Wallflower

“ But as a “rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” every true flower-lover cherishes his wallflower, which returns to him so bountifully the slightest attention, which accepts the humblest position, which thrives on the scantiest fare, which is amongst the first to welcome us in the spring, and, with its scantier second bloom, amongst the last to bid adieu in the autumn, sometimes even striving to gladden us with its blossom year in and year out if winter’s cold be not too stark. ”

“ In some parts it is a general favourite, and may be seen in almost every garden; such patronage is well merited, as it not only enlivens the garden at a dead season, but it heralds spring time and furnishes long sprigs of wallflower-scented blossom as cut bloom, which shows to advantage by gaslight. ”

“ No one can despise the Wallflower in the spring, and the heavenly-blue flowers of Nemophila insignis in early summer will tempt many a one to walk in the garden who would care little for sheets of scarlet and yellow that in full sunshine make the eyes ache to look upon them. ”

“ Ursula’s remark that she had planted over nine hundred seedlings was well within the mark. A thousand or two of wallflower seedlings do not go very far in this garden, because at one time of the year the place appears to be a waving mass of wallflowers from end to end.
And have you any idea what the scent is like when you have thousands of wallflowers smiling on a sunny spring morning?
But there are all sorts of oddments, some things you do not expect and some things you do. ”

“ Perhaps you think there must be large, dull spaces when the wallflowers cease blooming, but in between the wallflower plants are others coming on, and by the time the wallflowers have finished—and are ready to be pulled up—these beds are filling with sweet williams and snapdragons. The young plants were there, and they come into bloom as the wallflowers finish. ”

“ If you left it where it was sown it would send down a great root like a carrot, and then when you tried to move the plant you would kill it. Many gardeners pinch off the tap-root when they prick out, and then the Wallflower makes fibrous roots that can be safely transplanted. Mr. Robinson says that a well-grown Wallflower in a London market-garden could not be covered by a bushel basket, so now you know what size your plants ought to be, and how many you will have room for in your border. ”

“ It is loved for its beauty, its [Pg 336] associations, its adaptiveness. It is such a decorative flower, and looks of so much distinction in so many places. It is invaluable to the landscape gardener and to the architect; and might be named the wallflower, since it looks so well growing by every wall. I like it there, or by a fence-side, or in a corner, better than in the middle of flower beds. How many garden pictures have Hollyhocks? Sir Joshua Reynolds even used them as accessories of his portraits. They usually grow so well and bloom so freely. ”

“ You very likely wonder how the Wallflower or any other plant can grow upon the wall, for there is no earth to be seen--nothing but stones and crumbling mortar. But if we pull up one of the smaller plants we shall find earth clinging to its roots. ”

“ If, on the other hand, we wanted a purple or a very dark brown Wallflower, we should save seed from those blossoms which were nearest to the colour we wanted--dark brown or with a tinge of purple in them. We should sow seed from the darkest blossoms again and again, and at last we should get what we wished to have. ”

“ When the beds are cleared of their summer occupants, they may be filled with the best plants of Wallflower, to afford cheerful green leafage all through the winter and a grand show of bloom in the spring, as frost will not hurt the single varieties ”

“ Quite white we should never get our Wallflower, for no pure white flower can be obtained from a yellow one. However pale our Wallflower might be there would still always be just a tinge of yellow or cream colour in it. ”

“ Wallflowers cannot be grown in too great numbers in any garden, for either their delightful perfume or charming colour effect. The striking displays to be seen in some of our public parks and on seaside fronts have done much to popularise this old favourite flower. Since the first edition of this book was issued, many new and remarkable colours in Wallflowers have been introduced, among the last, but by no means least, being the Fire King and Orange Bedder. It is by the blending of the colours that the most telling effects can be produced. ”

“ Now Theophrastus gives the following list of flowers as suitable to be made into garlands—"The violet, the flower of Jupiter, the iphyum, the wallflower, the hemerocalles, or yellow lily. But he says the earliest blooming flower is the white violet; and about the same time that which is called the wild wallflower appears, and after them the narcissus and the lily; and of mountain flowers, that kind of anemone which is called the mountain anemone, and the head of the bulb-plant. For some people twine these flowers into garlands. ”

“ Wallflower is a choice pot-herb; lily-of-the-valley, too, and carnation, and Indian cress trailed about the window, is not only beautiful by colour, but the leaves are good to eat. I recommend thyme and rosemary for the aroma, which should not be left upon one side; they are good quiet growths. ”

“ A showy plant with a large terminal cluster of four-petaled flowers, it is frequently called “desert wallflower.” When growing under shrubs it often extends its stems 2 feet or more to reach up into the sunshine. Usually blossoming in March, some plants may be found blooming at almost any time during the summer to as late as September. ”

“ The wallflowers are in full bloom. Later on, the germander speedwell will open its bright evanescent flowers, that, though only a wild plant, makes such splendid masses of colour when cultivated, with the silver-foil in bunches near it.
Up a short flight of stone steps, with ferns on each side, under an ivy-covered archway, and on another plat of grass, with a long flower-bed, with trellis-work at the back, covered with the red and yellow honeysuckle, and a huge mass of climbing roses, the rare delicate ‘maiden blush,’ which in a fortnight will be heavy with bloom. ”

“ Early every summer the glory of the snapdragons and the wallflowers is overwhelmed for a time by the blossom of the pear-trees and the plums which spread themselves abroad and sprawl even over the top of the wall. By their aid the place is transformed for a whole month in a fruitful year. ”

