WHITE LILIES.
THE STEPS AND THEIR INCIDENTS.
The beautiful White Lily cannot be grown in the hot sandy soil of my garden. Even if its place be ever so well prepared with the loam and lime that it loves, the surrounding soil-influences seem to rob it of its needful nourishment; it makes a miserable show for one year and never appears again. The only way to grow it is in pots or tubs sunk in the soil. For some years I had wished to have an orderly planting of this lovely Lily in the lower border at the back of the Andromeda just in front of the Briars. I had no flower-pots deep enough, or wide enough at the bottom, but was able to make a contrivance with some short, broad, unglazed drain-pipes, measuring a foot long and of about the same diameter, by cementing in an artificial bottom made of pieces of roofing-tile and broken flower-pot, leaving spaces for drainage. Then three bulbs were put in each pot in a compost that I knew they would enjoy. When they were half grown the pots were sunk in holes at nearly even distances among the Andromedas, and in a few weeks my row of Lilies gave me my reward. Other Lilies (L. longiflorum) follow them a month later, just beyond in the wood edge among tufts of Male Fern, and a pot of Francoa is to right and left of the shallow steps.
During the last year or two some pretty incidents have occurred about these same steps; not important enough to call garden pictures, but charming and interesting and easily enjoyable because they are close to the open garden door of the sitting-room and because they teach me to look out for the desirable things that come of themselves. A seedling of the wild Clematis (C. Vitalba) appeared among the Briars to the left. As it was too strong a plant to let grow over them unchecked, I pulled it forward towards the steps, training one or two shoots to run along the hollow of the step and laying on them pieces of stone invisible among the foliage, to keep them from being dislodged by the skirts of visitors or the gambols of my cats. At the same time, in a crack of the stone just below the upper step there came a seedling of the tall Chimney Campanula (C. pyramidalis). The second year this threw up its tall flower-stem and was well in bloom when it was wrecked by an early autumn gale, the wind wrenching out the crown and upper root-stock. But a little shred of rooted life remained and now there is again the sturdy tuft promising more flower-stems for the coming season.
Close behind the Bell-flower a spreading sheet of Wild Thyme has crept out of the turf and spread rather widely over the stone. Luckily I just saved it from the tidying process that threatened it, and as it is now well established over the stone I still have the pleasure of its bright rosy bloom when the duties of the mowing-machine rob me of the other tiny flowers—Hawkweed, Milkwort and Bedstraw—that bloom so bravely in the intervals between its ruthless but indispensable ministrations.
CHAPTER XV
A BEAUTIFUL FRUIT GARDEN
There is a whole range of possible beautiful treatment in fruit-growing that is rarely carried out or even attempted. Hitherto but little has been done to make the fruit garden a place of beauty; we find it almost flaunting its unloveliness, its white painted orchard-houses and vineries, its wires and wire nettings. It is not to be denied that all these are necessary, and that the usual and most obvious way of working them does not make for beauty. But in designing new gardens or remodelling old, on a rather large scale, there need be no difficulty in so arranging that all that is necessarily unbeautiful should be kept in one department, so hedged or walled around as to be out of sight.