The Great Asphodel.
I had no space for a shrub wilderness, but have made a large clump for just the things I like best, whether new friends or old. It is a long, low bank, five or six paces wide, highest in the middle, where the rather taller things are planted. These are mostly Junipers and Magnolias; of the Magnolias, the kinds are Soulangeana, conspicua, purpurea, and stellata. One end of the clump is all of peat earth; here are Andromedas, Skimmeas, and on the cooler side the broad-leaved Gale, whose crushed leaves have almost the sweetness of Myrtle. One long side of the clump faces south-west, the better to suit the things that love the sun. At the farther end is a thrifty bush of Styrax japonica, which flowers well in hot summers, but another bush under a south wall flowers better. It must be a lovely shrub in the south of Europe and perhaps in Cornwall; here the year's growth is always cut at the tip, but it flowers well on the older wood, and its hanging clusters of white bloom are lovely. At its foot, on the sunny side, are low bushy plants of Cistus florentinus. I am told that this specific name is not right; but the plant so commonly goes by it that it serves the purpose of popular identification. Then comes Magnolia stellata, now a perfectly-shaped bush five feet through, a sheet of sweet-scented bloom in April. Much too near it are two bushes of Cistus ladaniferus. They were put there as little plants to grow on for a year in the shelter and comfort of the warm bank, but were overlooked at the time they ought to have been shifted, and are now nearly five feet high, and are crowding the Magnolia. I cannot bear to take them away to waste, and they are much too large to transplant, so I am driving in some short stakes diagonally and tying them down by degrees, spreading out their branches between neighbouring plants. It is an upright-growing Cistus that would soon cover a tallish wall-space, but this time it must be content to grow horizontally, and I shall watch to see whether it will flower more freely, as so many things do when trained down.
Next comes a patch of the handsome Bambusa Ragamowski, dwarf, but with strikingly-broad leaves of a bright yellow-green colour. It seems to be a slow grower, or more probably it is slow to grow at first; Bamboos have a good deal to do underground. It was planted six years ago, a nice little plant in a pot, and now is eighteen inches high and two feet across. Just beyond it is the Mastic bush (Caryopteris mastacanthus), a neat, grey-leaved small shrub, crowded in September with lavender-blue flowers, arranged in spikes something like a Veronica; the whole bush is aromatic, smelling strongly like highly-refined turpentine. Then comes Xanthoceras sorbifolia, a handsome bush from China, of rather recent introduction, with saw-edged pinnate leaves and white flowers earlier in the summer, but now forming its bunches of fruit that might easily be mistaken for walnuts with their green shucks on. Here a wide bushy growth of Phlomis fruticosa lays out to the sun, covered in early summer with its stiff whorls of hooded yellow flowers—one of the best of plants for a sunny bank in full sun in a poor soil. A little farther along, and near the path, comes the neat little Deutzia parviflora and another little shrub of fairy-like delicacy, Philadelphus microphyllus. Behind them is Stephanandra flexuosa, beautiful in foliage, and two good St. John's worts, Hypericum aureum and H. Moserianum, and again in front a Cistus of low, spreading growth, C. halimifolius, or something near it. One or two favourite kinds of Tree Pæonies, comfortably sheltered by Lavender bushes, fill up the other end of the clump next to the Andromedas. In all spare spaces on the sunny side of the shrub-clump is a carpeting of Megasea ligulata, a plant that looks well all the year round, and gives a quantity of precious flower for cutting in March and April.
I was nearly forgetting Pavia macrostachya, now well established among the choice shrubs. It is like a bush Horse-chestnut, but more refined, the white spikes standing well up above the handsome leaves.
On the cooler side of the clump is a longish planting of dwarf Andromeda, precious not only for its beauty of form and flower, but from the fine winter colouring of the leaves, and those two useful Spiræas, S. Thunbergi, with its countless little starry flowers, and the double prunifolia, the neat leaves of whose long sprays turn nearly scarlet in autumn. Then there comes a rather long stretch of Artemisia Stelleriana, a white-leaved plant much like Cineraria maritima, answering just the same purpose, but perfectly hardy. It is so much like the silvery Cineraria that it is difficult to remember that it prefers a cool and even partly-shaded place.
Beyond the long ridge that forms the shrub-clump is another, parallel to it and only separated from it by a path, also in the form of a long low bank. On the crown of this is the double row of cob-nuts that forms one side of the nut-alley. It leaves a low sunny bank that I have given to various Briar Roses and one or two other low, bushy kinds. Here is the wild Burnet Rose, with its yellow-white single flowers and large black hips, and its garden varieties, the Scotch Briars, double white, flesh-coloured, pink, rose, and yellow, and the hybrid briar, Stanwell Perpetual. Here also is the fine hybrid of Rosa rugosa, Madame George Bruant, and the lovely double Rosa lucida, and one or two kinds of small bush Roses from out-of-the-way gardens, and two wild Roses that have for me a special interest, as I collected them from their rocky home in the island of Capri. One is a Sweetbriar, in all ways like the native one, except that the flowers are nearly white, and the hips are larger. Last year the bush was distinctly more showy than any other of its kind, on account of the size and unusual quantity of the fruit. The other is a form of Rosa sempervirens, with rather large white flowers faintly tinged with yellow.
Lavender Hedge and Steps to the Loft.
