Plants for a Rock Garden.
Alyssum Saxatile.—This grows into a dwarf shrub in time, and is a mass of small, brilliant, yellow flowers in spring. It is very sweet, and the bees love it. It looks well near Aubrietias, or near Lithospermum Prostratum. Suitable either for a rock garden or for a loose stone wall in which you can have a deep pocket of earth for its roots.
Antirrhinums (Snapdragons).—We think the good dwarf ones are charming on rockeries. We once had some pink ones grown from Sutton’s seed that were as pretty as little Rose-bushes. On walls some of the taller ones often look well, and when they are self-sown they seem to flourish in chinks where there cannot be much food for them. If you have a wall you should sow a little seed, and be careful not to mistake the seedlings for weeds.
Anthericum Liliastrum (St. Bruno’s Lily).—A charming plant, growing from one to two feet high, and flowering in May or June. It likes a sandy loam. If you want to increase it, you can divide it in the autumn.
Arabis.—If you are a London child, you will have seen this with London Pride in every London rock garden. It is the commonest of rock plants, and its white flowers make a pleasant show near Aubrietias and Alyssum in spring.
Arenaria Balearica.—This is the little creeping mossy plant we have told you of already. Put a bit on some soil near any stones you want covered.
Aubrietias.—You must know these if you have ever looked at a garden in spring. They are in various shades of mauve and purple, and make great sheets of colour on walls and rockeries. It is sometimes called Purple Rock-Cress. You can divide them in autumn, or you can grow them from seed sown in May or June.
Campanulas.—There are many varieties of blue and white Harebells that do well on walls and rockeries. Pumila, Pulla, and Cæspitosa are three well-known dwarf ones. Isophylla is a good hanging one, but not quite hardy. Persicifolia is an easily-grown tall one. They are increased by division.
Helianthemums, or Sun Roses.—These must not be confused with the Cistus, or Rock Roses, which are charming, but not so hardy as the Helianthemums. If you grow them from seed sown in May or June, you should in the following year have a number of dwarf shrubs bearing single flowers in a variety of shades, ranging from white and yellow to bright crimson.
Iberis Sempervirens is often called Perennial Candytuft. We have known people buy it by its Latin name, and be much disappointed to find it was the well-known white flower they had seen in all their friends’ gardens. It is not proud, and will grow almost anywhere.
Iris Pumila and Iris Stylosa.—We mention two out of the many beautiful Irises suitable for a rockery. Try to get the variety of Pumila called Cœrulea, a lovely sky-blue. Stylosa is the scented Iris that flowers in winter. It likes sun and shelter, and dry, hard ground. It must be manured.
Lithospermum Prostratum.—If we were only allowed one rock plant out of all there are, we would choose this one. It flowers nearly all the year round in some parts of England, and its blue is as vivid as the blue of a Gentian. If you can plant it so that its roots can tuck themselves under a big rock as they grow, so much the better. We have transplanted a big plant of it successfully, but we did it in fear and trembling, as it is said to hate disturbance. You had better not try to divide it. It can only be increased by cuttings, and they are not at all easy to strike.
Phlox Setacea.—This is one of several varieties of dwarf Phloxes that are useful for edgings and rockeries. They must have sun and well-drained soil, or they damp off.
Speedwell: Veronica Repens.—There are many varieties and sizes of Veronica. Some make big garden shrubs. The one we recommend here is a tiny trailing plant, with small pale blue flowers. It increases at a great rate, and is easily divided. Slugs like it, but do not make headway against it in many gardens. It makes a pretty dwarf edging amongst stones, as it creeps amongst them, and partly covers them.
“THE ROAD TO ROME.”
