Henry Arthur Bright

“ Then, too, each year the intelligent gardener will arrange new combinations, grow new varieties of plants, and aim after a perfection which he can never hope to reach.
But the garden has no less also a scientific interest. Fresh species of plants are continually enriching our flower-beds, and botanists are constantly searching the wildest and most remote corners of the world on behalf of the English stove-house, conservatory, and garden. They endure untold hardships, and risk many dangers, if only they may secure some new treasure. ”

“ But no rose, taking all the good qualities of a rose together, its hardiness, free blooming, beauty, and scent, will surpass the Gloire de Dijon, though the golden cups of Marshal Niel may be richer in colour, and the fragrance of La France recalls, as no other rose does, the luscious fragrance of Oriental otto of roses.
And now, instead of ordinary bedding-out, let me suggest some garden-beds which are far more effective. One is a bed of Lilium auratum, with heliotrope to fill up the spaces. ”

“ There are weeds that worry, and seeds that fail. There are garden pests of every variety. The mice nibble away the tulip-bulbs: the canker gets into the rosebud, and the green fly infests the rose. Wire-worms destroy the roots of tender annuals, and slugs breakfast upon their sprouting leaves. Moles and birds and caterpillars have each and all their peculiar plans for vexing the gardener’s heart. Then again certain plants are attacked by special diseases of their own. The gladiolus turns yellow and comes to nothing, and a parasitic fungus destroys the hollyhock. ”

“ Meanwhile, as we are now untroubled by such scruples, we may not only enjoy the results of the art of the skilful florist, but may even take an intelligent interest in the art itself. It lets us into many secrets of nature. It helps to explain problems of much higher significance than the brief existence of a garden flower. It makes us understand, in some small degree, how, in every form of life, a higher type may be produced from one of inferior order. ”

“ THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. As spring comes on, the fancy of any man who cares about a garden, “lightly turns to thoughts” of flowers and the gardens where they grow. Never, perhaps, was the art of gardening so popular,—I wish we could say so intelligent,—as at present. The stately homes of England, the villas that line the roads of suburban districts, the cottages clustering round a village green, often even a back yard or window-sill in the heart of some manufacturing town, all testify in their different ways to the desire of having an adornment of flowers. ”

“ Above all, no garden should be without its hedge of sweet peas. If the pods are diligently pulled off, new flowers will be as constantly thrown out, and the “purfled scarf” of blossoms will remain in beauty till the first killing frost. It is easy to get a dozen different shades of colour, and nothing can look gayer, or give a more delicious scent. ”

“ Indeed, as with everything else, the garden will soon grow dull, and the flowers lose their attraction, unless we take the management, partly at least, into our own hands, and be masters not in name but in reality. It is not necessary to understand every matter of detail, though our interest will strengthen as our practical knowledge grows; but at least we may make up our minds as to what we want to have done, and then take care that the gardener carries out our orders. ”

“ The plants should grow of their own accord, and as their vagrant fancy takes them. The prettiest of all wild gardens is when the bluebells are so thick [33] that they seem a reflection of the sky, or the celandine lies in sunny patches on a bank, or the primrose and violet come up here and there at the foot of old forest-trees. Sometimes, too, less common flowers, which have been planted years ago, and have spread as it has pleased them, give an effect of even greater beauty. We remember one large shrubbery all blue with hepaticas, and another golden with the winter aconite. ”

“ Besides the spring garden, there is in some places the Semi-tropical garden, and in others the Alpine garden. No one has done more than has Mr. W. Robinson [5] to call up an interest in [28] the broad-foliaged plants which are the chief ornament in the gardens of Paris, and in the delicate tufts of flowers which nestle in the crevices of our rockeries. But there is much still to be done. It is, after all, only occasionally that either Semi-tropical or Alpine gardening is to be seen in any perfection. ”

“ So long as a garden is only regarded as a means for displaying masses of gay colouring, half the delight and all the real interest of it are gone. It is only when we learn to make friends of individual plants, and recall their history and associations, that a garden becomes a pleasure for the intellect as well as for the senses. ”

“ Why should some flowers of magnificent size, like the magnolia, require scent to attract insects, if we must indeed admit that use and not pleasure is the end and aim of every attraction of the garden? ”

“ They attribute the bright colour and beauty of flowers not to the same good purpose that gives beauty elsewhere, but as if it were merely that insects may be attracted, and do their duty among the ripening pollen. They are contemptuous at the idea of a flower being intended for the selfish pleasure of man and not for its own purposes, and they point to plants of beauty that “blush unseen” where man cannot admire them, forgetting, however, that man has seen them, or he would not know of their existence. ”

“ One of the greatest ornaments to a garden is a fountain, but many fountains are curiously ineffective. A fountain is most beautiful when it leaps high into the air, and you can see it against a background of green foliage. To place a fountain among low flower-beds, and then to substitute small fancy jets, that take the shape of a cup, or trickle over into a basin of gold-fish, or toy with a gilded ball, is to do all that is possible to degrade it. ”

“ Passing into the walled garden, we shall probably find the northern side taken up with vineries and plant-houses, with which, however, we have nothing to do, except in so far as they supply us with any tender or half-hardy plants for our garden-beds. In front of these houses will be great borders of stocks and mignonette, scenting the air—the mignonette sweetest when the sun is strongest, and the stocks as evening falls. ”

