Garden-Craft Old and New Part 13

Of the shapes of the beds it were of little avail to speak, and the diagrams here given are only of use where the conditions of the ground properly admit of their application. The geometrical garden is capable of great variety of handling. A fair size for a geometrical garden is 120 ft. by 60 ft. This size will allow of a main central walk of seven feet that shall divide the panel into two equal parts and lead down to the next level. The s.p.a.ce may have a bal.u.s.trade along its length on the two sides, and on the garden side of the bal.u.s.trade a flower-bed of mixed flowers and choice low-growing shrubs, backed with hollyhocks, tritoma, lilies, golden-rod, etc. The width of the border will correspond with the s.p.a.ce required for the steps that descend from the upper terrace. For obtaining pleasant proportions in the design, the walks in the garden will be of two sizes, gravelled like the rest--the wider walk, say, three feet, the smaller, one foot nine inches. The centre of the garden device on each side may be a raised bed with a stone kerb and an ornamental shrub in the middle, and the s.p.a.ce around with, say, periwinkle or stonecrop, mixed with white harebells, or low creepers. Or, should there be no wide main walk, and the garden-plot be treated as one composition, the central bed will have a statue, sundial, fountain, or other architectural feature. Each bed will be edged with box or chamfered stone, or terra-cotta edging. Or the formal garden may be sunk below the level of the paths, and filled either with flowers or with dwarf coniferae.

Both for practical and artistic reasons, the beds should not be too small; they should not be so small that, when filled with plants, they should appear like spots of colour, nor be so large that any part of them cannot be easily reached by a rake. Nor should the shapes of the beds be too angular to accommodate the plants well. In Sir Gardner Wilkinson's book on "Colour" (Murray, 1858, p. 372), he speaks of design and good form as the very _soul_ of a dressed garden; and the very permanence of the forms, which remain though successive series of plants be removed, calls for a good design. The shapes of the beds, as well as the colours of their contents, are taken cognisance of in estimating the general effect of a geometrical garden. This same accomplished author advises that there should always be a less formal garden beyond the geometrical one; the latter is, so to speak, an appurtenance of the house, a feature of the plateau upon which it stands, and no attempt should be made to combine the patterns of the geometrical with the beds or borders of the outer informal garden, such combination being specially ill-judged in the neighbourhood of bushes and winding paths.

Of the proper selection of flowers and the determination of the colours for harmonious combination in the geometrical beds, much that is contradictory has been preached, one gardener leaning to more formality than another. There is, however, a general agreement upon the necessity of having beds that will look fairly well at all seasons of the year, and an agreement as to the use of hardy flowers in these beds. Mr Robinson has some good advice to give upon this point ("English Flower Garden," p. 24): "The ugliest and most needless parterre (!) in England may be planted in the most beautiful way with hardy flowers alone." (Why "needless," then?) "Are we not all wrong in adopting one degree, so to say, of plant life as the only fitting one to lay before the house? Is it well to devote the flower-bed to one type of vegetation only--low herbaceous vegetation--be that hardy or tender?... We have been so long accustomed to leave flower-beds raw, and to put a number of plants out every year, forming flat surfaces of colour, that no one even thinks of the higher and better way of filling them. But surely it is worth considering whether it would not be right to fill the beds permanently, rather than to leave them in this naked or flat condition throughout the whole of the year.... If any place asks for permanent planting, it is the spot of ground immediately near the house; for no one can wish to see large, grave-like ma.s.ses of soil frequently dug and disturbed near the windows, and few care for the result of all this, even when the ground is well covered during a good season." Again our author, on p.

95, states that "he has very decided notions as to arrangement of the various colours for summer bedding, which are that the whole shall be so commingled that one would be puzzled to determine what tint predominates in the entire arrangement." He would have a "glaucous" colour, that is, a light grey or whitish green. Such a colour never tires the eye, and harmonises with the tints of the landscape, "particularly of the lawn."

This seems to be neutralising the effects of the flowers, and this primal consideration of the lawn is like scorning your picture for the sake of its frame!

