Gertrude Jekyll

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 aspect and sentiment of the garden, now that it has grown into shape—its lines closely following, as far as it went, the old design—are in perfect accordance with the whole feeling of the place, so that there seems to be no break in continuity from the time of the original planting some centuries ago. Such as it is to-day, such one feels sure it was in the old days—in parts line for line and path for path, but throughout, just such a garden as to general form, aspect, and above all, sentiment, as it must have been in the days of old. ”

“ The castle stands at one corner of the old walled kitchen garden, a door in the north front opening directly into it. The garden has no architectural features. There are walks with high box edgings and quantities of simple flowers. Everywhere is the delightful feeling that there is about such a place when it is treated with such knowledge and sympathy as have gone to the re-making of Kellie as a delightful human habitation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is none the less beautiful because it is a garden almost without flowers, so important and satisfying are its permanent forms of living green walls, with their own proper enrichment of ball and spire, bracket and buttress, and so fine is the design of the actual masonry and sculpture.
The large rectangular pool, known as the Canal, bordered with a bold kerb, has at its upper end a double stair-way; the retaining wall at the head of the basin is cunningly wrought into buttress and niche. Every niche has its appropriate sculpture and each buttress-pier its urn-like finial. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Sometimes a stem will incline downwards and run along the ground, followed by another. In the evening half-light they might be giant silver-scaled serpents, writhing and twisting and then springing aloft and becoming lost to sight in the dim masses of the crowning foliage. Seen thus one can hardly reconcile its identity with that of the poor, tamed, often-clipped bush of every garden. The Laurel is so docile, so easily coerced to the making of a quickly-grown hedge or useful screen, that its better qualities as an unmutilated tree in a mild district are usually lost sight of. ”

“ A garden many generations old may thus be a reflection of the minds of several of such possessors—men who have not only thankfully paced its green spaces and delighted in its flowery joys, but who have held it in that close and friendly fellowship whose outcome is sure to be some living and lasting addition either to its comfort, its interest, or its beauty. ”

“ There is some excellent gardening in a long flower-border outside the forecourt wall. Here the size of the house is no longer oppressive, and it comes into proper scale a little way beyond the point where the broad green ways, bounded by noble hedges of ancient yews, swing into a wide circle as they cross, and show the bold niches cut in the rich green foliage where leaden statues are so effectively placed. ”

“ And when the day’s work is done, and the light just begins to fail, no one knows better than the artist that then is the best moment in the garden—when the colours acquire a wonderful richness of “subdued splendour” such as is unmatched throughout the lighter hours of the long summer day. Then it is that the flowers of delicate texture that have grown faint in the full heat, raise their heads and rejoice ”

“ There could have been no pleasure garden in the old days; but now these ancient strongholds, mellowed by the centuries, seem grateful for the added beauty of good gardening. The grand yew hedges may be of the seventeenth century. They stand up solid and massive for ten feet or more, with roof-shaped tops, and then rise again at intervals into great blocks, bearing ornaments like circular steps crowned with a ball. The ornament is simpler, a low block and ball only, in the first picture, where they accentuate the arches that lead right and left into the two divisions of the flower garden. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That close, fine turf of the gardens of Britain is a thing so familiar to the eye that we scarcely think what a wonderful thing it really is. When we consider our flower and kitchen gardens, and remember how much labour of renewal they need—renewal not only of the plants themselves, but of the soil, in the way of manurial and other dressings; and when we consider all the digging and delving, raking and hoeing that must be done as ground preparation, constantly repeated ”

“ 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. ”

“ Probably he has been harvesting all day, and his strong frame is tired, with that feeling of almost pleasant fatigue that comes to a wholesome body after a good day’s work well done; and when the hardly-earned rest is thoroughly enjoyed. So he sits quite quiet, with one eye on the possible interests of his outer world, the road, and the other on the beauty of his flower-border. ”

“ By July there are still more of our tall garden flowers; the stately Delphiniums, seven, eight, and nine feet high; tall white Lilies; the tall yellow Meadow-Rues, Hollyhocks, and Sweet Peas in plenty.
By August we are in autumn; and it is the month of the tall Phloxes. There are some who dislike the sweet, faint and yet strong scent of these flowers; to me it is one of the delights of the flower year.
No garden flower has been more improved of late years; a whole new range of excellent and brilliant colouring has been developed. ”

“ The house stands on a wide space of grass terrace commanding the garden. On a lower level is a large quadrangular parterre, with cross paths. In each of its square angles is a sunk garden with a five-foot-wide verge of turf and a bordering stone kerb forming a step. The beds within, filled with good hardy plants, have bold box edgings eighteen inches high and a foot thick, that not only set off the bright masses of flowers within, but have in themselves an air of solidity and importance that befits the large scale of the place. ”

“ The garden is laid out to view, almost as a picture hangs on a wall, in the very best position for the convenience of the spectator; and there is nothing that gives a greater sense of dignity, with something of a poetical mystery, than separate flights of steps ascending one after another in plane after plane—as they do in that magnificent example, Canterbury Cathedral. It matters not whether the steps are under a roof or not—the impression received is the same. And there is much beauty in the steps themselves being long and wide and shallow. Looking uphill we see the steps ”

“ It is visited by a large number of people who go to see it as a large expensive place to gape at, but surely not for the truest love of a garden. So it is with many a large place; the size and grandeur of the garden may suit the great house as a design; it may be imposing and costly, it may be beautifully kept, and yet it may lack all the qualities that are needed for simple pleasure and refreshment. It is not till we come to some old garden of moderate size that has always been cherished and has never been radically altered, that the true message of the garden can be received and read ”

“ Does not the oldest of our legends, so closely bound up with our youngest apprehension of religious teaching, tell us of the earliest of our race of whom we have any record or even tradition, living happily in a garden in a state of childish innocence? Why should a garden not be childish?—perhaps when it truly deserves such a term it is the highest praise it could possibly have! ”

“ But the terrace is of fine effect, with the great flight of steps midway in its length that lead down to a wide unspoilt lawn. This again passes to the fish-pond, then to parkland with undulating country beyond.
The treatment of the ground is admirable. Fifty years ago the lawn would probably have been cut up into flower-beds, a frivolity forbidden by the dignified front.
Gardening is always difficult, often best let alone, in many such cases. When the architecture, especially architecture of the classical type, is good and pure, it admits of no intrusion of other forms upon its surfaces. ”

“ Roses are in fact rampant. A rough trellis, simply made of split oak after the manner of the hurdles used for folding sheep in the Midlands, but about six feet high, stands at the back of the main double flower-border. Rambling Roses and others of free-growing habit are loosely trained to this, their great heads of bloom hanging out every way with fine effect; each Rose is given freedom to show its own way of beauty, while the trellis gives enough support and guides the general line of the great hedge of Roses. ”