The Sedums, Saxifrages, and House-leeks, or Sempervivums, are all suitable for rockeries. Some kinds of Sedums, or Stonecrops, grow wild in our hedges. You should get Sedum Spectabile, the Japanese Stonecrop, which bears large heads of pink flowers in August. There are many widely differing varieties of Saxifrage, or Rockfoil; for instance, Muscoides, the Mossy Saxifrage, makes a plump, low cushion of green moss on your rockery; Sarmentosa is the well-known weed, Mother of Thousands; Umbrosa is London Pride. Some have large leaves and pink flowers; some send up pyramids of white flowers from tufts of silvery leaves. You must grow one or two at a time, and get to know them by degrees. Sempervivums are those little green rosettes you see spreading in clumps on old roofs and walls. One of the most fascinating is Sempervivum Arachnoideum, the Cobweb House-leek. It covers itself with a curious white down that looks like a spider’s web. They like a dry sandy part of the rock garden, and full exposure to the sun.
Besides these plants, you should put a few bulbs in your rockery. Some of the very small Daffodils, Narcissus Minimus or Bulbocodium look charming coming up through a mossy carpet of Arenaria Balearica, for instance. You could also have some Snowdrops, some Siberian Squills, some autumn Crocuses, some Fritillaries, and some Dog’s Tooth Violets (Erythronium Dens Canis). We much prefer the English names for flowers, but it is often necessary to give both, so that you should recognize it in the catalogues. We heard of someone who sent to the other end of England for a plant advertised as Tussilago Fragrans, or the Winter Heliotrope, and she was much disappointed to receive a bit of the common Coltsfoot, that was an obnoxious weed in her own garden. Someone else sent for Hieracium Aurantiacum, which certainly sounds a first-class name; but she did not want a bit of the orange Hawkweed, as it had established itself more firmly than she wished in her rock garden already, and had to be kept in bounds with a spade.
We have not given you separate lists for a sunny and a shady rock garden, because we shall tell you a little in another chapter about plants that like shade. You must have some Primroses, Polyanthuses, and Auriculas on your rockery, and though they like the sun in spring, the more delicate kinds need some shelter from the hot summer sun. Try to get Primula rosea, the hardy rose-coloured Himalayan Primrose, and Primula Cashmeriana, a Primrose that sends up heads of mauve flowers on a fat stalk. Both need much moisture. Then, the Japanese Primroses are very handsome, and seed themselves when once established; and Sieboldi, with its many varieties, is easily increased, either by seed sown in spring or by division of the roots.
Now we have chosen just a few flowers for your rock garden, and with every word we write others come and look at us reproachfully, saying, ‘Why are we left out?’ We see neat little tufts of Thrift, or Sea-pink, and hanging sheets of white-flowered Cerastium, Anemones of sorts, Alpine Violas, Forget-me-nots, Hepaticas, Gentians, the finer Columbines, and shrubs of various kinds and sizes. But we have only had one aim in writing this chapter, and that was to lead you just one step towards the rock garden you must make for yourself when you are older. Then you must get yourself ‘Wall and Water Gardens,’ by Gertrude Jekyll, and ‘My Rock Garden,’ by Reginald Farrar, two books that will teach you all that books can about this most fascinating side of garden craft. But from the first one we should like to quote a short passage that tells you how a wise gardener supplements what he learns from books by his own qualities of patience and observation.
‘Nothing is a better lesson in the knowledge of plants,’ says Miss Jekyll, ‘than to sit down in front of them, and handle them, and look them over just as carefully as possible; and in no way can such study be more pleasantly or conveniently carried on than by taking a light seat to the rock wall and giving plenty of time to each kind of little plant, examining it closely, and asking oneself and it, Why this? and Why that? especially if the first glance show two tufts, one with a better appearance than the other; not to stir from the place until one has found out why and how it is done, and all about it. Of course a friend who has already gone through it all can help on the lesson more quickly, but I doubt whether it is not best to do it all for oneself.’
That is excellent gardening advice, and you can apply it to whatever you are trying to do, whether it is a rock wall or a patch of Mustard and Cress.