Sir Gardner Wilkinson, who writes of gardens from quite another point of view, says: "It is by no means necessary or advisable to select rare flowers for the beds, and some of the most common are the most eligible, being more hardy, and therefore less likely to fail, or to cover the bed with a scanty and imperfect display of colour. Indeed, it is a common mistake to seek rare flowers, when many of the old and most ordinary varieties are far more beautiful. The point to note in this matter of choosing flowers for a geometrical garden is to ascertain first the lines that will best accord with the design, and make for a harmonious and brilliant effect, and to see that the flowers best suited to it blossom at the same periods. A succession of those of the same colour may be made to take the place of each, and continue the design at successive seasons. They should also be, as near as possible, of the same height as their companions, so that the blue flowers be not over tall in one bed, or the red too short in another.... Common flowers, the weeds of the country, are often most beautiful in colour, and are not to be despised because they are common; they have also the advantage of being hardy, and rare flowers are not always those best suited for beds" (Wilkinson on "Colour," p. 375).

With regard to the ornamental turf-beds of our modern gardens. To judge of a garden upon high principles, we expect it to be the finest and fittest expression that a given plot of ground will take; it must be the perfect adaptation of means to an end and that end is beauty. Are we to suppose, then, that the turf-beds of strange device that we meet with in modern gardens are the best that can be done by the heir of all the ages in the way of garden-craft? A garden, I am aware, has other things to attend to besides the demands of ideal beauty; it has to embellish life to supply innocent pleasure to the inmates of the house as well as to dignify the house itself; and the devising of these vagrant beds that sprawl about the grounds is a pleasure that can be ill spared from the artistic delights of a modern householder. It is indeed wonderful to what heights the British fancy can rise when put to the push, if only it have a congenial field! So here we have flower-beds shaped as crescents and kidneys--beds like flying bats or bubbling tadpoles, commingled b.u.t.terflies and leeches, stars and sausages, hearts and commas, monograms and maggots--a motley a.s.sortment to be sure--but the modern mind is motley, and the pretty flowers smile a sickly smile out of their comic beds, as though Paradise itself could provide them with no fairer lodgings!

And yet if I dare speak my mind "sike fancies weren foolerie;" and it were hard to find a good word to say for them from any point of view whatever. Their wobbly shapes are not elegant; they have not the sanction of precedent, even of epochs the most barbarous. And though they make pretence at being a species of art, their mock-formality has not that geometric precision which shall bind them to the formal lines of the house, or to the general bearings of the site. Not only do they contribute nothing to the artistic effect of the general design, but they even mar the appearance of the gra.s.s that accommodates them. Design they have, but not design of that quality which alone justifies its intrusion. No wonder "Nature abhors lines" if this base and spurious imitation of the "old formality," that Charles Lamb gloats over, is all that the landscape-garden can offer in the way of idealisation.

One other feature of the old-fashioned garden--the herbaceous border--requires a word. It is worthy of note that, unlike the modern, the ancient gardener was not a man of one idea--his art is not bounded like a barrel-organ that can only play one invariable tune! While the master of the "old formality" can give intricate harmonies of inwoven colours in the geometric beds--"all mosaic, choicely planned," where Nature lends her utmost magic to grace man's fancy--he knows the value of the less as well as the more, and finds equal room for the unconstrained melodies of odd free growths in the border-beds, where you shall enjoy the individual character, the form, the outline, the colour, the tone of each plant. Here let the mind of an earlier generation speak in George Milner's "Country Pleasures":

"By this time I have got round to the old English flower-bed, where only perennials with an ancient ancestry are allowed to grow. Here there is always delight; and I should be sorry to exchange its sweet flowers for any number of cartloads of scentless bedding-plants, mechanically arranged and ribbon-bordered. This bed is from fifty to sixty yards long, and three or four yards in width. A thorn hedge divides it from the orchard. In spring the apple-bloom hangs over, and now we see in the background the apples themselves. The plants still in flower are the dark blue monkshood, which is 7ft. high; the spiked veronica; the meadow-sweet or queen-o'-the-meadow; the lady's mantle, and the evening primrose.

