And so I will discourse upon Treillage as a feature of the garden.
Its effect seems to have been lost sight of for a long time, but happily within recent years its value as an auxiliary to decoration is being recognised. I have seen lovely hits in France as well as in Italy. It is one of the oldest imitations of Nature to be found in connection with garden-making, and to me it represents exactly what place art should take in that modification of Nature which we call a garden. We want everything that grows to be seen to the greatest advantage. Nature grows rampant climbers, and if we allowed them to continue rampageous, we should have a jungle instead of a garden; so we agree to give her a helping band by offering her aspiring children something pleasant to cling to from the first hour of their sending forth grasping fingers in search of the right ladder for their ascent. A trellis is like a family living: it provides a decorative career for at least one member of the family.
The usual trellis-work, as it is familiarly called: has the merit of being cheap—just now it is more than twice the price that it was five years ago; but still it does not run into a great deal of money unless it is used riotously, and this, let me say, is the very worst way in which it could be adapted to its purpose. To fix it all along the face of a wall of perhaps forty feet in length is to force it to do more than it should be asked to do. The wall is capable of supporting a climbing plant without artificial aid. But if the wall is unsightly, it were best hidden, and the eye can bear a considerable length of simple trellis without becoming weary. In this connection, however, my experience forces me to believe that one should shun the “extending” form of lattice-shaped work, but choose the square-mesh pattern.
This, however, is only Treillage in its elementary form. If one wishes to have a truly effective screen offering a number of exquisite outlines for the entwining of some of the loveliest things that grow, one must go further in one's choice than the simple diagonals and rectagonals—the simple verticals and horizontals. The moment that curves are introduced one gets into a new field of charm, and I know of no means of gaining better effects than by elaborating this form of joinery as the French did two centuries ago, before the discovery was made that every form of art in a garden is inartistic. But possibly if the French treillageurs—for the art had many professors—had been a little more modest in their claims the landscapests would not have succeeded in their rebellion. But the treillageurs protested against such beautiful designs as they turned out being obscured by plants clambering over them, and they offered in exchange repoussé metal foliage, affirming that this was incomparably superior to a natural growth. Ordinary people refused to admit so ridiculous a claim, and a cloud came over the prospects of these artists. Recently, however, with a truer rapprochement between the “schools” of garden design, I find several catalogues of eminent firms illustrating their reproductions of some beautiful French and Dutch work.
Personally, I have a furtive sympathy with the conceited Frenchmen. It seems to me that it would be a great shame to allow the growths upon a fine piece of Treillage to become so gross as to conceal all the design of the joinery. Therefore I hold that such ambitious climbers as Dorothy Perkins or Crimson Rambler should be provided with an unsightly wall and bade to make it sightly, and that to the more graceful and less distracting clematis should any first-class woodwork be assigned. This scheme will give both sides a chance in the summer, and in the winter there will be before our eyes a beautiful thing to look upon, even though it is no longer supporting a plant, and so fulfilling the ostensible object of its existence.
There should be no limit to the decorative possibilities of the Treillage lath. A whole building can be constructed on this basis. I have seen two or three very successful attempts in such a direction in Holland; and quite enchanting did they seem, overclambered by Dutch honeysuckle. I learned that all were copied from eighteenth century designs. I saw another Dutch design in an English garden in the North.
It took the form of a sheltered and canopied seat. It had a round tower at each side and a gracefully curved back. The “mesh” used in this little masterpiece was one of four inches. It was painted in a tint that looks best of all in garden word—the gray of the echeveria glauca, and the blooms of a beautiful Aglaia rose were playing hide-and-seek among the laths of the roof. I see no reason why hollow pillars for roses should not be made on the Treillage principle. I have seen such pillars supporting the canopied roof of more than one balcony in front of houses in Brighton and Hove. I fancy that at one time these were fashionable in such places. In his fine work entitled The English Home from Charles I. to George IV., Mr. J. Alfred Gotch gives two illustrations of Treillage adapted to balconies.
But to my mind, its most effective adaptation is in association with a pergola, especially if near the house. To be sure, if the space to be filled is considerable, the work for both sides would be somewhat expensive; but then the cost of such things is very elastic; it is wholly dependent upon the degrees of elaboration in the design. But in certain situations a pergola built up in this way may be made to do duty as an anteroom or a loggia, and as such it gives a good return for an expenditure of money; and if constructed with substantial uprights—I should recommend the employment of an iron core an inch in diameter for these, covered, I need hardly say, with the laths—and painted every second year, the structure should last for half a century. Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema carried out a marvellous scheme of this type at his house in St. John's Wood. It was on a Dutch plan, but was not a copy of any existing arrangement of gardens. I happen to know that the design was elaborated by himself and his wife on their leaving his first St. John's Wood home: it was a model of what may be called “l'haut Treillage.”
Once again I would venture to point out the advantage of having a. handsome thing to look at during the winter months when an ordinary pergola looks its worst.
Regarding pergolas in general a good deal might be written. Their popularity in England just now is well deserved. There is scarcely a garden of any dimensions that is reckoned complete unless it encloses one within its walls. A more admirable means of dividing a ground space so as to make two gardens of different types, could scarcely be devised, in the absence of a yew or box growth of hedge; nor could one imagine a more interesting way of passing from the house to the garden than beneath such a roof of roses. In this case it should play the part of one of those “vistas” which were regarded as indispensable in the eighteenth century. It should have a legitimate entrance and it should not stop abruptly. If the exigencies of space make for such abruptness, not a moment's delay there should be in the planting of a large climbing shrub on each side of the exit so as to embower it, so to speak. A vase or a short pillar should compel the dividing of the path a little further on, and the grass verge—I am assuming the most awkward of exits—should he rounded off in every direction, so as to cause the ornament to become the feature up to which the pergola path is leading. I may mention incidentally at this moment that such an isolated ornament as I have suggested gives a legitimate excuse for dividing any garden walk that has a tendency to weary the eye by its persistent straightness. Some years ago no one ever thought it necessary to make an excuse for a curve in a garden walk. The gardener simply got out his iron and cut out whatever curve he pleased on each side, and the thing was done. But nowadays one must have a natural reason for every deflection in a path; and an obstacle is introduced only to be avoided.