In a Cheshire Garden Part 1

In a Cheshire Garden.

by Geoffrey Egerton-Warburton.

I.

INTRODUCTORY.

Although much of the neighbourhood has become semi-urban and any idea of rural seclusion is destroyed, at least in summer, by the crowds that find their way to it from Manchester and other large towns, yet the Cheshire village of Warburton in which this garden is situated is a real country place still. How long it will remain so is another thing.

One salt works has been set up at Heatley about a mile away and we are now (1912) promised another, while there is every prospect of land being let for works in Warburton itself. Who knows, in a few years perhaps the whole place may be reduced to the desolation of another Widnes. Then, when it has become a rare thing to find even a blade of gra.s.s on the dreary black waste or to see any bird but a grimy sparrow, a record of what was once here may be strange reading.

The garden itself about which I write is quite on the northern boundary of Cheshire, in old days divided from Lancashire by the Mersey only.

The soil is light and sandy, not far from the rock in places and in places with water at a very little depth below the surface. It is well suited to hollies and rhododendrons, both of which grow abundantly and luxuriantly, as also do yews. There are a good number of ordinary deciduous trees, chiefly on the old bank of the river, such as oak, sycamore, chestnut, birch, beech, and alder, but no conifers of any age except one or two Scotch firs. There is one flourishing deadara which I planted myself and a few young Austrian pines that seem to be doing well.

A spruce fir that I once planted behaved in an extraordinary way; instead of growing straight, it shot up in a zigzag fashion, the leading shoot one year going off at an angle of 60 degrees or so, and the next year harking back and starting in the opposite direction at about the same angle.

Few of the trees can be more than 80 years old. I think most of them would have been planted by my father, who was rector from 1833 to 1849.

There is however a remarkable old yew in the adjoining churchyard. The half of it, just below where the branches spring, measures nearly nine feet round. The other half has entirely gone, so has practically the whole of the substance, the wood of the trunk, and what is left of the still standing side is little more than a sh.e.l.l with a coating of bark.

Notwithstanding this there is quite a fair-sized head of leafy young branches (which by the way has greatly increased since I first remember the tree 40 years ago) growing up amidst the ruins of the old far-reaching boughs. These yet remain to tell something of the wide and grateful shade they once afforded to our "rude forefathers" as on summer Sundays they waited for service to begin, just as I remember the last generation gathered and gossipped under younger yews when this was the Parish Church. This yew is the "thousand-year-old tree" of the clerk's tale to visitors, and if one thinks how many years of slow growth it must have taken to form a trunk of that thickness, say 18 feet in circ.u.mference, and how many more for it to have decayed away to its present condition, it does indeed carry us back to an early date in English history when the little green shoot that sprang from the crimson-coated seed first saw the light.

One great drawback from a gardener's point of view is the prevalence of strong, cold, N.-W. winds in spring. The winters are not so severe as they often are further south, but the late spring frosts are sometimes disastrous. We have had potatoes cut down by frost as late as June 21st, but the worst spring frost I have known was in May, 1894, just about the time that Queen Victoria came to Manchester to open the Ship Ca.n.a.l. On three consecutive nights, May 19, 20 and 21, there was frost, and its intensity seemed to increase each night. Not only were potatoes cut, but garden peas and many hardy herbaceous plants and even common weeds. (I noticed that those with a northern aspect suffered least.) The shoots and buds of roses were scorched, and the young leaves of most trees and shrubs. Hollies suffered especially, but even yew and rhododendron, oak, sycamore, and chestnut did not escape. The only tree that weathered the cold with impunity was the hawthorn, the tenderest leaves and tips of which were not injured. (This was not the case though in the severe frost of Easter 1903.) Royal, male, and lady ferns were shrivelled up to a greater or less degree, but parsley and oak fern were unharmed.

We miss one gardener's friend here, but we escape the attentions of one enemy. Though frogs are common enough, toads are very rare. I remember to have seen only one during all the many years I have known the garden. On the other hand, whilst I have a dim recollection of having once found an old snail-sh.e.l.l, I cannot say for certain that I have ever seen a snail, though of sh.e.l.l-less slugs in all sizes there is no scarcity.

II.

WEEDS AND ALIEN PLANTS.