This last may be regarded as the characteristic plant of the season. The flowers open about seven o'clock, and as the twilight deepens, they gleam like pale lamps, and harmonise wonderfully with the colour of the sky. _On this bed I read the history of the year._ Here were the first snowdrops; here came the crocuses, the daffodils, the blue gentians, the columbines, the great globed peonies; and last, the lilies and the roses."

And now to apply what has been said.

Since gardening entails so much study and experience--since it is a craft in which one is so apt to err, in small matters as in large--since it exists to represent pa.s.sages of Nature that have touched man's imagination from time immemorial--since its business is to paint living pictures of living things whose habits, aspects, qualities, and character have ever engaged man's interest--since the modern gardener has not only not found new sources of inspiration unknown of old, but has even lost sensibility to some that were active then--it were surely wise to take the hand of old garden-masters who did large things in a larger past--to whom fine gardening came as second nature--whose success has given English garden-craft repute which not even the journeyman efforts of modern times can quite extinguish.

These men--Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, and their school--let us follow for style, elevated form, n.o.ble ideals, and artistic interpretation of Nature.

For practical knowledge of trees and shrubs, indigenous or exotic--to know _how_ to plant and _what_ to plant--to know what to avoid in the practice of modern blunderers--to know the true theory and practice of Landscape-gardening, reduced to writing, after ample a.n.a.lysis--turn we to those books of solid value of the three great luminaries of modern garden-craft, Gilpin, Repton, Loudon.

And it were not only to be ungenerous, but absolutely foolish, to neglect the study of the best that is now written and done in the way of landscape-gardening, in methods of planting, and ill.u.s.tration of botany up to date. One school may see things from a different point of view to another, yet is there but one art of gardening. It is certain that to gain boldness in practice, to have clear views upon that delicate point--the relations of Art and Nature--to have a reliable standard of excellence, we must know and value the good in the garden-craft of all times, we must sympathise with the point of view of each phase, and follow that which is good in each and all without scruple and doubtfulness. That man is a fool who thinks that he can escape the influence of his day, or that he can dispense with tradition.

I say, let us follow the old garden-masters for style, form, ideal, and artistic interpretation of Nature, and let us not say what Horace Walpole whimpered forth of Temple's garden-enterprise: "These are adventures of too hard achievement for any common hands." Have we not seen that at the close of Bacon's lessons in grand gardening he adds, that the things thrown in "for state and magnificence" are but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden?

The counsels of perfection are not to be slighted because our ground is small. In gardening, as in other matters, the true test of one's work is the measure of one's possibilities. A small, trim garden, like a sonnet, may contain the very soul of beauty. A small garden may be as truly admirable as a perfect song or painting.

Let it be our aim, then, to give to gardening all the method and distinctness of which it is capable, and admit no impediments. A garden not fifty yards square, deftly handled, judiciously laid out, its beds and walks suitably directed, will yield thrice the opportunity for craft, thrice the scope for imaginative endeavour that a two-acre "garden" of the pastoral-farm order, such as is recommended of the faculty, will yield. The very division of the ground into proportionate parts, the varied levels obtained, the framed vistas, the fitting architectural adjuncts, will alone contribute an air of size and scale.

As to "codes of taste" (which are usually in matters of Art only someone's opinions stated pompously), these should not be allowed to baulk individual enterprise. "Long experience," says that accomplished gardener and charming writer, E. V. B., in "Days and Hours in a Garden"

(p. 125), "Long experience has taught me to have nothing to do with principles in the garden. Little else than a feeling of entire sympathy with the diverse characters of your plants and flowers is needed for 'Art in a Garden.' If sympathy be there, all the rest comes naturally enough." Or to put this thought in Temple's words, "The success is wholly in the gardener."

