It is now a good many years since it fell to my lot to plan and lay out a new suburban garden, fortunately not one of the smallest, and happily placed, inasmuch as the ground ran down to a railway cutting, at that period almost sylvan in its wildness, with scattered Birch and Fir trees and banks of Primroses. How many of this garden’s inhabitants have been grateful since for the good broad stretch of turf that then was carefully put down and has gone on improving and mellowing with time and age. Blackbirds and thrushes have hopped about all over it, finding many a meal, and so have round-eyed robins, though not at the same moment; croquet and tennis have been played upon it,—first croquet, then tennis, then croquet again in the cycle of the môde; dainty tea-cups’ cheerful chink has softly sounded over it, and oft has it been dinted by childish feet. In the morning it has been dim with early dew, at noon a carpet all alive with shadows flung from leaves, and in the evening warm and smooth and barred by sunshine. The lawn has been as good as a sun-dial for telling the hours; the trees are the pointers, here a Willow and there an Oak, and the dial-plate is the grass itself. Whether in shade or sunshine, the lawn is always soft to the foot and pleasant to the eye.
In this garden grass was made the keynote. Turf is the favourite bordering for the shrubbery—a good wide border, that makes a handsome edge and is pretty for flowers to tumble over; grass again where there is room for another little lawn, that can be given up to flower-beds.
How much is said now about the dreadful practice of cutting up a lawn to stick flower-beds in it, “shrieking spots of colour set down here and there with little thought.” An authority I revere says “a lawn is a place for grass; to spot bright beds all over it is to ruin it.” I quite admit that to “spot,” if there is only room for one lawn, is gross Vandalism, but I am quite as firmly convinced that no garden is complete without some flower-beds set in turf. What else shows the colours to so much advantage? Flower-beds in gravel, with a stiff edging of Box, do not please me at all; they are formal, and the effect is hard. Even these can be improved by a broad edging of grass to every bed. Herbaceous borders are delightful; we cannot live without them, but we do want beds too, they are so brilliant, so useful, and so well-behaved. “Bedders” are the good children of the garden, herbaceous plants the wayward. To manage them is like playing a game of croquet with Wonderland Alice’s live flamingoes for hoops and mallets; the plants have the same habit of taking their way, not ours, and this puts us more than ever in conceit with our little plots of green enamel, set with coloured flowers like jewels.
A grass walk, where there is room for it, is another charming feature. In dry weather, when well kept, nothing is so pleasant to walk on. But no small suburban garden can hope for this luxury; it is only to be attained in large gardens, that have other walks for everyday wear and tear.
One of the gardens haunted by me as a child had a very long grass walk. There was a flower border on each side of it, and behind the borders there were trees. How we all delighted in this part of the garden-ground; how many were the friendships sworn along that silent scented pathway. It was said, moreover, that every engagement in the family dated from it.
Perhaps it is going too far to praise turf because it is healthy, and poetry is no argument; but Fuller, about 1620, said that “to smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome to the body.” Ruskin in his best prose speaks lovingly of its “soft and countless peaceful spears,” and Shakespeare simply revels in grass. The Bible, too, generally the first poem a child loves and is influenced by, may be responsible for some of the fascination of the green herb: “Like rain upon the mown grass;” “Thou shalt lead me in the green pastures;” “He maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains.” No wonder one loves and even idealizes grass.
CHAPTER XIV
FERNS AND WILD FLOWERS
“Wood-sorrel and wild violet