RAMSCLIFFE: LARKSPUR
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF Miss Kensit
when it has been so well trained that the eye is enabled to appreciate the utmost refinements of colour-values, and when this education has been carried to the point necessary for the artist, of justly estimating the colour as it appears to be. This is the most difficult thing to learn; to see colour as it is, is quite easy; any one not colour-blind can do this; but to see it as it appears to be needs to be learnt, for upon this acquired proficiency depends the power of the artist to interpret the colours of objects and to represent them in their right relation to each other.
There is another good double flower-border in this pleasant garden. In the sunny month of August the fine Summer Daisies (Chrysanthemum maximum), Phloxes and Lavender are in beauty, and some bloom remains upon the climbing Roses. The Box-edging, stout and strong, can withstand the temporary encroachments of some of the border flowers, for in such a garden, rule is relaxed whenever such latitude tends to beauty. Here and there, where the little edging shrub showed signs of unusual vigour, it has been allowed to grow up on the understanding that it shall submit to the shears, which clip it into rounded ball-shapes of two sizes, one upon another, like loaves of bread.
A garden like this, of moderate size, and needing no troublesome accessories of glasshouses, or even frames, and very little outside labour, is probably the very happiest possession of its kind. As the seasons succeed each other new pictures of flower beauty are revealed in constant succession. After the day’s work in the best of the daylight is over, its owner turns to it for pleasant labour or any such tending as it may need. Every group of plants meets him with a friendly face, for each one was planted by his own hands. His watchful eye observes where anything is amiss and the needful aid is immediately given.
In a great garden this vigilant personal care of plants as individuals is impossible. However able a man the head gardener may be, or however much he may love and wish to cherish the flowers under his care, his duties and responsibilities are too many and too onerous to admit of his being able to enjoy this intimate fellowship; but in the humbler garden the close relationship of man and flowers, with all its beneficent and salutary serviceableness to both, seems to be exactly adjusted.
Such a garden it is that fulfils its highest purpose; that giving of the pleasure—the rich reward of the loving toil and care that have gone to its making; every plant or group in it doing its appointed work in its due season—that giving of “sweet solace” according to the well-fitting wording of our far-away ancestors.
And when the day’s work is done, and the light just begins to fail, no one knows better than the artist that then is the best moment in the garden—when the colours acquire a wonderful richness of “subdued splendour” such as is unmatched throughout the lighter hours of the long summer day. Then it is that the flowers of delicate texture that have grown faint in the full heat, raise their heads and rejoice; that the tall evening Primrose opens its pale wide petals and gives off its faint perfume; that the little lilac cross-flowers of the night-scented Stock open out and show their modest prettiness and pour forth their enchanting fragrance. This early evening hour is indeed the best of all; the hour of loveliest sight, of sweetest scent, of best earthly rest and fullest refreshment of body and spirit.
