A Garden of Peace: A Medley in Quietude

by Frank Frankfort Moore

I notice that most writers on garden-making begin by describing what a wilderness their place was when they first took it in hand. I cannot maintain that tradition. Mine had nothing of the wilderness about it. On the contrary, it was just too neat for my taste. The large lawn on to which some of the lower rooms of the house opened, had broad paths on each side and a broad flower border beyond. There was not a shrub on the lawn and only one tree—a majestic deodar spreading itself abroad at an angle of the nearest wing of the house; but on a knoll at the farther end of the lawn there were, we discovered next summer, pink and white mays, a wild cherry, and a couple of laburnums, backed by a towering group made up of sycamores and chestnuts. Such a plan of planting could not be improved upon, I felt certain, though I did not discuss it at the time; for I was not out to make an alteration, and my attention was wholly occupied with the appearance of the ancient walls, glorious with snapdragon up to the lilacs that made a coping of colour for the whole high range, while the lower brick boundary opposite was covered with pears and plums clasping hands in espalier form from end to end.

But I was not sure about the flower borders which contained alternate clumps of pink geraniums and white daisies. Perhaps they were too strongly reminiscent of the window-boxes of the Cromwell Road through which I had walked every day for nearly twenty years, and in time one grows weary even of the Cromwell Road!

But so well did the accident of one elbow of the wall of the bowling-green pushing itself out lend itself to the construction of the garden, that the first and most important element in garden-design was attained. This, I need hardly say, is illusion and surprise. One fancied that here the limits of the ground had been reached, for a fine deciduous oak seemed to block the way; but with investigation one found oneself at the entrance to a new range of grounds which, though only about three times as large as the first, seemed almost illimitable.

The greater part had at one time been an orchard, we could see; but the trees had been planted too close to one another, and after thirty or forty years of jostling, had ceased to be of any pictorial or commercial value, and I saw that these would have to go. Beyond there was a kitchen garden and a large glass-house, and on one side there was a long curve of grass terrace made out of the Saxon or Roman earthwork, against which, as I have already said, the Norman walls were built, showing only about twelve or fifteen feet above the terrace, while being forty or fifty down to the dry moat outside. This low mural line was a mass of antirrhinums, wallflowers, and such ferns as thrive in rock crevices.

There was obviously not much to improve in all this. We were quite satisfied with everything as it stood. There was nothing whatsoever of the wilderness that we could cause to blossom as the rose, only—not a rose was to be seen in any part of the garden!

We were conscious of the want, for our Kensington garden had been a mass of roses, and we were ready to join on to Victor Hugo's “Une maison sans enfants,” “un jardin sans roses?” But we were not troubled; roses are as easily to be obtained as brambles—in fact rather more easily— and we had only to make up our minds where to plant them and they would blush all over the place the next summer.

We had nothing to complain of but much to be thankful for, when, after being in the house for a month, I found the old gardener, whom we had taken over with the place, wheeling his barrow through a doorway which I knew led to a dilapidated potting-shed, and as I saw that the barrow was laden with rubbish I had the curiosity to follow him to see where he should dispose of it.

He went through a small iron gate in the wall alongside the concealed potting-house, and, following him, I found myself to my amazement in a small walled space, forty feet by thirty, containing rubbish, but giving every one with eyes to see such a picture of the Barbican, the Castle Gate with the Keep crowning the mound beyond, as made me shout—such a picture as was not to be found in the county!

If it had a fault at all it was to be found in its perfection. Every one has, I hope, seen the Sham Castle, the castellated gateway, built on Hampton Down, near Bath, to add picturesqueness to the prospect as seen from the other side. This is as perfectly made a ruin as ever was built up by stage carpenters. There was no reason why it should not be so, for it was easy to put a stone in here and there if an improvement were needed, or to dilapidate a bit of a tower until the whole would meet with the approval even of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who are, I am given to understand, the best informed authorities in England on the assessment of dilapidations. I must confess that the first glimpse I had of the picture that stood before my eyes above my newly-acquired rubbish-heaps suggested the perfection of a sham. The mise-en-scène seemed too elaborate—too highly finished—no detail that could add to the effect being absent. But there it was, and I remained looking at it for the rest of the day.

The over-conscientious agents had said not a word in the inventory of the most valuable asset in connection with the property. They had scrupulously advertised the “unique and valuable old-fashioned residence,” and the fact that it was partially “covered by creepers”—a partiality to which I was not very partial—and that the “billiard saloon” had the same advantages—they had not failed to allude to the gardens as “old-world and quaint,” but not one word had they said about this view from the well-matured rubbish-heaps!