A Year in a Lancashire Garden Part 2

We have been busy renewing the Box edgings to our flower-beds where it was required. Last year we had carelessly laid down salt on the narrow walks to destroy some weeds, and it has injured a good deal of the Box; some injury, too, has been caused by the growth of several strong plants, which got out of bounds and smothered it. Our garden is not a good spring garden. The soil is cold and heavy, and the delicate spring flowers do not thrive; but, on the other hand, no garden about is a better summer garden. It is a regular sun-trap, and yet even in the hottest weather the plants keep fresh and unburnt. Meanwhile the white Scilla, the double Daffodil, the Arabis, and some others, are doing well enough. A bed of Daisies and another of Polyanthus are far from satisfactory. Hepaticas I have tried over and over again, and they always fail.

In front of one of the beds of evergreens on the lawn I planted some double Primroses--yellow, white, red, and lilac; some of them are showing their blossoms, but they are not vigorous. By the way, I found it very difficult to get these Primroses, and had to pay what seemed an excessive price for them. They are, I fear, among the old neglected flowers, which we run a good chance of losing altogether, if gardeners will confine themselves entirely to bedding plants.

There is a charmingly fantastic conceit in one of Herrick's poems, "To Primroses filled with Morning Dew." He thinks they may be weeping, because

"Ye have not seen as yet The Violet."

My Primroses at least have not this excuse, for we have Violets in abundance, and they scent all the air as we pa.s.s through the garden door. Even in winter a faint fragrance lingers among their leaves--a shadowy memory of a perfume, which haunts them even when no single flower can be found. Bacon says that "the flower which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air is the Violet; specially the double white Violet which comes twice a-year: about the middle of April and about Bartholomew-tide." Where is the double white Violet grown now?

One of the greatest floral heresies of modern days is as regards the Violet. Both Ruskin and Lord Stanhope have a.s.serted that the Violet of the Greek and Latin poets was an Iris! If so, we are to believe that Athens was crowned with Iris; that the revellers at banquets decked themselves with wreaths of Iris; that wine was flavoured with Iris juice; and that a Violet is nowhere mentioned! Fortunately, however, Pliny makes it clear that there were Violets and Irises both, in old cla.s.sic times; and the city of the Violet-crown is fragrant as of yore.[2]

[2] See note I. on the Viola of the Romans.

Some of the flowering shrubs are now coming out and looking gay. There is the Mezereon with its upright shoots, all purpled over with their blossom; there is the Rhododendron dauric.u.m with its beautiful lilac bloom; there, the oldest favourite of all, is the Pyrus j.a.ponica, with its bunches of cherry-coloured flowers, breaking out all along the hard-twisted branches. This Pyrus is no doubt most effective when trained up against a wall, and then, of course, it flowers earlier; but one bush of it is quite worth growing in any garden.

The last bit of planting we have done this year is an addition to our flowering-trees. We have got two of the best Robinias--the glutinosa and the hispida--and I shall be much disappointed if they do not prove a great success.

V.

The Herbaceous Beds--Pulmonaria--Wallflowers--Polyanthus-- Starch Hyacinths--Sweet Brier--Primula j.a.ponica--Early Annuals and Bulbs--The Old Yellow China Rose.

_April 4._--Is any moment of the year more delightful than the present?

What there is wanting in glow of colour is more than made up for in fulness of interest. Each day some well-known, long-remembered plant bursts into blossom on the herbaceous borders, and brings with it pleasant a.s.sociations of days that are no more, or of books that cannot die. It is, I think, Alphonse Karr who says we should watch closely and rejoice greatly over the slow procession of the flowers, as one by one they appear, bloom, and fade; if we are past middle life, it is a sight which, at best, we can only see some twenty or thirty times again.

The common double Daffodils are already past, but we have still the variety which, from its blended hues of dark orange and pale citron, the children call--as they call the wild Linaria--"the b.u.t.ter-and-egg flower." Here is the Saxifraga cra.s.sifolia, with its huge broad leaves and its thick spikes of pink bell-blossom. It is almost too coa.r.s.e growing, however, for the border, and does better on a rude rockery, or rather "loggery," which I have elsewhere.

