Harry Roberts

“ Not everyone can grow the Gentians, but certainly everyone can grow—though not all of us can exterminate—those beautiful Veronicas, the Germander Speedwell and the Field Speedwell, with their brightest of blue flowers. Merely to name the dandelion, daisy, plantain, convolvulus, dock, pheasant's eye, and even the groundsel, is to remind ourselves of the great beauty which our garden weeds possess, and of the essential place which they occupy in the mental picture of a homely garden. ”

“ No garden, no road, no wall or fence even, but grass does its best to drape and to beautify it. And if gardening has made men blind to the beauty of the grass leaf, so blind that they needs must roll and cut it for appearance's sake, then is gardening to be ranked with that spirit of vestrydom, of which Mrs Meynell says such true, sarcastic things. ”

“ To most people, and more particularly to most women, one of the chief uses or functions of a garden is to provide flowers to be cut for the decoration of rooms. But I hold that a flower cut from its plant and placed in a vase is as a scalp on the walls of a wigwam—a trophy showing how one more beautiful plant has been defeated and victimised by its powerful and tasteless owner. ”

“ July is the month of climax for the gardener who grows only annual flowers raised afresh each year from seed. A very fine show he may have, too, during his somewhat brief season. To the grower of herbaceous plants who aims, and wisely aims, at having flowers all the year through, July is but one month out of twelve. Spring means for him not a season for sowing, so much as a very flowery season, full of Crocuses and Anemones, of Primroses and of Hepaticas; for him even winter itself is not flowerless, since he has his Hellebores and winter Aconites and fragrant Coltsfoot. ”

“ So many people desire the gaudy, or the unique, or the curious, that we are apt to look upon gardens merely as appliances for the production of quaint or monstrous flowers.
The analysis of beauty has ever a dissecting-room-feel about it; still, as he who would become a skilful surgeon must be first a practical anatomist, and as he who would be a painter must first study his materials and the "dodges" of his craft, so must the would-be artist in gardening dissect the beauty of perfect gardens, and study such apparently dull materials as earth and manure, and practical garden books. ”

“ I thought of Ruskin's statement that "the path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers, but they rise behind her steps, not before them," when one day I sat on a quaint old seat under a pear tree in this little flowerful garden; for it is literally behind his steps, not before them, that all the beauty of my friend's garden has sprung up. Each beautiful leaf and stem and flower are products of his labour and care almost as much as of sun and rain. Yet to a stranger the garden shows no sign of human fingers, human muscles, or human interference. ”

“ Just to name a few of the plants whose scent fill the rooms, what glories are thereby called up:—Honeysuckle and Jasmine, Lily of the Valley, Lilac and Narcissus, Carnation, Syringa and Heliotrope, Thyme, Bergamot, and Aloysia! These, and a hundred other fragrances mingled together in infinitely varying combinations, give sensuous joys which even the most jaded can but appreciate. For there is probably no pleasure so democratic as that which is yielded by the fragrance of flowers and leaves. ”

“ One of the greatest gifts of a perfect garden is the gift of solitude, and that is generally beyond the power of the little cottage plot to offer; but, as a source of infinite pleasure to its owner, as a source of pleasure to all those who pass by, as a cheering feature of English landscape, and as a great force tending towards contentment and peace, the cottage garden is beyond price. ”

“ The last bees have reached their hives, laden with the sweet product of their hard labour. The honeyed flowers, which look to their visits and to the visits of other sun-loving insects for aid in fertilisation, have, so far as possible, covered their tempting cups to avoid the damping or loss of the precious pollen within. Snails and slugs crawl from hidden caves, prepared to work in darkness the evil which fear of feathered warders hinders by day. Except for these workers of ill, these foes of beauty, the garden is apparently going to sleep. ”

“ THE GARDEN IN WINTER When the last of the Michaelmas daisies and of the out-door chrysanthemums have cast their blooms, many gardeners are apt to think that the interest and beauty of the garden are over, and that for three months there is nothing to be done but to dig and enrich the soil, and to wait patiently for the onset of spring. ”

“ Many a man with a garden looks upon winter as a season to be got through as soon as possible, as a season when nothing short of necessity shall drag him into the garden. I am sure that even in the very heart of December, one should find in the garden more of real beauty than ninety-nine gardens out of a hundred contain in June. I recall in particular one little heather path bordered by large bushes of blue-grey Lavender and green-grey Rosemary, in the bays being great Mullein plants and clumps of Pink and Alyssum. ”

“ It is the absence of bare earth—for scarcely one inch of soil lies undraped by plants—which partly gives the garden that feeling of settled-down-ness. A half-dressed person, a half-papered wall, a half-filled bookcase, a half-finished house—all these things hinder the feeling of repose. So it is that nearly all gardens, looking, as they do, to be in a state of preparation and incompleteness, make restfulness out of the question. But in this garden repose seems the natural emotion, and to sit there beneath a tree and read or chat is always the appropriate thing. ”

“ One must have read much before one is able to appreciate the style of a Ruskin or a Pater, a Maeterlinck or a Le Gallienne; one must have studied many pictures before being able to realise the beauty of the works of the great artists; and in like manner one must needs have loved and watched plants long and steadfastly before the beauty of winter twig and summer leaf comes home to him. ”

“ But I think that most people, when they think of cottage gardens, picture to themselves those little wayside plots attached to the homes of working folks which cheer the passer-by nearly as much as they cheer their owners. One thinks of Rose and Clematis climbing over the doorway, of Sweet-Williams, Pæonies, Hollyhocks, Sunflowers and Pansies flowering in bed or border. Old-fashioned herbaceous plants are those which one associates with these cottage gardens, and nearly the year through one expects to find something of interest and of beauty. ”

