The Flowers and Gardens of Madeira

by Florence Du Cane

The palm must be given to the garden of Santa Luzia, as not only does it cover a much larger expanse of ground than any other, but the owner takes so much individual interest in almost every plant in the garden, that here, as it is always said flowers grow better for those who love them, everything seems to flourish and grow at its best. Like all good gardeners, she has not been deterred by the failure of a plant one season or the failure to import a new treasure at the first attempt, but has given hosts of plants a fair trial, often rewarded with success in the end, though naturally failing in some cases. Plants have been sent to her from all parts of the world, and the island owes many of its flowery treasures to this garden, which was originally their nursery and trial-ground. One of the most remarkable instances of this is Streptosolen Jamesonii, originally introduced to this garden, but which only succeeded the fourth time it was imported, and has now spread, until there is hardly a humble cottage garden in the whole of Funchal which is not decorated with its orange bushes in the winter months. The garden has been much enlarged of late years, and gradually terrace after terrace has been added to it, many of them forming a complete little garden in themselves. From the lie of the ground in a steep slope in two directions, and possibly from the fact that the garden has been added to gradually, it shares the difficulty I have described elsewhere, and had no very imposing scheme to start with.

WISTARIA, SANTA LUZIA

The entrance to the garden leads one to expect a wealth of flowers in the garden below, as a vision of pink begonias with a profusion of blossom, tall feathery bamboos, and long hanging ferns, greets the eye at the very door. On the terrace in front of the house stands one of the finest wistarias. It clothes the whole wall, makes a purple canopy to the corridor, climbs up the square pillars, and has even taken possession of the flagstaff, so in the early days of April the whole air is filled with its delicate bean-like scent. The beauty of its blossoms is short-lived, and possibly for this reason is all the more appreciated. A few short days and the heat of the sun will have taken all the colour out of its purple tassels, the leaves will begin to appear, and all its glory is departed. Some of the winter-flowering creepers last in beauty so long—for weeks or almost months—such as the bougainvilleas and Bignonia venustus, that if such a thing were possible, one becomes almost wearied of their beauty, and passes them by almost unnoticed. But with wistaria it is different: it must be noticed and appreciated at once or not at all, as the colour changes and fades with every passing hour.

Possibly April is the best month to visit this garden, though at no season is it without flowers, but March, April, and May are the best months of the year in all Madeira gardens. In some ways the autumn here seems as though it ought to be spring. Late in September or early in October the gardens go through the tidying up, pruning, and cutting back, which is generally done in our English gardens in early spring, and are made ready to reap the full benefit of the heavy autumn rains. Here during the summer everything has been left to grow as it will: the roses put forth long, rank, flowerless growth; the creepers grow out of all bounds; geraniums grow “leggy,” with long leafless stems; the heliotrope has flowered itself to death, and must be cut back in order to make fresh growth for the coming season. The gardens by the end of the long, dry summer must present the aspect of an overgrown jungle, and according to the judicious or injudicious pruning in September and October will greatly depend the failure or success of the garden for the rest of the year. This also is the season for sowing seeds, and probably the best moment for starting newly imported treasures; it is most important that all these operations should be got through early in October, as by November it is soon evident that it is not really spring; the sap is not really rising, and through December, January, and February, it lies more or less stagnant and dormant, so unless seedlings and cuttings have made a good start before then, they will grow but little during those three months. The same will apply to plants which have been cut back; they should have made fresh shoots before the middle of November, or they will remain more or less bare and unsightly throughout the winter. By the time when most of the English owners return to their gardens in late November or early December, all traces of the necessary cutting should have vanished, and though the garden may not be gay with flowers, it should be full of promise of glories to come. But it seems hard to train a Portuguese gardener to get through his pruning at this season, and to have done with it for the time being, as, according to his ideas, pruning should be done apparently promiscuously, at any and every season of the year, and he is never happy without a pruning-knife in his hand, as often as not dealing death and destruction to a plant when it is in full beauty.

In the lower part of the garden a small pond, shaded by a weeping willow, whose parent was grown from a cutting brought from Longwood, provides a home for the white, pink, and blue water-lilies, which, with a large clump of papyrus, speedily remind one that one is in subtropical regions, where no breath of winter will ever reach the water sufficiently to bring death to the blue lilies which we in England know as pampered flowers, and can only grow by providing them with a warm bath, heated by artificial means.

On one of the terraces broad sheets of the mauve Virginian stock—with us an unconsidered little flower, but here, from the sheer wealth of its blossoms, providing a mass of colour—lead to a little Iris garden. Only the white Iris Florentina and a deep purple Iris Germanica really seem to flourish, so the beds are filled with these two kinds only. Iris Pallida and many of the other beautiful varieties of Iris Germanica have refused to make a home here, so the two kinds only have been retained, and for a few weeks in late December and early January the little garden is all purple and white. The purple weigandia flowers and the white of the Porto Santo daisy-trees help to carry out the colour scheme. The walls of the little garden are clad with the old Fortune’s yellow roses, called by some Beauty of Glazenwood, and it is certainly one of the roses which thrive best in Madeira, bearing its burden of yellow and pink-tipped blossoms in the spring. On the corridor above a host of creepers flourish, but the blossoms of the Burmese rose were new to me. Its large single blooms open a delicate lemon colour, which gradually turns to white, and its shiny foliage is also very ornamental; but I fear its constitution will never stand the cold of our English winters, or even if it survived the cold, the warmth of our summers would not be sufficient to ripen the wood enough to make it flower. I believe it to be the same rose which has been grown with some success on the Riviera under the name of Rosa grandiflora. Near by is its fellow-countryman, the Burmese honeysuckle, suggesting a monster form of French honeysuckle; the foliage of its long twining branches closely resembles it, only on a very large scale, and the white trumpets of its blossoms, instead of being one or one and a half inches long, are from four to five inches in length. The heavy scent is almost overpowering, coming at a season of the year when the air seems to bring out the scent of the flowers to such an extent that they become almost offensive.

The garden is so full of interesting trees and shrubs that it would be a hopeless and never-ending task to attempt to enumerate them all, but the curious trunk and roots of all that remains of a formerly grand specimen of a Bella Sombra, or Phytolacca dioica, attract the attention of all new-comers. From the uncouth root have sprung numerous fresh branches, but they can never make a fine tree like their original parent. As a foliage plant Monstera deliciosa, a native of Mexico, makes a fine group where it can be allowed sufficient space to throw out its long aerial roots, by which it will firmly attach itself to a wall or bank. It must have been these strange roots which gained for it the first part of its name, as its deeply perforated dark green leathery leaves are no monsters, and I imagine it owes the second part to its fruit, which I have seen described as being “succulent, with a luscious pine-apple flavour.”

There is a very fine specimen of Bombax, or silk cotton tree, which has a peculiar growth, and in June is covered with fluffy white blossoms.