A Year in a Lancashire Garden

PREFACE

This volume is but a collection of Notes, which, at the request of the editor, I wrote, month by month, in 1874, for the columns of the Gardeners' Chronicle.

They pretend to little technical knowledge, and are, I fear, of but little horticultural value. They contain only some slight record of a year's work in a garden, and of those associations which a garden is so certain to call up.

As, however, I found that this monthly record gave pleasure to readers, to whom both the garden and its owner were quite unknown, I printed off some fifty copies to give to those, whom I have the happiness to number among my friends, and for whom a garden has the same interest that it has for me.

Four years have passed since then, and I am still asked for copies which I cannot give.

I have at last, rather reluctantly, for there seems to me something private and personal about the whole affair, resolved to reprint these notes, and see if this little book can win for itself new friends on its own account.

One difficulty, I feel, is that I am describing what happened five years ago. But this I cannot help. To touch or alter would be to spoil the truthfulness of all. The notes must stand absolutely as they were written. But after all, I believe, the difficulty is only an apparent one. The seasons, indeed, may vary – a spring may be later, a summer may be warmer, an autumn may be more fruitful, – but the seasons themselves remain. The same flowers come up each year, the same associations link themselves on to the returning flowers, and the verses of the great poets are unchanged. The details of a garden will alter, but its general effect and aspect are the same.

Nevertheless, something has been learnt, and something remembered, since these notes were written, and this, also communicated from time to time to the Gardeners' Chronicle, I have condensed into a supplementary chapter.

If, as I have heard from a friendly critic, there is too much couleur de rose in my descriptions, I am tempted to retort that this is a colour not perhaps altogether inappropriate to my subject; but, be this as it may, I have described nothing but as it really appeared to me, and I have only wished that others should receive the same impressions as myself.

For my very open egotism I make no apology; it was a necessity of the plan on which I wrote.

I have added notes on the Roman Viola, and on the Sunflower of the Classics, and have given some extracts respecting the Solanum and the fly-catching Azalea. I have also reprinted, by the editor's kind permission, part of an article of mine that appeared in the Athenæum on "Flowers and the Poets."

I

Introductory – The House – The Latest Flowers – The Arbutus – Chrysanthemums – Fallen Leaves – Planting – The Apple-room – The Log-house – Christmas.

December 3.– These notes are written for those who love gardens as I do, but not for those who have a professional knowledge of the subject; and they are written in the hope that it may not be quite impossible to convey to others some little of the delight, which grows (more certainly than any bud or flower) from the possession and management of a garden. I cannot, of course, by any words of mine, give the hot glow of colour from a bed of scarlet Ranunculus with the sun full upon it, or bring out the delicious scent of those double Tuberoses, which did so well with me this autumn; but I can at least speak of my plans and projects, tell what I am doing, and how each month I succeed or fail, – and thus share with others the uncertainty, the risks and chances, which are in reality the great charm of gardening. And then, again, gardening joins itself, in a thousand ways, with a thousand associations, to books and literature, and here, too, I shall have much to say.

Lancashire is not the best possible place for a garden, and to be within five miles of a large town is certainly no advantage. We get smoke on one side, and salt breezes on another, and, worst of all, there comes down upon us every now and then a blast, laden with heavy chemical odours, which is more deadly than either smoke or salt. Still we are tolerably open, and in the country. As I sit writing at my library window, I see, beyond the lawn, field after field, until at last the eye rests on the spire of a church three miles away.

A long red-gabled house, with stone facings, and various creepers trained round it, – a small wood (in which there is a rookery) screening us from a country road, and from the west, – lawns with some large trees and several groups of evergreens, – and the walled garden, the outer garden, and the orchard; – it is to these that I invite you. Exclusive of meadow-land there are only some four acres, but four acres are enough for many gardening purposes, and for very great enjoyment.