We must end this chapter with a short list of things we hope you will never allow in your rock garden, and as they are all to be seen here and there, you need not say that the advice is unnecessary. Coloured glass balls, for instance! We assure you that, especially in Germany, there are many people who think coloured glass balls beautiful objects in a garden. Others like bits of quartz, and in cottage gardens you may see sea-shells and broken glass. Then, persons who ought to know better will make a grimy erection with clinkers or broken bricks, and a home for Slugs and Woodlice with a rotting tree-stump. You must do none of these things. If you live where you can easily get stone, have a rock garden in some form, even if it is only an edging of stones to your herbaceous border, and grow some of the plants we have told you of amongst them. If you live where your walls are of brick, you may still get some plants established on them. For instance, where weeds have established themselves, you can remove them, stuff in a little good soil, and sow a few seeds of Snapdragon or Wallflower. Old brick walls make beautiful wall-gardens, and when the builder is not looking you can help on the process in a new one with a chisel, a little fine moist soil, and a few roots or seeds.
CHAPTER XI
DIFFICULT AND SHADY GARDENS
As we told you in our first chapter, the worst piece of ground you can have for a garden is one already occupied by the roots of trees and coarse-growing shrubs or hedges. All around London Privet hedges and grimy Laurels are to be seen everywhere, and wherever people try to grow flowers near their thievish roots the flowers languish. You may put a few Crocuses in front of a group of Laurels, but you will not get much else to flourish. Even that hardiest of Saxifrages, London Pride, leads a starved life, and you cannot know how beautiful it is until you have seen it sending up masses of its foamy pink flowers in good air and from good soil. If you not only have an impoverished and shady garden, but one under the drip of trees, you will not be able to do much with it. Still, we can tell you about a few things we persuaded to live in a situation of this kind not far from London. You must understand that the two authors of this book have had very different gardening experiences. One is the mistress of a large and very beautiful garden running down to the sea in the West of England, while the other has been a wanderer on the face of the earth, and has worked in many gardens of varying sizes. It is usually her fate to find a wilderness, delve like Adam in it till it is a garden, and then go her ways to the next wilderness. The one you are to hear of now was not a pleasant country wilderness, where even the Briars and Nettles are growing in good clean soil and in fresh air. It was one of those disheartening builders’ gardens, where the earth looks a sort of unwholesome lumpy drab, and is full of old bricks and ginger-beer bottles. One side of it was bounded by a Privet hedge, and the soil was starved, but as it was sunny, we got the strong herbaceous things and pinks to do well in it. The other side, which was under great Horse-Chestnuts and Laburnums, got no sun at all, looked very bare, and was evidently wretched soil. We had it well dug and dressed, and planted clumps of Michaelmas Daisy, of Iris Germanica, and of the common Evening Primrose a little way back. The Michaelmas Daisies soon made big bushes, and did very well. The Evening Primroses flowered, but ran up rather tall and spindly. The Iris did not flower well, but it increased, and made a clump of handsome leaves. In front we found that the Perennial Candytuft (Iberis Sempervirens) did well, and increased quickly. You can hardly have a more satisfactory plant for the front of a border of this kind. Crocuses came up year after year, too, but we never persuaded our Daffodils to flower more than once in this garden. Annuals we advise you strongly not to try. They are a source of disappointment in such circumstances. The pretty little yellow-flowered shrub St. John’s Wort should do well under trees, and so will some hardy Ferns.
