Days and hours in a garden

by E. V. B.

V.

FEBRUARY.

Land of Mandragora and the Serpent Flower.

“There never was a juster debt

Than what the dry do pay for wet;

Never a debt was paid more nigh

As what the wet do pay for dry!”

February 13.—If the West Country farmer’s rhyme prove true this year, the “dry” will have a heavy debt to pay! Some of the gravel walks in the garden are quite green, along the sides where the almost ceaseless rain flows down. All our dressed stone—sun-dial, vases, steps—is discoloured and green, and will all have to be scrubbed with hot water and soap, like the rocks in the great rockery once described in the Gardener’s Chronicle (vol. xviii., p. 747). A large part of the grounds has been under water nearly all through the winter; the “wet,” however, in which they sometimes stand ankle deep for weeks, seems not to do any harm to the evergreens here; whilst we get from the floods charming landscape effects. I could almost wish the glassy meres, with their clear reflections of tree or sky, to be permanent.

I have been looking over and making notes of our Fir trees—we have only about a dozen or so, I am afraid! I find that Pinus Austriaca thrives better than any other here; it is a regret to me that we did not plant numbers more of them, instead of wasting years in trying to make Scotch Fir succeed. Spruce never seems to do well in this part of the country; we have two or three old Spruce Firs which are mere poles, and some much younger, which must be cut down to relieve our eyes from that garden misery, a sickly tree. Only in the “Fantaisie” are our Spruce Firs successful, and there, from overcrowding—for there are at least ten—they are well-nigh spoilt. This little spot has proved good for them, I imagine, because it was new ground, taken in from old unbroken pasture and well trenched. One or two others, full and healthy, of a few years’ growth, suddenly went off last summer; it was as if a blighting wind had scorched their branches, or lightning had seared them. I know no successful Spruce plantations anywhere in the neighbourhood. The soil is gravelly, with chalk and flint; and sometimes trees seem to strike their roots down into a subsoil—perhaps an intermittent layer of greensand—and then they go off. But this can scarcely be the only cause that so fatally affects our Firs. About 120 miles down west, there is a group of extremely fine Spruce Firs that I have known for the last thirty years, and when I visited them last year I found they had all gone off in the same way as ours here. Excelsa Grandis flourishes equally with Pinus Austriaca. One fine young plant in the “Fantaisie” was, as one says, “quite a picture” in the summer for the perfect symmetry of its form, and on the two topmost laterals were just two beautifully shaped upright green cones, crested with amber-coloured gum! I rejoiced in this young tree during all the season, but there is a fear since then that it may suffer in its growth from the premature effort. The Balm of Gilead Firs, a few of which we put in along one side of the turf walk, have failed entirely. I meant each to become a little rounded beauty, like that one planted by my father, which I remember long years since as a wonder of aromatic greenery; but these are grey and stunted, and they all wear such a look of age and decay as I fear we cannot long endure to see. The crisp leaves, however, are as sweet when crumpled in the hand as they ought to be. With two or three of these piteous little trees, the branches show, without losing stiffness, a certain tendency to droop or turn downwards at the extremities. It is rather curious, this droop, affected by a few individuals in a Fir plantation! For they do not begin life with that intention; the young tree may be just like any other for years, when suddenly one branch will be observed turned down, then another and another, till finally the whole thing is decided, and the tree becomes a “weeper,” as some call them. In a large plantation in Aberdeenshire, some years since, I knew one young Silver Fir out of all the others that grew itself into a drooping form, so that it seemed at last to draw down its branches close together as one would draw a cloak around one in the cold. It was then ten or twelve feet high, and now it must indeed be a remarkable object if it has grown and drooped at the same rate. Our Douglas Fir (Sir Bedivere) has known this temptation to droop, but evidently the feeling of the mass of his branches is dead against the idea, and it will come to nothing.

Fair Maids of February.

This accident or sport is common in other trees all over the world, I suppose, and one of the most ancient nomadic patterns of Persian rugs depicts, on either side the Tree of Life, the columnar Cypress and the drooping Cypress, beside a little tomb.

