The herbaceous borders of early summer become gayer still, though the individual plants are perhaps less interesting. We have now, with numberless others, the snowflake, the hairy red poppy, the valerian, mulleins of various sorts, the early gladiolus, the large flowering lupin, and above all, lilies. The variety of lilies, all beautiful, and nearly all easily grown, is quite remarkable, and we doubt whether (comparatively at least) any flower is more neglected.
Then come roses, and we would strongly recommend that, in addition to the newer “remontant” roses, the old roses and the old way of growing them should not be quite forgotten. Standard roses are all very well, but a rosebush covered over with blossom is very often much better. “Madame Rothschild” is pre-eminent in beauty, but (if she will tolerate the “odorous” comparison) the old cabbage rose or moss rose has a charm of scent and of association of which their fashionable rival is entirely devoid. The old pink china or monthly rose, which flowers on from early summer to latest autumn, deserves a bed to itself. It should be trained and pegged down, as is so constantly done in Belgium and Holland, and the blue lobelia should be planted in between. A bed of the yellow briar-rose is still more beautiful, but it lasts for weeks only instead of months. Other beautiful old summer roses are the maiden’s blush, the Portland rose, the rose unique, and the rose Celeste. But no rose, taking all the good qualities of a rose together, its hardiness, free blooming, beauty, and scent, will surpass the Gloire de Dijon, though the golden cups of Marshal Niel may be richer in colour, and the fragrance of La France recalls, as no other rose does, the luscious fragrance of Oriental otto of roses.
And now, instead of ordinary bedding-out, let me suggest some garden-beds which are far more effective. One is a bed of Lilium auratum, with heliotrope to fill up the spaces. Another is Agapanthus umbellatus, surrounded by Lobelia cardinalis. Then there should be beds of cannas, of gladiolus, of Clematis Jackmanni trained over withies, of zinnias, of the new hybrid begonias, and of asters. Somewhere room should be found for a border of everlastings, and somewhere for a row of the large red linum. One border may be given up to annuals, and it is no bad plan to mix the seeds of some twenty varieties, and let them grow up together as they will. The blue cornflower should have a piece of ground to itself, and so of course should the carnations. The white pinks will already have perfumed the herbaceous border with their aromatic scent, and the sweet-william and antirrhinum will also have claimed a place. The convolvulus major should have a chance of climbing upon a trellis, and the large nasturtium of trailing over a bank; and where the Tropæolum speciosum, which is one of the great ornaments of the gardens at Minto and elsewhere in Scotland, can be made to flourish in our English garden, it will be found as beautiful as either.
Above all, no garden should be without its hedge of sweet peas. If the pods are diligently pulled off, new flowers will be as constantly thrown out, and the “purfled scarf” of blossoms will remain in beauty till the first killing frost. It is easy to get a dozen different shades of colour, and nothing can look gayer, or give a more delicious scent. Keats—than whom no poet ever described flowers more accurately—speaks of the sweet pea’s “wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,” and of its “taper fingers catching at all things.”
Clumps of hollyhock, crusted over with bloom, should be planted near a sundial, or (as says the author of the well-known essay on “The Poetry of Gardening”), “in a long avenue, the double and the single, not too straitly tied, backed by a dark thick hedge of old-fashioned yew.”
Sunflowers, also in clumps, should stand out here and there, and though the modern sceptics may tell us that this American plant cannot be the Clytie of Grecian story, it amply vindicates its name by its large discs, surrounded by golden rays. Tritomas should hold up their scarlet maces to the sun, among tufts of the Arundo conspicua, or (better still, if possible) of Pampas grass. Lastly, we must not forget to plant, for the sake of their delicious scent, as the summer evening falls, the curious Schizopetalon, and the better known Mathiola, or night-scented stock.
But, besides its flowers, the garden is alive with other happy forms of life. The blackbird, as the Laureate tells us, will “warble, eat, and dwell” among the espaliers; and the thrush, as Mr. Browning reminds us, “sings each song twice over” from some blossoming pear-tree. Then the bees are busy all summer long, rifling for themselves the flowers, and setting for us the fruit. “The butterflies flutter from bush to bush, and open their wings to the warm sun,” and a peacock or red admiral, or better still, a humming-bird moth, is always a welcome guest. Only the other day I heard a delightful story (I wish I were satisfied that it was a fact) of a lady who got some chrysalises of butterflies from Italy and elsewhere, and, planting in a corner of her garden the herbs and flowers in which they most delighted, had hovering around, for many weeks of summer, these beautiful strange visitors from the south.
One great charm of a garden lies in the certainty that it will never be the same two years running. If we were only confident that each year was to be precisely like the last, it may fairly be doubted whether we could feel the same interest in our task. It is really no paradox to say, that it is fortunate that gardening should be always more or less of a struggle, for the very struggle, as should always happen, has the element of pleasure about it. Each year there will be success on one side, if something of failure on another. And there are always difficulties enough. There are difficulties arising from bad seasons, from climate, or from soil. There are weeds that worry, and seeds that fail. There are garden pests of every variety. The mice nibble away the tulip-bulbs: the canker gets into the rosebud, and the green fly infests the rose. Wire-worms destroy the roots of tender annuals, and slugs breakfast upon their sprouting leaves. Moles and birds and caterpillars have each and all their peculiar plans for vexing the gardener’s heart. Then again certain plants are attacked by special diseases of their own. The gladiolus turns yellow and comes to nothing, and a parasitic fungus destroys the hollyhock. And yet, if there were no difficulties to contend against, no forethought to be exercised, no ingenuity to be displayed, no enemies to conquer, it is surely impossible that we could feel the same pleasure and personal triumph in our success. Then, too, each year the intelligent gardener will arrange new combinations, grow new varieties of plants, and aim after a perfection which he can never hope to reach.
But the garden has no less also a scientific interest. Fresh species of plants are continually enriching our flower-beds, and botanists are constantly searching the wildest and most remote corners of the world on behalf of the English stove-house, conservatory, and garden. They endure untold hardships, and risk many dangers, if only they may secure some new treasure. Often they have caught deadly fever or met with fatal accidents in their search, and, true martyrs of science as they are, they pass away forgotten, except perchance when some unwonted designation of a plant may recall, not their memory indeed, but their name. But as one drops off, another will succeed; and so, among far coral islands of the Pacific, in the tropical recesses of a South American forest, in the heart of Asiatic mountains, or the unexplored mysteries of New Guinea, these lovers of nature are at work, labouring for our pleasure and instruction, and procuring for us new forms of vegetable life and beauty. And meanwhile science is working at home in another and a happier way. Not content with finding new species of plants, she is for ever developing fresh varieties. The art is no new one, and in old days the simpler minds of men were not quite sure of its propriety. It was unnatural, they used to say. It is in vain that Polixenes tells Perdita that there is an art that does mend nature, and, therefore, is nature. She evidently thinks it all sophistry, and not a gillyflower will she have.
“I’ll not put
The dibble in the earth to set one slip of them.”