A few steps beyond I paused to look at my Austrian briar hedge, which was then literally, a line of flame in my garden. It was a glorious note of colour, and planted next to the hedge were patches of purple peonies. What a beautiful contrast the two made! one that Sandro Botticelli loved. Then I made my way to a bed of hybrid teas.
These delightful roses, as has been justly said, combine all that is best of old and new. Almost all of them are sweet scented, and even in cold latitudes they flower twice, freely, in each year. Amongst those that I love best are Augustine Guinoiseau, and Camoens. Beyond these, on the southern side of the garden, extend my great bed of hybrid perpetuals, which stand our cold Shropshire climate so bravely and bloom often into late November. I stopped to admire a beautiful specimen of the Earl of Dufferin that seemed almost purple in its sombre magnificence, and felt almost dazzled at the splendour of Éclair. Then I paused to smell a Fisher Holmes, and gathered an almost black rose, which Burbidge told me a few days ago was a new rose to him, and was called the Black Prince. Such a mysterious black rose as it was, with a faint sweet distant smell, like new-mown grass after a summer shower.
IRISES AND ROSES
Between each row of roses I have planted rows of the beautiful English and Spanish irises in turns. These bulbs, I find, like the damp and shade caused by the neighbourhood of the bushes, and the effect of yellow, purple, blue, and lavender, between the pink, red, and white of the roses was enchantingly beautiful. Then I looked upwards and was delighted to see that my Crimson Ramblers and Ayrshire and Penzance briers were all ramping away to my, and to their, hearts’ content over their pillars, and covering their bowers and arches with trails and clusters of glory. I call my arches and bowers my garden in the clouds. Nobody quite knows how beautiful the Crimson Rambler can be till they have seen it against a background of summer sky. Just out of the garden stretched the plantation of firs, Scotch and Austrian, with a border of ribes, laurels, hollies, and yews. The plantation is very small, but it gives a sense of silence between the Abbey and the old town.
Before I returned to the house, I made my way to my bed of annuals. They were on the southern side of the greengages. How gay and gorgeous they looked with a few orange-tip butterflies flying over them. There were patches of African marigold, all a blaze of rich velvety gold, pale Love-in-the-Mist, sea-tinted and mysterious. Love-in-the-Mist is just such a flower as one can imagine Venus wore when she appeared for the first time from the depth of the sea foam, with its curious shadow of green, and its sea-green petals of blue. Then I had in full flower little square beds of larkspur, raised from some wonderful seed I bought from Messrs. Smith, of Worcester, that had blossomed forth in a hundred shades of opalescent beauty. There were shadowy unreal reds, and purples of many shades and colours in one flower, and as I looked at them, they recalled the wonderful draperies of some Burne Jones figures in that great artist’s paintings from the Idylls of the King. A little further off there were lines of stocks of all colours, warm-tinted buff, like the hue of Scotch cattle browsing on a moorland, primrose, bluish rose, dusky red, and spotless white, with creamy hearts. Then flame-coloured nasturtiums ran along in places, black and brown, and twisted and twined wherever there was a little space. At the end of the long border there were patches of the primrose-tinted sweet sultan, with its exquisite scent, mixed with crimson cockscomb, over which old Gerard fell into ecstasies, and wrote of the “gentle,” as he called it, that it “far exceeded his skill to describe so beautiful, and excellent a plant.”
Before I returned to the Abbey, I slipped off to the kitchen garden to ascertain what progress my sweet peas had made. They were only as yet showing buds and long tendrils, but in another month they would be a glory of sweetness and brilliancy, I felt certain. As I retraced my steps to the Abbey, I was greeted by the children. During his visit to the Abbey little Hals had lost his delicate look, and fine pink roses bloomed on each cheek. He and Bess came dancing up the path hand-in-hand, and the little fox-terriers scampered behind them, joyously.
“I am sure we have found something,” cried Bess, excitedly. “Burbidge wouldn’t look because he’s been stung by a bee. ‘But,’ I said, ‘you don’t hear all that chattering for nothing. If only Thady were here we should soon know.’ I wanted to run off to the Bull Ring to fetch him, but Nana said I wasn’t to mess myself, as Aunty Constance was coming down to luncheon to-day. Much she’d care! She knows I can have as much soap as I like.”
THE GARDEN MYSTERY
“Much you’d use, miss, if you had your own way,” I answered laughing. And then I turned and begged Bess, pouting and looking rather irate, to show me where there was this wonderful chattering.
“It is a secret,” cried Bess, “I am sure—a real secret.”