Old Time Gardens Part 10

CHAPTER VII

OLD FLOWER FAVORITES

"G.o.d does not send us strange flowers every year.

When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places The same dear things lift up the same fair faces; The Violet is here.

"It all comes back; the odor, grace, and hue Each sweet relation of its life repeated; No blank is left, no looking-for is cheated; It is the thing we knew."

--ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY, 1861.

Not only do I love to see the same dear things year after year, and to welcome the same odor, grace, and hue; but I love to find them in the same places. I like a garden in which plants have been growing in one spot for a long time, where they have a fixed home and surroundings. In our garden the same flowers shoulder each other comfortably and crowd each other a little, year after year. They look, my sister says, like long-established neighbors, like old family friends, not as if they had just "moved in," and didn't know each other's names and faces. Plants grow better when they are among flower friends. I suppose we have to transplant some plants, sometimes; but I would try to keep old friends together even in those removals. They would be lonely when they opened their eyes after the winter's sleep, and saw strange flower forms and unknown faces around them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Larkspur and Phlox.]

For flowers have friendships, and antipathies as well. How Canterbury Bells and Foxgloves love to grow side by side! And Sweet Williams, with Foxgloves, as here shown. And in my sister's garden Larkspur always starts up by white Phlox--see a bit of the border on this page. Whatever may influence these docile alliances, it isn't a proper sense of fitness of color; for Tiger Lilies dearly love to grow by crimson-purple Phlox, a most inharmonious a.s.sociation, and you can hardly separate them. If a flower dislikes her neighbor in the garden, she moves quietly away, I don't know where or how. Sometimes she dies, but at any rate she is gone. It is so queer; I have tried every year to make Feverfew grow in this bed, and it won't do it, though it grows across the path. There is some flower here that the pompous Feverfew doesn't care to a.s.sociate with. Not the Larkspur, for they are famous friends--perhaps it is the Sweet William, who is rather a plain fellow. In general flowers are very sociable with each other, but they have some preferences, and these are powerful ones.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sweet William and Foxglove.]

It is amusing to read in no less than five recent English "garden-books," by flower-loving souls, the solemn advice that if you wish a beautiful garden effect you "must plant the great Oriental Poppy by the side of the White Lupine."

"Thou say'st an undisputed thing In such a solemn way."

The truth is, you have very little to do with it. That Poppy chooses to keep company with the White Lupine, and to that impulse you owe your fine garden effect. The Poppy is the slyest magician of the whole garden. He comes and goes at will. This year a few blooms, nearly all in one corner; next year a blaze of color banded across the middle of the garden like the broad sash of a court chamberlain. Then a single grand blossom quite alone in the pansy bed, while another pushes up between the tight close leaves of the box edging:--the Poppy is _queer_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plume Poppy.]

Some flowers have such a hatred of man they cannot breathe and live in his presence, others have an equal love of human companionship. The white Clover clings here to our pathway as does the English Daisy across seas. And in our garden Ladies' Delights and Ambrosia tell us, without words, of their love for us and longing to be by our side; just as plainly as a child silently tells us his love and dependence on us by taking our hand as we walk side by side. There is not another gesture of childhood, not an affectionate word which ever touched my heart as did that trustful holding of the hand. One of my children throughout his brief life never walked by my side without clinging closely--I think without conscious intent--with his little hand to mine. I can never forget the affection, the trust of that vanished hand.

I find that my dearest flower loves are the old flowers,--not only old to me because I knew them in childhood, but old in cultivation.

"Give me the good old weekday blossoms I used to see so long ago, With hearty sweetness in their bosoms, Ready and glad to bud and blow."

Even were they newcomers, we should speedily care for them, they are so lovable, so winning, so endearing. If I had seen to-day for the first time a Fritillaria, a Violet, a Lilac, a Bluebell, or a Rose, I know it would be a case of love at first sight. But with intimacy they have grown dearer still.

The sense of long-continued acquaintance and friendship which we feel for many garden flowers extends to a few blossoms of field and forest.

It is felt to an inexplicable degree by all New Englanders for the Trailing Arbutus, our Mayflower; and it is this unformulated sentiment which makes us like to go to the same spot year after year to gather these beloved flowers. I am sensible of this friendship for b.u.t.tercups, they seem the same flowers I knew last year; and I have a distinct sympathy with Owen Meredith's poem:--

"I pluck the flowers I plucked of old About my feet--yet fresh and cold The b.u.t.tercups do bend; The selfsame b.u.t.tercups they seem, Thick in the bright-eyed green, and such As when to me their blissful gleam Was all earth's gold--how much!"

We have little of the intense sentiment, the inspiration which filled flower-lovers of olden times. We admire flowers certainly as beautiful works of nature, as objects of wonder in mechanism and in the profusion of growth, and we are occasionally roused to feelings of grat.i.tude to the Maker and Giver of such beauty; but it is not precisely the same regard that the old gardeners and "flowerists" had, which is expressed in this quotation from Gerarde of "the gallant grace of violets":--

"They admonish and stir up a man to that which is comelie and honest; for flowers through their beautie, varietie of colour and exquisite forme doe bring to a liberall and gentlemanly mind, the remembrance of honestie, comelinesse and all kinds of virtues."