“ If the weather be dry, yet not frosty, it is well to settle the soil above the roots by means of a heavy watering. If the roses are to form a bed, they may, if dwarfs, be planted at an average distance of about eighteen inches apart.
But a bed of roses, beautiful as it is, is but one expression of the culture of these precious flowers. Over walls, trellises, arches and arbours they should be allowed to trail and climb at will, showing the graceful curves of briar stem, as well as the beautiful flowers themselves. ”

“ This is a narrow and an ill-informed view, for, though through the months of winter we cannot hope to see many or gaudy flowers, we may yet have our gardens bright and interesting with evergrey and evergreen shrubs and herbs, with the delightfully-coloured barks of willows, dog-woods and other trees, and, not less interesting, with the often beautiful stems of the last season's growth of herbaceous plants, usually sacrificed to the tidying spirit of those who would tidy the floor of heaven itself. ”

“ Soil is to plants not a source of food alone, but is a suit of clothes, a blanket and coverlet, a cooking-range and a drawing-room fire. It is a pied-à-terre in its most literal sense, and it is a cellar and tankard combined. To all the great and beautiful world of flowers, the soil is indeed mother earth, giving them warmth and nourishment in their infancy, affording them a root-hold throughout their life, and offering them sanctuary for their bodies when their earthly life is done.
He who would grow beautiful flowers must therefore first study the soil from which he would raise them. ”

“ Through the open windows of house or cottage the eyes should be able to feast on the beauty of freely growing flowers quite as easily as if they were cut and stuck in glass or porcelain vase like so many heads of traitors on the city gates. ”

“ A Snowdrop, for instance, is not to me merely such a figure as a painter might give me by copying the flower when placed so that its loveliness shall be best apparent, but a curious mental combination or selection from the figures which the flower may present when placed in every possible position, and in every aspect which it has worn from birth to grave, and coloured by all the associations which have chanced to cling around it. ”

“ When I look at the beautiful silver-white of the inner surface of the petals, my mind is always dwelling upon and rejoicing in the fact that their outer side is green, though of that green outside I cannot see a hair's breadth. ”

“ It is merely a bit of enclosed and humanised natural beauty, a place where one may quietly enjoy delightful flowers and delightful fragrance without the jarring condition of viewing behind the scenes all the time that the performance is being enacted. Every flower in the garden was originally planted by my friend, and has been regularly watched over and tended by him ever since, yet not one but looks as though it had been planted [19] at the creation of the world and had been subject only to the forces of Nature all its life. ”

“ The colour and form of plants require a little attention for their appreciation, but their odour overwhelms our senses whether we attend or no. The variety of perfumes yielded by plants is almost as great as their forms, for blossom of Apple and of Jonquil, leaf of Strawberry, Currant and Sweet Gale gives each an æsthetic pleasure peculiar to itself. ”

“ If our suburban villas were fronted by unpretentious plots cultivated frankly as cottage gardens and bordered by simple palings, how very different would be their aspect, and how much more pleasant would a suburban walk become. For there are numerous plants of great beauty which would thrive even in the suburbs of London, given care and a little knowledge as to the correct preparation of the soil. ”

“ Still, with weeds, be they ever so beautiful, ever so interesting, must the gardener wage eternal war. Nature, like the artist she is, abhors bare earth as much as she abhors a vacuum, and, where she sees a piece of ground uncovered, there she sows her seeds or projects her roots. One of the best ways of keeping weeds within bounds, therefore, is to have as little earth as possible uncovered by plants, for then weeds have small chance of entry and smaller chance of development. ”

“ I am sure that gardeners who study the native flora of England derive much more pleasure from their flowers than those who focus all their attention on the cultivated species and hybrids which are grown in gardens. The hedges and woodlands are full of examples and full of suggestions, for they show us the habit and manner of life of the English relatives of our exotic plants. By studying the wild species with their wonderful grace and simple beauty, indicative of adaptation of means to ends, we are less liable to become the slaves of the florists. ”

“ SOILS AND THEIR PREPARATION Many people imagine that in some mysterious fashion plants eat soil much as we eat beef-steak; and that, all soil being just "soil," one has but to make a hole in the ground and thrust the roots of a plant into it, in order to make the desert bloom as the rose. ”

“ Because the active life of these larger plants is over for a season, however, one need not imagine that the well managed garden is suddenly to become flowerless. Roses and Pentstemons, Potentillas and Phloxes, Sweet-Peas and Nasturtiums, and a host of other summer bloomers still remain and often continue to bear flowers till hard frost pulls down the curtain. But it is not on summer flowers that we need rely, for there are numerous beautiful hardy flowers peculiar to autumn itself. ”

“ In like manner, people often have an idea that the perfect garden is a continuous sheet of wonderful flowers. How great is the fallacy contained in this idea it should be needless to point out. Leaf and stem, light and shade and fragrance, these are quite as essential parts of a garden as are the "blooms" of the gardening showman.
An eye for beauty is largely a product of training and experience. A soul and a brain there must be as a basis, but "taste" is to a large extent cultivated. ”

“ The greatest joy which a garden can yield is a feeling of restfulness and peace, a feeling which no garden of staring beds and ostentatious splendour can afford, but which is yielded—as by nothing else in the world—by a garden of happy, homely, old-fashioned flowers. ”