RAMSCLIFFE: ORANGE LILIES & MONKSHOOD
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF Mr. C. E. Freeling
the Dutch, because they bloom at the time of the herring harvest—six and seven feet high, and with them the Monkshood, with its tall spikes of hooded bloom. In poorer soils or with worse culture these fine flowers are of much lower growth, the Monkshood often only half the height, with its deeply-cut leaves yellowing before their time with the weakness of too-early maturity. The pleasure with which one sees this fine old garden flower is, however, always a little lessened by the knowledge of the dangerously poisonous nature of the whole plant, and especially of the root. It is the deadly Aconite of pharmacy. Another of the same family is grouped with it; the yellow Aconite of the Austrian mountains, with branched heads of sulphur-coloured bloom and singularly handsome leaves—large, dark green, glistening and persistently enduring—for, long after the bloom is past, they are beautiful in the border.
How well an artist knows the value of grey-leaved plants, and their use in pictorial gardening in the way of giving colour-value by close companionship, to tender pinks and lilacs, and, above all, to whites! A patch of white bloom is often too hard and sudden and inharmonious to satisfy the trained eye, but led up to and softened and sweetened by masses of neighbouring tender grey it takes its proper place and comes to its right strength in the well-ordered scheme. Lavender, Lavender-cotton (Santolina), Catmint, Pinks and Carnations, and the Woolly Woundwort (Stachys) with some other plants of hoary foliage, do this good work. In this garden the Woundwort, there known by its old Midland name of “Our Saviour’s Blanket,” throws up its grey-pink heads of bloom from a thick carpet of rather large leaves, silvery soft with their thick coating of long white down. Here a groundwork of it leads to the group of white Peach-leaved Bell-flower on the right and to the tall white Gnaphalium, a plant of kindred woolliness, on the left, while the precious grey quality runs through the left-hand flower-group by means of the downy-coated pods of the earlier-blooming Lupins, purposely left among the later flowers for this and for their handsome form.
How finely the Orange Lilies tell against the background of the holly hedge, at the path-end cut into an arbour, may well be seen in the picture, and how kindly and gracefully the Greengage Plum-tree bends over and plays its appointed part.
Such a flower border makes many a picture in the hands of a garden-artist. His knowledge of the plants, their colours, seasons, habits and stature, enables him to use them as he uses the colours on his palette.
How grandly the tall Delphiniums grow in this strong soil. A little of the colour has been lost owing to technical difficulties of reproduction, for the blue is purer and stronger in effect both in the original picture and in nature than is here shown. They are grouped, as blue flowers need, with contrasts of yellow and orange; with yellow Daisies and the feathery Meadow-rue (Thalictrum), and the tall yellow Aconite and nearly white Campanulas, woolly Stachys and purple Bell-flowers beyond. Only one small patch of brighter colour, the scarlet of Lychnis chalcedonica, is allowed here. On the other side is the loose-growing and always pictorial white Mallow (Sidalcea candida), taking some weeks to produce its crop of flowers that, like Foxgloves and most of the flowers of the tall-spiked habit of growth, begin to bloom below, following upward till they finish at the top.
Some sort of garden knowledge is so generally professed in these days, and so much more gardening of the better kind is being attempted, that people are gradually learning the advantage of planting in good groups of one thing at a time. The older way of putting one each of the same plant at regular intervals along a border—like buttons on a waistcoat—is now no longer tolerated, but a great deal has yet to be learnt. Even planting in bold groups, however good the plants, will be ineffective if not absolutely unfortunate, if relationships of colouring are not understood. The safest plan is to plant in harmonies more or less graduated as to the warm colours, such as full yellow with orange and scarlet, and to plant blues with contrasts of yellows and any white flowers. Then delightful effects may be obtained with masses of grey foliage, such as Lavender, Lavender-cotton, and Stachys, and white Pink, with flowers that have colourings of tender pink, white, lilac and purple. To acquire a colour eye is an education in itself, founded on the needful natural aptitude, a gift that is denied to some people even if they are not actually colour-blind. But it is a precious possession where it occurs, and all the better
