Instructions in gardening for ladies

by Mrs. Loudon

Grass seeds should be sown either in spring or autumn; and May, and August or September are considered the best months. In very old lawns, moss is apt to predominate, and when it is wished to destroy this, the surface of the lawn is dressed, as it is called, in May with lime. Dressing with lime will also destroy the worms which are often very troublesome in lawns (particularly where the ground has been manured with dung), in throwing up casts, which make the ground uneven, and very difficult to mow.

The Walks in pleasure-grounds should be hard and dry; and they should also be sufficiently wide to admit of three persons to walk abreast occasionally; as nothing can be more disagreeable than the situation of the third person, whom the narrowness of the walk obliges to walk before or behind his companions; and who is obliged either to remain silent or to carry on a most uncomfortable and disjointed kind of conversation. The minor evils of clothes being caught by branches, and leaves discharging on the pedestrians the remains of a recent shower, would likewise be avoided by broader walks.

The laying out of pleasure grounds embraces a wide field; and when they are extensive they require the eye of a painter, as well as the taste and skill of a landscape gardener. Even in small places, so much depends on situation (particularly as regards the house, and whether there may or may not be any distant prospects); on the taste of the occupier; and on the expense to be incurred, not only in laying out and planting, but in after keeping, that few directions can be given that would be generally applicable. It may, however, be observed that in all places whether large or small, the walks should be so contrived, that no person passing along one, should see the persons walking on another. Indeed, if more than one walk be ever seen at a time, it gives an idea of want of space and confinement; and this idea is one which the landscape gardener always endeavours as much as possible to avoid. For the same reason the boundary fence should never be seen, if it can possibly be disguised. Even in a small street-garden, with three low walls on three of the sides, and the house on the fourth, a very pleasing effect may be produced by effectually concealing the boundary walls with ivy; and thus permitting the imagination to fix the boundary where it will.

Another general rule in laying out pleasure-grounds is to avoid monotony or sameness as much as possible. Nothing is more wearying to the eye than a place, every part of which is alike, and which leaves nothing to the imagination. A place regularly dotted over with trees at equal distances is quite featureless; has nothing to attract the eye, and nothing to interest the mind. But if the same trees are planted on the same ground in masses, with a broad expanse of lawn between; the trees sometimes projecting, and sometimes showing a smooth glade of grass, running in among them, the end of which the eye cannot reach, the imagination becomes excited, and a degree of interest is instantly created. Where the lawn is large, a few single trees may be introduced; but few things in landscape gardening require more taste. Indeed, in laying out pleasure-grounds, however small they may be, it is generally the best, and indeed the most economical way, to have the advice of a professional landscape gardener at first; instead of groping on in the dark, from a mistaken idea of economy, till at last it is discovered that all is wrong, and must be done over again. Thus in the end, the work is generally found to have cost twice as much as would have been expended if it had been begun properly at first; besides the loss of time, and the annoyance always occasioned by having anything to undo.

The Trees and Shrubs.—In all places sufficiently small to be managed by a lady, without the aid of a regular gardener, the trees and shrubs should be of the choicest kinds. It is quite the fashion of the present day to plant arboretums; and though a place of the kind I mention would not admit of a complete one, a lady might take some genus, or some small natural order to illustrate, (as for example the genus Ribes, or the order Berberideæ,) and fill up the rest of her grounds with hollies or other evergreens, so as to form a back ground to the ornamental trees. The genera Magnolia and Liriodendron form the hardy trees of another small order, which it would be easy to cultivate, taking care to plant M. conspicua, and any other that produces its flowers before it does its leaves, with a rich background of evergreens. The almond, which flowers in the same manner, should be placed in a similar situation; and standard roses may also be so placed as to have the unsightliness of their long naked stems greatly lessened by a mass of evergreens behind.