If your garden is in the country, and is only partly shaded by trees, you can grow many beautiful things in it. Perhaps you will be able to have a background of large stones, and plant Ferns amongst them. The hardiest Ferns are Male Fern, Osmunda, Hart’s Tongue, Spleen Wort, Lady Fern, and Shield Fern, and these all like shade. Amongst the Ferns you should have Solomon’s Seal, Columbines, and Foxgloves. As far as you can, in a garden of this kind plant big patches of one flower, and not a muddle of single specimens. Have a bed of Lilies of the Valley in some part of it, and under the trees a bed of Wild Hyacinths. Snowdrops do well amongst the roots of shrubs and trees, so well that in some gardens they spread and increase like a wild flower. They are fond of peat. Primroses do well in shady places, and so does the Wood Anemone (Anemone Nemorosa). Periwinkle will flower in shade, though it likes sun part of the day. Many Saxifrages and Sempervivums (Rockfoils and Stonecrops) will do well in shady places. For instance, if you have a stone edging to your border, you will be able to have clumps of the mossy Saxifrages and of various Stonecrops. Between them the little dwarf Campanulas would do well, and give you colour all through the summer months. The splendid tall Campanula Pyramidalis might do farther back near your Ferns, if you can give it good soil; so would Campanula Persicifolia, which grows wild in Yorkshire woods. Many Lilies like partial shade and to be near shrubs, but they should never be planted close to the roots of trees.
It is not as generally known as it should be that nearly all the Cyclamens are hardy. The Persian Cyclamen, that we know so well as a pot plant and in greenhouses, is not hardy, and you must not try that in your garden. Get some of the other species which you will find offered in any good bulb catalogue, and in winter give them a covering of moss or dry leaves. They like a dry, porous soil, mixed with a little peat or leaf-mould and some lime or old mortar. The corms are often half out of the ground, or at any rate level with it; but some gardeners, who have paid great attention to their culture, prefer to bury them just under the soil, because the roots of some species come from the top of the corm. The one thing Cyclamens will not stand is stagnant moisture. You must give them well-drained, sandy soil, mixed with a little lime. We repeat this because it is so important, and because Cyclamens are so beautiful that they are worth any trouble you can take for them. Some flower in spring and some in autumn, and they must be planted when they are at rest: the spring ones in October or November, and the autumn ones in June. If they flourish with you their seedlings will appear naturally; otherwise you had better buy new corms when you want them. Gardeners raise them from seed, but this requires a frame or gentle heat.
In a mild climate you can grow Hydrangeas and the shrubby Veronicas in shady places, but they will not live through prolonged hard frosts.
CHAPTER XII
SOME HARDY CLIMBERS
We think the American who described climbing plants as ‘creepers and crawlers’ must have been first cousin to the American novelist who said the house in which his heroine lived was not disfigured by any messy plants growing near it. As you may have a wall, a paling, an arch, or the dead stump of a tree that you would like to disfigure with flowers all the summer, we will tell you of a few good hardy climbers, other than those already recommended in earlier chapters.
A creeper should always be allowed to grow as naturally as possible, and not be restrained more than is necessary by nails or by cutting back. Climbing Roses lose much of their vigour and beauty if penned severely and stretched out tight on a wall. Most climbing plants need some support at the beginning, but later in life take care of themselves. One climber may be freely allowed to mingle with others, so that you can think out lovely combinations; but you must understand which are free growers and which are shy and delicate, or the strong will strangle the weak. The common Honeysuckle and a pink monthly Rose climb all over the front of a cottage known to us, and on the south side the exquisite Solanum Jasminoides throws its clusters of snowy flowers into them. The Honeysuckle and the monthly Rose would grow almost anywhere in these islands, but the Solanum Jasminoides, or Winter Nightshade, is only hardy in the South of England and other warm districts. It finds support for itself by a twist of its leaf-stalk (you will have watched your Giant Nasturtiums do this most cleverly), and its colour varies a little according to its place in sun or partial shade. The shoots of this creeper must be cut back in spring, when frosts are well over, and in hot weather it must be watered.
The Wistaria is one of the most beautiful of all creepers, and its long mauve racemes mix well with a Dorothy Perkins Rose. The Wistaria is a native of China, and was brought to Europe by Mr. Wistar in 1816. The original plant is still to be seen at Wistar House, grown to an immense size. It is a most useful creeper, for it will flower year after year without any attention to roots or soil. If you have one you should, if possible, get a gardener to pay its woody branches a little attention once a year, as, if left quite to themselves, they grow into an inextricable tangle, too thick in some places, and not thick enough in others.