A slight knowledge of botany adds greatly to the interest of a garden, and is besides often of practical value. With such knowledge, one forms a habit of looking even at weeds with some interest, and this has led to my finding several strange plants among them. I have for example come across the following in the kitchen garden:

"Saponaria vaccaria," with its curious angled calyx and pretty pink flower.

"Galium tricorne," very much like common goose-gra.s.s or cleavers, but rare in England, and quite unknown in this neighbourhood.

Annual mercury (closely allied to the common perennial Dog's mercury), green and dull-looking, only of interest because it is rare.

"Holosteum umbellatum," which again is rare and not much more attractive to the casual observer.

"Draba muralis," allied to "Shepherd's purse," and not unlike it, but as rare as that is common.

"Melilotus officinalis," a graceful yellow pea-flower. When this first appeared it was quite a stranger in these parts, but afterwards for several years it was continually turning up in different corners of the garden, indeed even in 1911, twenty-six years since its first visit, I found a stray specimen.

"Ranunculus arvensis," a weak-looking b.u.t.tercup with curious rough seed vessels.

"Scandix Pecten-Veneris," an ordinary unattractive umbelliferous plant, but with extraordinary long beaks to the fruit, which are supposed to be like the teeth of a comb. Both of these are I believe common in other parts of the country, but they are unusual here.

"Poa nemoralis," a stranger gra.s.s of elegant growth, came one year in the rougher part of a rock-border. It was made welcome and kindly treated, but though allowed to follow its own devices and though several seedlings sprang up round it, they were all gone in a year or two. A rarer gra.s.s still, "Setaria glauca," once turned up in a cuc.u.mber frame.

In 1907, a seedling fig came up close to the wall of the house. It has now (1912) several shoots about eight feet long. The same year another seedling fig appeared in the kitchen garden, and that too I have transplanted to a warm corner of the house-wall, where it has made a nice bush.

For several years we have found seedling tomatoes growing in the kitchen garden, and in 1911 we gathered seven pounds of green tomatoes from two plants to make into jam.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old Church.]

When first I came here, and for a long time afterwards, "Erysimum cheiranthoides" was always among the kitchen garden weeds, and one year I found growing in a bed of onions its near relative "Erysimum orientale," which is quite a rare British plant.

Greater celandine, a rather handsome perennial with somewhat glaucous leaves and bright yellow flowers, used to be an abundant weed on the banks and among the bushes, and is still (1911) to be found in the garden, though in diminished quant.i.ty.

In 1889, a strange plant appeared which puzzled me a good deal at first. It was tall and straggling, but had no flowers. Next spring there were several of the same plants, very much branched with something of the habit of a mugwort, and long spikes of flowers at the end of every branch. I discovered it to be a species of "Ambrosia," a native of North America, but I soon discovered also that it increased by underground runners in every direction, and was only too thankful to get rid of it.

Two years before, I had found another visitor, this time from South America, with bright yellow flowers, evidently allied to forget-me-not, which proved to be an "Amsinckia" (intermedia ?). There were about 20 plants of this annual in one border and several others in other parts of the garden. With some consideration, but with no particular care on my part, it has maintained itself in more or less quant.i.ty in the same herbaceous border ever since.

In 1897, a single plant of an "Allium" appeared and grew to a height of more than five feet, straight up with very stout stems, one and a half inches in circ.u.mference, and handsome heads of reddish-green bell-shaped flowers on drooping stalks, which afterwards, in fruit, became quite straight and upright. I found it to be "Allium Dioscorides," a native of Sicily and Sardinia. There were many tubers at the root when I took it up, but none of them ever grew so tall and fine as the original.

One or two plants that I have introduced myself have proved very tiresome weeds. In 1875 or thereabouts, I brought back from the wild part of a large garden in the neighbourhood a balsam with rather a conspicuous yellow flower ("Impatiens noli-me-tangere," I think). It made itself at home at once, but as it would keep within no bounds, I have done all I could "to get without it," as they would say here, but it defies me to my face and in spite of relentless persecution, again and again every spring it comes up smiling in an abundant crop.

