A garden should, as I believe, be an emanation from the spirit of its owner, and, just as some men are formal and some informal, some prim and some Bohemian, some careful and some rash, so should their several gardens vary in style and feeling.
I have laid down no laws as to the arrangement of flowers with a view to producing "colour schemes," for I have never seen colour schemes which surpass those chance effects of the hedgerow and the meadow, or of those pleasant gardens where the gardeners' sole aim is to grow plants from the plants' point of view, that is to say, with the sole aim of growing them healthily and well. Of course, occasionally, a bad colour shows itself, but the remedy is simple and obvious. Occasionally, also, a colour discord will be perceived in bed or border, but a spade will cure the trouble in five minutes. Indeed, there is some small risk at the present moment that the individuality of beautiful plants and flowers may be too frequently sacrificed to the production of "effects." This was the deadly fault of the "bedding" system, and should be guarded against. The bedding system has made such beautiful flowers as geraniums, calceolarias and lobelias stink in the nostrils of some of us; just as the disgusting invention of Dr. Gregory has been successful in making raspberry jam a source of nausea to tens of thousands of English boys and girls.
Let us as gardeners beware of being too clever and "artistic"; Nature may be a hard mistress, but she is not a fool.
[OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS]
Strictly, of course, the term is indefinite, for old-fashioned flowers and old-fashioned gardens mean to different people different things. Probably to most people—at all events to the present writer—old-fashioned gardening means that system which is in direct opposition to prim geometric beds and to the imitation of carpet patterns by arrangement of flowers. By an old-fashioned garden, the present writer means an informal "garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permit to be noursed up," as Parkinson put it; and by old-fashioned flowers he means sweet williams and gilly flowers, mignonette, sweet peas, roses and honeysuckle, "daffodils, fritillaries, jacinthes, saffron-flowers, lilies, flower-deluces, tulipas, anemones, French cowslips or bearseares, and such other flowers, very beautifull, delightfull and pleasant." After the severe, monotonous, formal arrangements which still too often constitute the gardens around our finest houses, how interesting and restful it is to stroll round a delightful garden such as Canon Ellacombe's "Vicarage Garden" at Bitton, where the shape of the beds or borders is not prearranged, where all the soil is occupied, where every plant looks healthy and at home, where every yard brings one a surprise and a fresh interest, where the old walls have growing from their crevices such plants as the Cheddar Pink, Sedums and Sempervivums; where, too, every plant in its glory hides the decay of its predecessor in bloom and shelters the birth of its successor.
There is a class—and a very large class—of folks who are so constituted that continual prize or applause hunting are essentials to happiness. For such, the topiary-victimised trees, the glaring carpet beds, and the flower show are useful and comparatively harmless instruments for the indulgence of their little weaknesses. But it goes sorely against the grain to give to such the honourable and historic title of gardener, just as one hesitates to describe as a gardener the issuer of that curious "catalogue of greens" which Pope satirically described in No. 173 of The Guardian:—
"Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm; Eve and the serpent very flourishing. Noah's Ark in holly, the ribs a little damaged for want of water.