In various odd nooks and corners of the garden, I know where to find a few little old Cephalonian Pines, all that remain out of a number we once had. They are only about 4 or 5 feet high, yet they were grown from seed over a quarter of a century ago. Like poor old useless retainers, they have followed the fortunes of the family, and we have become attached to one another. One amongst the original number became a fine specimen—and perished. The rest have never had a chance of growing up, for every spring their new buds are nipped, so they remain still the same, with a sort of look of old-young trees. I am especially interested in the welfare of one of the Cephalonians, who lives in an English Yew. Those two are certainly bosom friends! The Yew itself was only half a tree, spared, out of charity, on what seemed a bare chance of surviving. The Cephalonian stood near and shivered, and lost its buds every spring, while the Yew crept nearer and nearer, till at last its thick dark foliage reached the little Pine, and so grew on; and now the Yew fairly holds it within its warm, comfortable embrace. Some say, “What a mistake to leave them thus!” I say, “They shall not be parted;” so the two remain together, and grow quite happily in each other’s arms. Oddly enough, the Pine seems to be assimilating itself in colour, and partly in form, with the Yew, so that it is not easy to distinguish them. But if the Cephalonian at last out-tops its benefactor, what will happen then? At times the space of ground over which we reign seems to be very much too small; and I incline to envy the possession of land, with room enough to plant; for there can be no more engrossing interest of its kind than to watch the growth of trees, their manners and customs. I would plant at once acres of Ilex Oak. What shelter they would make! And in a congenial soil they would not be too slow of growth. There should be broad bands of Beech and Oak, and long groves of Larch, delicious in spring for the fragrance of their green and pink-tipped tassels. And there should be plantations of Fir—Scotch Fir, for the delight of their healthy blue-green in youth, and for the glory of their great red stems in age; and Spruce Fir, with all their charm of deep mosses underneath, and the loveliness in spring of starry Winter-green (Trientalis Europæ) and “the rathe Primrose;” and for the music of the winds among their branches, and the velvet darkness of their colour under summer skies. (Mem.—The Winter-green would have to be sent us from the North.)

Our great work of last month has been an alteration at the east end of the garden. A Quickset hedge, forty or fifty years old, is moved back, so as to take in from “the park” a bit of waste ground; the gravel path that ran under the hedge is widened, and a block of Laurels cut through. By this means a turf way, leading north and south, is made to enter the improved walk, whose chief attraction is the border of old damask Roses. Plum trees and Pears stand along the border amongst the Roses, and a large perennial yellow Lupin, in which thrushes have been known to make their nests. In the middle of the hedge grew a fine young Elder. I had long promised that Elder it should never be cut down, so when the Hawthorns were removed the tree remained, arching across the path to meet a Plum tree on the other side. An Elder in full bloom is such a beautiful thing that it is painful to feel obliged to destroy it; but Elders have such an unfortunate knack of appearing where they are not wanted! The birds sow Elder seeds in the clefts of trees, in chinks of walls, flower borders—all sorts of inconvenient places—now that the berries are no longer requisitioned to make Elder wine. In old-fashioned days it was worth having a cold, to enjoy a night-cap of Elder wine from the saucepan on the hob! So this one tree is preserved in honour, as compensation for those others which are no more. I am not in the least superstitious, but it is rather uncanny to cut down an old Elder! Eldritch legends and spells have clung to the tree in days of yore, and have even come down to our own times. I used to listen at my mother’s knee, and beg again and again for the story of the fairy changeling. The interest of the story never failed, and the rhyme never tired, about the enchanted hare, who ran—

“Runie and runie the Eildon tree,

And seven times runie the Eildon tree.”

According to custom, I was rather on the look-out for treasures when the old hedge was dug up, but nothing appeared excepting a huge yellow bone and a gigantic root of White Briony. The uncouth thing bore a strange resemblance to some organized being with arms and legs—something like an octopus in full swim, only twenty times as big, and yet also with a sort of human aspect! I was told it was a Mandrake (though it did not shriek on being pulled up), and so I desired it should be carefully buried, in order that the household might not be disturbed by its groans at night. In India the sounds emitted by a Mandrake in the dark night are said to be sometimes heartrending. And so the witch, in the Masque of Queens—

“I last night lay all alone

O’ the ground to heare the mandrake grone.”