These are certainly what the American poet Bryant calls "the melancholy days, the saddest in the year." The late autumn flowers are over; – the early spring ones are still buried under the soil. I could only find this morning a single blighted monthly Rose, a Wallflower or two, an uneasy-looking Polyanthus, and some yellow Jasmine against the house – and that was all. Two days of early frost had killed the rest. Oddly enough, however, a small purple flower caught my eye on the mixed border; it was a Virginian Stock, – but what it was doing at this unwonted season who can say? Then, of course, the Arbutus is still in bloom, as it has been for the last two months, and very beautiful it is. There is a large bush of it just as you enter the walled garden, and, though the pink clusters of blossom are now past their best, they are more welcome than ever in the present dearth of flowers. Can any one tell me why my Arbutus does not fruit? It has only borne one single berry in the last four years; and yet the Arbutus fruits abundantly in other places in Lancashire, and at Lytham, close to the sea, I saw clusters of berries only the other day. Sometimes I fancy there is a better chance of the fruit setting if the pollen is from another tree, and I have lately planted a second Arbutus for the experiment. I am very fond of the Arbutus; it carries me back to the days of Horace, for we remember how his goats, wandering along the lower slopes of Lucretilis, would browse upon the thickets of Arbutus that fringed its side.

Lastly, the Chrysanthemums are in flower, though not in the inner garden. Some I have tended and trained, and they are now looking handsome enough in the porch and vestibule of the house. Some I have planted, and allowed to grow as they like, in front of the shrubbery borders; these have failed very generally with me this year – they look brown and withered, and the blooms are small, and the stems long and ragged, while many have entirely disappeared. The best of them all is Bob, with his bright, red, merry face, only surpassed by a trained Julia Lagravière in the porch. Another favourite Chrysanthemum of mine is the Fleur de Marie, with its large white discs, all quilled inside and feathered round the edge. Fastened up against a wall, I have seen it, year after year, a mass of splendid snowy blossom. The Chrysanthemum has three merits above almost every flower. It comes in the shortest and darkest days; it blooms abundantly in the smoke of the largest cities; it lasts longer than any flower when cut and put into water. If flowers have their virtues, the virtue of the Chrysanthemum is its unselfish kindliness.

In the outer garden, we have been busy with the fallen leaves, brushing them away from the walks and lawn, leaving them to rot in the wood, digging them into the shrubbery borders. This work is finished now, and we have swept up a great stack for future use at the end of two years. The Beech and the Oak leaves we (in opposition to some authorities) hold to be the most valuable, but of course we cannot keep them distinct from the rest. These fallen leaves – of which we make our loam for potting purposes – what endless moralities they have occasioned! The oldest and the youngest poets speak of them. It is Homer, who compares the generations of men to the generations of the leaves, as they come and go, flourish and decay, one succeeding the other, unresting and unceasingly. It is Swinburne, who says in his poems —

During this open weather we have been getting on with our planting. Those beds of Rhododendrons just under the drawing-room windows have become too thick. They are all good sorts – John Waterer, Lady Emily Cathcart, and the rest – and must have sufficient room. We move a number of them to the other side of the house, opposite the front door, where till now there has been a bed of the common Rhododendrons, and this in turn we plant as a fresh bed elsewhere.

There will be now some space to spare in the hybrid beds, and I shall plant in them a number of roots of the Lilium candidum – the dear old white Lily of cottage gardens. They will come up each year from between the Rhododendrons, and will send their sweet subtle odour through the open windows into the house. And as I write I am told of a recipe showing how, in the Wortlore of old, the firm white petals were esteemed of use. You must gather them while still fresh, place them unbroken in a wide-necked bottle, packed closely and firmly together, and then pour in what brandy there is room for. In case of cut or bruise no remedy, I am told, is more efficacious, and certainly none more simple.

December 23.– The weather is still mild and open. We have had three days' sharp frost, but it soon passed, and, while it lasted, it spared even the Chrysanthemums. "Bob" looks better than ever. During the frost was the time to look over the Apple-room, the Mushroom-bed, and the Log-house.

The Pears we are now using are the Winter Nelis, which I believe is known also as the Bonne de Malines. It is a capital Pear at this season of the year, and in these parts, and trained on my south-west walls, bears well, though the trees are young. I only planted them some four years ago, and, as all the world knows, —

The Mushrooms are late this year; the spawn appeared less good than usual, and I expected a total failure, but, after all, there is promise of a dish for Christmas Day. I do not care to grow Mushrooms when the green vegetables are in full glory but now they are very welcome.

