A Year in a Lancashire Garden

VII

The Summer Garden – The Buddleia – Ghent Azaleas – The Mixed Borders – Roses – The Green Rose.

July 13.– There is a longer interval than usual since my last notes; but I have been away among the Soldanellas and the Gentians of Switzerland, and I have had to leave my garden to the gardener's care. Now that I have returned, I find how much has gone on, and how much I must have missed. The Nemophila bed, I hear, gradually filled up and became a perfect sheet of brilliant blue. The Anemone bed was very good, and that of Ranunculus very fair; but best of all, as I knew it would be, was the bed of Brier Roses, with their trained branches laden with sweet little yellow blossoms.

The Kalmias too are over, and the alpine Rhododendrons (Roses des Alpes) are also nearly at an end; but I have just found them wild upon the Wengern Alp, and that must be my consolation. There is nothing I am more sorry to have missed than the great shrub – almost tree – of Buddleia globosa, which grows in the centre of one of the herbaceous borders. It has been, as it always is, covered with its golden balls, smelling of honey, and recalling an old garden in Somersetshire which I knew years ago. It is certainly true that nothing calls up associations of the past as does the sense of smell. A whiff of perfume stealing through the air, or entering into an open window, and one is reminded of some far-off place on some long-past day when the same perfume floated along, and for one single moment the past will seem more real than the present. The Buddleia, the Magnolia, and one or two other flowers always have this power over me.

I have still one Azalea, and only one, in blossom; it has a small and very fragrant white flower.

I have been lately reading several articles about the fly-catching flowers. Is it generally known that no fly-catcher is more cruel and more greedy than the common Ghent Azalea, especially, I think, the large sweet yellow one? On one single blossom, which I gathered just before leaving home, at the end of May, I found no less than six flies; four of them were quite dead, and of one or two nothing remained but a shred of wing. Two others were still alive, but the Azalea had already nearly drained their life away, and held them so tightly with its viscid hairs that I could hardly release them from its grasp. On the other blossoms in the truss were other flies, three, four, or five; so that the entire Azalea shrub had probably caught some hundreds.4

The mixed borders are almost past their best, – at least the hairy red Poppy, the day Lily, and the early purple Gladiolus are over, and, of course, the Irises and Pæonies. At present various Canterbury Bells, Valerian (which I saw bedded out the other day at Liége), and the white and orange Lily, are the gayest things we have. There is a Mullein, too, which is well worth a corner in any garden. Not long since I saw, in some book of rambles through our southern counties, the spire of a cathedral with its pinnacles and crockets compared to a spike of Mullein flower. It is certainly the Mullein (the distinctive name of which I do not know) which is now in bloom with me; and, indeed, the resemblance had occurred to me before I had read the book.

But I hardly care to linger over other flowers, when the Rose-beds are in their fullest splendour. The summer Roses must have been better a fortnight back, but the perpetuals are as good as can be, and many of the summer Roses yet remain. I sometimes fear that the passion for large, well-formed blossoms, and the desire of novelty, will make some of the dear old Roses of our childhood pass into entire neglect; yet, when we think of a Rose, of which any poet has written, it will not be La France, or Sénateur Vaisse, or Alfred Colomb – beautiful as they are. When Herrick warns us —

or when Hood tells us —

– their Roses were other than the favourite Roses of to-day. Perhaps they were the old Cabbage Rose, a great bush of which grows next to a bed of Lavender, and pleasantly scents the garden as you enter it. Perhaps they were the Portland Rose, of which I have some three beds, and than which no Rose is better for the making of Pot Pourri, as the young ladies in Mr. Leslie's picture may learn to their advantage. Perhaps they were the Moss Rose, with its mossed buds and fragrant blossoms, of which I have another bed entirely for itself. Perhaps they were the Maiden Blush, or the York and Lancaster, or the sweet old China, with its pink shell petals, which comes so soon and lingers on so late – the last Rose, not of summer but of autumn.5 Then there are other old Roses which should not be neglected. The Rose Unique, which is a white Cabbage Rose, is one; the Rose Celeste, the thin delicate buds of which are so beautiful, is another. Then there is the little Rose de Meaux, and the old Damask, which indeed seems to have nearly disappeared.

It must have been one of these Roses, be sure, and not a Tea or a perpetual, which Lady Corisande finds in her garden for Lothair.

Not of course that we are not grateful for the new Roses, with their brilliant colouring and their perfect form, but we are unwilling that the old should be forgotten. The Gloire de Dijon and Général Jaqueminot seem to me the most vigorous and most useful, if not the finest; but I have two old standards which are at the moment more effective than anything I have. One is Boule de Nantes, the other an old summer Rose, the name of which I do not know, but which, when fully out, much resembles the Comtesse de Jaucourt. They are not trained in any way, and I find, measuring round their heads, that one has a circumference of 12 feet, and the other of 12½ feet. In the South of England it is no doubt different, but for us these are large dimensions; and certainly nothing I now get from the nursery gardens seems inclined to attain to half the size.

