If any man wants an argument in favour of keeping every available space open in towns and cities let him go into some crowded neighbourhood and watch the children playing in the gutters of the streets. Then let him find one of those places, a disused burial ground, or the garden of an old square, which has been preserved, and kept open, and laid out for the benefit of the children, and he will see the difference at once. There are two such places easy for the Londoner to visit, the one Browning Hall Garden, now a garden, once the York Road Burial Ground, Walworth, the other Meath Gardens, eleven acres of public garden, once The Victoria Park Cemetery, Bethnal Green.
They say that one half of London doesn’t know how the other half lives. They do not know, but worse still they don’t care. It is equally true that half the people who profess to care for flowers are ignorant of the wonderful flower-beds carefully grown for their pleasure within a two-penny ’bus ride of most parts of London. The row of beds facing Park Lane; the flower walk (where the babies walk, too) in Kensington Gardens; the flower walk in Regent’s Park, the Houses at Kew, are sights as well worth an afternoon’s excursion as any other form of amusement. Most people almost unconsciously absorb the colour of cities, vaguely realising grey streets, red streets, white streets, spaces of grass and trees, big blots of colour—like the huge beds of scarlet geraniums in front of Buckingham Palace, but they do not trouble to get the value of their impressions. People look on the way from Hyde Park Corner to the Marble Arch as a convenient means of crossing London instead of one of the most interesting and delightful experiences to be had. They go crazy over trees and sky in the country, when they have at their doors sights the country can never equal. The sun in late autumn setting behind the trees of Hyde Park and glowing over the murky smoke-laden skies is a sight for the gods. Smoke has its disadvantages, but it certainly gives one æsthetic joys unknown in clear skies, for instance alone the reflection of the lights of Piccadilly on the evening sky.
After all, the time to see the wonder of town gardens is at night. The streets are empty of people. Here and there a few night workers walk the lonely streets, a policeman tramps his beat, the huge carts bringing the provisions for the city lumber along with sleepy carters swaddled in sacks perched high among the heaps of baskets. Here and there men with long hoses are washing down the roads. The Parks and Gardens lie bathed in peace, mysterious shadows make velvet caves sheltered by leaves. Those trees standing close to the road are lit by the electric lamps and fringe the street with vivid green. Only the flowers seem really awake, alive, in a tremendous dream city. Along the lines of houses, blinds down, shutters closed, a window box here and there breaks the monotony and seems to be the only real thing there. If it is Spring, then from Hyde Park Corner to the Kensington High Street, all along the side of the Park, behind the railings are regiments of Crocus flowers, spikes of Narcissus, and of Daffodil. Their sweetness fills the air, their very presence fills the town with gentleness, and purifies and softens its grimness. Far above, in some citadel of flats, a solitary light burns, some one is at work, or ill, or watching. Above all hang the blazing stars.
II
THE EFFECT OF TREES
Of the pleasure and affect of trees no one speaks so wisely as Bacon. Although those who have a feeling for garden literature know his essay on Gardens as the classic of its kind, still many do not recall his thoughts when the planning of a garden is on hand. Too much, I think, is given by the man who is about to make a garden, to his own particular hobby, and many a man wonders why his garden gives him not all the pleasure he expected. You will hear of a man talk of his new Rose beds, of the nursery for Carnations he is in the process of making, of the placing of his Violet frames, of his ideas for a rock garden (I think the distressful feeling for a rockery of clinkers is dead), but you will seldom hear of a man who deliberates quietly for effects of trees, or who thinks of planting fruit trees as ornaments, but always he places them in his kitchen garden, and ignores their value in their other proper places.
Bacon rejoices in his arrangement of gardens for every month of the year, and dwells, rightly, just as much on the pleasure of his trees as in the ordering of his flower beds. Naturally he had not such a large selection of flowers from which to choose as we have to-day, but to-day we neglect the beauty of many trees, and especially the beauty of hedges.
Are there sights in any garden more beautiful than the Almond tree and the Peach tree in blossom, or the sweet trailing Sweetbriar? Bacon would have us notice these, make a feast of these. Also he recommends the beauty of the White Thorn in leaf, the Cherry and the Plum trees in blossom, the Cherry tree in fruit, the Lilac tree, the wonder of the Apple tree, and the Medlar.
Then, again, Bacon touches on a point all too little counted: the perfume of the garden. He says: “And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes like the warbling of musick) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air.
“Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells; so that you may walk by a whole row of them and find nothing of their sweetness; yea, though it be in a morning’s dew. Bays likewise yield no smell as they grow; Rosemary little; nor Sweet Marjoram.