But travelling by road, what do we see? Whether we steam along the great high-road to Acton and Ealing, or towards the hills of Highgate and Hampstead, or rattle through Richmond to Wimbledon, or viâ Kingston’s quaint old town to Surbiton and its precincts, it is always the same; hundreds and thousands of villas and small houses are met with, each of which is a castle to some Englishman. Interspersed with them are large gardens of older houses; but these, as a rule, are hidden from view by high walls and trees. They have a different story, are sometimes of great beauty, and do not belong at all to the class we are now considering.
Before every one of the small suburban houses, certainly before all that are detached, there is a little plot of ground with trees and shrubs. These plots are typically suburban, and are often very severely censured by careless critics for their monotony and gracelessness. Unjustly so, I think; it appears to me that, in most cases, pains have been taken to make the most of opportunities, and considering that in a whole row of small gardens every one has a different owner, and a different mind behind it, it is wonderful things are not more patchy than they are.
Let us look at some of these suburban highways on a smiling day of very early summer; it is a cheerful prospect. There will be flowering and foliage trees, neat gravel paths, and carefully kept shrubs. Lilacs, Syringas (properly called Mock-orange), Laburnums dropping fires, Rowan-trees that by-and-by will be brilliant with berries, bronze-brown Copper-beech trees, Guelder-roses tossing up their creamy balls, the White May and the rose-pink Double Thorn—all these are as common along the road as are the nursery-maids and perambulators upon the sidewalks and pavements. If our survey had been taken either earlier or a good deal later in the year, so far as the season would allow, the outlook would have been just as pleasing. We should have seen the Fire-thorn’s splendid red, the Cotoneaster’s softer crimson, the gold flowers of the Winter Jasmine, the bare-branched Almond trees kindled with rosy fire, or brick walls blazoned with yellow blooms of February’s Forsythia, above borders brimming with the gallant Crocus. The people who live in the houses behind these fore-courts (if we may not call them gardens) are not very rich perhaps, but may be educated folk of taste and culture, doing their best to make beautiful their surroundings, though often but birds of passage who look forward to a time not far away, when the little home will be left for larger borders. Many are presided over by the wives of barristers and other men of business or of law, who prefer renting a small house away from town to living in the whirl and dust of London; or sometimes by the widows and daughters of country clergymen, who do not possess too much of this world’s goods, but cannot exist without some of their former favourites growing around them in their new suburban homes.
We are so much accustomed to the scenes I have described that we do not take much heed of them; they are a matter of course, but they do surprise the stranger that is within our gates. People I have met abroad, both in Germany and Switzerland, have told me that one of the things that struck them most in England was the beauty of London’s outskirts, owing largely to the little gardens before each private house. We must hope the fashionable flat will not rob us wholly of this charm.
Whenever I see a pretty front suburban garden, a wild curiosity as to the back premises arises within me. Herein are opportunities for the most dreadful mistakes and the most wonderful successes; all depends on the presiding genius.
Corner houses are the luckiest; they get more room, and the gardens are of quainter shapes. But we will begin by considering the ordinary strip. It may be long, it is almost sure to be narrow—anyhow, no expansion is possible; we must make the best of what we have. A general consensus of opinion has decided on having a border for flowers all round the edge against the outer wall or paling, fronting this a gravel path; and the centre is turfed over and called the “lawn.” In very small gardens it is difficult to improve on this plan, though other suggestions are made—such as gravelling the garden entirely, and having a large bed for flowers in the middle, and a bank at the end. In practice, this does not make a garden so comfortable to sit and to walk about in. One does want pathways, and to be able to get at the flowers easily.
If the garden is long enough, it is a very good plan to turf quite up to the wall or paling, on the shady side, and have a bank raised across the middle of the garden about halfway down it. A path may then be carried all round the remainder of the plot where we can walk on firm, dry ground. Behind the bank we can revel in Currant and Gooseberry bushes and fruit trees, and grow Violets and Crocusses underneath them, and Parsley and all manner of herbs that love the partial shelter of the bush. Near where the bank comes, a Willow tree may be planted. The common Weeping-willow grows faster than anything, and will soon give enough shelter for enjoyment. I much prefer the loose growth of the common Willow to the tight little tents made by some Willow trees that are considered more choice. Under the shadow of a simple tree like this, father, mother, and little ones may sit and enjoy the beauty of the sun-flecked turf and leaf-entangled sunbeams, as well as if they were in the grandest gardens that could be imagined.
It is often objected that turf does not do well in suburban gardens. Turf does not do well anywhere, unless it is looked after, and put down carefully in the first place. People seem to think grass has no roots. I have seen the jobbing gardener, as well as the amateur, lay his squares of new turf on anything that came first! This is to court disaster. Turf wants feeding as much as anything else. It is, of course, useless to expect it to do well right under the shadow of a house, or under most trees; but I love grass so much that I consider it indispensable even in the smallest garden, and would not begrudge the trifling expense of laying down fresh turves, where wanted, every season. We should not hesitate to spend the same sum on a book or a theatre-ticket; why refuse it to the garden which we shall very likely be looking at and living in the summer through?
If one ever has a chance of viewing a roadful of back suburban gardens when their owners are not there to distract attention, nothing could be more entertaining. Through the medium of a friendly railway-track, I once enjoyed this treat. Houses looked pretty much alike, but the gardens were strikingly dissimilar. In some cases the minds of the owners were pleasingly reflected in their gardens; in others one saw nothing but the tracks of the jobbing gardener; in none, except the empty and ownerless, did one see neglect—so much must be said for all of them.
One or two things that were noticed were worthy of remark. It was abundantly clear that the best results came about where owners themselves had personally shared in the gardening work; it is quite easy to pick out those cases where mere neatness ended, and mind came in, and taste.