I wonder if White Briony is really the true Mandrake, about which there must seriously be something mysterious. I find in the dictionary, “Mandragora (Mandrake), a powerful soporific. Mandrage, a plant said to be so called because it points out that a cave is near.” I know no more, besides the wild traditions, and this vision the other day, in the twilight, of a white misshapen figure lying on the earth. There are, however, few things more exquisitely graceful than the Black and White Brionies. Black Briony is rare in our part of Buckinghamshire. In this garden three White Brionies have leave to dwell. All winter, the mystic root lies hidden, awaiting the appointed time. On a day in spring or early summer, suddenly up-springs a group of delicate pale green stalks, and they, as soon as they have seen the sun in heaven, delay not to put forth all the strength stored under the earth in the big ugly root; and before many days the green stalks have grown into a beautiful leafy plant, mantling over whatever is nearest of tree or bush, with leaves of most fanciful cut, and a thousand ringlets of circling, sensitive tendrils. By-and-by there will be a whole firmament of little star-like flowers, greenish-white in colour—all either male or female, according to the plant. In October an unhappy collapse sets in. Life ebbs fast from the flaccid stalks and tendrils, dying away, sinking down, down into the buried root, till nothing remains but a dry colourless shroud, clinging close over the supporting shrub, which scarce can breathe, till a friendly hand in due course clears the whole thing off.

I think I never saw a finer show of white Arums than we have just now. There is the grandest luxuriance of foliage, with thick tall stems, crowned by spathes in spiral lines of perfect grace. The rich texture of these flowers is marvellous; white as the drifted snow, with a lemon scent. Our success is perhaps due, not only to good management, but to what one may call imported bulbs. Four years ago they were thrown out of a garden at Cannes, as worthless rubbish, on to the road-side. I passed that way one day, while a little peasant girl was collecting some of these bulbs in her pinafore. I asked her what they were. “Des lis!” she said. So I immediately gathered up some for myself, and they were done up in newspapers and packed in our trunks and brought home. In grim contrast to these joyous flowers of light is the Serpent Flower, a tropical member of the Arum family. I saw it, once only, eleven years ago, in the beautiful garden of Palazzo Orenga, at Mortola, near Ventimiglia. It grew on the edge of a ravine, under the deep shade of a low stone wall. Right up from a cluster of black-spotted leaves the centre spiral rose to about ten or twelve inches, bending over at the top into a sort of hood, like the hooded head of a cobra. The creature—flower I cannot say—took the attitude exactly of a snake preparing to spring, the body marked and spotted the same as a snake, with the hood greyish-brown. The whole thing seemed something more than a good imitation only of the reptile whose name it bears. The first glance gave a sort of shock, as if on a sudden one had become aware of the actual presence at one’s feet of a deadly serpent; and yet the terrifying object is, I believe, used by the Indians as an antidote to snake-bite.

All over the Olive grounds of the same country where the Serpent Arum is acclimatized, about this time or early in March, appear the little brown “Sporacci”—tiny hooded Arums of quaint form, little odd monks with yellow tongues hanging out (Arum Arisarum). My window is full of Paper Narcissus—Narcissus is Remembrance; and for the sake of past days, I love it—they succeed a set of blue Roman Hyacinths, dear also from association, and beautiful in their full tones of blue and green. The perfume of both flowers brings back vividly the sweet South, where I knew them wild. I must end with a little bit out of a letter sent me from that southern land which has the power to create lovers of Nature:—

“I am longing for sunshine, to bring to life all the flowers I am watching for near the torrent beds. My ignorance of flowers has this advantage, that each leaf is a mystery to me, and I know not what flower it frames, so each will be a surprise as it appears.”

MARCH.

“Out of the Snow, the Snowdrop—

Out of Death comes Life.”...

David Gray.