THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS
(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose)
Oaklands, September 1. So you have been away and in going discovered the possibilities of growing certain pinks and carnations out-of-doors that, in America at least, are usually considered the winter specialties of a cool greenhouse!
We too have been afield somewhat, having but now returned from a driving trip of ten days, nicely timed as to gardens and resting-places until the last night, when, making a false turn, ten o'clock found us we did not know where and with no prospect of getting our bearings.
We had ample provisions for supper with us, including two bottles of ginger ale; no one knew that we were lost but ourselves and no one was expecting us anywhere, as we travel quite con amore on these little near-by journeys of ours. The August moon was big and hot and late in rising; there was a rick of old hay in a clean-looking field by the roadside that had evidently been used as winter fodder for young cattle, for what remained of it was nibbled about the base, leaving a protruding, umbrella-like thatch, not very substantial, but sufficient shelter for a still night. Then and there we decided to play gypsy and camp out, literally under the sky. Evan unharnessed the horse, watered him at a convenient roadside puddle, and tethered him at the rear of the stack, where he could nibble the hay, but not us! Then spreading the horse-blanket on some loose hay for a bed, with the well-tufted seat of the buggy for a pillow, and utilizing the lap robe for a cover against dew, we fell heavily asleep, though I had all the time a half-conscious feeling as if little creatures were scrambling about in the hay beneath the blanket and occasionally brushing my face or ears with a batlike wing, tiny paws, or whisking tail. When I awoke, and of course immediately stirred up Evan, the moon was low on the opposite side of the stack, the stars were hidden, and there was a dull red glow among the heavy clouds of the eastern horizon like the reflection of a distant fire, while an owl hooted close by from a tree and then flew with a lurch across the meadow, evidently to the destruction of some small creature, for a squeal accompanied the swoop. A mysterious thing, this flight of the owl: the wings did not flap, there was no sound, merely the consciousness of displaced air.
We were not, as it afterward proved, ten miles from home, and yet, as far as trace of humanity was concerned, we might have been the only created man and woman.
Do you remember the old gypsy song?—Ben Jonson's, I think—
"The owl is abroad, the bat, the toad,
And so is the cat-a-mountain;
The ant and the mole both sit in a hole,
And frog peeps out o' the fountain;
The dogs they bay and the timbrels play
And the spindle now is turning;
The moon it is red, and the stars are fled
But all the sky is a-burning."
But we were still more remote, for of beaters of timbrels and turners of spindles were there none!
Your last chronicle interested us all. In the first place father remembers Mrs. Marchant perfectly, for he and the doctor used to exchange visits constantly during that long-ago summer when they lived on the old Herb Farm at Coningsby. Father had heard that she was hopelessly deranged, but nothing further, and the fact that she is living within driving distance in the midst of her garden of fragrance is a striking illustration both of the littleness of the earth and the social remoteness of its inhabitants.
Father says that Mrs. Marchant was always a very intellectual woman, and he remembers that in the old days she had almost a passion for fragrant flowers, and once wrote an essay upon the psychology of perfumes that attracted some attention in the medical journal in which it was published by her husband. That the perfume of flowers should now have drawn the shattered fragments of her mind together for their comfort and given her the foretaste of immortality, by the sign of the consciousness of personal presence and peace, is beautiful indeed.
Your declaration that henceforth one garden is not enough for your ambition, but that you crave several, amuses me greatly. For a mere novice I must say that you are making strides in seven-league horticultural boots, wherein you have arrived at the heart of the matter, viz.:—one may grow many beautiful and satisfactory flowers in a mixed garden such as falls to the lot of the average woman sufficiently lucky to own a garden at all, but to develop the best possibilities of any one family, like the rose, carnation, or lily, that is a bit whimsical about food and lodging, each one must have a garden of its own, so to speak, which, for the amateur, may be made to read as a special bed in a special location, and not necessarily a vast area.
This need is always recognized in the English garden books, and the chapter headings, The Rose Garden,—Hardy Garden,—Wall Garden,—Lily Garden,—Alpine Garden, etc., lead one at first sight to think that it is a great estate alone that can be so treated; but it is merely a horticultural protest, born of long experience, against mixing races to their mutual hurt, and this precaution, together with the climate, makes of all England a gardener's paradise!
What you say of the expansiveness of the list of fragrant flowers and leaves is also true, for taken in the literal sense there are really few plants without an individual odour of some sort in bark, leaf, or flower usually sufficient to identify them. In a recent book giving what purports to be a list of fragrant flowers and leaves, the chrysanthemum is included, as it gives out an aromatic perfume from its leaves! This is true, but so also does the garden marigold, and yet we should not include either among fragrant leaves in the real sense.
Hence to make the right selection of plants for the bed of sweet odours it is best, as in the case of choosing annuals, to adhere to a few tried and true worthies.
