Valerian.
No garden can aspire to be named An Old-fashioned Garden unless it contains that beautiful plant the Garden Valerian, known throughout New England to-day as Garden Heliotrope; as Setwall it grew in every old garden, as it was in every pharmacopœia. It was termed "drink-quickening Setuale" by Spenser, from the universal use of its flowers to flavor various enticing drinks. Its lovely blossoms are pinkish in bud and open to pure white; its curiously penetrating vanilla-like fragrance is disliked by many who are not cats. I find it rather pleasing of scent when growing in the garden, and not at all like the extremely nasty-smelling medicine which is made from it, and which has been used for centuries for "histerrick fits," and is still constantly prescribed to-day for that unsympathized-with malady. Dr. Holmes calls it, "Valerian, calmer of hysteric squirms." It is a stately plant when in tall flower in June; my sister had great clumps of bloom like the ones shown above, but alas! the cats caught them before the photographer did. The cats did not have to watch the wind and sun and rain, to pick out plates and pack plate-holders, and gather ray-fillers and cloth and lens, and adjust the tripod, and fix the camera and focus, and think, and focus, and think, and then wait—till the wind ceased blowing. So when they found it, they broke down every slender stalk and rolled in it till the ground was tamped down as hard as if one of our lazy road-menders had been at it. Valerian has in England as an appropriate folk name, "Cats'-fancy." The pretty little annual, Nemophila, makes also a favorite rolling-place for our cat; while all who love cats have given them Catnip and seen the singular intoxication it brings. The sight of a cat in this strange ecstasy over a bunch of Catnip always gives me a half-sense of fear; she becomes such a truly wild creature, such a miniature tiger.
In The Art of Gardening, by J. W., Gent., 1683, the author says of Marigolds: "There are divers sorts besides the common as the African Marigold, a Fair bigge Yellow Flower, but of a very Naughty Smell." I cannot refrain, ere I tell more of the Marigold's naughtiness, to copy a note written in this book by a Massachusetts bride whose new husband owned and studied the book two hundred years ago; for it gives a little glimpse of old-time life. In her exact little handwriting are these words:—
"Planted in Potts, 1720: An Almond Stone, an English Wallnut, Cittron Seeds, Pistachica nutts, Red Damsons, Leamon seeds, Oring seeds and Daits."
Poor Anne! she died before she had time to become any one's grandmother. I hope her successor in matrimony, our forbear, cherished her little seedlings and rejoiced in the Lemon and Almond trees, though Anne herself was so speedily forgotten. She is, however, avenged by Time; for she is remembered better than the wife who took her place, through her simple flower-loving words.
I am surprised at this aspersion on the Marigold as to its smell, for all the traditions of this flower show it to have been a great favorite in kitchen gardens; and I have found that elderly folk are very apt to like its scent. My father loved the flower and the fragrance, and liked to have a bowl of Marigolds stand beside him on his library table. It was constantly carried to church as a "Sabbath-day posy," and its petals used as flavoring in soups and stews. Charles Lamb said it poisoned them. Canon Ellacombe writes that it has been banished in England to the gardens of cottages and old farm-houses; it had a waning popularity in America, but was never wholly despised.
How Edward Fitzgerald loved the African Marigold! "Its grand color is so comfortable to us Spanish-like Paddies," he writes to Fanny Kemble in letters punctuated with little references to his garden flowers: letters so cheerful, too, with capitals; "I love the old way of Capitals for Names," he says—and so do I; letters bearing two surprises, namely, the infrequent references to Omar Khayyam; and the fact that Nasturtiums, not Roses, were his favorite flower.