Old Time Gardens Part 14

"The Marigold amidst the nettles blew, The Gourd embrac'd the Rose bush in its ramble.

The Thistle and the Stock together grew, The Hollyhock and Bramble.

"The Bearbine with the Lilac interlaced, The st.u.r.dy Burdock choked its tender neighbor, The spicy Pink. All tokens were effaced Of human care and labor."

These lines are a great contrast to the dignified versification of The Old Garden, by Margaret Deland, a garden around which a great city has grown.

"Around it is the street, a restless arm That clasps the country to the city's heart."

No one could read this poem without knowing that the author is a true garden lover, and knowing as well that she spent her childhood in a garden.

Another American poet, Edith Thomas, writes exquisitely of old gardens and garden flowers.

"The pensile Lilacs still their favors throw.

The Star of Lilies, plenteous long ago, Waits on the summer dusk, and faileth not.

The legions of the gra.s.s in vain would blot The spicy Box that marks the garden row.

Let but the ground some human tendance know, It long remaineth an engentled spot."

Let me for a moment, through the suggestion of her last two lines, write of the impress left on nature through flower planting. "The garden long remaineth an engentled spot." You cannot for years stamp out the mark of a garden; intentional destruction may obliterate the garden borders, but neglect never. The delicate flowers die, but some st.u.r.dy things spring up happily and seem gifted with everlasting life. Fifteen years ago a friend bought an old country seat on Long Island; near the site of the new house, an old garden was ploughed deep and levelled to a lawn. Every year since then the patient gardeners pull up, on this lawn, in considerable numbers, Mallows, Campanulas, Star of Bethlehem, Bouncing-bets and innumerable Asparagus shoots, and occasionally the seedlings of other flowers which have bided their time in the dark earth. Traces of the residence of Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland may still be seen in the growth of richly perfumed wall-flowers which he brought from the Azores. The Affane Cherry is found where he planted it, and some of his Cedars are living. The summer-house of Yew trees sheltered him when he smoked in the garden, and in this garden he planted Tobacco. Near by is the famous spot where he planted what were then called Virginian Potatoes. By that planting they acquired the name of Irish Potatoes.

I have spoken of the Prince Nurseries in Flushing; the old nurserymen left a more lasting mark than their Nurseries, in the rare trees and plants now found on the roads, and in the fields and gardens for many miles around Flushing. With the Parsons family, who have been, since 1838, distributors of unusual plants, especially the splendid garden treasures from China and j.a.pan, they have made Flushing a delightful nature-study.

In the humblest dooryard, and by the wayside in outlying parts of the town, may be seen rare and beautiful old trees: a giant purple Beech is in a laborer's yard; fine Cedars, Salisburias, red-flowered Horse-chestnuts, j.a.panese flowering Quinces and Cherries, and even rare j.a.panese Maples are to be found; a few survivors of the Chinese Mulberry have a romantic interest as mementoes of a giant bubble of ruin. The largest Scotch Laburnum I ever saw, glorious in golden bloom, is behind an unkempt house. On the Parsons estate is a weeping Beech of unusual size. Its branches trail on the ground in a vast circ.u.mference of 222 feet, forming a great natural arbor. The beautiful vernal light in this tree bower may be described in Andrew Marvell's words:--

"Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade."

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

The photograph of it, shown opposite page 232, gives some scant idea of its leafy walls; it has been for years the fit trysting-place of lovers, as is shown by the initials carved on the great trunk. Great Judas trees, sadly broken yet bravely blooming; decayed hedges of several kinds of Lilacs, Syringas, s...o...b..a.l.l.s, and Yuccas of princely size and bearing still linger. Everywhere are remnants of Box hedges. One unkempt dooryard of an old Dutch farm-house was glorified with a broad double row of yellow Lily at least sixty feet in length. Everywhere is Wistaria, on porches, fences, houses, and trees; the abundant Dogwood trees are often overgrown with Wistaria. The most exquisite sight of the floral year was the largest Dogwood tree I have ever seen, radiant with starry white bloom, and hung to the tip of every white-flowered branch with the drooping amethystine racemes of Wistaria of equal luxuriance.

Golden-yellow Laburnum blooms were in one case mingled with both purple and white Wistaria. These yellow, purple, and white blooms of similar shape were a curious sight, as if a single plant had been grafted. As I rode past so many glimpses of loveliness mingled with so much present squalor, I could but think of words of the old hymn:--

"Where every prospect pleases And only man is vile."

