Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth

by Alice Morse Earle

Mrs. Milne-Home says her old Scotch gardener called the white Delphinium Elijah's Chariot—a resounding, stately title. Helmet-flower is another name. I think the Larkspur Border, and the Blue Border both gain if a few plants of the pure white Delphinium, especially the variety called the Emperor, bloom by the blue flowers. In our garden the common blue Larkspur loves to blossom by the side of the white Phlox. A bit of the border is shown on [page 162]. In another corner of the garden the pink and lilac Larkspur should be grown; for their tints, running into blue, are as varied as those of an opal.

I have never seen the wild Larkspur which grows so plentifully in our middle Southern states; but I have seen expanses of our common garden Larkspur which has run wild. Nor have I seen the glorious fields of Wyoming Larkspur, so poisonous to cattle; nor the magnificent Larkspur, eight feet high, described so radiantly to us by John Muir, which blues those wonders of nature, the hanging meadow gardens of California.

I am inclined to believe that Lobelia is the least pleasing blue flower that blossoms. I never see it in any place or juxtaposition that it satisfies me. When you take a single flower of it in your hand, its single little delicate bloom is really just as pretty as Blue-eyed Grass, or Innocence, or Scilla, and the whole plant regarded closely by itself isn't at all bad; but whenever and wherever you find it growing in a garden, you never want it in that place, and you shift it here and there. I am convinced that the Lobelia is simply impossible; it is an alien, wrong in some subtle way in tint, in habit of growth, in time of blooming. The last time I noted it in any large garden planting, it was set around the roots of some standard Rose bushes; and the gardener had displayed some thought about it; it was only at the base of white or cream-yellow Roses; but it still was objectionable. I think I would exterminate Lobelia if I could, banish it and forget it. In the minds of many would linger a memory of certain ornate garden vases, each crowded with a Pandanus-y plant, a pink Begonia, a scarlet double Geranium, a purple Verbena or a crimson Petunia, all gracefully entwined with Nasturtiums and Lobelia—while these folks lived, the Lobelia would not be forgotten.

You will have some curious experiences with your Blue Border; kindly friends, pleased with its beauty or novelty, will send to you plants and seeds to add to its variety of form "another bright blue flower." You will usually find you have added variety of tint as well, ranging into crimson and deep purple, for color blindness is far more general than is thought.

The loveliest blue flowers are the wild ones of fields and meadows; therefore the poor, says Alphonse Karr, with these and the blue of the sky have the best and the most of all blueness. Yet we are constantly hearing folks speak of the lack of the color blue among wild flowers, which always surprises me; I suppose I see blue because I love blue. In pure cobalt tint it is rare; in compensation, when it does abound, it makes a permanent imprint on our vision, which never vanishes. Recalling in midwinter the expanses of color in summer waysides, I do not see them white with Daisies, or yellow with Goldenrod, but they are in my mind's vision brightly, beautifully blue. One special scene is the blue of Fringed Gentians, on a sunny October day, on a rocky hill road in Royalston, Massachusetts, where they sprung up, wide open, a solid mass of blue, from stone wall to stone wall, with scarcely a wheel rut showing among them. Even thus, growing in as lavish abundance as any weed, the Fringed Gentian still preserved in collective expanse, its delicate, its distinctly aristocratic bearing.

Bryant asserts of this flower:—

"Thou waitest late, and com'st alone
When woods are bare, and birds are flown."

But by this roadside the woods were far from bare. Many Asters, especially the variety I call Michaelmas Daisies, Goldenrod, Butter-and-eggs, Turtle Head, and other flowers, were in ample bloom. And the same conditions of varied flower companionship existed when I saw the Fringed Gentian blooming near Bryant's own home at Cummington.