“ But quite apart from scientific interests, a real old garden, unaltered and unspoiled, has a peculiar interest of its own. It is sure to be haunted by associations, and nothing calls up associations so quickly and certainly as a sudden scent of flowers coming and going upon the summer air. ”

“ But even when the flower or plant is something better than a “touch” of colour, there is often some gross carelessness, or ignorance, which gives a sense of annoyance rather than of pleasure. Each returning year, the Gardeners’ Chronicle reviews the Royal Academy from a botanical point of view, and nothing can be droller than the blunders it points out. Sometimes all sorts of flowers of various seasons are growing together, or a wood, through which a knight is riding, is adorned with agarics and fungi that belong to different periods of the year. ”

“ Nothing more strikingly shows the interest that is now taken in gardening than the number of books that are published on the subject. Besides those that deal less with the craft of the gardener than with the flowers themselves, we have Manuals of gardening, with their annual and monthly calendars of gardening operations, their practical advice and technical knowledge. Then there are the almost countless catalogues of the nurserymen and seedsmen, which often add excellent, and sometimes coloured, engravings, and always supply much useful information. ”

“ It is calculated that the bedding-out of a single good-sized garden will take at least 100,000 plants to make it effective.
But now, leaving the question of summer bedding-out, we are glad to note signs of real advance in other directions. It is something that within the last ten or fifteen years our gardeners should have discovered that bare earth, all spring, is not particularly beautiful, and should have taken to what is called Spring gardening. All flowers are welcome in spring, and even masses of double daisies are acceptable. ”

“ There are to be no trees there, but thickets of honeysuckle and other trailing plants, and heaps like molehills, set with pinks or periwinkles, or violets, or various “sweet and sightly” flowers, and on some of the heaps little bushes of juniper or rosemary, or other low-growing shrubs, are to be planted. Such a garden would hardly seem to be one of “natural wildness”; but Bacon’s theory that there should be a “wild garden” is, with certain modifications, carried out in various places. But to cultivate a wild garden almost involves a paradox. ”

“ When we come to the flower-beds themselves, we have an almost infinite variety of flowers from which to choose for their adornment. In old days, when the tulips were over, there were beds of anemones and ranunculus—and a bed of ranunculus when the sun shines full upon the scarlet petals is a glorious sight. Then came annuals and herbaceous plants. Now, as each year brings something new, and the old plants, if out of fashion, can yet generally be procured, our difficulty is the difficulty of selection. ”

“ But the walled garden was better than the newly-cut circles on the lawn. In the garden there would at least be the shade of one of the garden walls. In the outside Italian garden, where, with the smooth old turf, trees had been cut away, there would be no shade whatever. Nobody would really care to walk there, and probably no one would be allowed to gather flowers, for fear of spoiling the symmetry of the beds. Nor can [20] any one feel the slightest interest about the hundred little pelargoniums in one bed, or the fifty calceolarias in the next. ”

“ And it is almost worse when the poor gathered flowers are brought indoors and placed in some blue jar or Salviati vase, and the artist shows how carefully he can draw, not so much the petals of the flowers as the texture of the porcelain or the iridescence of the glass. It is difficult enough worthily to paint the light and glow of colour in any beautiful flower, but, if it is to be painted, let it be when the plant is still growing, and as it grows. Any garden will give subjects enough, if they are only sought for. Here is a bank of daffodils ”

“ A limpid fountain had evidently been frequented. I found here a new Balanophora, like a small orange or a small fungus. I was distracted by the songs and the screams of new birds, and every turn in the path showed me something new and surprising. I had just killed a small new marsupial (Phascelogale dorsalis, Pet, and Doria) , that balanced itself on the stem of a great tree like a squirrel, and turning round, I suddenly stood before the most remarkable specimen of the industry of [79] an animal. It was a hut or bower close to a small meadow enamelled with flowers. ”

“ The owner of the garden is nobody, and the gardener is everything. The prize is in almost every case regarded as the unchallenged property of the gardener, who has, nevertheless, won the prize by his master’s plant, reared at his master’s expense, and at the cost of time which has made him too frequently neglect much more important matters. ”

“ Hunt, he has had to repeat the same lesson, that plants that grow are pleasanter objects than flowers that are gathered. And, indeed, the reason is not far to seek. A bunch of garden-roses thrown carelessly down upon a mossy bank—and there is scarcely an exhibition without one—not only gives one a feeling of incongruity (as though the fashionable flowers were out at a picnic) , but a stronger feeling still of coming death. We know those roses must wither and die, almost, we fancy, as [70] we look upon them. ”

“ The very men who would most readily throw over the old theological argument of “design,” which believed that everything was done in the most perfect way for the most perfect ends, will now in the interests of evolution show the necessity for each curve of a flower-cup and for each marking on a petal. ”

“ That our ordinary flower-show is for the ordinary spectator an extremely pretty sight is no less certain. But we are satisfied that in the majority of cases it is the wiser course for any one who really cares about his garden, and would rather have a succession of well-cultured flowers than some merely exceptional success, to discourage his gardener from exhibiting. ”