Some concord with humanity
Given to no other flower I see
The forest through.”
OVERLOOKING THE TOWN
One very charming scheme that has been adopted with great success for the sunny side of the street is to have the whole house painted white, and to fill every box and balcony with the lovely tendrils of Asparagus Sprengeri, and nothing else. This ripples over most luxuriantly; to look at it makes one feel cool on the hottest day. After two hours’ eye-strain at the Royal Academy no sight could be more refreshing. The Sprengeri is often used for pendant baskets, which it furnishes to perfection.
However handsome may be the receptacle for our flowers, no arrangement is really so pretty as that which gives them trailing blossoms and greenery to hang and cluster over the hard edge. Campanulas are always ready to do this gracious task, and can be had either in pink or white to suit every requirement.
If we live in a flat that has a good many windows and aspects, we may enjoy a great number of different growing plants. Before the kitchen-window I should have a box for parsley and a herb or two. They make for grace as well as use. Some herbs grow very prettily, and their aromatic, refreshing scent (so unaccustomed in a town drawing-room) will please more than that of the costliest exotic. I have sometimes amused myself by making a nosegay out of nothing but herbs. In a sick-room it is priceless. Wormwood—the herb that in France is used for making absinthe—is a very graceful grower, of pale grey green not unlike Southernwood or Old-Man, but finer, and it has a more delicate and subtle scent. Another herb, Sweet Cicely, is often mistaken for a fern, though it is softer and bears flowers. Mint, Balm, Sage, and Rue make a pleasing bunch, and these herbs will grow anywhere; they are not afraid of London smoke. Parsley is more difficult to manage, but is just as tricky in the garden as in the box. It is perhaps as well to buy this with our cabbages and cauliflowers. Some of the other herbs are really not procurable in towns, however gladly we would pay their price, so it is worth while trying to grow them for ourselves, and it can be done.
All town gardeners must make up their mind to contend with difficulties. The worst of them are smoke and smuts. Smoke, however, is not nearly so bad in summer as in winter, nor are there then so many flying children of the soot. We must wash and sponge and syringe, and we must use soft water. Oh, the magic of soft water in the plant-world! but how often the dry and panting flowers sigh for it in vain. We forget or omit to store the water heaven sends us, though nothing is simpler to arrange than a pipe leading from the gutter on the roof down to the ground. Instead of feeding our plants with rain-water we turn the nearest tap, and torment them with hard water from the main. This is what Londoners do, anyway; I hope it is not the same in other towns. On the whole, growing plants give very little trouble, and make slight demands upon our time, but, like children, they are ruined by alternations of petting and neglect; the little care we give them must be constant, and, as usual, experience is the best teacher. “The watched pot never boils,” they say, and picnic experiences have taught us to believe the proverb; but it does not apply to plants and flowers, which always do better for being noticed. It has come to be a family fiction, in which we more than half believe, that flowers will not thrive unless they are watched. Looking at them seems to make them grow, which of course is only another way of saying that they pay for close attention, and the stitch in time that saves.
At Exeter, already one of the most beautifully kept of English towns, the window-box bids fair to become a striking feature. An enthusiast in horticulture, anxious to improve its southern entrance, is offering prizes for the best window-sill gardening in that locality. Three months are allowed for exhibition, and consolation prizes give a chance to all. The idea is a good one, and almost sure to be imitated in other places. I have often wished that every nursery-window in London might have its window-box for simple flowers. A child’s delight in the first shoot above the ground is a pretty thing to see, and after that there is the miracle of the bud and bloom. How much more meaning has the pretty “Seed Song” to a town child who has himself with his own hands sowed the little seedlets and watched the wonder of their birth in his very own window-box! I borrow two half verses of it, for the benefit of those to whom it is unfamiliar.