Here is the Pulmonaria or Lungwort, with its varied bloom of red and blue, and with the white markings on its leaves, which were supposed to look like lungs, and from which it takes its name. This Pulmonaria is one of the large cla.s.s of plants, which, it was believed, had a healing power, and indicated that healing power by the form of leaf, or root, or blossom. These herbs of grace--and it is doubtful whether any plant would be entirely excepted--bore about with them, plain for all to see, outward and visible signs of their secret and subtle virtue. Thus the Liverwort (Hepatica) had the shape of a liver in its leaves, the Eyebright (Euphrasia) looked up to you with an eye like your own--and each had potency of healing for that part of the human body, of which the image was expressed in its own frail form.

Farther on are close green tufts of the Corydalis, with its delicate lilac flowers. Then come bushes of Wallflower of the richest red-brown colour--a colour like nothing else, and indeed without a name, that would convey the depth and beauty of the dark tawny hue. What a contrast to the little wild yellow flower, which draws its scanty life from the wall of some grey old castle like that of Conway! Few scents are more delicious than that of Wallflowers. Bacon says of them that they "are very delightful, to be set under a parlour or lower chamber window." It is an old controversy whether the Wallflower and the Gillyflower are the same; but it seems tolerably clear that the latter name was rather loosely used, and meant sometimes the Wallflower, but sometimes also the Stock or the Clove Carnation. The Polyanthus on the borders has done better than those on the separate bed; the pretty _tortoise-sh.e.l.l_ blossoms (to use a good expression of Forbes Watson) are just now in full perfection, and I have also a perfectly white Hose-in-hose Polyanthus, which is really charming. There is a droll pa.s.sage in one of Sterne's love-letters to his future wife, in which he says--and he means to be sentimental and pathetic--

"The kindest affections will have room to shoot and expand in our retirement.--Let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L. [the lady's name was Lydia] has seen a Polyanthus blow in December!

Some friendly wall has sheltered it from the biting wind.--No planetary influence shall reach us but that which presides over and cherishes the sweetest flowers."

There is still one other flower of which I must speak. It grows so abundantly, it flowers so luxuriantly with me;--it comes up like a weed on almost every border, and I have given it one entire bed to itself. It is the Starch or Grape Hyacinth, known also, I believe, as the Plum or Cl.u.s.ter Hyacinth. Its lower bells are of the darkest indigo, but towards the top it melts into the softest sky-blue tints, and when in ma.s.ses it is beautiful. Ruskin says it is "as if a cl.u.s.ter of Grapes and a hive of honey had been distilled and compressed together into one small boss of celled and beaded blue."

Upon the wall by the vinery a Corchorus (Kerria) j.a.ponica is laden with wreaths of golden blossom. An Almond-tree near the front door is just shedding its pink petals. The double Gorse will be in flower in a week.

But after all there is no flowering shrub, which we care for more just now than the still unflowering Sweet Brier. Towards the end of the walled garden I have laid out a miniature herb garden, with its separate little beds for Thyme and Marjoram, and Sage and Borage, and the rest, and inclosed it within a hedge of Sweet Brier. This Sweet Brier is now in leaf, and, after rain especially, it fills all that corner of the garden with whiffs and s.n.a.t.c.hes of sweetest perfume. The Sweet Brier is the true Eglantine of the poets, for though Milton seems to confound "twisted Eglantine" with the Honeysuckle, Shakspeare has it right, and t.i.tania's bower is, as we all know,

"Quite over-canopied with luscious Woodbine, With sweet Musk Roses, and with Eglantine."

By the way, is the Musk Rose still found in English gardens, and what is it? Two years ago I got, with infinite trouble, a root or two, but they have died down again, and I begin to doubt whether I shall ever know its scent--a scent which Bacon says comes next to the Violet in perfuming the garden's air.

