THE PROBLEM OF HOLLY
There have been a few mistakes, no doubt. It was not easy, for instance, in the case of Holly, and perhaps also of Rowan, for the beginner to distinguish which clump was likely to bear the decorative winter coral and which not. Seeing what some of our Hollies in a good season can be ‹that which closes the prospect at the north end of our Hemicycle, for example, what a glory of pure scarlet it displays when all bright colours have disappeared from the garden!› we regret not to have spared a few more. Nevertheless, it is a wise decision, in grounds overgrown by underwood, that delendum est Ilex Aquifolium—that Common Holly must go.
In the first place, nothing will grow under the shade of its dark leathery, spinous leaves, which, even when shed, are more indestructible and noxious to grass than pine needles themselves. And, secondly, Holly is a very bully and brigand among growing trees. Its vitality and pushfulness over-masters everything. Your young Holly will thrust aside the sturdiest neighbouring branches; will conquer its “place under the sun” to the detriment of the equally fair claims of Oak, or Ash, or anything that strives upward.
No—the right place of Holly is in the close-set hedge, for which its forbidding, never-failing foliage and its vigorous growth pre-eminently fit it. Or, again, in a dignified isolation where it can, without truculent self-assertion, develop on all sides its regular, shapely growth, look beautiful at all times in its evergreen sheen; and, if of the fruit-bearing sex, relieve with its scarlet the browns of autumn and the white of a winter landscape.
The first spot to be assailed was the area now called the Blue-bell Glade, the interior of which was then terra incognita. It had to be tackled like a fortress—by regular sap. Nothing was spared but the full-grown trees. Terrible was the destruction, and gigantic the accumulation of small firewood for future use. But great was the landscape result: it gave us our first far-reaching perspective along our own ground. We had, of course, fine and wide views over the tree-tops from the highest terrace. But now we obtained, in one direction at least, a middle-distance prospect of green fields between the boles under overhanging branches. And the effect was singularly satisfying.
And so the war on undergrowth was carried-on, with system, until the present pleasing condition was reached, when in every direction the eye is able to find, up hill or down, either some far view of moor or valley, or some corner of the grounds themselves, now grass-grown or bright with flower-beds.
Grass—that was what Villino Loki most wanted! And the extirpation of the greatest enemies to grass—Brushwood, Heather, Gorse, and Bracken—has been the hardest achievement of all: one which Grandpa is fond of letting every one know is more especially his own.
THE GREAT CLEARANCE