Old Time Gardens Part 16

Our wild Violets, the blue ones, have for me a sad lack for a Violet, that of perfume. They are not as lovely in the woodlands as their earlier coming neighbor, the shy, pure Hepatica. Bryant, calling the Hepatica Squirrelcups (a name I never heard given them elsewhere), says they form "a graceful company hiding in their bells a soft aerial blue."

Of course, they vary through blue and pinky purple, but the blue is well hidden, and I never think of them save as an almost white flower. Nor are the Violets as lovely on the meadow and field slopes, as the mild Innocence, the Houstonia, called also Bluets, which is scarcely a distinctly blue expanse, but rather "a milky way of minute stars." An English botanist denies that it is blue at all. A field covered with Innocence always looks to me as if little clouds and puffs of blue-white smoke had descended and rested on the gra.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A "Sweet Garden-side" in Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts.]

I well recall when the Aquilegia, under the name of California Columbine, entered my mother's garden, to which its sister, the red and yellow Columbine, had been brought from a rocky New England pasture when the garden was new. This Aquilegia came to us about the year 1870. I presume old catalogues of American florists would give details and dates of the journey of the plant from the Pacific to the Atlantic. It chanced that this first Aquilegia of my acquaintance was of a distinct light blue tint; and it grew apace and thrived and was vastly admired, and filled the border with blueness of that singular tint seen of late years in its fullest extent and most prominent position in the great ma.s.ses of bloom of the blue Hydrangea, the show plant of such splendid summer homes as may be found at Newport. These blue Hydrangeas are ever to me a color blot. They accord with no other flower and no foliage. I am ever reminded of blue mould, of stale damp. I looked with inexpressible aversion on a photograph of Cecil Rhodes' garden at Cape Town--several solid acres set with this blue Hydrangea and nothing else, unbroken by tree or shrub, and scarce a path, growing as thick as a field sown with ensilage corn, and then I thought what would be the color of that ma.s.s!

that crop of Hydrangeas! Yet I am told that Rhodes is a flower-lover and flower-thinker. Now this Aquilegia was of similar tint; it was blue, but it was not a pleasing blue, and additional plants of pink, lilac, and purple tints had to be added before the Aquilegia was really included in our list of well-beloveds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Salpiglossis.]

There are other flowers for the blue border. It is pleasant to plant common Flax, if you have ample room; it is a superb blue; to many persons the blossom is unfamiliar, and is always of interest. Its lovely flowers have been much sung in English verse. The Salpiglossis, shown on the opposite page, is in its azure tint a lovely flower, though it is a kinsman of the despised Petunia.

How the Campanulaceae enriched the beauty and the blueness of the garden.

We had our splendid cl.u.s.ters of Canterbury Bells, both blue and white. I have told elsewhere of our love for them in childhood. Equally dear to us was a hardy old Campanula whose full name I know not, perhaps it is the Pyramidalis; it is shown on page 263, the very plant my mother set out, still growing and blooming; nothing in the garden is more gladly welcomed from year to year. It partakes of the charm shared by every bell-shaped flower, a simple form, but an ever pleasing one. We had also the _Campanula persicifolia_ and _trachelium_, and one we called Bluebells of Scotland, which was not the correct name. It now has died out, and no one recalls enough of its exact detail to learn its real name. The showiest bell-flower was the _Platycodon grandiflorum_, the Chinese or j.a.panese Bell-flower, shown on page 264. Another name is the Balloon-flower, this on account of the characteristic buds shaped like an inflated balloon. It is a lovely blue in tint, though this photograph was taken from a white-flowered plant in the white border at Indian Hill. The Giant Bell-flower is a _fin de siecle_ blossom named _Ostrowskia_, with flowers four inches deep and six inches in diameter; it has not yet become common in our gardens, where the _Platycodon_ rules in size among its bell-shaped fellows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Old Campanula.]