But at your rhapsody on the bed of carnations, I am also tempted to launch forth in praise of all pinks in general and the annual flowering garden carnation, early Marguerite, and picotee varieties in particular, especially when I think what results might be had from the same bits of ground that are often left to be overrun with straggling and unworthy annuals. For to have pinks to cut for the house, pinks for colour masses out-of-doors, and pinks to give away, is but a matter of understanding, a little patience, and the possession of a cold pit (which is but a deeper sort of frame like that used for a hotbed and sunken in the ground) against a sunny wall, for the safe wintering of a few of the tenderer species.
In touching upon this numerous family, second only to the rose in importance, the embarrassment is, where to begin. Is a carnation a pink, or a pink a carnation? I have often been asked. You may settle that as you please, since the family name of all, even the bearded Sweet-William, is Dianthus, the decisive title of Linnæus, a word from the Greek meaning "flower of Jove," while the highly scented species and varieties of the more or less pungent clove breath remain under the old subtitle—Caryophyllus.
To go minutely into the differences and distinctions of the race would require a book all to itself, for in 1597, more than three hundred years ago, Gerarde wrote: "There are, under the name of Caryophyllus, comprehended diuers and sundrie sorts of plants, of such variable colours and also severall shapes that a great and large volume would not suffice to write of euery one in particular." And when we realize that the pink was probably the first flower upon which, early in the eighteenth century, experiments in hybridization were tried, the intricacy will be fully understood.
For the Garden, You, and I, three superficial groups only are necessary: the truly hardy perennial pinks, that when once established remain for years; the half-hardy perennials that flower the second year after planting, and require protection; and the biennials that will flower the first year and may be treated as annuals.
The Margaret carnations, though biennials, are best treated as annuals, for they may be had in flower in three to four months after the sowing of the seed, and the English perennial border carnations, bizarres, and picotees will live for several years, but in this climate must be wintered in a dry wooden cold pit, after the manner of the perennial varieties of wallflowers, tender roses, and the like.
I emphasize the words dry wooden in connection with a cold pit from my experience in seeking to make mine permanent by replacing the planks, with which it was built and which often decayed, by stone work, with most disastrous results, causing me to lose a fine lot of plants by mildew.
The truly hardy pinks (dianthus plumarius), the fringed and clove-scented species both double and single of old-time gardens, that bloom in late spring and early summer, are called variously May and grass pinks. Her Majesty is a fine double white variety of this class, and if, in the case of double varieties, you wish to avoid the risk of getting single flowers, you would better start your stock with a few plants and subdivide. For myself, every three or four years, I sow the seed of these pinks in spring in the hardy seed bed, and transplant to their permanent bed early in September, covering the plants lightly in winter with evergreen boughs or corn stalks. Leaf litter or any sort of covering that packs and holds water is deadly to pinks, so prone is the crown to decay.
In the catalogues you will find these listed under the names of Pheasant's Eye, Double Scotch pinks (Scotius), and Perpetual Pink (semperflorens). With this class belongs the Sweet-William (dianthus barbatus), which should be sown and treated in a like manner. It is also a hardy perennial, but I find it best to renew it every few years, as the flowers of young plants are larger, and in spite of care, the most beautiful hybrids will often decay at the ground. There is no garden flower, excepting the Dahlia, that gives us such a wealth of velvet bloom, and if you mean to make a specialty of pinks, I should advise you to buy a collection of Sweet-Williams in the separate colours, which range from white to deepest crimson with varied markings.
Directions for sowing the biennial Chinese and Japanese pinks were given in the chronicle concerning the hardy seed bed. These pinks are not really fragrant, though most of them have a pleasant apple odour that, together with their wonderful range of colour, makes them particularly suitable for table decoration.
In addition to the mixed colours recommended for the general seed bed, the following Japanese varieties are of special beauty, among the single pinks: Queen of Holland, pure white; Eastern Queen, enormous rose-pink flowers, Crimson Belle, dark red. Among the double, Fireball, an intense scarlet; the Diadem pink, Salmon Queen, and the lovely Oriental Beauty with diversely marked petals of a crêpy texture.
The double varieties of course are more solid and lasting, if they do not insist upon swelling so mightily that they burst the calyx and so have a dishevelled and one sided look; but for intrinsic beauty of colour and marking the single Chinese and Japanese pinks, particularly the latter, reign supreme. They have a quality of holding one akin to that of the human eye and possess much of the power of individual expression that belongs to pansies and single violets.
By careful management and close clipping of withered flowers, a bed of these pinks may be had in bloom from June until December, the first flowers coming from the autumn-sown plants, which may be replaced in August by those sown in the seed bed in late May, which by this time will be well budded.
"August is a kittle time for transplanting border things," I hear you say. To be sure; but with your water-barrel, the long-necked water-pots, and a judicious use of inverted flower-pots between ten a.m. and four p.m., there is no such word as fail in this as in many other cases.