If a garden grow flowers in abundance, _there_ is success, and one may proceed to frame a garden after approved "codes of taste" and fail in this, or one may prefer unaccepted methods and find success beyond one's fondest dreams. "All is fine that is fit" is a good garden motto; and what an eclectic principle is this! How many kinds of style it allows, justifies, and guards! the simplest way or the most ornate; the fanciful or the sweet austere; the intricate and complex, or the coy and unconstrained. Take it as true as Gospel that there is danger in the use of ornament--danger of excess--take it as equally true that there is an intrinsic and superior value in moderation, and yet the born gardener shall find more paths, old and new, that lead to Beauty in a plot of garden-ground than the modern stylist dreams of.

The art of gardening may now be known of all men. Gardening is no longer a merely princely diversion requiring thirty wide acres for its display.

Everyone who can, now lives in the country, where he is bound to have a garden; and I repeat what I said before, let no one suppose that the beauty of a garden depends on its acreage, or on the amount of money spent upon it. Nay, one would almost prefer a small garden plot, so as to ensure that ample justice shall be done to it.[46] In a small garden there is less fear of dissipated effort, more chance of making friends with its inmates, more time to spare to heighten the beauty of its effects.

[Footnote 46: "Embower a cottage thickly and completely with nothing but roses, and n.o.body would desire the interference of another plant."--LEIGH HUNT.]

To some extent the success of a garden depends upon favourable conditions of sun, soil, and water, but more upon the choiceness of its contents, the skill of its planting, the lovingness of its tendence.

Love for beauty has a way of enticing beauty; the seeing eye wins its own ranges of vision, finds points of vantage in unlikely ground. "I write in a nook," says the poet Cowper, "that I call my boudoir; it is a summerhouse, not bigger than a sedan-chair; the door of it opens into the garden that is now crowded with pinks, roses, and honeysuckles, _and the window into my neighbour's orchard_. It formerly served an apothecary as a smoking-room; at present, however, it is dedicated to sublimer uses." What a mastery of life is here!

"As if life's business were a summer mood; As if all needful things would come unsought To genial faith, still rich in genial good;

By our own spirits are we deified."

But I must not finish the stanza in this connection.

A garden is pre-eminently a place to indulge individual taste. "Let us not be that fict.i.tious thing," says Madame Roland, "that can only exist by the help of others--_soyons nous_!" So, regardless of the doctors, let me say that the best general rule that I can devise for garden-making is: put all the beauty and delightsomeness you can into your garden, get all the beauty and delight you can out of your garden, never minding a little mad want of balance, and think of proprieties afterwards! Of course, this is to "prove naething," but never mind if but the garden enshrine beauty. To say this is by no means to allow that the garden is the fit place for indulging your love of the out-of-the-way; not so, yet a little sign of fresh motive, a touch of individual technique, a token, however shyly displayed, that you think for yourself is welcome in a garden. Thus I know of a gardener who turned a section of his grounds into a sort of huge bear-pit, not a sunk-pit, but a mound that took the refuse soil from the site of his new house hollowed out, and its slopes set all round with Alpine and American garden-plants, each variety finding the aspect it likes best, and the proportion of light and shade that suits its const.i.tution. This is, of course, to "intrude embankments" into a garden with a vengeance, yet even Mr Robinson, if he saw it, would allow that, as in love and war, your daring in gardening is justified by its results, where, as George Herbert has it--

"Who shuts his hand, hath lost its gold; Who opens it, hath it twice told."

A garden is, first and last, a place for flowers; but, treading in the old master's footsteps, I would devote a certain part of even a small garden to Nature's own wild self, and the loveliness of weed-life. Here Art should only give things a good start and help the propagation of some sorts of plants not indigenous to the locality. Good effects do not ensue all at once, but stand aside and wait, or help judiciously, and the result will be a picture of rude and vigorous life, of pretty colour and glorious form, that is gratifying for its own qualities, and more for its opposition to the peacefulness of the garden's ordered surroundings.

