All English poets have ever been ready to sing English flowers until jesters have laughed, and to sing garden flowers as well as wild flowers. Few have really described a garden, though the orderly distribution of flowers might be held to be akin to the restraint of rhyme and rhythm in poetry.
Shakespeare Border at Hillside.
It has been the affectionate tribute and happy diversion of those who love both poetry and flowers to note the flowers beloved of various poets, and gather them together, either in a book or a garden. The pages of Milton cannot be forced, even by his most ardent admirers, to indicate any intimate knowledge of flowers. He certainly makes some very elegant classical allusions to flowers and fruits, and some amusingly vague ones as well. "The Flowers of Spenser," and "A Posy from Chaucer," are the titles of most readable chapters in A Garden of Simples, but the allusions and quotations from both authors are pleasing and interesting, rather than informing as to the real variety and description of the flowers of their day. Nearly all the older English poets, though writing glibly of woods and vales, of shepherds and swains, of buds and blossoms, scarcely allude to a flower in a natural way. Herrick was truly a flower lover, and, as the critic said, "many flowers grow to illustrate quotations from his works." The flowers named of Shakespeare have been written about in varied books, Shakespeare's Garden, Shakespeare's Bouquet, Flowers from Stratford-on-Avon, etc. These are easily led in fulness of detail, exactness of information, and delightful literary quality by that truly perfect book, beloved of all garden lovers, The Plant Lore and Garden Craft of Shakespeare, by Canon Ellacombe. Of it I never weary, and for it I am ever grateful.
Shakespeare Gardens, or Shakespeare Borders, too, are laid out and set with every tree, shrub, and flower named in Shakespeare, and these are over two hundred in number. A distinguishing mark of the Shakespeare Border of Lady Warwick is the peculiar label set alongside each plant. This label is of pottery, greenish-brown in tint, shaped like a butterfly, bearing on its wings a quotation of a few words and the play reference relating to each special plant. Of course these words have been fired in and are thus permanent. Pretty as they are in themselves they must be disfiguring to the borders—as all labels are in a garden.
In the garden at Hillside, near Albany, New York, grows a green and flourishing Shakespeare Border, gathered ten years ago by the mistress of the garden. I use the terms green and flourishing with exactness in this connection, for a great impression made by this border is of its thriving health, and also of the predominance of green leafage of every variety, shape, manner of growth, and oddness of tint. In this latter respect it is infinitely more beautiful than the ordinary border, varying from silvery glaucous green through greens of yellow or brownish shade to the blue-black greens of some herbs; and among these green leaves are many of sweet or pungent scent, and of medicinal qualities, such as are seldom grown to-day save in some such choice and chosen spot. There is less bloom in this Shakespeare Border than in our modern flower beds, and the flowers are not so large or brilliant as our modern favorites; but, quiet as they are, they are said to excel the blossoms of the same plants of Shakespeare's own day, which we learn from the old herbalists were smaller and less varied in color and of simpler tints than those of their descendants. At the first glance this Shakespeare Border shines chiefly in the light of the imagination, as stirred by the poet's noble words; but do not dwell on this border as a whole, as something only to be looked at; read the pages of this garden, dwell on each leafy sentence, and you are entranced with its beautiful significance. It was not gathered with so much thought, and each plant and seed set out and watched and reared like a delicate child, to become a show place; it appeals for a more intimate regard; and we find that its detail makes its charm.
Such a garden as this appeals warmly to anyone who is sensitive to the imaginative element of flower beauty. Many garden makers forget that a flower bed is a group of living beings—perhaps of sentient beings—as well as a mass of beautiful color. Modern gardens tend far too much toward the display of the united effect of growing plants, to a striving for universal brilliancy, rather than attention to and love for separate flowers. There was refreshment of spirit as well as of the senses in the old-time garden of flowers, such as these planted in this Shakespeare Border, and it stirred the heart of the poet as could no modern flower gardens.