There are several pretty low-growing blue flowers suitable for edgings, among them the tiny stars of the Swan River Daisy (_Brachycome iberidifolia_) sold as purple, but as brightly blue as Scilla. The dwarf Ageratum is also a long-blossoming soft-tinted blue flower; it made a charming edging in my sister's garden last summer; but I should never put either of them on the edge of the blue border.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chinese Bell-flower.]

The dull blue, spa.r.s.ely set flowers of the various members of the Mint family have no beauty in color, nor any noticeable elegance; the Blue Sage is the only vivid-hued one, and it is a true ornament to the border. Prunella was ever found in old gardens, now it is a wayside weed. Th.o.r.eau loved the Prunella for its blueness, its various lights, and noted that its color deepened toward night. This flower, regarded with indifference by nearly every one, and distaste by many, always to him suggested coolness and freshness by its presence. The Prunella was beloved also by Ruskin, who called it the soft warm-scented Brunelle, and told of the fine purple gleam of its hooded blossom: "the two uppermost petals joined like an old-fashioned enormous hood or bonnet; the lower petal torn deep at the edges into a kind of fringe,"--and he said it was a "Brownie flower," a little eerie and elusive in its meaning. I do not like it because it has such a disorderly, unkempt look, it always seems bedraggled.

The pretty ladder-like leaf of Jacob's Ladder is most delicate and pleasing in the garden, and its blue bell-flowers are equally refined.

This is truly an old-fashioned plant, but well worth universal cultivation.

In answer to the question, What is the bluest flower in the garden or field? one answered Fringed Gentian; another the Forget-me-not, which has much pink in its buds and yellow in its blossoms; another Bee Larkspur; and the others _Centaurea cya.n.u.s_ or Bachelor's b.u.t.tons, a local American name for them, which is not even a standard folk name, since there are twenty-one English plants called Bachelor's b.u.t.tons.

Ragged Sailor is another American name. Corn-flower, Blue-tops, Blue Bonnets, Bluebottles, Loggerheads are old English names. Queerer still is the t.i.tle Break-your-spectacles. Hawdods is the oldest name of all.

Fitzherbert, in his _Boke of Husbandry_, 1586, thus describes briefly the plant:--

"Hawdod hath a blewe floure, and a few lytle leaves, and hath fyve or syxe branches floured at the top."

In varied shades of blue, purple, lilac, pink, and white, Bachelor's b.u.t.tons are found in every old garden, growing in a confused tangle of "lytle leaves" and vari-colored flowers, very happily and with very good effect. The ill.u.s.tration on page 258 shows their growth and value in the garden.

In _The Promise of May_ Dora's eyes are said to be as blue as the Bluebell, Harebell, Speedwell, Bluebottle, Succory, Forget-me-not, and Violets; so we know what flowers Tennyson deemed blue.

Another poet named as the bluest flower, the Monk's-hood, so wonderful of color, one of the very rarest of garden tints; graceful of growth, blooming till frost, and one of the garden's delights. In a list of garden flowers published in Boston, in 1828, it is called Cupid's Car.

Southey says in _The Doctor_, of Miss Allison's garden: "The Monk's-hood of stately growth Betsey called 'Dumbledores Delight,' and was not aware that the plant, in whose helmet--rather than cowl-shaped flowers, that busy and best-natured of all insects appears to revel more than any other, is the deadly Aconite of which she read in poetry." The dumbledore was the b.u.mblebee, and this folk name was given, as many others have been, from a close observance of plant habits; for the fertilization of the Monk's-hood is accomplished only by the aid of the b.u.mblebee.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Garden at Tudor Place.]

Many call Chicory or Succory our bluest flower. Th.o.r.eau happily termed it "a cool blue." It is not often the fortune of a flower to be brought to notice and affection because of a poem; we expect the poem to celebrate the virtues of flowers already loved. The Succory is an example of a plant, known certainly to flower students, yet little thought of by careless observers until the beautiful poem of Margaret Deland touched all who read it. I think this a gem of modern poesy, having in full that great element of a true poem, the most essential element indeed of a short poem--the power of suggestion. Who can read it without being stirred by its tenderness and sentiment, yet how few are the words.