As for the Log-house, it is full. We have cut down several trees, and huge Yule logs lie in heaps, ready for the hall fire. We shall want them before the winter is over. If Horace had to say to Thaliarchus in Italy (this is Lord Denman's version) —

surely in these northern latitudes, and in this dearth of coal, the advice is doubly seasonable. And then a log fire is so charming. It does more than warm and blaze – it glows and sparkles. But Mr. Warner, the American, has just given us in his Backlog Studies long pages about wood-fires, and I need only refer to that very pleasant little book. One quotation, however, I will give: —

"We burn in it Hickory wood, cut long. We like the smell of this aromatic forest timber and its clear flame. The Birch is also a sweet wood for the hearth, with a sort of spiritual flame, and an even temper – no snappishness. Some prefer the Elm, which holds fire so well; and I have a neighbour who uses nothing but Apple-tree wood – a solid, family sort of wood, fragrant also, and full of delightful associations. But few people can afford to burn up their fruit-trees."

But besides the dead wood, we have just cut our fresh Christmas boughs. Up against an outhouse I have an immense Ivy, almost as large as one you see growing up some old castle: it spreads along the wall, covering it all over on both sides; then it climbs up a second wall at right angles to the first, and throws its trailing branches down to the very ground: and now they are one mass of blossom.

It is from this ivy that we gather our best Christmas greenery; but there are also cuttings from the Box, Yew, and Holly; – and one variegated Holly has been beautiful, for its mottled leaves have in some sprays become of a perfectly clear and creamy white – the colour of fine old ivory. Mistletoe does not grow with us, and we have to buy it in the market of our town. By the way, how strangely the idea of an English Mistletoe bough now associates itself with that very uncomfortable Italian story of the bride and the oaken chest. How curious, too, that, in this country at least, the memory of poor Ginevra is due not to Rogers's poem, but to Haynes Bayly's ballad.

To-morrow will be Christmas Eve, and to-morrow (so the legend says), in the vale of Avalon, – at the old abbey, where King Arthur was buried and St. Dunstan lived – "outbuds the Glastonbury Thorn" – the sacred Thorn, which sprang from the staff St. Joseph planted there. Unhappily no such Thorns grow in my Lancashire garden.

II

Gardening Blunders – The Walled Garden and the Fruit Walls – Spring Gardening – Christmas Roses – Snowdrops – Pot Plants.

January 5.– What wonderful notions some people have about gardens! In a clever novel I have just been reading, there occurs this description: – "The gardens at Wrexmore Hall were in a blaze of beauty, with Geraniums and Chrysanthemums of every hue." In the published letters of Mr. Dallas, who was formerly United States' Minister here, there is something still more marvellous. He had been staying with Lord Palmerston at Broadlands in the end of September, and he speaks of "the glowing beds of Roses, Geraniums, Rhododendrons, Heliotropes, Pinks, Chrysanthemums." I shall have to make a pilgrimage to Broadlands. Meanwhile, why should we not more often bed out Chrysanthemums in masses, as in the Temple Gardens? A "winter garden" is generally nothing more than a garden of small evergreens, which, of course, is an improvement on bare soil, but which is in itself not singularly interesting.