There is one Rose in my garden which flourishes abundantly, but which is the only Rose, of which I should decline to give a cutting. It is so ugly that it is worth nothing, except as a curiosity; and if it ceased to be a curiosity it would be quite valueless. It is a green Rose. I got a small plant from Baltimore, in America, some years ago, and I find it perfectly hardy. It flowers very freely, and all through the summer; the bud is a perfect Rose bud in appearance, but the open flower shows that the Rose is of monstrous and not natural growth; the petals are, it seems to me, no real petals at all, but an expansion of the green heart, which often appears in Roses, and which has here been so cultivated as to take the place of the natural Rose. These petals are coarse and irregular, and have serrated edges, with a very faint scent.6

How the Rose twines itself around all history and all literature! There are the Rose gardens of Persia, and the loves of the Rose and nightingale; there are those famous Roses once plucked in the Temple Garden, of which "the pale and bloody petals" (to use a fine expression of Hawthorne's) were strewed over many an English battle-field; there is the golden Rose which the Pope gives as the best of gifts to the foremost among Catholic monarchs – emblem at once of a fading earthly life, and of the unfading life in heaven.

Of English poets is there one, who does not celebrate the Rose, and of all is there one, who draws from it a more tender morality than Waller in "Go, lovely Rose"?

But no nation ever loved the Rose as did the Greeks, and it was their legend that told us how the Rose sprang to birth. Bion's "Lament for Adonis" has been translated by Mrs. Browning, and I know no translation equal to it in general fidelity and vigour of expression. It appears to me, on the whole, perhaps the very best translation in the language. Here are the lines which tell this part of the story: —

Another still more famous Greek poem about the Rose is one by Sappho, which Mrs. Browning has also most beautifully translated – a fit task, which unites the names of the two great poetesses of Greece and England. The poem begins: —

No wonder the Greeks wove their wreaths of the Rose, or that "under the Rose" they passed many a gay and happy hour, to be kept in memory, if untold in words.

My bedding-out is of course finished, but of this I must speak on the next occasion. The weather has been hot, and rain will now be welcome.

VIII

The Fruit Crop – Hautbois Strawberries – Lilium Auratum – Sweet Williams – Carnations – The Bedding-out.

August 15.– It is, I find, a dangerous thing to leave a garden masterless for even a month. The best of gardens will probably fall short in some respect, and I certainly discover several matters which would have been otherwise had I remained at home. My readers will hardly be interested by the details of my grievances; it is pleasanter to tell where we have been successful.

The wall fruit, however, I must mention. The ants and the aphis, and possibly some frost, have destroyed the Peach crop utterly. There is not a single Peach, and the Nectarines, which are certainly a hardier fruit with us, only number thirty in all! The Apricots have done fairly, and were so early that we gathered three or four in the last days of July – a full month before their usual time. The Moorpark Apricot, which we owe to Sir William Temple, is still the best. By the way, he tells us that the Roman name for Apricots is Mala epirotica. Is this the root of the word Apricot, or may we still look upon it as from "apricus," the "sunny fruit," – the fruit that loves the sun and has caught its own bright colour?7

Of the smaller fruit Cherries have been a failure, with the exception indeed of the Morellos. Gooseberries have done well, though I fear I cannot compete with the giant Gooseberries of a Lancashire Gooseberry show. The Currants, whether against the wall or on bushes, have been capital, and the black Currants would take a prize at any show. We now net up some Currant bushes for the later autumn. The Raspberries, which we train in arches, have done tolerably, and we should have a second crop of the white ones in October.

The Strawberries have been an average crop, and the little Alpines have been capital – so large, so highly flavoured, and so redolent of Switzerland!

I am trying, too, for the first time, to grow Hautbois Strawberries, which are almost unknown with us. We are as yet not very successful, and I well know how capricious a fruit it is as regards setting. A year or two ago I was breakfasting with a well-known and most courtly physician in London, who is since dead. A dish of beautiful Hautbois was on the table. We were all admiring. "Yes," said our host, "they are now getting very rare. Sometimes a patient says to me, 'May I not have a little fruit?' 'Certainly not!' is my answer. 'Surely a few Strawberries?' Then, that I may not seem a great curmudgeon, I say, 'Well, a few Strawberries, but be sure they are Hautbois;' and I know they can't get them!" To ordinary Strawberries a Hautbois is what a Tea Rose is to ordinary Roses; it has an aroma all its own, and unlike all others.