"Oh, not in ladies' gardens, My peasant posy, Shine thy dear blue eyes; Nor only--nearer to the skies In upland pastures, dim and sweet, But by the dusty road, Where tired feet Toil to and fro, Where flaunting Sin May see thy heavenly hue, Or weary Sorrow look from thee Toward a tenderer blue."

I recall perfectly every flower I saw in pasture, swamp, forest, or lane when I was a child; and I know I never saw Chicory save in old gardens.

It has increased and spread wonderfully along the roadside within twenty years. By tradition it was first brought to us from England by Governor Bowdoin more than a century ago, to plant as forage.

In our common Larkspur, the old-fashioned garden found its most constant and reliable blue banner, its most valuable color giver. Self-sown, this Larkspur sprung up freely every year; needing no special cherishing or nourishing, it grew apace, and bloomed with a luxuriance and length of flowering that cheerfully blued the garden for the whole summer. It was a favorite of children in their floral games, and pretty in the housewife's vases, but its chief hold on favor was in its democracy and endurance. Other flowers drew admirers and lost them; some grew very ugly in their decay; certain choice seedlings often had stunted development, garden scourges attacked tender beauties; fierce July suns dried up the whole border, all save the Larkspur, which neither withered nor decayed; and often, unaided, saved the midsummer garden from scanty unkemptness and dire disrepute.

The graceful line of Dr. Holmes, "light as a loop of Larkspur," always comes to my mind as I look at a bed of Larkspur; and I am glad to show here a "loop of Larkspur," growing by the great boulder which he loved in the grounds of his country home at Beverly Farms. I liked to fancy that Dr. Holmes's expression was written by him from his memory of the little wreaths and garlands of pressed Larkspur that have been made so universally for over a century by New England children. But that careful flower observer, Mrs. Wright, notes that in a profuse growth of the Bee Larkspur, the strong flower spikes often are in complete loops before full expansion into a straight spire; some are looped thrice. Dr. Holmes was a minute observer of floral characteristics, as is shown in his poem on the _Coming of Spring_, and doubtless saw this curious growth of the Larkspur.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Light as a Loop of Larkspur."]

Common annual Larkspurs now are planted in every one's garden, and deservedly grow in favor yearly. The season of their flowering can be prolonged, renewed in fact, by cutting away the withered flower stems.

They respond well to all caretaking, to liberal fertilizing and watering, just as they dwindle miserably with neglect. There are a hundred varieties in all; among them the "Rocket-flowered" and "Ranunculus flowered" Larkspurs or Delphiniums are ever favorites. A friend burst forth in railing at being asked to admire a bed of Delphinium. "Why can't she call them the good old-time name of Larkspur, and not a stiff name cooked up by the botanists." I answered naught, but I remembered that Parkinson in his _Garden of Pleasant Flowers_ gives a chapter to Delphinium, with Lark's-heel as a second thought. "Their most usual name with us," he states, "is Delphinium." There is meaning in the name: the flower is dolphin-like in shape. Of the perennial varieties the _Delphinium brunonianum_ has lovely clear blue, musk-scented flowers; the Chinese or Branching Larkspur is of varied blue tints and tall growth, and blooms from midsummer until frost. And loveliest of all, an old garden favorite, the purely blue Bee Larkspur, with a bee in the heart of each blossom. In an ancient garden in Deerfield I saw this year a splendid group of plants of the old _Delphinium Belladonna_: it is a weak-kneed, weak-backed thing; but give it un.o.btrusive crutches and busks and backboards (in their garden equivalents), and its incomparable blue will reward your care. There is something singular in the blue of Larkspur. Even on a dark night you can see it showing a distinct blue in the garden like a blue lambent flame.

"Larkspur lifting turquoise spires Bluer than the sorcerer's fires."