We are sure you gardening children who live in a cold climate must often wish for a warm one. But now we will tell you about one of the most brilliant creepers known that likes to be as far north as possible, spreads like a weed in Scotland, Yorkshire, Westmorland, and is usually a ‘miffy doer’ in the West Country. This is the Flame Flower, the Tropæolum Speciosum, whose vermilion trumpets can be seen two miles away on a clear day. It is a capricious plant, sometimes failing when it has every attention, and succeeding when it is badly treated. Mr. J. Weathers tells a story of a garden in which it was planted most carefully in many places, but some tubers left over were thrust anyhow amongst the roots of an old yew. None of the correctly-planted ones came up, and the others were forgotten. In the third year someone noticed a flame-coloured flower on a Yew, and found that the badly-planted tubers were all coming up, increasing, flowering, and likely to go on for ever. It dislikes scorching heat, and needs moisture in the air. A west or north aspect suits it, and bushes or hedges amongst which it can scramble. We know a Westmorland garden where it can hardly be kept within bounds, and there they believe in deep planting. A daughter of the house got it to succeed against the wall of a cottage on the place, where it had never succeeded before. ‘What did you do?’ we asked. ‘I dug till I got to New Zealand,’ she said, ‘and then I planted it.’
If you live in the Midlands or the South, where this Chilian Tropæolum would probably not do well, you had better be content with the Ampelopsis Veitchii, the best of the Virginian creepers. It is a wonderful sight in Oxford all through September, and even in London it makes a lovely blaze of colour on many a dull house and wall. It is the least troublesome of all creepers, as it attaches itself by little suckers. We once grew the Ceanothus Veitchii with it, a shrub that is often trained against walls, and which in spring becomes a mass of powder-blue flowers. It is one of the easiest and handsomest doers we know, but be sure to get the right kind, the Gloire de Versailles or the Veitchii. There are a good many kinds of Ceanothus, and some are a very poor colour.
We have told you already about two of the Clematis tribe, the white Montana and the purple Jackmanni. The Montana must not be pruned until its flowering season is quite over. If you cut it back while it is making new shoots, you will injure it. The Jackmanni and its relations are hybrids, and you must try to get either a layered plant or one grown from seed, as the grafted ones are unsatisfactory. The flowers are produced on this year’s shoots. The plants should be cut down in winter to twelve inches from the ground. If you get one of the ‘Patens’ section, remember when you prune that the flowers are borne on the old ripened wood. Only dead wood should be cut away. Lady Londesborough, Miss Bateman, and Mrs. George Jackman, are three well-known ones. The Wild Clematis, Vitalba, or Traveller’s Joy, will grow into a dense mass if left undisturbed. We know of a cottage where, with a Japanese Honeysuckle, it forms a rainproof porch; and even that is nothing to one at Belvoir Castle, which is twenty feet high and thirty feet in diameter.
The great advantage of Wichuriana Roses is that they are evergreen, and it is a good plan to grow one of them—for instance, the deep red Hiawatha, with the yellow Jasmine (Jasminum Nudiflorum), whose flowers come out before its leaves. If we could only have one creeper out of all there are, we would have this Jasmine, which flowers in winter, and is quite hardy. Be sure not to let anyone prune yours in autumn. Ignorant gardeners often do this, and cut off all the shoots that wanted to flower. Any pruning necessary should be done in March or April, but you need only cut out dead wood. The charming sprays, if cut in bud, come out well in water.
The Hop is a graceful, hardy, and quick-growing climber, and there is a variegated kind that some people prefer. A Hop will cover a big arch in one year. Also, if you are not on the spot to attend to it, it will throttle every other plant near, and it will probably acquire several varieties of insect blight, and hand them on to its neighbours. One of the authors has suffered from sharing a garden with a Hop enthusiast, and she well remembers the struggle she had to rescue her Roses, Hollyhocks, and Delphiniums from the Hop’s embraces and from the green fly it encouraged. It came up year after year, too, and would not be killed.