_April 25._--The stages in the cool vinery are now gay with Spiraeas and Cinerarias. The Lilies of the Valley are over, but they have done exceedingly well this year. I wonder whether the Trillium grandiflorum or Canadian Wood-Lily is generally known. I believe it to be hardy, but it was new to me, and I had grown it in a pot in the vinery, and a very pretty little flower it is, with its three green leaves, its three green sepals, and its three white petals. I have grown in the same way, for the first time, the Primula j.a.ponica, and surely nothing can be more beautiful than its five circles of crimson blossoms, one whorl above another. I have been so pleased with it, that I have just given orders for an entire bed of it to be made, which shall remain permanently, and between the plants I am dropping in Gladiolus bulbs, so that the bed will be in beauty for many weeks.

As I have before explained, you can hardly see the various beds of my flower-garden at a glance, so that I can go to work independently of the effects of the colour produced by elaborate bedding out. To tell the truth, too, I am heartily weary of the monotony of modern gardens, with their endless Pelargoniums, Calceolarias, and Verbenas. Some few such beds I cannot of course dispense with, but I am always glad when I can _reclaim_ a bed for permanent herbaceous plants, as in this case of the Primula j.a.ponica.

Another bed, I trust, may be successful in another way--it is a bed of the blue Nemophila insignis. Two years ago I saw in the People's Garden at Dublin, in the beginning of May, two beds, which struck me as being almost the most effective in their colouring of any I had ever seen. One was of Nemophila, the other of Virginian stock; one was a ma.s.s of the most brilliant blue, the other a blending of shades of tenderest lilac.

The blooms were thick and close as possible, and the size of the flowers much finer than that of the ordinary spring-sown annuals. The manager of these gardens kindly explained to me his secret: the seeds were sown in autumn, p.r.i.c.ked out in spring, protected during the early months, and then finally bedded out. Last year we tried with the Nemophila, but we were too soon, and the frost caught us and destroyed our plants. This year we are later, and, by giving some protection against cold and sun for a few days longer, I hope to reproduce what I saw in Dublin. Another year I may make trial of the Virginian Stock as well.

The Hyacinth bed has done fairly well, but there were too many pinks among the spikes for it to be quite successful. The Van Thol Tulips are a terrible failure. Some mice got to the bed, and, though we have killed thirteen of them, they had already eaten away so many of the crowns that some dozen Tulips, appearing here and there, are all I have. The bed of Golden Prince Tulips is, however, doing better; this always seems to me a very handsome Tulip, and I sometimes fancy has a sweetness of scent beyond all other kinds--a something, which at times half reminds one of the odour of some Tea Rose.

By the bye, I have had a Tea Rose in blossom in the vinery--of a sort I rarely see, and of which I really do not know the proper name. It used to grow over a cottage in Herefordshire, which I knew many years ago, and the Herefordshire nurseryman, from whom I got my standard, calls it "the old yellow China." Is this the right name, and is the Rose more common than I imagine? Its petals are loose and thin, and of a pale primrose colour, and before it is fully out it is at its best. Its leaves are large and handsome, and of glossy green. Its blossom has a certain half-bitter scent of Tea about it, to which the scent of no other Tea Rose can at all compare--it is so strong and aromatic.

We gathered our first forced Strawberries on the 16th; our first forced French Beans on the 17th, and our first Asparagus on April 18. This is early for us, but we are having the finest weather.

VI.

Ants and Aphis--Fruit Trees--The Gra.s.s Walk--"Lilac-tide"-- Narcissus--Snowflakes--Columbines--Kalmias--Hawthorn Bushes.

_May 4._--May set in this year with (as Horace Walpole somewhere says) "its usual severity." We felt it all the more after the soft warm summer weather we had experienced in April. The Lilac, which is only due with us on the 1st of May, was this year in flower on the 28th of April.

Green Gooseberry tarts, which farther south are considered a May-day dish, we hardly hope to see in this colder lat.i.tude for ten days later, and now these cold east winds will throw back everything.

I have been going over the fruit walls. The Apricots have, after all, done fairly well, and, if they do not fall off at the "stoning," we shall have nothing to complain of. Peaches and Nectarines are even worse than I had feared. There was not much bloom to begin with; then what bloom there was has set but badly; and now my most promising trees are overrun with aphis and with ants. We are doing everything that can be done to check the plague, but with only a partial success. I am told that ants do no harm, and, indeed, are useful as against the aphis. I do not know how this is. They seem to be most excellent friends, and the more ants there are the more the leaves curl up, and the more the aphis seems to thrive.[3] Last year one Peach-tree was completely killed, and this year two of them are looking very miserable. There has been no want of care or attention, but the enemy increases faster than we can destroy it. Is it a disease (so to speak) in a particular tree, which spreads to other trees? Or is it a blight in the air, against which we cannot guard? And what remedy is there when we have used tobacco-powder and Gishurst Compound, and all in vain?