It was a virtue to be comely in those days; as it is indeed a virtue now; and to the pious old herbalists it seemed an impossible thing that any creation which was beautiful should not also be good.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Meadow Rue.]

All flowers cannot be loved with equal warmth; it is possible to have a wholesome liking for a flower, a wish to see it around you, which would make you plant it in your borders and treat it well, but which would not be at all akin to love. For others you have a placid tolerance; others you esteem--good, virtuous, worthy creatures, but you cannot warm toward them. Sometimes they have been sung with pa.s.sion by poets (Swinburne is always glowing over very unresponsive flower souls) and they have been painted with fervor by artists--and still you do not love them. I do not love Tulips, but I welcome them very cordially in my garden. Others have loved them; the Tulip has had her head turned by attention.

Some flowers we like at first sight, but they do not wear well. This is a hard truth; and I shall not shame the garden-creatures who have done their best to please by betraying them to the world, save in a single case to furnish an example. In late August the Bergamot blossoms in luxuriant heads of white and purplish pink bloom, similar in tint to the abundant Phlox. Both grow freely in the garden of Sylvester Manor. When the Bergamot has romped in your borders for two or three years, you may wish to exile it to a vegetable garden, near the blackberry vines. Is this because it is an herb instead of a purely decorative flower? You never thus thrust out Phlox. A friend confesses to me that she exiled even the splendid scarlet Bergamot after she had grown it for three years in her flower-beds; such subtle influences control our flower-loves.

Beautiful and n.o.ble as are the grand contributions of the nineteenth century to us from the garden and fields of j.a.pan and China, we seldom speak of loving them. Thus the Chinese White Wistaria is similar in shape of blossom to the Scotch Laburnum, though a far more elegant, more lavish flower; but the Laburnum is the loved one. I used to read longingly of the Laburnum in volumes of English poetry, especially in Hood's verses, beginning:--

"I remember, I remember, The house where I was born,"

Ella Partridge had a tall Laburnum tree at her front door; it peeped in the second-story windows. It was so cherished, that I doubt whether its blooms were ever gathered. She told us with conscious pride and rect.i.tude that it was a "yellow Wistaria tree which came from China"; I saw no reason to doubt her words, and as I never chanced to speak to my parents about it, I ever thought of it as a yellow Wistaria tree until I went out into the world and found it was a Scotch Laburnum.

Few garden owners plant now the s...o...b..rry, _Symphoricarpus racemosus_, once seen in every front yard, and even used for hedges. It wasn't a very satisfactory shrub in its habit; the oval leaves were not a cheerful green, and were usually pallid with mildew. The flowers were insignificant, but the cl.u.s.ters of berries were as pure as pearls. In country homes, before the days of cheap winter flowers and omnipresent greenhouses, these snowy cl.u.s.ters were cherished to gather in winter to place on coffins and in hands as white and cold as the berries. Its special offence in our garden was partly on account of this funereal a.s.sociation, but chiefly because we were never permitted to gather its berries to string into necklaces. They were rigidly preserved on the stem as a garden decoration in winter; though they were too closely akin in color to the encircling snowdrifts to be of any value.

In country homes in olden times were found several universal winter posies. On the narrow mantel shelves of farm and village parlors, both in England and America, still is seen a winter posy made of dried stalks of the seed valves of a certain flower; they are shown on the opposite page. Let us see how our old friend, Gerarde, describes this plant:--

"The stalkes are loden with many flowers like the stocke-gilliflower, of a purple colour, which, being fallen, the seede cometh foorthe conteined in a flat thinne cod, with a sharp point or p.r.i.c.ke at one end, in fashion of the moone, and somewhat blackish. This cod is composed of three filmes or skins whereof the two outermost are of an overworne ashe colour, and the innermost, or that in the middle whereon the seed doth hang or cleave, is thin and cleere shining, like a piece of white satten newly cut from the peece."

In the latter clause of this striking description is given the reason for the popular name of the flower, Satin-flower or White Satin, for the inner septum is a shining membrane resembling white satin. Another interesting name is p.r.i.c.ksong-flower. All who have seen sheets of music of Elizabethan days, when the notes of music were called p.r.i.c.ks, and the whole sheet a p.r.i.c.ksong, will readily trace the resemblance to the seeds of this plant.

Gerarde says it was named "Penny-floure, Money-floure, Silver-plate, Sattin, and among our women called Honestie." The last name was commonly applied at the close of the eighteenth century. It is thus named in writings of Rev. William Hanbury, 1771, and a Boston seedsman then advertised seeds of Honestie "in small quant.i.ties, that all might have some." In 1665, Josselyn found White Satin planted and growing plentifully in New England gardens, where I am sure it formed, in garden and house, a happy reminder of their English homes to the wives of the colonists. Since that time it has spread so freely in some localities, especially in southern Connecticut, that it grows wild by the wayside.

It is seldom seen now in well-kept gardens, though it should be, for it is really a lovely flower, showing from white to varied and rich light purples. I was charmed with its fresh beauty this spring in the garden of Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright; a photograph of one of her borders containing Honesty is shown opposite page 174.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Money-in-both-pockets.]