A garden is the place for flowers, a place where one may foster a pa.s.sion for loveliness, may learn the magic of colour and the glory of form, and quicken sympathy with Nature in her higher moods. And, because the old-fashioned garden more conduces to these ends than the modern, it has our preference. The spirit of old garden-craft, says: "Do everything that can be done to help Nature, to lift things to perfection, to interpret, to give to your Art method and distinctness." The spirit of the modern garden-craft of the purely landscape school says: "Let be, let well alone, or extemporise at most. Brag of your scorn for Art, yet smuggle her in, as a stalking-horse for your halting method and non-geometrical forms."

And, as we have shown, Art has her revenges as well as Nature; and the very negativeness of this school's Art-treatments is the seal to its doom. Mere neutral teaching can father nothing; it can never breed a system of stable device that is capable of development. But old garden-craft is positive, where the other is negative; it has no niggling scruples, but clear aims, that admit of no impediment except the unwritten laws of good taste. Hence its permanent value as a standard of device--for every gardener must needs desire the support of some backbone of experience to stiffen his personal efforts--he must needs have some basis of form on which to rest his own device, his own realisations of natural beauty--and what safer, stabler system of garden-craft can he wish for than that of the old English garden--itself the outcome of a s.p.a.cious age, well skilled in the pictorial art and bent upon perfection?

The qualities to aim at in a flower-garden are beauty, animation, variety, mystery. A garden's beauty, like a woman's beauty, is measured by its capacity for taking fine dress. Given a fine garden, and we need not fear to use embellishment or strong colour, or striking device, according to the adage "The richly provided richly require."

[Ill.u.s.tration: (PERSPECTIVE VIEW).

PLAN SHEWING ARRANGEMENT OF FOUNTAIN, YEW WALK, AND FLOWER BEDS FOR A LARGE GARDEN.]

Because Art stands, so to speak, sponsor for the grace of a garden, because all gardening is Art or nothing, we need not fear to overdo Art in a garden, nor need we fear to make avowal of the secret of its charm.

I have no more scruple in using the scissors upon tree or shrub, where trimness is desirable, than I have in mowing the turf of the lawn that once represented a virgin world. There is a quaint charm in the results of the topiary art, in the prim imagery of evergreens, that all ages have felt. And I would even introduce _bizarreries_ on the principle of not leaving all that is wild and odd to Nature outside of the garden-paling; and in the formal part of the garden my yews should take the shape of pyramids or peac.o.c.ks or c.o.c.ked hats or ramping lions in Lincoln-green, or any other conceit I had a mind to, which vegetable sculpture can take.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF GARDEN IN PLAN FOLLOWING.]

As to the other desirable qualities--animation, variety, mystery--I would base my garden upon the model of the old masters, without adopting any special style. The place should be a home of fancy, full of intention, full of pains (without showing any); half common-sense, half romance; "neither praise nor poetry, but something better than either,"

as Burke said of Sheridan's speech; it should have an ethereal touch, yet be not inappropriate for the joyous racket and country cordiality of an English home. It should be

"A miniature of loveliness, all grace Summ'd up and closed in little"--

something that would challenge the admiration and suit the moods of various minds; be brimful of colour-gladness, yet be not all pyramids of sweets, but offer some solids for the solid man; combining old processes and new, old idealisms and new realisms; the monumental style of the old here, the happy-go-lucky shamblings of the modern there; the page of Bacon or Temple here, the page of Repton or Marnock there. At every turn the imagination should get a fresh stimulus to surprise; we should be led on from one fair sight, one attractive picture, to another; not suddenly, nor without some preparation of heightened expectancy, but as in a fantasy, and with something of the quick alternations of a dream.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF A DESIGN FOR A GARDEN, WITH CLIPPED YEW HEDGES AND FLOWER BEDS.]

Your garden, gentle reader, is perchance not yet made. It were indeed happiness if, when good things betide you, and the time is ripe for your enterprise, Art

... "Shall say to thee I find you worthy, do this thing for me."

CHAPTER VIII.

ON THE OTHER SIDE.--A PLEA FOR SAVAGERY.

"I am tired of civilised Europe, and I want to see a wild country if I can."--W. R. GREG.

"Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!"--TENNYSON.