My list seems to be already stretching to a tolerable length, yet there are plenty of things that have not yet found their way into it. Here is Bocconia cordata, for instance, impossible to do without in such a spot. Here are the spider-worts, both blue and white. Here are various spiræas, chiefly low-growing ones, such as “Anthony Waterer” and palmata, the latter only happy in a more or less damp place. In the peat-filled hollow beyond quite a little crowd of claimants rise up for notice. A good many of these are now only satisfactory in the retrospect. Of such are Primula japonica, and Primula rosea, sorry-looking tufts of brown shreds, with no new leaves as yet showing. Cypripedium spectabile is in the same plight, but Hellonias bullata is still green, Gentiana asclepiadea has a flower or two showing, Lobelia cardinalis, both the older and newer varieties, look red and happy, and Schizostylis coccinea promises fairly, though it never behaves with us quite as it ought to do, and as I have known it behave in kindlier soils.
Turning to the region of mere dryness, three or four rough stone steps, and a ridiculous little ridge, lead towards the azalea corner.
Here cistuses of various kinds have their home, and, being fairly sheltered, do well, though several require remembering in the winter. I find the same to be the case here with regard to the rosemaries, especially the younger plants, as they grow older they seem to harden. Lavenders fortunately are safe everywhere, in all weathers, and the same may be said of Skimmia japonica and Fortunei, two of the most satisfactory of small winter-flowering shrubs. These with a few tufts of Andromeda floribunda, and a small jungle of alpine rhododendron, bring us up to the azalea corner.
All these plants, especially the more recently planted ones, will need pretty constant looking after during the next year or so, but once that crucial period of their existence is over, it is my hope—possibly only my delusion—that they will learn so to arrange their affairs as merely to require the sort of attention that is necessary to see that they do not overcrowd one another, or—what is more serious—become invaded by wild neighbours, rose-campions, and the like, swarming in upon them to the point of suffocation. The safest way of avoiding this is undoubtedly to cover the ground with low, carpeting growths, which will remain green nearly all the year round, and at the same time not make too severe a demand upon the soil. The number of such kindly little evergreens, or semi-evergreens is a constant surprise when one comes to collect them, and the fact that there should be so many speaks volumes for a climate that we are none of us ever weary of abusing. Apart from absolute rock-plants, nearly all of which are evergreen, there are a number of others, which rarely or never lose their leaves, and whose presence saves banks and hollows like these from the reproach of bareness, and further takes away—certainly ought to take away—all excuses for visitations from that Tool of the Destroyer, the pitchfork. Of such plants none are better than certain campanulas, including our own hairbells, both the blue and the white. Wood-sorrels again are excellent in a shady place, or, for a sunnier one, there is their energetic cousin Oxalis floribunda, in this soil the most undaunted of colonisers, growing all the winter. “Creeping Jenny” again, and “Blue-eyed Mary,” delightful things with delightful names, will cover as much space as they are allowed to do. Of the more easily grown forget-me-nots there are at least four kinds—palustris, for planting close to the water, or in it; dissitiflora, happy all the summer, so long as it gets a little shade; sylvatica and alpestris, growing anywhere, and everywhere. Epimediums, again, are excellent, though apt to get a little rusty in the winter. So is Tellina grandiflora, an unwisely named plant, since its strength lies, not in its flowers, but its leaves. Thymes, too, are always available; likewise potentillas, erysimums, and veronicas, though these last may seem to be trenching upon the rock-plant region. Then, if we want larger growths, are there not all the megaseas, which may be torn in pieces two or three times a year, if we like? Of low-growing shrubs, such as Euonymus radicans, the various creeping cotoneasters, the savin, Gaultheria shallon, and others, there is no lack. Yet another, and one of the best of them all, Cornus canadensis, a true shrub, and an evergreen one, although no larger than a wild wood-strawberry.
But I find myself growing breathless, and the list of such kindly “carpeters” is in reality only begun. Flinging down woodruffs, wild pansies, foam-flowers, sedums, mossy saxifrages, waldsteinias, and periwinkles, as one might out of a basket, I will only now delay to find room for a few rock-pinks, particularly for these four—cæsius, cruentus, atro-rubens, and deltoides,—all of which may be sown broadcast in the spring, and all of which, especially the last, may be trusted to hold their own against any but the biggest and most ferocious of natives.
We have been honest caterers for our clients, as far as preparation went, and my hope, I may say my ideal, is that they will henceforward be content with receiving merely surface nourishment from time to time, and will neither look for or need that eternal process of renewal, and as a consequence of disorganisation, which is the bane, though I am willing to admit the unavoidable bane, of nearly every flower-bed and border.
Ideals are odd things, and this one of mine seems, even as I write it down, about as ridiculous and puny an ideal as any forlorn idealist was ever driven into making a boast of! Such as it is, however, I cling to it tenaciously. After all what does it mean? Written out a little large it means repose of mind, and a freedom from the strain of change; it even means a certain sense of finality, and that at a very sensitive spot in one’s small environment.
To a greater or less extent we all sigh for finality. Nobody has ever attained to it, that I have heard of, and not many people would perhaps relish it if they could do so. None the less it remains, something haunting; a dimly descried presence, to us vaguely desirable. To sit at ease under their own vines; to be at rest in their own shaded places, has from the earliest days flattered the imaginations of men, busy and idle ones alike. Dawdlers in sunny places, and haunters of gardens like ourselves are naturally assigned to the second of these categories. Since we have to support the reproach of idleness, let us at least then take heed that we secure the comfort of it. If Leisure is an acquaintance of ours he is an acquaintance of so few people nowadays, that we had better make the most of him. Now fuss the good man detests, and change, merely for change’s sake, is undoubtedly one of the very worst forms of fuss. Like every other pursuit and following, horticulture no doubt has its battlefields, and those who go out upon them must expect charge and countercharge, rapid assault and varying vicissitude, like other heroes upon other battlefields. For me such combats, I am free to confess, have not even a vicarious charm; Peace being the only deity to whom I would willingly raise even the smallest of garden altars. With other out-of-door conditions we all aver that it is their stability, their adorable unchangeableness, which lends them in our eyes their most persistent charm. Why then are we not to look for the same charm in our gardens, which after all come nearest home? That it is a charm easy of attainment I were loth to asseverate, but that seems hardly a reason for not endeavouring to attain to it. It is in this direction at all events that my own private plottings and plannings propose to turn. If I must moil and delve; if I must plant, dig, and contrive now, it is with the fixed and fond determination of before long sitting resolutely down, and doing absolutely nothing!
October 27, 1899
WHO dare forecast even his nearest future?