Could the hedges, trees, and vines which came from the Prince and Parsons Nurseries have been cared for, northeastern Long Island, which is part of the city of Greater New York, would still be what it was named by the early explorers, "The Pearl of New Netherland."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Within the Weeping Beech.]

CHAPTER X

THE CHARM OF COLOR

"How strange are the freaks of memory, The lessons of life we forget.

While a trifle, a trick of color, In the wonderful web is set."

--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

The quality of charm in color is most subtle; it is like the human attribute known as fascination, "whereof," says old Cotton Mather, "men have more Experience than Comprehension." Certainly some alliance of color with a form suited or wonted to it is necessary to produce a gratification of the senses. Thus in the leaves of plants every shade of green is pleasing; then why is there no charm in a green flower? The green of Mignonette bloom would scarcely be deemed beautiful were it not for our a.s.sociation of it with the delicious fragrance. White is the absence of color. In flowers a pure chalk-white, and a snow-white (which is bluish) is often found; but more frequently the white flower blushes a little, or is warmed with yellow, or has green veins.

Where green runs into the petals of a white flower, its beauty hangs by a slender thread. If the green lines have any significance, as have the faint green checkerings of the Fritillary, which I have described elsewhere in this book, they add to its interest; but ordinarily they make the petals seem undeveloped. The Snowdrop bears the mark of one of the few tints of green which we like in white flowers; its "heart-shaped seal of green," sung by Rossetti, has been noted by many other poets.

Tennyson wrote:--

"Pure as lines of green that streak the white Of the first Snowdrop's inner leaves."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Spring Snowflake.]

A cousin of the Snowdrop, is the "Spring Snowflake" or Leucojum, called also by New England country folk "High Snowdrop." It bears at the end of each snowy petal a tiny exact spot of green; and I think it must have been the flower sung by Leigh Hunt:--

"The nice-leaved lesser Lilies, Shading like detected light Their little green-tipt lamps of white."

The ill.u.s.tration on page 234 shows the graceful growth of the flower and its exquisitely precise little green-dotted petals, but it has not caught its luminous whiteness, which seems almost of phosph.o.r.escent brightness in each little flower.

The Star of Bethlehem is a plant in which the white and green of the leaf is curiously repeated in the flower. Gardeners seldom admit this flower now to their gardens, it so quickly crowds out everything else; it has become on Long Island nothing but a weed. The high-growing Star of Bethlehem is a pretty thing. A bed of it in my sister's garden is shown on page 237.

It is curious that when all agree that green flowers have no beauty and scant charm, that a green flower should have been one of the best-loved flowers of my home garden. But this love does not come from any thought of the color or beauty of the flower, but from a.s.sociation. It was my mother's favorite, hence it is mine. It was her favorite because she loved its clear, pure, spicy fragrance. This ever present and ever welcome scent which pervades the entire garden if leaf or flower of the loved Ambrosia be crushed, is curious and characteristic, a true "ambrosiack odor," to use Ben Jonson's words.

A vivid description of Ambrosia is that of Gerarde in his delightful _Herball_.

"Oke of Jerusalem, or Botrys, hath sundry small stems a foote and a halfe high dividing themselves into many small branches. The leafe very much resembling the leafe of an Oke, which hath caused our English women to call it Oke of Jerusalem. The upper side of the leafe is a deepe greene and somewhat rough and hairy, but underneath it is of a darke reddish or purple colour. The seedie floures grow cl.u.s.tering about the branches like the yong cl.u.s.ters or blowings of the Vine. The roote is small and thriddy. The whole herbe is of a pleasant smell and savour, and the whole plant dieth when the seed is ripe. Oke of Jerusalem is of divers called Ambrosia."

Ambrosia has been loved for many centuries by Englishwomen; it is in the first English list of names of plants, which was made in 1548 by one Dr.

Turner; and in this list it is called "Ambrose." He says of it:--

"Botrys is called in englishe, Oke of Hierusalem, in d.u.c.h.e, trauben kraute, in french pijmen. It groweth in gardines muche in England."

Ambrosia has now died out "in gardines muche in England." I have had many letters from English flower lovers telling me they know it not; and I have had the pleasure of sending the seeds to several old English and Scotch gardens, where I hope it will once more grow and flourish, for I am sure it must feel at home.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Star of Bethlehem.]