“ Erysimum Pumilum. Fairy Wallflower, or Dwarf Treacle-mustard; Nat. Ord. Cruciferæ.
One of the alpine gems of our rock gardens, not in the sense of its rarity, because it grows and increases fast. It came from Switzerland about sixty years ago, and for a long time was esteemed as a biennial, but it is more—it is perennial and evergreen; at any rate its new branches take root, and so its perennial quality is established. ”

“ To enjoy wallflowers to the full the sun must be shining upon them, and you must stand a little away from the bed, and the west wind must come along gently, bearing in its arms the scent—just a breath of warm fragrance, and—well, that is the way to enjoy wallflowers, and—oh, nurse, I do so want to bury my face in them. ”

“ If you and I were clever gardeners and had plenty of time and patience, we could get purple or nearly white wallflowers from these yellow-flowered plants upon the wall. It would perhaps take us many years, but we should succeed at last. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The spider may have “spread her net abroad with cords” as usual, but there was no magician’s wand to touch it.
*****
The orchard ought to be very gay in the spring. Daffodils have been dropped in all over the turf, and a round patch dug round each Apple tree is to be filled with yellow Wallflowers. This is an experiment, and I do not feel sure that I shall like the flowers so well as the trees simply growing out of the grass. A change, however, is always pleasant; though, perhaps, one might hardly care to lay out the garden differently every year, as the Chinese are said to do. ”

“ The wall round the daffodil garden is bright blue--I painted it myself, and still carry patterns of it about with me--and the result of all these yellow heads on their long green necks waving above the blue walls of my garden is that we are always making excuses to each other for going up and down stairs, and the bell in the drawing-room is never rung.
But I have a fault to find with my daffodils. They turn their backs on us. ”

“ THIS species is one of the most desirable of hardy-wooded plants we possess. They are admirable for the house, for the balcony, the piazza, or the border, being handsome in foliage, and very graceful and beautiful in flowers. Some are stately, others dwarf, some are flexible and drooping. We have had for several years three that we have greatly admired for their variegated leaves, especially for the winter window-garden, where they compensate for the scarcity of flowers, by the brilliancy of their foliage, yellow and green, finely mottled and marbled. ”

“ Some small Saxifrages we liked are S. sancta, with yellow flowers, S. oppositifolia, with red-purple blooms, and the double-flowered native S. granulata. Perhaps the handsomest of all is S. longifolia, which grows in huge rosettes, throwing from the centre of each a panicle of creamy white flower nearly two feet long.
Wall-planting is easier to manage in the small garden than the rockery because it so economizes space. Many, in fact most, rock-plants do well in walls if made with mould enough to give root-room. A double wall is a delightful thing. ”

“ It would be quite easy to make a beautiful rock or wall garden without going away from our own country to people it; many of our common native stone-loving plants are so good. Snap-dragons are grand, and we could have Foxgloves, the great Mulleins and the delicate Stitchwort, the shining Crane’s-bell—so scarlet of leaf as summer wanes—the Wall-Pennywort, and the pink-flowered tiny Toad-flax. Some Ferns, too, could find a place in it, Cetrach and Wall-Rue in the sun, and Polypody and the black-stemmed Adiantum nigrum anywhere. ”

“ This species, though not hardy enough for every situation, is yet sufficiently so to stand unharmed as a wall plant. It grows from 10 feet to 12 feet high, with deep-green leaves that are hoary on the under sides. The flowers, which are borne in large, axillary panicles, are bright blue, and produced in June and the following months. In a light, dry soil and sunny position this shrub does well as a wall plant, for which purpose it is one of the most ornamental. ”

“ The common single Wall-flowers, which grow wild abroad, have sundry small, long, narrow, dark green leaves, set without order upon small round, whitish, woody stalks, which bear at the tops divers single yellow flowers one above another, every one bearing four leaves a-piece, and of a very sweet scent: after which come long pods, containing a reddish seed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You take a Lily-of-the-Valley from its vase, attracted irresistibly by its scent, and find it fast set in a corsetière of steel—each leaf and stalk, almost each separate blossom, wired. This gives you a horrid feeling; you idly untwist the cruel bonds, and then the poor flower droops or falls to pieces.
In the ballroom dreadful things are suffered by the Roses. Fancy a curtain all made of these lovely flowers, wired together in long trails to match the festoons that wave softly overhead! ”

“ The flowers are not individually large, but form large spikes or racemes, and the fruits are often beautifully scaled and hang in huge bunches which are sometimes more than a load for a strong man. The climbing palms are very remarkable, their tough, slender, prickly stems mounting up by means of the hooked midribs of the leaves to the tops of the loftiest forest-trees, above which they send up an elegant spike of foliage and flowers. ”

“ Beneath the shade of deciduous trees there are many plants which will live healthy and flowery lives. In the spring we have for such situations the great array of bulbs, together with many of the Primroses, Sweet Woodruff, Hepaticas, Hellebores, Fair maids of France, Doronicums, and other early bloomers; and, even when the trees are in full leaf, we may enjoy, if the soil be but properly prepared, such pleasant flowers as those of the Martagon Lily and Lilium speciosum, Campanulas, both dwarf and tall, Foxgloves, Knotweeds, and Columbines ”

“ These palms were often clothed with creepers, which ran up to the summits, and there put forth their blossoms. Lower down, on the water’s edge, were numerous flowering shrubs, often completely covered with convolvuluses, passion-flowers, or bignonias. Every dead or half-rotten tree was clothed with parasites of singular forms, or bearing beautiful flowers, while smaller palms, curiously-shaped stems, and twisting climbers, formed a background in the interior of the forest. ”