single specimens or groups, as by clipping such we only get ugly forms—unnatural, too. Last autumn, in Hyde Park, I saw a man clipping Hollies at the Rotten Row end of the Serpentine, and asking him why it was done, he said it was to "keep them in shape," though, to do him justice, he added that he thought it would be better to let them alone. Men who clip so handsome a tree as the Holly when taking no part in a hedge or formal line are blind to beauty of form. ”

“ Few things are more delightful to anybody who cares about hardy plants than naturalising the Lily of the Valley in pleasant spots about a country house. It is in every garden, of course, and very often so crowded and so starved that it seldom flowers well. A bare garden border is not so suitable for it as that in which it may be found in a thin wood, or in little openings in a copse, where it enjoys enough light, and gets shelter too. Frequently the fresh wood soil would be more welcome to it than the worn–out soil in a garden ”

“ If all interested in flower-gardening had an opportunity of seeing the charming effects produced by judiciously intermingling fine-leaved plants with brilliant flowers, there would be an immediate revolution in our flower-gardening, and verdant grace and beauty of form would be introduced, and all the brilliancy of colour that could be desired might be seen at the same time. ”

“ It is surely flying in the face of Nature to fill our gardens with tropical plants, as we are urged to do by the writers on landscape gardening, ignoring the entire difference of climate and the fact that a colour which may look superb in the midst of other strong colours will look gaudy and vulgar amongst our sober tints, and that a leaf like that of the Yucca, which may be all very well in its own country, is out of scale and character amidst the modest foliage of our English trees. (The Formal Garden.) ”

“ If the dwarfer and choicer conifers were tastefully disposed in and immediately around a flower-garden not altogether spoiled by a profusion of beds for masses of colour, that flower-garden could hardly fail to look as well in winter as in summer; in fact I have seen places where, from rather close association of the more elegant types, the best kind of winter garden was made. Our efforts must tend to prevent a desert-like aspect at any time of the year; and to this end nothing can help us more than a judicious selection of conifers. Almost every beauty of form is theirs. ”

“ Whatever plants may seem best to associate with in gardens, an immense number—more than two thousand species of those now cultivated—would thrive to perfection among our meadow Grasses, as they do on the Grassy breast of the mountain in many lands. Some, like the tall Irises or Columbines, will show their heads clear above the delicate bloom of the Grass; others, like the Cerastiums, will open their cups below it, in this way multiplying the variety of effects that may be obtained. The varieties of Columbine in the Grass were perhaps the prettiest flowers at the time of my visit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So, apart from needless formality of design and bare walls where no walls were wanted, there was often an ugly formality of detail, a senseless attempt to leave Nature out of the garden, an outrage against all that ever has or ever can make a garden delightful throughout the year by ruling that even the walls of the house should not shelter a Rose! ”

“ Why do we always put ferns in the shade, when many of the best and hardiest kinds grow freely in the full sun if sufficiently moist at the root? Why do we always confine them to the fernery proper, when there are so many other places that could be graced by their presence? The very highest beauty of form might be added to beds of low flowers, by the introduction of such ferns as the Struthiopteris, Pteris, Lastrea, etc., while they should also be freely planted in various parts of the pleasure-ground, either alone, or grouped with the Acanthuses and other hardy fine-leaved plants. ”

“ I do not mean that we are to exclude other men than the landscape gardener proper from the garden. We want all the help we can get from those whose tastes and training enable them to help us—the landscape painter best of all, if he cares for gardens18 and trees—the country gentleman, or any keen student and lover of Nature. The landscape gardener of the present day is not always what we admire, his work often looking more like that of an engineer. His gardening near the house is usually a repetition of the decorative work of the house, of which I hope many artistic people are already tired. ”

“ In these islets of bushes in a sea of grass one may gather flowers after they have been all browsed down on the turf. Next to the most interesting aspects of Alpine vegetation, there is perhaps nothing in the world of plant–life more lovely than the delicate tracery of low–climbing things wedded to the bushes in all northern and temperate regions of the earth. Perishing like the grass, they are happy and safe in the earth’s bosom in winter ”

“ They are so hardy that they may be planted in any soil, and afterwards left to take care of themselves. Their fine leaves and bold habit make them valuable ornaments for the margins of shrubberies (the best way is to plant one singly a few feet from the margin of the shrubbery, so that when they die down in autumn no blank may be seen) , and for semi-wild places where a very free and luxuriant type of vegetation is desired. Though not particular as to soil, they enjoy it when it is deep and rich, and the more it is made so the better they will grow. ”

“ In our own country, we have been so long encroaching upon the bogs and wastes that some of us come to regard them as exceptional tracts all over the world. But when one travels in new countries in northern climes, one soon learns what a vast extent of the world’s surface was at one time covered with bogs. In North America day after day, even by the margins of the railroads, one sees the vivid blooms of the Cardinal–flower springing erect from the wet peaty hollows. ”

