The Master of the House—he has admitted it himself somewhere in these pages—understands little if anything of gardener’s art: that is, of the art of rearing flowers in their proper seasons, in suitable ground and so forth. But he complacently believes that he has an aptitude for what, on a larger theatre of operations than the few acres of Villino Loki, would be called Landscape Gardening! He imagines that, had fate provided him with an “estate,” he would have been great at devising vistas, grouping trees, laying out pleasing curves of approach, and all that sort of thing.
At the Villino this imaginary special competency could only find an opening in clearance work. And when we first bought this strip of hill-side, clearance was indeed no small matter.
With the exception of the terraces immediately round the House and of the kitchen yards about the Cottage, the whole place was a congeries of almost impenetrable thickets, interspersed with patches of heather and furze. There were but two paths, running down, in purely utilitarian lines, from the higher level to that of the cottage potager.
‹What has been achieved since then in the matter of path-cutting can be made patent by a glance at Mr. Robinson’s perspective map of the Villino grounds.›
So thick and strenuous was the growth of underwood—self-sown infant Hollies, adolescent Larches and Pines, young Ashes, Oaks and Chestnuts in their nonage, all interlocked, entwined in Brambles and Honeysuckle, that hardly anywhere could the trunks of the full-grown trees be distinguished.
Now it is obvious that the beauty of wooded grounds depends essentially upon light effects under the foliage and between the boles; upon distant peeps. In no direction ought the view ever to be solidly stopped—unless, of course, where it is desired to hide some unpleasing prospect. It may therefore be erected into a maxim that, if trees are to be enjoyed, underwoods must be sacrificed wholesale.
At first, with that reverence for things which, if they may be laid low at one blow or two of the billhook, require many years for their growth, one feels inclined to hesitate. One’s heart rebels at the thought of cutting off in the flower of its youth the sapling that in the spring is of so tender green, the bush of name unknown but engaging enough—if there were not “so many of him.” But it soon becomes evident that you must harden your heart and ruthlessly slash away the bulk of undergrowths, for good and all.
And this has been the province of the padrone. And although on many an occasion at first the padrona bewailed bitterly, almost tearfully, that he was making the place “simply scald,” it is now generally admitted that the result has proved a matter for congratulation.