The Everlasting Peas are most useful climbers in town gardens. They have no scent, but they give you colour, and are extremely hardy. Then, there are many annual climbers, some of which we have told you about already. If you get Convolvulus Major do not be in a hurry to sow your seeds. The seedlings are delicate, and do not seem to recover well if touched by a spring frost. The first week in May is soon enough. We have seen their blue trumpets grown with a Gloire de Dijon, and their pink ones opening all over an old Lavender bush. Another combination we remember in the same garden was a yellow Banksia Rose and a pink monthly one climbing together up an old grey stone wall. The climbing La France, too, loves a wall, and will flower in masses against one.
But we might go on for ever about the fascinations of creepers and crawlers. The real difficulty is invariably that of choice. You never have room for all you want to grow.
So you must decide for yourself what you will grow; but we advise you strongly to buy your climbers from a first-rate grower. They only cost 1s. or 1s. 6d. each; you cannot have room for many, and they last for years. The cheap stuff advertised is usually most disappointing. We once planted two of the Ampelopsis Veitchii against the same wall, one from the great Veitch himself, and one from a little man round the corner. The difference was in colour rather than in growth. Both lived, climbed, and covered the house, but it was the Veitch plant that turned glowing red and yellow. The other remained brownish-green. It was the same with a Ceanothus. The one from a good firm covered a side of the house with soft yet vivid blue in spring. A cheap one flowered, but its flowers were wishy-washy, a vexation rather than a pleasure.
Before you plant a creeper turn over the soil well, and if it is poor have some good manure forked in. We should never dream of planting a climbing Rose without digging a large hole and putting in a quantity of manure for its roots to feed on, not immediately, but later on. There should be soil on the top of the manure, and in that your Rose should be planted, as we have told you, firmly, yet not too deeply, and with outspread roots. The main stem of your creeper should be as near its support as possible, and tied to nails, wires, or trellis, with bast or twine; but be careful not to bind it tightly, or when it grows it will be cut through. Many gardeners use little strips of cloth and nails, but the cloth shelters insects.
CHAPTER XIII
FRUIT AND VEGETABLES
To this hour one of the authors of this book prefers unripe Greengages to ripe ones, because they remind her of those that grew against the wall of her own garden when she was a child, and which she always ate long before they were ripe. In her days children did imprudent things of this kind, but no doubt you modern children know too much about the laws of hygiene to run such risks—at least, we hope so, or we might be blamed for letting you know that anyone could eat unripe fruit and survive. We are not going to tell you much about fruit and vegetables, because a child is not likely to want his little garden to be a kitchen garden. In case you are a town child, and have never seen vegetables growing, we may as well tell you that they take a great deal of room. We know a boy in Germany who went to live in a ground-floor flat that had a tiny garden belonging to it, the kind of garden in which you can have three rose-bushes and a border of pinks. He was so fond of gardening that after school on a winter day he would amuse himself with a trowel shovelling the bare soil up and down; but he knew so little about it that he wrote to his aunt in England, saying he wished to grow Potatoes, Parsley, Mint, Honeysuckle, Runner Beans, and Vegetable Marrows. The aunt had to explain as well as she could by letter that in a garden of that size he could only grow about two Potatoes, and that he had better try a few Tulips and Daffodils instead. But when spring came she sent him some Vegetable Marrow seeds, and they were the source of a great and joyful excitement later in the year. The boy was away in the country most of the early summer, and when he got back to his little garden in August he found a huge ripe Marrow and smaller ones coming on. We can’t advise you to grow Vegetable Marrows, however, as they take a great deal of room, and require a mound or ridge. If you have a warm brick wall you should have a Peach, a Pear, a Golden Plum, a Greengage, or a White Heart Cherry. If you have a spare corner, plant a Gooseberry or a Currant bush. In your border try to grow a few Lettuces and Radishes, and some Mustard and Cress for the schoolroom tea.