Mrs. Milne-Home says her old Scotch gardener called the white Delphinium Elijah's Chariot--a resounding, stately t.i.tle. Helmet-flower is another name. I think the Larkspur Border, and the Blue Border both gain if a few plants of the pure white Delphinium, especially the variety called the Emperor, bloom by the blue flowers. In our garden the common blue Larkspur loves to blossom by the side of the white Phlox. A bit of the border is shown on page 162. In another corner of the garden the pink and lilac Larkspur should be grown; for their tints, running into blue, are as varied as those of an opal.

I have never seen the wild Larkspur which grows so plentifully in our middle Southern states; but I have seen expanses of our common garden Larkspur which has run wild. Nor have I seen the glorious fields of Wyoming Larkspur, so poisonous to cattle; nor the magnificent Larkspur, eight feet high, described so radiantly to us by John Muir, which blues those wonders of nature, the hanging meadow gardens of California.

I am inclined to believe that Lobelia is the least pleasing blue flower that blossoms. I never see it in any place or juxtaposition that it satisfies me. When you take a single flower of it in your hand, its single little delicate bloom is really just as pretty as Blue-eyed Gra.s.s, or Innocence, or Scilla, and the whole plant regarded closely by itself isn't at all bad; but whenever and wherever you find it growing in a garden, you never want it in _that_ place, and you shift it here and there. I am convinced that the Lobelia is simply impossible; it is an alien, wrong in some subtle way in tint, in habit of growth, in time of blooming. The last time I noted it in any large garden planting, it was set around the roots of some standard Rose bushes; and the gardener had displayed some thought about it; it was only at the base of white or cream-yellow Roses; but it still was objectionable. I think I would exterminate Lobelia if I could, banish it and forget it. In the minds of many would linger a memory of certain ornate garden vases, each crowded with a Panda.n.u.s-y plant, a pink Begonia, a scarlet double Geranium, a purple Verbena or a crimson Petunia, all gracefully entwined with Nasturtiums and Lobelia--while these folks lived, the Lobelia would not be forgotten.

You will have some curious experiences with your Blue Border; kindly friends, pleased with its beauty or novelty, will send to you plants and seeds to add to its variety of form "another bright blue flower." You will usually find you have added variety of tint as well, ranging into crimson and deep purple, for color blindness is far more general than is thought.

The loveliest blue flowers are the wild ones of fields and meadows; therefore the poor, says Alphonse Karr, with these and the blue of the sky have the best and the most of all blueness. Yet we are constantly hearing folks speak of the lack of the color blue among wild flowers, which always surprises me; I suppose I see blue because I love blue. In pure cobalt tint it is rare; in compensation, when it does abound, it makes a permanent imprint on our vision, which never vanishes. Recalling in midwinter the expanses of color in summer waysides, I do not see them white with Daisies, or yellow with Goldenrod, but they are in my mind's vision brightly, beautifully blue. One special scene is the blue of Fringed Gentians, on a sunny October day, on a rocky hill road in Royalston, Ma.s.sachusetts, where they sprung up, wide open, a solid ma.s.s of blue, from stone wall to stone wall, with scarcely a wheel rut showing among them. Even thus, growing in as lavish abundance as any weed, the Fringed Gentian still preserved in collective expanse, its delicate, its distinctly aristocratic bearing.

Bryant a.s.serts of this flower:--

"Thou waitest late, and com'st alone When woods are bare, and birds are flown."

But by this roadside the woods were far from bare. Many Asters, especially the variety I call Michaelmas Daisies, Goldenrod, b.u.t.ter-and-eggs, Turtle Head, and other flowers, were in ample bloom.

And the same conditions of varied flower companionship existed when I saw the Fringed Gentian blooming near Bryant's own home at c.u.mmington.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Viper's Bugloss.]