At Belvoir Castle in England, in the "d.u.c.h.ess's Garden," the Satin-flower can be seen in full variety of tint, and fills an important place. It is carefully cultivated by seed and division, all inferior plants being promptly destroyed, while the superior blossoms are cherished.

The flower was much used in charms and spells, as was everything connected with the moon. Drayton's Clarinax sings of Lunaria:--

"Enchanting lunarie here lies In sorceries excelling."

As a child this Lunaria was a favorite flower, for it afforded to us juvenile money. Indeed, it was generally known among us as Money-flower or Money-seed, or sometimes as Money-in-both-pockets. The seed valves formed our medium of exchange and trade, pa.s.sing as silver dollars.

Through the streets of a New England village there strolled, harmless and happy, one who was known in village parlance as a "softy," one of "G.o.d's fools," a poor addle-pated, simple-minded creature, witless--but neither homeless nor friendless; for children cared for him, and feeble-minded though he was, he managed to earn, by rush-seating chairs and weaving coa.r.s.e baskets, and gathering berries, scant pennies enough to keep him alive; and he slept in a deserted barn, in a field full of rocks and Daisies and Blueberry bushes,--a barn which had been built by one but little more gifted with wits than himself. Poor Elmer never was able to understand that the money which he and the children saved so carefully each autumn from the money plants was not equal in value to the great copper cents of the village store; and when he asked gleefully for a loaf of bread or a quart of mola.s.ses, was just as apt to offer the shining seed valves in payment as he was to give the coin of the land; and it must be added that his belief received apparent confirmation in the fact that he usually got the bread whether he gave seeds or cents.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Box Walk in Garden of Frederick J. Kingsbury, Esq.

Waterbury, Connecticut.]

He lost his life through his poor simple notion. In the village he was kindly treated by all, clothed, fed, and warmed; but one day there came skulking along the edge of the village what were then rare visitors, two tramps, who by ill-chance met poor Elmer as he was gathering chestnuts.

And as the children lingered on their way home from school to take toll of Elmer's store of nuts, they heard him boasting gleefully of his wealth, "hundreds and hundreds of dollars all safe for winter." The children knew what his dollars were, but the tramps did not. Three days of heavy rain pa.s.sed by, and Elmer did not appear at the store or any house. Then kindly neighbors went to his barn in the distant field, and found him cruelly beaten, with broken ribs and in a high fever, while scattered around him were hundreds of the seeds of his autumnal store of the money plant; these were all the silver dollars his a.s.sailants found.

He was carried to the almshouse and died in a few weeks, partly from the beating, partly from exposure, but chiefly, I ever believed, from homesickness in his enforced home. His old house has fallen down, but his well still is open, and around it grows a vast expanse of Lunaria, which has spread and grown from the seeds poor Elmer saved, and every year shoots of the tender lilac blooms mingle so charmingly with the white Daisies that the sterile field is one of the show-places of the village, and people drive from afar to see it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lunaria in Garden at Waldstein.]

There grow in profusion in our home garden what I always called the Mullein Pink, the Rose Campion (_Lychnis coronaria_). I never heard any one speak of this plant with special affection or admiration; but as a child I loved its crimson flower more than any other flower in the garden. Perhaps I should say I loved the royal color rather than the flower. I gathered tight bunches without foliage into a glowing ma.s.s of color unequalled in richness of tint by anything in nature. I have seen only in a stained gla.s.s window flooded with high sunlight a crimson approaching that of the Mullein Pink. Gerarde calls the flower the "Gardener's Delight or Gardner's Eie." It was known in French as the Eye of G.o.d; and the Rose of Heaven. We used to rub our cheeks with the woolly leaves to give a beautiful rosy blush, and thereby I once skinned one cheek.

Snapdragons were a beloved flower--companions of my childhood in our home garden, but they have been neglected a bit by nearly every one of late years. Plant a clump of the clear yellow and one of pure white Snapdragons, and see how beautiful they are in the garden, and how fresh they keep when cut. We had such a satisfying bunch of them on the dinner table to-day, in a milk-white glazed Chinese jar; yellow Snapdragons, with "borrowed leaves" of Virgin's-bower (_Adlumia_) and a haze of Gypsophila over all.

A flower much admired in gardens during the early years of the nineteenth century was the Plume Poppy (_Bocconia_). It has a pretty pinkish bloom in general shape somewhat like Meadow Rue (see page 164 and page 167). A friend fancied a light feathery look over certain of her garden borders, and she planted plentifully Plume Poppy and Meadow Rue; this was in 1895. In 1896 the effect was exquisite; in 1897 the garden feathered out with far too much fulness; in 1901 all the combined forces of all the weeds of the garden could not equal these two flowers in utter usurpment and close occupation of every inch of that garden.

The Plume Poppy has a strong tap-root which would be a good symbol of the root of the tree Ygdra.s.syl--the Tree of Life, that never dies. You can go over the borders with scythe and spade and hoe, and even with manicure-scissors, but roots of the Plume Poppy will still hide and send up vigorous growth the succeeding year.