September 29, 1899
“FOUNTAINS; they are a great beauty and refreshment, but pools mar all, and make the garden unwholesome, full of flies and frogs.”
For two persons who have just been at some pains to establish a pool in their grounds, this is a hard saying! That the judgment has much to support it, apart from the weight of its utterer, I cannot deny. At the same time a better case can, I think, be made out for the culprits than may appear at first sight. Fountains in a copse, be they never so limpid, never so sparkling, would be stamped with an unendurable stamp of artificiality. Pools on the other hand, though there are certainly not many in these copses of ours, are at all events not inconceivable. In the present case we flatter ourselves that the particular spot we have selected for our pool was intended by Nature to contain one, and nothing but the incurable aridity of these dry hillsides hindered her from carrying out that intention. Where every drop of water has to be watched over like hid treasure, it may be doubted whether the amount that we can afford to have trickling through it in summer will suffice to hinder the water in it from becoming yellow, brown, or green. That is a point however which remains for future discovery. Our main preoccupation at present rests with the planting of the edges of our pool, especially with the clothing of the bank which, rising to the north of it, will absorb most of the midday sun, and will require therefore the most attention.
In its present condition a good deal of that bank looks bare to desperation, yet I strongly suspect that summer will prove it to have the reverse fault of being crowded with a dense, and inextricably entangled mass of vegetation. Fortunately half its present inhabitants, being biennials, will depart after the first season, when, the prospect clearing, the permanent inhabitants will stand forth confest and visible.
Omitting this temporary part of its furniture, I will jot the others down as they stand, which will enable us to see what we have, and also to form a better idea of what we still lack.
First and foremost a kindly gift; two large clumps of Arundo donax, easily supreme anywhere as pond-side decoration, the more so, as they quickly attain to their full size. No other plant of the reedy order, not even excepting a bamboo, gives quite the same impression of vigorous, of almost insolent energy as does this one. It adapts itself moreover perfectly to our sandy soil, and so long as one sees that it receives a reasonable amount of moisture, seems to ask for little else. Next follow two or three plants of Arundinaria japonica, and below these again Arundinaria, or Bambusa palmata, skirting the edge of the pond, and passing on into the so-called bog. This last came from Kildare, where it has established itself, and run practically wild along the edge of a lake. Here it seems to do its growing more slowly, but the plants are spreading, and I think promise fairly. Below the other bamboos, but above palmata come two large plants of Astilbe rivularis, placed so that their arching leaves will overhang their lower neighbours, and all but touch the water. Next, turning the corner of the pond, come various low-growing bushes. Berberis Darwini below, with the faithful Aquifolium, and the taller stenophylla above, ending in a fringe of bog-myrtle, and of Rodgersia podophylla, among which some Solomon’s seal are now barely discernible. After these come a few plants of Hemerocallis, both fulva and flava, which need continual dividing in the borders, but seem to flower well, and give no further trouble so long as they are within reach of an occasional splash. Acanthuses appear to be in the same position, the difference between their growth in wet and dry soil being extraordinary; indeed when one remembers how they abound in Spain and Italy, one fails to understand the limp and desolated aspect they see fit to assume here, under a very much more moderate dispensation of drought.
Next follows Funkia Sieboldi. Funkias are all meritorious plants, but Sieboldi, to my mind, towers head and shoulders above the rest. Apart from the beauty of the flower, its grey-green, almost iridescent foliage is like no other leaf that grows, and when the two are combined the result is High art, art at its best point. Such praise is, however, merely impertinent. It is more pertinent to say that the whole genus, but especially Sieboldi, belong to that very limited category of plants that are at once fit for the most orthodox of beds or borders, while at the same time they are free enough, and independent-looking enough, not to seem ridiculous in a bit of pure “wildness” such as this little pond-side purports to be. This is far from being a common virtue. One only needs to run over such words as “Hollyhock,” “Begonia,” “Pelargonium,” to perceive in a moment what would be intolerable outside of a more or less stiff parterre. It is not so much a question of beauty, as of fitness and adaptability, perhaps also of freedom from certain set associations, which, having once rooted themselves in our minds, make it impossible for us ever to rearrange our impressions, and recast them in a new form. This however is a digression. To go on with my list.
Upon the actual edge of the pond we are at this moment planting some two dozen varieties of Iris Kæmpferi. These have recently come from Haarlem, and being still new-comers, have their destiny ahead of them. The common yellow iris, best and handsomest of all native, water-edge plants, had only to be transplanted, as it was already flourishing close at hand. As a successor to it comes Ranunculus Lingua, another indispensable native, but one that requires sharp watching; its capabilities as a coloniser being unlimited, the long, pink-tipped suckers pushing forward into the water at a rate that would soon turn any limited space of it into a mere jungle of triumphant buttercups.
In the part of the bank which, sloping rather quickly away, inclines towards the “glade,” come various low-growing shrubs, which carry the line down to the region of heather, which in its turn brings it to the level of the grass. The tallest of these,—rather too tall for the place,—is Viburnum opulus, common beside many a Surrey pond, but not nearly enough grown in gardens, as the best of amateur gardeners has recently reminded us. Its cultivated relation, Viburnum plicatum, is just beyond it, placed there, not because there is the slightest occasion for its being upon the water’s edge, simply because it happens to be one of those plants that never seem quite happy unless they have abundance of space to move about in, the long shoots, laden with blossom, having a wonderful power of reaching out to distances that at first sight seem to be quite beyond their grasp. Another plant of which the same may be said is Hydrangea paniculata. So far ours have spent their existence dully in tubs, the idea being that they required winter protection. Judging by some that were experimented upon last winter this seems to be a mistake, and I propose to try a few here, by way of successors to the foregoing, with which their equally industrious sprays seem to possess a sort of kinship.
Our grassy “glade” being now all but reached the remaining corner of the bank has been filled with various grass-leaved flowering plants, which seemed to come in appropriately. Of these the largest is Libertia formosa, green all the year round, and in summer bristling with white, iris-like flowers, and, by way of plant-fellow to it, Sisyrinchium Bermudianum (Plague upon these polysyllabic dog-latinists!), one of the friendliest of little plants that ever pined for a decent English name. Put it where one will—on a bank, in a bog, in a flower-bed—it seems equally happy and appropriate; always compact, yet increasing as rapidly as any weed; above all continually in flower, even, so I noticed last winter, in the middle of frost and snow, and when its leaves were so brittle that they snapped when they were touched, like any icicle.