Single and Double Pinks.
Upon the second and third classes you must depend for pinks of the taller growth ranging from one to two feet in height and flourishing long-stemmed clusters of deliciously clove-scented flowers. The hardy Margarets might be wintered in the pit, if it were worth the while, but they are so easily raised from seed, and so prone literally to bloom themselves to death in the three months between midsummer and hard frost, that I prefer to sow them each year in late March and April and plant them out in May, as soon as their real leaves appear, and pull them up at the general autumnal garden clearance. Upon the highly scented perpetual and picotee pinks or carnations (make your own choice of terms) you must depend for fragrance between the going of the May pinks and the coming of the Margarets; not that they of necessity cease blooming when their more easily perfected sisters begin; quite the contrary, for the necessity of lifting them in the winter gives them a spring set-back that they do not have in England, where they are the universal hardy pink, alike of the gardens of great estates and the brick-edged cottage border.
These are the carnations of Mrs. Marchant's garden that filled you with such admiration, and also awoke the spirit of emulation. Lavinia Cortright was correct in associating them with the lavish bloom of the gardens of Hampton Court, for if anything could make me permanently unpatriotic (which is impossible), it would be the roses and picotee pinks of the dear old stupid (human middle-class, and cold bedroom-wise), but florally adorable mother country!
The method by which you may possess yourself of these crowning flowers of the garden, for coronations is one of the words from which carnation is supposed but to be derived, is as follows:—
Be sure of your seed. Not long ago it was necessary to import it direct, but not now. You may buy from the oldest of American seed houses fifty varieties of carnations and picotees, in separate packets, for three dollars, or twenty-five sorts for one dollar and seventy-five cents, or twelve (enough for a novice) for one dollar, the same being undoubtedly English or Holland grown, while a good English house asks five shillings, or a dollar and a quarter, for a single packet of mixed varieties!
Moral—it is not necessary that "made in England" should be stamped upon flower seeds to prove them of English origin!
If you can spare hotbed room, the seeds may be sown in April, like the early Margarets, and transplanted into some inconspicuous part of the vegetable garden, where the soil is deep and firm and there is a free circulation of air (not between tall peas and sweet corn), as for the first summer these pinks have no ornamental value, other than the pleasurable spectacle made by a healthy plant of any kind, by virtue of its future promise. Before frost or not later than the second week in October the pinks should be put in long, narrow boxes or pots sufficiently large to hold all the roots comfortably, but with little space to spare, watered, and partly shaded, until they have recovered themselves, when they should be set in the lightest part of the cold pit. During the winter months they should have only enough water to keep the earth from going to dust, and as much light and air as possible without absolutely freezing hard, after the manner of treating lemon verbenas, geraniums, and wall-flowers.
By the middle of April they may be planted in the bed where they are to bloom, and all the further care they need will be judicious watering and the careful staking of the flower stalks if they are weak and the buds top-heavy,—and by the way, as to the staking of flowers in general, a word with you later on.
In the greenhouse, pinks are liable to many ailments, and several of these follow them out-of-doors, three having given me some trouble, the most fatal being of a fungoid order, due usually to unhealthy root conditions or an excess of moisture.
Rust is one of these, its Latin name being too long for the simple vocabulary of The Garden, You, and I. It first shows itself in a brown spot that seems to have worked out from the inner part of the leaf. Sometimes it can be conquered by snipping the infected leaves, but if it seizes an entire bed, the necessary evil of spraying with Bordeaux mixture must be resorted to, as in the case of fungus-spotted hollyhocks.
Thrip, the little transparent, whitish fly, will sometimes bother border carnations in the same way as it does roses. If the flowers are only in bud, I sprinkle them with my brass rose-atomizer and powder slightly with helebore. But if the flowers are open, sprinkling and shaking alone may be resorted to. For the several kinds of underground worms that trouble pinks, of which the wireworm is the chief, I have found a liberal use of unslaked lime and bone-dust in the preparation of the soil before planting the best preventive.
Other ailments have appeared only occasionally. Sometimes an apparently healthy, full-grown plant will suddenly wither away, or else swell up close to the ground and finally burst so that the sap leaks out and it dies like a punctured or girdled tree. The first trouble may come from the too close contact of fresh manure, which should be kept away from the main roots of carnations, as from contact with lily bulbs.
As to the swelling called gout, there is no cure, so do not temporize. Pull up the plant at once and disinfect the spot with unslaked lime and sulphur.
Thus, Mary Penrose, may you have either pinks in your garden or a garden of pinks, whichever way you may care to develop your idea. "A deal of trouble?" Y-e-s; but then only think of the flowers that crown the work, and you might spend an equal amount of time in pricking cloth with a steel splinter and embroidering something, in the often taken-in-vain name of decorative art, that in the end is only an elaborated rag—without even the bone and the hank of hair!