The seeds of this beloved Ambrosia, which filled my mother's garden in every spot in which it could spring, and which overflowed with cheerful welcome into the gardens of our neighbors, was given her from the garden of a great-aunt in Walpole, New Hampshire. This Walpole garden was a famous gathering of old-time favorites, and it had the delightful companionship of a wild garden. On a series of terraces with shelving banks, which reached down to a stream, the boys of the family planted, seventy years ago, a myriad of wild flowers, shrubs, and trees, from the neighboring woods. By the side of the garden great Elm trees sheltered scores of beautiful gray squirrels; and behind the house and garden an orchard led to the wheat fields, which stretched down to the broad Connecticut River. All flowers thrived there, both in the Box-bordered beds and in the wild garden, perhaps because the morning mists from the river helped out the heavy buckets of water from the well during the hot summer weeks. Even in winter the wild garden was beautiful from the brilliant Bittersweet which hung from every tree.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The Pearl."]

Here Ambrosia was plentiful, but is plentiful no longer; and Walpole garden lovers seek seeds of it from the Worcester garden. I think it dies out generally when all the weeding and garden care is done by gardeners; they a.s.sume that the little plants of such modest bearing are weeds, and pull them up, with many other precious seedlings of the old garden, in their desire to have ample expanse of naked dirt. One of the charms which was permitted to the old garden was its fulness. Nature there certainly abhorred a vacant s.p.a.ce. The garden soil was full of resources; it had a seed for every square inch; it seemed to have a reserve store ready to crowd into any s.p.a.ce offered by the removal or dying down of a plant at any time.

Let me tell of a curious thing I found in an old book, anent our subject--green flowers. It shows that we must not accuse our modern sensation lovers, either in botany or any other science, of being the only ones to add artifice to nature. The green Carnation has been chosen to typify the decadence and monstrosity of the end of the nineteenth century; but nearly two hundred years ago a London fruit and flower grower, named Richard Bradley, wrote a treatise upon field husbandry and garden culture, and in it he tells of a green Carnation which "a certayn fryar" produced by grafting a Carnation upon a Fennel stalk. The flowers were green for several years, then nature overcame decadent art.

There be those who are so enamoured of the color green and of foliage, that they care little for flowers of varied tint; even in a garden, like the old poet Marvell, they deem,--

"No white nor red was ever seen So amorous as this lovely green."

Such folk could scarce find content in an American garden; for our American gardeners must confess, with Shakespeare's clown: "I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir, I have not much skill in gra.s.s." Our lawns are not old enough.

A charming greenery of old English gardens was the bowling-green. We once had them in our colonies, as the name of a street in our greatest city now proves; and I deem them a garden fashion well-to-be-revived.

The laws of color preference differ with the size of expanses. Our broad fields often have pleasing expanses of leaf.a.ge other than green, and flowers that are as all-pervading as foliage. Many flowers of the field have their day, when each seems to be queen, a short day, but its rights none dispute. Snow of Daisies, yellow of Dandelions, gold of b.u.t.tercups, purple pinkness of Clover, Innocence, Blue-eyed Gra.s.s, Milkweed, none reign more absolutely in every inch of the fields than that poverty stricken creature, the Sorrel. William Morris warns us that "flowers in ma.s.ses are mighty strong color," and must be used with much caution in a garden. But there need be no fear of ma.s.sed color in a field, as being ever gaudy or cloying. An approach to the beauty and satisfaction of nature's plentiful field may be artificially obtained as an adjunct to the garden in a flower-close sown or set with a solid expanse of bloom of some native or widely adopted plant. I have seen a flower-close of Daisies, another of b.u.t.tercups, one of Larkspur, one of Coreopsis. A new field tint, and a splendid one, has been given to us within a few years, by the introduction of the vivid red of Italian clover. It is eagerly welcomed to our fields, so scant of scarlet. This clover was brought to America in the years 1824 _et seq._, and is described in contemporary publications in alluring sentences. I have noted the introduction of several vegetables, grains, fruits, berries, shrubs, and flowers in those years, and attribute this to the influence of the visit of Lafayette in 1824. Adored by all, his lightest word was heeded; and he was a devoted agriculturist and horticulturist, ever exchanging ideas, seeds, and plants with his American fellow-patriots and fellow-farmers. I doubt if Italian clover then became widely known; but our modern farmers now think well of it, and the flower lover revels in it.