So indeed does a tall polygonum ("P. cuspidatum" I believe it is) that I brought back from the same garden about the same time. It absolutely refuses to budge from the place where I first allowed it to grow. It does not perpetuate itself by seed like the balsam, but from little odds and ends of rootlets and suckers that hide themselves in the soil.

What I take to be a variety of "Oxalis corniculata," a very pretty little thing with dark reddish-brown leaves and deep yellow flowers, is another uncontrollable subject. It is perennial and yet increases by seed as fast as a balsam.

A plant which on the top of a stone wall is very pretty, "Linaria vulgaris," has proved a veritable plague to me in the garden. I had it sent to me originally by a nurseryman for the "Peloria" variety, and as if the disappointment of that were not enough, it added insult to injury, or rather injury to insult, by running below the surface in a provoking and persevering manner and showing itself in most unexpected places. Although the normal "vulgaris" is so irrepressible, I have found "Peloria" quite the reverse, and have never been able to keep it above a year or two.

The double-flowered varieties of most plants are, as a rule, more difficult than the ordinary single, but a little potentilla ("reptans"

?) with a yellow ball of double flower has proved an exception here. No single-flowered plant could get over and under the ground faster than this has done.

In 1886, in an out-of-the-way path among trees, an orchid, "Epipactis latifolia," came up in the very middle. I took care that it was not disturbed, and found it again in exactly the same place four years later, no sign of it having been seen in the interval. Never before, or since, have I found a plant of that or any other orchis growing wild in the garden.

One year (1887) in a border nearly full of rhododendrons, close to the front door, a curious looking thing made its way above the ground, which, at first sight might have been put down as something between a hyacinth and a lily-of-the-valley, but was said to be "Muscari comosum." I had never planted it and during the fifteen years that I had been here had never seen anything like it. I very carefully marked the spot when it died down, but from that time to this (1911) during all the 24 years that have pa.s.sed it has never shown itself again.

III.

BIRDS--THRUSHES.

You can feel something like affection even for a plant, when you have watched over it and attended to its likes and dislikes as to aspect, soil, moisture, shade and so on, and when it has responded to your care and rewarded you for the pains you have spent upon it, but birds become personal friends, it is an interest and amus.e.m.e.nt to study their characters and habits, and a delight to listen to their voices. And this friendship is not for any one particular bird (though of course there may be that sometimes), but for the particular species of bird, any one of which that you happen to meet with anywhere seems like an old friend. A lively impudent tom-t.i.t for instance is the same amusing companion and it is the same pleasure to hear his cheery note, whether you find him in a suburban garden or in some shady corner of a wood.

Of course it is a day to be marked with a white stone when you come across a new or a rare bird, but if you watch the commonest sympathetically and intelligently you have an endless fund of interest and amus.e.m.e.nt. The quarrels, the loves, the boldness and ingenuity even of a sparrow may divert your mind pleasantly and help you to put away worries. Then how eagerly in spring does one listen for the first note of a willow-warbler, what an interest is the first sight of a swallow, and how gladly one welcomes each of our summer visitors as in turn they arrive from pa.s.sing the winter in the Sahara oases or among our friends in the Transvaal or Cape Colony.

In a country unexplored or newly settled it may not be the same, but in England there is no need to spoil the charm of friendship by use of the collector's gun. All British birds have been so well ill.u.s.trated and described that it ought to be possible to tell most of them by careful observation without actually having them in one's hand. In the interests of science, to make sure of the discovery of a new species or the distribution of a known one, birds must sometimes be shot (and after all to be shot is a less cruel end than to fall a prey to their natural enemies), but to shoot a well-known bird simply for the sake of its skin is another matter. A man who shoots every rare bird he sees, that he may add it to his private collection, is sacrificing bird-life for his own selfish pleasure and disregarding the sentiments and interests of the great body of nature-lovers and students. The true naturalist does not collect specimens as he would postage stamps; to study the life of a wren in its natural surroundings is more to him than anything he can do with the dried skin of a golden eagle.

They say that there is in Switzerland a law which forbids the shooting of any bird without a licence. If some such law could be enforced here, rare birds that seek hospitality among us would no longer be at the mercy of every idle lout who happens to have a gun. And is it impossible that children might be taught to find pleasure in watching, and not, as seems generally the case now, in destroying life?