Since last I wrote, we have had storms of wind and rain, and some little snow and frost, but the weather has, on the whole, been very genial for the time of year. I have finished my planting, and am now busy re-sodding the grass terrace which runs along the south and east of the house; the grass had become full of weeds, and in places was bare and brown. But my most important work has been within the walled garden. This garden is entered by a door in the south-east wall, and two walls, facing south-west and north-east, run at right angles to it. A thick hedge, guarded by wire netting to keep out the rabbits, is at the further or north-west side, and divides us from the home-croft. Along the south-east wall we have two vineries, and between them a small range of frames and hotbeds. Against the sheltered wall between the vineries we have a Magnolia grandiflora, which flowered with me last year; a Banksian Rose, which has done no good as yet; and a Général Jacqueminot, which is always beautiful. A Camellia (Woodsii), which flowered abundantly last spring, I have moved elsewhere, and have planted a Maréchal Niel in its place. Beyond the vineries on both sides are my best Peaches and Nectarines. On the south-west wall are Peaches and Nectarines, Apricots, Plums and Pears, and on the north-east Cherries and Currants. In front of the Vine border is a broad gravel walk, which reaches along the whole breadth of the garden, and on the other side of it are the flower-beds. There are about forty of them in all, of different shapes and sizes, and divided from each other by little winding walks of red Jersey gravel. As you come upon them all at once, but cannot see the whole at a glance, I have no temptation to sacrifice everything to monotonous regularity and a mere effect of colour. I take bed by bed, and make each as beautiful as I can, so that I have a constant variety, and so that at no season of the year am I entirely bare of flowers. Box hedges three feet high and some two and a half feet thick, and a screen of Rhododendrons, separate the flower garden from the kitchen garden, which is beyond; and right through both flower garden and kitchen garden, from the front of the Vine border to the far hedge by the croft, we have just been extending a grass walk, and planting, along the part that skirts the kitchen garden, Pears, Plums, and (for sake of a very uncertain experiment) a Walnut and a Medlar.

My spring gardening is on no great scale. A bed of mixed Hyacinths, another of single Van Thol Tulips, and another of Golden Prince Tulips, two beds of Wallflowers, one of red Daisies edged with white, and one of Polyanthus, are all I have at present planted. There will be more by and by. Meanwhile the spring flowers I really care about are those that come up every year on the mixed borders, – the outside borders of the flower garden. They are old friends that never fail us; they ask only to be left alone, and are the most welcome "harbingers of spring," bringing with them the pleasant memories of former years, and the fresh promise of the year that is to come.

I never saw such Christmas Roses as I have just now. Clustering beneath their dark serrated leaves rise masses of bloom, – bud and blossom, – the bud often tinged with a faint pink colour, the blossom a snowy white guarding a centre of yellow stamens. I have counted from thirty to forty blooms upon a single root, and I sometimes think the Eucharis itself is not a finer flower. The Christmas Rose, the Helleborus niger, has been celebrated by Pliny, by Spenser, and by Cowley; but I confess my own favourite association with it is of a later date. I never see it without recalling the description poor Anne Brontë gives in her strange wild story of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Just at the end, when Helen, after her sad unhappy life, is free at last, and wishes to tell Gilbert that what remains of her life may now be his, she turns to "pluck that beautiful half-blown Christmas Rose that grew upon the little shrub without, just peeping from the snow that had hitherto, no doubt, defended it from the frost, and was now melting away in the sun." And then, "having gently dashed the glittering powder from its leaves," she says, "This Rose is not so fragrant as a summer flower, but it has stood through hardships none of them could bear: the cold rain of winter has sufficed to nourish it, and its faint sun to warm it; the bleak winds have not blanched it, or broken its stem, and the keen frost has not blighted it. Look, Gilbert, it is still fresh and blooming as a flower can be, with the cold snow even now on its petals. Will you have it?" Nowhere in the whole of the Brontë novels (so far as I remember) is a flower described as this one is.

It is suggestive enough of dark and drowsy winter, that the two flowers which most enliven it should bear the deadly names of black Hellebore and winter Aconite (though, indeed, the Eranthis is itself allied rather to the Hellebores than to the Aconites); as yet, however, my Aconites are still below the sod.

January 20.– It is St. Agnes's Eve, and never was there a St. Agnes's Eve so unlike that one which witnessed the happy adventure of young Porphyro. Then

Now the weather is soft, and almost warm.