[3] I have since learned that the fact of the ant and the aphis being constantly together is well known; and further, that a sweet juice exudes from the aphis, on which the ant feeds. Pierre Huber declares that the aphis is the _milch-cow_ of the ant; and adds, "Who would have supposed that the ants were a _pastoral people_?"

Two Fig-trees against the wall, in the sunniest corners, are promising a full crop for this district; another Fig-tree of a smaller variety close by bears nothing. The old Arabic proverb, which Emerson quotes, that "A Fig-tree looking upon a Fig-tree becometh fruitful," has not held good in this case. Lancashire, of course, is not the climate for Figs, but I should doubt whether Fig-trees are anywhere so common in England as they were 150 years ago, when Batty Langley of Twickenham wrote. He recommends them to be grown as dwarfs or standards as well as against a wall, and says they "are either white, black, yellow, grey, green, brown, purple, or violet-coloured, consisting of sixteen different kinds,"--but he adds that the white and the long purple do the best.

The Pears against the wall have but little fruit, but the standards are setting well, and the Apples will not, I hope, have suffered from this spell of cold. The new gra.s.s walk, of which I wrote on January 5 as pa.s.sing right through the garden, is shaded by some Apple-trees, and it is pleasant to see their flakes of rosy snow falling softly on the fresh green beneath. Between these old Apple-trees and the young standards I have planted, there was room, which I am making ornamental with cones of Scarlet Runners. We have some five circles on each side of the walk, and shall train up the bean tendrils by strings fastened to a centre pole, so that in summer we shall have a succession of tents of scarlet and green. I tried this method of training Scarlet Runners on a smaller scale last year. The effect was excellent. Then, too, close along the gra.s.s on either side I am planting a broad belt of Violets, so that this new walk will one day be the sweetest part of the garden. Lastly, to give colour to the end of the walk, where it is bounded by the hedge of the croft, I am sowing the large Everlasting Pea, and the strongest growing Nasturtium, that they may climb and trail among the Hawthorn and the clipped Beech.

The outside borders and the lawn clumps are beautiful with flowering shrubs. No season is like "Lilac-tide," as it has been quaintly called, in this respect. Besides the Lilac itself, there are the long plumes of the white Broom, the brilliant scarlet of the hybrid Rhododendrons, the delicious blossoms, both pink and yellow, of the Azaleas, the golden showers of the Laburnum, and others too numerous to mention. A Judas-tree at an angle of the house is in bud. The General Jacqueminot between the vineries has given us a Rose already.

The cuckoo has been calling for days past among the trees beyond the orchard, and the song birds seem to be awake half through the night.

The foliage of the large forest-trees is particularly fine this year.

The Horse Chestnuts were the first in leaf, and each branch is now holding up its light of waxen blossom. The Elms came next, the Limes, the Beeches, and then the Oaks. Yet still

"the tender Ash delays To clothe herself when all the woods are green,"

and is all bare as in mid-winter. This, however, if the adage about the Oak and the Ash be true, should be prophetic of a fine hot summer.

_May 21._--I wonder if any effect of bedding out is finer than that which my mixed borders have now to show. They are at their very best, for it is the reign of the Paeony and the Iris. Great clumps of each, the one bowed down with the weight of its huge crimson globes, the other springing up erect with its purple-headed shafts, appear at intervals along the borders, and each lends a fresh grace to the form and colour of the other.

Among other flowers in rare beauty just now are (as once in the garden of "the Sensitive Plant,")

"Narcissi, the fairest among them all, Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess Till they die of their own dear loveliness."

Was it, I wonder, owing to this story of Narcissus, and as an emblem of self-seeking, that the Greeks twined the white stars of this flower among the tangled locks of the Eumenides?