“ When we come to examine the most charming examples of our own indigenous or any other wild vegetation, we find that their attraction mainly depends on flower and fern, trailer, shrub, and tree, sheltering, supporting, relieving and beautifying each other, so that the whole array has an indefinite tone, and the mind is satisfied with the refreshing mystery of the arrangement. ”

“ Now, such beauty could be obtained without any further aid from other plants; and in many cases it might be desirable to consider the trees and shrubs and their effect only, and let the turf spread in among them; but we have the privilege of adding to this beautiful tree and shrub life another world of beauty—the bulbs and herbaceous plants, and innumerable beautiful things which go to form the ground flora, so to say, of northern and temperate countries, and which light up the world with loveliness in meadow or copse, or wood or alpine pasture in the flowering season. ”

“ Nothing can be finer than the aspect of this plant when allowed to spread out into a mass on the turf of the flower-garden or pleasure-ground. It seems much to prefer deep sandy soils to heavy ones; indeed, I have known it refuse to grow on heavy clay soil, and flourish most luxuriantly on a deep sandy loam in the same district. Like all large-leaved plants, it loves shelter. No garden or pleasure-ground in the southern parts of England and Ireland should be without a tuft of it in a sheltered spot. ”

“ I was led to think of the enormous number of beautiful hardy plants from other countries which might be naturalised, with a very slight amount of trouble, in many situations in our gardens and [vi] woods—a world of delightful plant beauty that we might in this way make happy around us, in places now weedy, or half bare, or useless. I saw that we could not only grow thus a thousandfold more lovely flowers than are commonly seen in what is called the flower garden, but also a number which, by any other plan, have no chance whatever of being seen around us. ”

“ Apart altogether from our want of a more elegantly diversified surface in the flower-garden—the best and most practical way to meet which is by the use of such plants as these and neat and elegant young specimens of such things as Thujopsis borealis—there is, in many British gardens, a great gulf between the larger tree and shrub vegetation and the humbler colouring material, which most will admit should be filled up, and there is nothing more suitable for it than the many graceful conifers we now possess. ”

“ But the prettiest results are only attainable where the grass need not be mown till nearly the time the meadows are mown. Then we may have gardens of Narcissi, such as men never dared to dream about a dozen years ago; such as no one ever thought possible in a garden. In grass not mown at all we may even enjoy many of the Lilies, and all the lovelier and more stately bulbous flowers of the meadows and mountain lawns of Europe, Asia, and America. ”

“ The Wild Roses, Purple Vetch, Honeysuckle, and the Virgin’s Bower, clamber above smaller, but not less pretty, wildlings, and throw a veil of graceful life over the mutilated shrubs, reminding us of the plant–life in the nest–like thickets of dwarf shrubs that one often meets on the high Alpine meadows. ”

“ Look, for instance, at the wide and bare belts of grass that wind in and around the shrubberies in nearly every country place; frequently, they never display a particle of plant–beauty, and are merely places to be roughly mown now and then. But if planted here and there with the Snowdrop, the blue Anemone, the Crocus, Scillas, and Winter Aconite, they would in spring surpass in attractiveness the gayest of spring gardens. Cushioned among the grass, these would have a more congenial medium in which to unfold than is offered by the beaten sticky earth of a border ”

“ Among the many plants suitable for the wild garden none look more at home than Borage, a few seeds of which scattered over fresh dry ground soon germinate, and form fine patches that will flower during the summer. Although only an annual, once it is introduced there is no fear of losing it, as it comes up somewhere near the same spot each succeeding year, and when in bloom the peculiar Solanum–like shape of the blossoms, and their rich blue colour, make it beautiful. ”

“ There is no finer picture at present to be seen in gardens than a free–growing flowering creeper, enjoying its own wild way over an old tree or stump, and sending down a rain of flower–laden shoots. A Clematis montana here, originally trained on a wall, sent up some of its shoots through a tree close at hand, where, fortunately, they have been allowed to remain, and now the long shoots hang from the tree full of flowers. ”

“ The surface which is dug and wasted in all our parks, and in numbers of our gardens, should be occupied with this varied life; not in the miserable old mixed border fashion, with each plant stuck up with a stick, but with the plants in groups and colonies between the shrubs. In the spaces where turf would not thrive, or where it might be troublesome to keep fresh, we should have irises, or narcissi, or lupines, or French willows, or Japan anemones, or any of scores of other lovely things which people cannot now find a place for in our stiff gardens. ”

“ To do it rightly we must group and mass as Nature does. Though we may enjoy a single flower or tuft here and there, the true way is natural fringes and masses of plants, one or two species prevailing in a given spot; in that way we [62] may secure several important ends—distinct effects in different places, a variety as we walk along, and better means of meeting the wants of a plant, inasmuch as, dealing with a group, or mass, or carpet, we can best observe the result of our judgment in putting them in any soil or place. ”