Another vast field of blue, ever living in my memory, was that of the Viper's Bugloss, which I viewed with surprise and delight from the platform of a train, returning from the Columbian Exposition; when I asked a friendly brakeman what the flower was called, he answered "Vilets," as nearly all workingmen confidently name every blue flower; and he sprang from the train while the locomotive was swallowing water, and brought to me a great armful of blueness. I am not wont to like new flowers as well as my childhood's friends, but I found this new friend, the Viper's Bugloss, a very welcome and pleasing acquaintance. Curious, too, it is, with the red anthers exserted beyond the bright blue corolla, giving the field, when the wind blew across it, a new aspect and tint, something like a red and blue changeable silk. The Viper's Bugloss seems to have the pervasive power of many another blue and purple flower, Lupine, Iris, Innocence, Grape Hyacinth, Vervain, Aster, Spiked Loosestrife; it has become in many states a tiresome weed. On the Esopus Creek (which runs into the Hudson River) and adown the Hudson, acre after acre of meadow and field by the waterside are vivid with its changeable hues, and the New York farmers' fields are overrun by the newcomer.

I have seen the Viper's Bugloss often since that day on the railroad train, now that I know it, and think of it. Th.o.r.eau noted the fact that in a large sense we find only what we look for. And he defined well our powers of perception when he said that many an object will not be seen, even when it comes within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray.

Last spring, having to spend a tiresome day riding the length of Long Island, I beguiled the hours by taking with me Th.o.r.eau's _Summer_ to compare his notes of blossomings with those we pa.s.sed. It was June 5, and I read:--

"The Lupine is now in its glory. It is the more important because it occurs in such extensive patches, even an acre or more together.... It paints a whole hillside with its blue, making such a field, if not a meadow, as Proserpine might have wandered in. Its leaf was made to be covered with dewdrops. I am quite excited by this prospect of blue flowers in clumps, with narrow intervals; such a profusion of the heavenly, the Elysian color, as if these were the Elysian Fields. That is the value of the Lupine. The earth is blued with it.... You may have pa.s.sed here a fortnight ago and the field was comparatively barren. Now you come, and these glorious redeemers appear to have flashed out here all at once. Who plants the seeds of Lupines in the barren soil? Who watereth the Lupines in the field?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Precision of Leaf and Flower of Lupine.]

I looked from a car window, and lo! the Long Island Railroad ran also through an Elysian Field of Lupines, nay, we sailed a swift course through a summer sea of blueness, and I seem to see it still, with its prim precision of outline and growth of both leaf and flower. The Lupine is beautiful in the garden border as it is in the landscape, whether the blossom be blue, yellow, or white.

Th.o.r.eau was the slave of color, but he was the master of its description. He was as sensitive as Keats to the charm of blue, and left many records of his love, such as the paragraphs above quoted. He noted with delight the abundance of "that principle which gives the air its azure color, which makes the distant hills and meadows appear blue," the "great blue presence" of Monadnock and Wachusett with its "far blue eye." He loved Lowell's

"Sweet atmosphere of hazy blue, So leisurely, so soothing, so forgiving, That sometimes makes New England fit for living."

He revelled in the blue tints of water, of snow, of ice; in "the blueness and softness of a mild winter day." The constant blueness of the sky at night thrilled him with "an everlasting surprise," as did the blue shadows within the woods and the blueness of distant woods. How he would have rejoiced in Monet's paintings, how true he would have found their tones. He even idealized blueberries, "a very innocent ambrosial taste, as if made of ether itself, as they are colored with it."

Th.o.r.eau was ever ready in thought of Proserpina gathering flowers. He offers to her the Lupine, the Blue-eyed Gra.s.s, and the Tufted Vetch, "blue, inclining in spots to purple"; it affected him deeply to see such an abundance of blueness in the gra.s.s. "Celestial color, I see it afar in ma.s.ses on the hillside near the meadow--so much blue."

I usually join with Th.o.r.eau in his flower loves; but I cannot understand his feeling toward the blue Flag; that, after noting the rich fringed recurved parasols over its anthers, and its exquisite petals, that he could say it is "a little too showy and gaudy, like some women's bonnets." I note that whenever he compares flowers to women it is in no flattering humor to either; which is, perhaps, what we expect from a man who chose to be a bachelor and a hermit. His love of obscure and small flowers might explain his sentiment toward the radiant and dominant blue Flag.