Czar Violets are giving their fine and fragrant flowers on stalks nine inches long. To have them at their best they must be carefully cultivated and liberally enriched. No plants answer better to good treatment, or spoil more quickly by neglect. A miserable sight is a forgotten violet-bed where they have run together into a tight mat, giving only few and poor flowers. I have seen the owner of such a bed stand over it and blame the plants, when he should have laid the lash on his own shoulders. Violets must be replanted every year. When the last rush of bloom in March is over, the plants are pulled to pieces, and strong single crowns from the outer edges of the clumps, or from the later runners, are replanted in good, well-manured soil, in such a place as will be somewhat shaded from summer sun. There should be eighteen inches between each plant, and as they make their growth, all runners should be cut off until August. They are encouraged by liberal doses of liquid manure from time to time, and watered in case of drought; and the heart of the careful gardener is warmed and gratified when friends, seeing them at midsummer, say (as has more than once happened), "What a nice batch of young Hollyhocks!"
In such a simple matter as the culture of this good hardy Violet, my garden, though it is full of limitations, and in all ways falls short of any worthy ideal, enables me here and there to point out something that is worth doing, and to lay stress on the fact that the things worth doing are worth taking trouble about. But it is a curious thing that many people, even among those who profess to know something about gardening, when I show them something fairly successful—the crowning reward of much care and labour—refuse to believe that any pains have been taken about it. They will ascribe it to chance, to the goodness of my soil, and even more commonly to some supposed occult influence of my own—to anything rather than to the plain fact that I love it well enough to give it plenty of care and labour. They assume a tone of complimentary banter, kindly meant no doubt, but to me rather distasteful, to this effect: "Oh yes, of course it will grow for you; anything will grow for you; you have only to look at a thing and it will grow." I have to pump up a laboured smile and accept the remark with what grace I can, as a necessary civility to the stranger that is within my gates, but it seems to me evident that those who say these things do not understand the love of a garden.
I could not help rejoicing when such a visitor came to me one October. I had been saying how necessary good and deep cultivation was, especially in so very poor and shallow a soil as mine. Passing up through the copse where there were some tall stems of Lilium giganteum bearing the great upturned pods of seed, my visitor stopped and said, "I don't believe a word about your poor soil—look at the growth of that Lily. Nothing could make that great stem ten feet high in a poor soil, and there it is, just stuck into the wood!" I said nothing, knowing that presently I could show a better answer than I could frame in words. A little farther up in the copse we came upon an excavation about twelve feet across and four deep, and by its side a formidable mound of sand, when my friend said, "Why are you making all this mess in your pretty wood? are you quarrying stone, or is it for the cellar of a building? and what on earth are you going to do with that great heap of sand? why, there must be a dozen loads of it." That was my moment of secret triumph, but I hope I bore it meekly as I answered, "I only wanted to plant a few more of those big Lilies, and you see in my soil they would not have a chance unless the ground was thoroughly prepared; look at the edge of the scarp and see how the solid yellow sand comes to within four inches of the top; so I have a big wide hole dug; and look, there is the donkey-cart coming with the first load of Dahlia-tops and soft plants that have been for the summer in the south border. There will be several of those little cartloads, each holding three barrowfuls. As it comes into the hole, the men will chop it with the spade and tread it down close, mixing in a little sand. This will make a nice cool, moist bottom of slowly-rotting vegetable matter. Some more of the same kind of waste will come from the kitchen garden—cabbage-stumps, bean-haulm, soft weeds that have been hoed up, and all the greenest stuff from the rubbish-heap. Every layer will be chopped and pounded, and tramped down so that there should be as little sinking as possible afterwards. By this time the hole will be filled to within a foot of the top; and now we must get together some better stuff—road-scrapings and trimmings mixed with some older rubbish-heap mould, and for the top of all, some of our precious loam, and the soil of an old hotbed and some well-decayed manure, all well mixed, and then we are ready for the Lilies. They are planted only just underground, and then the whole bed has a surfacing of dead leaves, which helps to keep down weeds, and also looks right with the surrounding wild ground. The remains of the heap of sand we must deal with how we can; but there are hollows here and there in the roadway and paths, and a place that can be levelled up in the rubbish-yard, and some kitchen-garden paths that will bear raising, and so by degrees it is disposed of."
CHAPTER XII
NOVEMBER
Giant Christmas Rose — Hardy Chrysanthemums — Sheltering tender shrubs — Turfing by inoculation — Transplanting large trees — Sir Henry Steuart's experience early in the century — Collecting fallen leaves — Preparing grubbing tools — Butcher's Broom — Alexandrian Laurel — Hollies and Birches — A lesson in planting.
The giant Christmas Rose (Helleborus maximus) is in full flower; it is earlier than the true Christmas Rose, being at its best by the middle of November. It is a large and massive flower, but compared with the later kinds has a rather coarse look. The bud and the back of the flower are rather heavily tinged with a dull pink, and it never has the pure-white colouring throughout of the later ones.
I have taken some pains to get together some really hardy November-blooming Chrysanthemums. The best of all is a kind frequent in neighbouring cottage-gardens, and known hereabouts as Cottage Pink. I believe it is identical with Emperor of China, a very old sort that used to be frequent in greenhouse cultivation before it was supplanted by the many good kinds now grown. But its place is not indoors, but in the open garden; if against a south or west wall, so much the better. Perhaps one year in seven the bloom may be spoilt by such a severe frost as that of October 1895, but it will bear unharmed several degrees of frost and much rain. I know no Chrysanthemum of so true a pink colour, the colour deepening to almost crimson in the centre. After the first frost the foliage of this kind turns to a splendid colour, the green of the leaves giving place to a rich crimson that sometimes clouds the outer portion of the leaf, and often covers its whole expanse. The stiff, wholesome foliage adds much to the beauty of the outdoor kinds, contrasting most agreeably with the limp, mildewed leafage of those indoors. Following Cottage Pink is a fine pompone called Soleil d'Or, in colour the richest deep orange, with a still deeper and richer coloured centre. The beautiful crimson Julie Lagravère flowers at the same time. Both are nearly frost-proof, and true hardy November flowers.