Another very interesting mode of arrangement, where the ground will admit of it, is to plant particular situations with certain trees which are not to be found in any other part of the grounds; and thus to form what the landscape gardeners call scenes. Thus, for instance, there might be an American ground, formed in some shaded hollow, and planted with rhododendrons, azaleas, and kalmias. All these plants require a light peaty soil, and a shady and somewhat moist situation. In another part of the pleasure-grounds there might be some alpine scenery, with pines and firs, and particularly larches, interspersed with a few birch-trees, planted in dry sandy soil on hilly ground. The deciduous cypress and weeping willow should be near water, as should the common willow, nearly all the poplars, and the alders. In another place might be a thicket of the different varieties of hawthorn, with a few of the fine large-fruited foreign thorns planted in striking situations. In short there are no limits to the numerous and beautiful scenes that might be laid out by a woman of cultivated mind, who possessed fancy and taste, combined with a very slight knowledge of trees; and I think I may safely add, that I do not know a more delightful occupation than this kind of landscape gardening. It is landscape painting, but on the noblest and boldest scale: and it is a source of constant enjoyment, from the daily improvement that it displays. What a difference it makes in the pleasure we have in returning home, if we have something to visit, that we know has been improving in our absence. We regard the trees and shrubs we have planted, and the scenes we have laid out with almost a parental fondness; and a new and daily increasing interest is given to life. I would, therefore, most earnestly entreat my readers to study trees and shrubs; and I do assure them that they will find themselves amply repaid, not only by the pleasure they will have in landscape gardening, but in the additional enjoyment their accession of knowledge will give to every country walk and ride that they take.

There is, however, one great drawback to the pleasure that may be anticipated from planting an arboretum, or even an illustration of any particular order or genus; and this is the very great difficulty that exists in procuring plants true to their names. Nurserymen put down a great many more names in their catalogues, than they have different kinds of plants; and thus the same plants, like the actors in a country theatre, are often made to perform under a great many different names in the same piece. I have heard of instances where twelve or fourteen species were named in a catalogue, though the nurseryman only possessed three or four, which, when wanted, were made to do duty under all these different names. Almost all nurserymen are alike in this respect, and the only real cure will be an increased knowledge of trees and shrubs on the part of the purchasers, which will render it impossible to impose false kinds upon them. In the mean time I may mention that Mr. Loudon has found the trees and shrubs in the nursery of Messrs. Whitley and Osborn, at Fulham, more correctly named than in most others.

In planting masses of trees and shrubs, great care should be taken to hide the dug ground around them, which always forms a scar in the landscape. The best way of doing this is to cover all the space between the shrubs with grass, and to tie down the branches of the trees to pegs or stakes fixed in the earth, so as to make the trees feather down to the ground. Where this cannot be accomplished, on account of the expense of clipping the grass, for it cannot be mown among the trees, ivy may be pegged down over the dug ground, or evergreen trailing roses, of which there are many kinds especially adapted for this purpose. There is one general rule relating to the planting of trees and shrubs, which can never be too often repeated, or too strongly enforced,—it is, never to suffer them to be planted too thickly. This may appear a very simple rule, but it is one which it is very difficult to put in practice, as all the persons employed in planting are generally opposed to it. The nurseryman of course wishes to dispose of his plants, and the gardener to produce a good effect as soon as possible, nay, even the proprietor cannot help feeling the bare and desolate appearance of a new plantation where the shrubs are placed at proper distances. There are but two remedies for this: either planting so as to produce an effect at first, and then thinning out half the plants, beginning the second or third year; or planting the shrubs at the proper distances, and covering the ground between them with some trailing plant pegged down.

Nothing can look worse than a row of tall trees which were evidently planted for a screen; but which, so far from answering the intended purpose, admit the light between their slender naked stems, which afford no more concealment than the open rails of a paling. Mr. Loudon observes, in one of the numbers of the Gardener’s Magazine, that the quickest way of thickening a plantation in this state is, if the trees are deciduous, to cut every alternate tree down, in order that the stools of the fallen trees may send up young shoots; but if any of them have branches within six or eight feet of the ground, by taking off the tops of the trees, and tying down these branches, the plantation may be thickened, without cutting any trees down.

A weeping ash is a very ornamental tree on a lawn, but unless it is well trained it loses its effect. When trained to a wooden frame, the hoops and rods of which it is composed are seldom strong enough to sustain the weight of snow which falls on the summit of the tree in severe winters, and if they give way in any place, the boughs are frequently broken. In the arboretum which Joseph Strutt, Esq., is now having laid out at Derby, and which, when finished, he is most liberally about to present to that town as a public promenade, there is a very fine weeping ash, for which Mr. Strutt has had an iron frame-work made. The iron rods are light and elegant, and yet so strong that they are in no danger of giving way under any weight of snow that is ever likely to fall on the tree. The iron frame work has been coated over with gas tar to preserve it from rust, and it now looks exceedingly well.