I always seem to connect the idea of a Snowdrop with St. Agnes; and Tennyson speaks of "the first Snowdrop of the year" lying upon her bosom. This year our first Snowdrop appeared on the 18th, and now each day brings out fresh tufts on the herbaceous borders, where the sun strikes most warmly. Another week will pass, and, under the Lime trees which shade the orchard, I shall find other tufts of the double variety, planted in bygone years I know not by whom, and now springing up half wild and quite uncared for. And these Snowdrops gave me a hint a year or two ago. I found that my gardener was in the habit of throwing away his old bulbs – Hyacinths and Tulips – which had served their turn and lived their season. There was, of course, no good in keeping them for garden purposes; but this throwing them away seemed sadly wasteful. We now, therefore, plant them in the orchard grass, and each year they come up half wild like the Snowdrops, and each year they will be more numerous and more effective. But the best way of growing Snowdrops is, I believe, on a lawn itself. I have planted several hundreds of them in groups and patches, in a corner, where I can see them from the library window. The green spears are now piercing the grass, and in a few days there will be a broken sheet of snowy white, which will last for at least a fortnight, and which, from a distance, will seem like the lingering relic of some snowdrift still unmelted by the sun.1 By the way, was it not Mrs. Barbauld who spoke of the Snowdrop as "an icicle changed into a flower?" The conceit is not a particularly happy one, for the soft white petals have nothing in common with the hard sparkle of the icicle.

We have not been fortunate this winter with the pot-plants which we require for the house. The Primulas have been singularly shabby. We had got some white sand from an excavation in the road near us, and it seems to have checked the growth of several of our plants. The Roman Hyacinths, too, have done less well than usual with us. There was a gummy look about many of the bulbs, which made us fear at the time that they were not properly ripened, and the result has proved that we were right. For dinner-table decoration can anything be prettier at this season than small Orange-trees – Japanese Oranges, I think they are – laden with their wealth of green and golden fruit? I have only just taken to them, and certainly I have seen nothing of the kind I like so well.

III

Frost – The Vineries and Vines – Early Forcing – Orange-trees – Spring Work – Aconites – The Crocus.

February 6.– We have had no morning so beautiful this winter. A clear, bright frost is in the air, and on the grass, and among the trees. Not a spray but is coated with crystals, white as snow and thick as moss; not a leaf of Holly or of Ivy but is fringed with frosted fretwork. There is not a breath of wind, and the birds, that were singing yesterday, have all vanished out of sight. It is wonderfully beautiful while it lasts, but it will be over before night.

Meanwhile, I am thankful for any touch of frost, if it will only come now instead of later. It will help to kill some few of the eggs and larvæ, which, in the different form of noxious insects, will plague us through the summer. It will keep back the fruit-tree buds, which are sadly too forward, and which will run a poor chance unless they are checked betimes. The Apricots especially look almost ready to open, and I can see colour even on the Nectarines.

We are beginning to force our first vinery. The year before last we had renewed the Vine border, and last year we did not venture any forcing; this year I hope we may be repaid. Our Black Hamburghs are old Vines of rather a good sort, with fine large berries and very few stones. The Muscats – Canon Hall, Alexandria, and Troveren – are Vines which I planted some three years ago. In the same house there is also an old Syrian Vine, bearing big bunches, but otherwise worth but little.

In the second vinery are Black Hamburghs again, Black Princes, Grizzly Frontignan, and a Sweetwater, – all old Vines; and to these I have added a Mrs. Pince's Muscat, a Foster's Seedling, and a Madresfield Court. Both vineries are of old construction, with clumsy flues, and require a thorough re-arranging, which I must give them some day. Quite the best grape, so far as flavour goes, is, I contend, the Grizzly Frontignan, which has now comparatively gone out of fashion. The bunches, it is true, are not handsome, the berries are not large, and the colour is not good; but has any Muscat a finer or more aromatic flavour? It was Sir William Temple who first introduced it, and he speaks of it with pride as "the noblest of all Grapes I ever ate in England." The Sweetwater is of value in another way; it is of all Grapes the most grateful and refreshing to an invalid. Only the autumn before last I was asked by an old friend whether anywhere in our neighbourhood the Sweetwater was still grown. He had been very ill, and was longing for Grapes, – but the rich luscious Muscats, with their highly-flavoured and thickly-sugared juice, had been forbidden. He had searched in vain among the vineries of many great houses, where the Sweetwater has been long discarded, and it was a pleasant surprise to find that in my small vineries this once favourite old Grape could still be found.