In the flower garden the finest bed is one which I have now had for the last three years. It is a bed of Lilium auratum, with the dark Heliotrope growing in between. I take up the Lily bulbs for the winter, bring them on in heat, and then plant them out. They are really beautiful, and each year they seem more vigorous. Some have four blossoms, some have six or eight, and one has as many as ten. The strong perfume lies heavy on that end of the garden, and I think this Lily should never be brought inside the house. It is curious how the blossoms vary; in some the golden stripes are so much deeper, in some the dark claret spots are so much more numerous.

Another bed is of Lilium speciosum, planted to take the place of a bed of Sweet William, which was quite a glow of colour in the earlier part of the summer. This dear old Sweet William, which was the favourite in the old cottage gardens, and which, with the Lad's-love and the Pink, was the chosen flower for the buttonhole of the country boy, is now far too much neglected. Its rich velvet clusters of twenty different shades make a bed of exquisite beauty. It is over too soon, but it can be supplanted (may I say?) by something else. In a second bed of Sweet Williams I placed Gladiolus bulbs, and now they are coming into flower from out the green cushion, from which we have cut the withered blossoms.

A bed of the sweet little pink Pinks has of course been over some time, and though the bed is now quite bare of bloom – for I cannot disturb the roots – it is well worth sacrificing some colour in autumn for the three summer weeks of delicious perfume. Clusters of white Pinks have been no less sweet on the herbaceous borders, and now the Clove Carnations take their place.

It is curious that so familiar a flower as the Pink should be scarcely mentioned by the great poets. Shakspeare only just names it, and I do not think Marvell does. Milton, in his Lycidas, barely alludes to "the white Pink," and Cowley has no separate poem in its praise. Indeed, one may say generally that, with the exception of the Rose, the flowers in which the poets have rejoiced, and which they have immortalised, are the flowers of spring. Cowley, who wrote as a horticulturist, is the almost solitary exception. There is, however, a rather pretty and fanciful little song of Herrick's "To Carnations: " —

For the ordinary bedding-out of ordinary gardens I have a real contempt. It is at once gaudy and monotonous. A garden is left bare for eight months in the year, that for the four hottest months there shall be a blaze of the hottest colour. The same combinations of the same flowers appear wherever you go. Calceolarias, Verbenas, and Zonal Pelargoniums, with a border of Pyrethrum or Cerastium – and that is about all. There is no thought and no imagination. The "bedding-stuff" is got together and planted out, and each year of planting is a repetition of the year before; and thus, as Forbes Watson says so truly, "Gardeners are teaching us to think too little about the plants individually, and to look at them chiefly as an assemblage of beautiful colours. It is difficult in those blooming masses to separate one from another; all produce so much the same sort of impression. The consequence is, people see the flowers on our beds without caring to know anything about them, or even to ask their names." Any interest in the separate plants is impossible, and then they are, almost without exception, scentless plants, to which no association attaches, and which are cared for merely because they give a line or patch of red or yellow to the garden. "The lust of the eye and the pride of life," – there is little purer pleasure to be drawn from "bedding stuff" than those words convey. However, there is already a reaction setting in, and the use of Echeverias and the like gives evidence at least of a more refined taste in colour, though in themselves nothing can be less interesting. Meanwhile, as some bedded-out beds will always be necessary, we may try to diversify them as much as possible. The following are among my most successful: – A bed of Agapanthus, with its beautiful foliage and sky-blue umbels, is surrounded with bright yellow Peacock Gazania; a bed of scarlet Lobelia cardinalis (is this the "Cardinal Flower" that American writers speak of?) is edged with the white Ribbon-grass, and that again with the blue Lobelia speciosa; and a second bed of the same Lobelia cardinalis, the bronze foliage of which harmonises so well with the spikes of glowing red, has the Lobelia speciosa next to it, and the Golden Pyrethrum as a border. Another bed is of Humea elegans, edged with the white variegated-leaved Miss Kingsbury Pelargonium, and that again with the blue Lobelia. Into other beds I have introduced the variegated Aloe and the Aralia, as centres for the more dwarf and brightly-coloured Verbenas.

Of the variegated Pelargoniums I find the Beauty of Calderdale the most effective and most vigorous, and though I am told "Mrs. Pollock has a most excellent constitution," she does less well with me. One other bed, which is now over, has been too pretty for me not to mention; it was a bed of Antirrhinums of all colours, and I shall certainly repeat it another year. Lastly, I have a large bed of Clematis Jackmanii in full glory. Last year it did fairly well, but the plants were comparatively weak, and the flowers trailed upon the ground. This year the plants have grown vigorously, and I have trained Withies all across the bed, so that the purple blossoms twine and cling around them, and are now a perfect mass of blossom.