That being decided upon, what to experiment with becomes the next question, and here aspect is clearly the ruling factor. That no early morning sun will reach the place even in summer is certain. Four respectable oaks, of quite a gentlemanly girth, stand along the fence, and forbid it. They are not near enough for their roots to do much damage, but the firstlings of the sun’s rays they will certainly keep to themselves. This being so, there is a limit clearly as to what will answer. All things considered, especially with regard to the fact that the brambles could hardly be dislodged without a wrench which would disorganise everything, I am inclined to give my vote for more brambles, only this time civilised ones. There are plenty fortunately to choose from. There is, for instance, Rubus odoratus, showing a vigour, and a turn for colonisation hardly to be exceeded by the very wildest of wild brambles. There is the cut-leafed bramble; there is the bramble of the Nootka Sound; there is the whitewashed bramble; there is the salmon-berry; the cloudberry; the bramble of the Rocky Mountains, and others, all of which I already in fancy see tossing themselves up and down the bracken, and over their wilder brethren, in one delicious froth of white or rose-coloured blossom.
Another, and a yet more fascinating vision, sweeping over the field of my mind, has for a moment given it pause. What of a jungle, not of brambles, but of roses? None of your trim standards, of course, but some of the freer kinds—Rosa alba, Rosa lucida, Rosa brunonis, with some Ayrshires, some Dundee ramblers, and one commanding thicket of the biggest of the Polyanthas? It is a heady vision, and as a portion of the natural “wildness” might intoxicate the brain of Lord Bacon himself. In gardening it does not do, however, to be too easily intoxicated. We have to keep a sober head; we have to look at the matter from all its points of view; there is the question of aspect, already touched upon; there is the question of soil; above all there is the question of fertilisation—dear, delicate word! No, we must not allow ourselves to be carried off our feet by any vision, however roseate. We have always been a pair of sober horticulturists, and we will continue to be so still. Our rose-jungle must wait. It is only postponed: we will have it yet, and in a better place. Even if we never did have it, even if the postponement had to be an eternal one, is it not, one sometimes asks oneself, the gardens that never have been planted—“whose flowers ne’er fed the bee”; whose dusky scented walks no foot has ever trod, that yield the deepest, the most unqualified enjoyment? “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.” What then of unseen gardens? What wealth of blossoms! what a flood of sunshine, which yet never scorches! what green and translucent groves, which at the same time are never damp! what order, without the faintest touch of formality! what wildness, what heavenly entanglements, without so much as an approach to confusion! But I perceive that I am again wandering out of the domain of horticulture, into a much less attainable region, and it may be as well, therefore, to pause.
March 28, 1900
HAD we embarked upon a little stone house, instead of a little red-brick one, should we, I wonder, have had the energy to bestow upon ourselves a small flagged and stonewalled garden as an adjunct to it? I doubt it. For one thing flagged gardens are, I imagine, costly affairs. Moreover I have never myself seen a new one that appealed to me as quite satisfactory. An old, grey-walled, and grey-flagged garden, as part of an old, grey farmhouse, or manor, is one of the most ideal possessions that the heart of man could sigh after. Like most other ideal possessions, to have it, it is, unfortunately, necessary as a rule to have been born to it.
Be this as it may, I have never ceased to rejoice that we had the energy to embark at once upon our little red-brick garden. The comfort of knowing that there is always one spot sure to be clean, sure to be dry, sure to be a satisfaction to step into, even in such weather as we have of late been afflicted with, is a boon that can hardly be overrated. As a mere matter of appearance, the red-brick garden seems to be at least as “natural” an appanage of the red-brick house as the little grey-stone garden of the grey-stone one. Both require a certain amount of thought and contrivance, especially as regards proportion, but once this is attained, they soon learn to wear that inevitable aspect, which in garden making, as in all the other arts, great and small, is the first, and surely the least dispensable of all requirements?
That the grey-stone garden is on the whole the higher species of the two I admit. At the same time the red-brick one has this great advantage over its stony brother that it is essentially a winter’s day garden, whereas the stone one may, and in bad weather does, look grim, to the point of being almost forbidding. In both gardens some amount of hindrance is apt to arise with regard to the laying down of the walks. Flagging is a costly process, and where the walks are very narrow, the laying down of stone flags must be a matter of some difficulty. The same applies, though not quite to the same extent, to the red-brick garden. That it ought to be tiled, just as the other ought to be flagged, I feel sure. At the same time good, red gravel, or even bricks, broken fine, mixed with sand, and rolled, answers fairly. Another question arises in the matter of vases. Terra-cotta ones of the right design are not easily come by in this country, and, when come by, they often cost more than if imported direct from Italy. These, however, are details, while the question of what to plant in such gardens is still more obviously an open one. That the more of glaucous, grey-blue tints—such as that found in the foliage of carnations—we have the better, is I think certain, while if small bushes are wanted, lavender will provide the same shade. Where both walls and walks are of red brick, blue, white and violet seem to be the right prevailing colours; reds and yellows only to be admitted slowly, and with precaution. All this, however, savours of dogmatism!
The supreme moment for such little plots is of course their spring-bulb time. Most people call them Dutch gardens, and whether common in Holland or not, the tulip undoubtedly seems born to flourish in them. When the tulips are over, plenty of other things come on however to take their places. Pansies, for instance, never look better than in such gardens, whether as a carpet for tea-roses, or in beds by themselves. The smaller campanulas, especially the white hairbells, the small double daisies, and a host of other things of the same sort, answer perfectly, while, if we want to stretch out our bulb season all we can, sparaxis, ixias, bobartias, the early white gladioli, and others, are all ready to hand, followed by the various lesser irises, winding up, at perhaps their best point, with xiphium and xiphioides.
The one indispensable point—here again dogmatism appears!—is that such gardens should be so close to the house as to keep up the idea of being merely an adjunct, or flowery courtyard to it. With this idea in our minds anything like distance is fatal. You must be free to step into your garden from your door, or with no more interval than two or three steps, or the breadth of a gravel walk. Garden fanatics as many of us already are, and—as life increases in strenuousness—more and more will yearly become, it is our interest obviously to spin out our playtime all we can. Now nothing so helps us towards this, or so effectually counteracts our Arch-enemy, as to have some little settled place so cunningly contrived that even his malignity, backed by its worst agents—sleet, hail, fierce winds, cutting rains,—fails to reduce it to a condition of mere despairing sloppiness; mere forlorn, and death-suggesting desolation.
March 29, 1900
WHO would believe in being seriously tormented by a plague of oaks? Such nevertheless has been our lot for the last few weeks. As plagues go they are certainly better than locusts, not to speak of others that we read of in the Bible. For all that we find them quite troublesome enough. Although so young that they were only dropped from the parent bough last autumn, they already cling to the ground with all the tenacity of their ancestors; the most exasperated pull causing considerable fatigue to the puller, but producing no effect whatever upon the youthful athlete. Many of them are in the engaging condition of being still attached to their natal acorn, which, acting as a sort of grappling iron, effectually hinders their being drawn up, even through the soft soil of our flower-borders. Last year was a most bountiful one for acorns, and every sty in the neighbourhood revelled in plenty. Since we do not ourselves keep pigs, we hope that another season we may be less blessed!