17 minute read
A WINDOW BOX IN JUNE THE BOOK OF TOWN & WINDOW GARDENING BY Mrs F. A. BARDSWELL JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD LONDON AND NEW YORK. MCMIII WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES....
8 minute read
Courage is wanted to write a book about Town-gardening. Is there such a thing? Some would say “No; cats, fogs, and smuts forbid.” Yet how inseparable from London is the thought of flowers! Can we picture the West End on a summer’s day without them? The dust-laid, freshly sprinkled squares and streets, where behind half-drawn blinds there is the fragrance of many blossoms; the bright harness of horses jangling as they champ the bit, a knot of flowers at every bridle; flower-sellers with baskets at all convenient corners, and along the roadway carts of Palms and growing plants bending and waving in the wind; every man one meets has got his button-hole, and every maiden wears her posy; even the butcher-boy holds a bud between his thumb and finger, twirling it and smelling at it as he goes. The love of flowers and an almost passionate delight in cultivating them...
7 minute read
Since Londoners have learned that life without scent and colour is not worth living, England’s capital has become a City of Flowers. It is not only Covent Garden and the great floral shops of the West End that blaze with blossoms; the same idea has spread into every little outlying suburb, wherein no self-respecting greengrocer, however small his frontage, would fail to fill a shelf or two with fresh-cut flowers several times a week. Here every careful housewife holds her Saturday marketing incomplete till she has bought the bunch of sweetness that is destined to adorn the Sunday sitting-room or grace the midday meal. Cold winds of wintry spring may blow, but, wrapped in folds of pale green tissue (which sets them off amazingly), bright yellow Daffodils, purple Violets, white Narcissus, or branches of the almond-sweet Mimosa, are carried through the streets by thousands. All this is delightful; but cut...
8 minute read
The spring months over, and our early blossom faded, how joyfully one hails the crowd of summer flowers, that appear as if by magic, begging us to buy them. Market-carts and barrows filled with “bedders” meet us at every turn, and their wafted sweetness in square and street is intoxicating. We must clutch these old joys and hold them. How now about the window-box? To be practical, two courses are open to us. Bulbs are not at all fond of being moved; they like to rest in peace while their grass grows long and straggly, to feed the bulblets underground; but this does not look pretty, so if we have any place where we can store the spring flower-box, we may remove it bodily, and leave the rest to Nature. If not, we had much better clear it all out ruthlessly, and start afresh. One mistake that should be guarded...
7 minute read
Some of us have a balcony as well as a window-box. Here is a field indeed; we have more space, more opportunity for display. Rescued from the hands of the florist, balcony-gardening becomes one of the most interesting of occupations. Here we may aspire to creepers and climbers in a good aspect, even to Roses. Imagine it in London! Climbers in pots that make thick summer growth are easiest to manage; these we can get fresh every season, and they greatly brighten up the old friends that have lived with us from year to year through the adversities of frost and fog. Major Convolvulus and the perennial “Morning Glories” do well, also Canariensis; but all these must have sun. A HANGING BASKET For a town wall-plant nothing can surpass the Winter Jasmine, whose yellow blossoms cheer the dullest months, and in summer we welcome its long green trails, which we...
7 minute read
“O, green is the colour of faith and truth.” When one comes to write of roof and back-yard gardens the pen must run less glibly; such oases in the dust and drouth of towns are few and rare. The roofs of English houses are not shaped well for gardening, and if there happen to be a back-yard, it is often more like a well than a garden; not a dripping well lined with fern and soft with moss, but a well walled round with smoke-black bricks, and not much of a sky above it. Yet garden-lovers do make their little plots somehow, even in London’s heart, and live there happily tending their flowers. In the broad City thoroughfare that leads from Blackfriar’s Bridge to St. Paul’s Cathedral stands a church among the shops and marts—an old church built by Sir Christopher Wren. Behind this building, up a narrow street—little more...
6 minute read
“Along the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves and ways—every leaf a miracle.” A kindly K.C. of my acquaintance is always telling us we ought to provide pianos for the poor. “So elevating”—this is his argument. Mine is, that pianos want too much practising—poor people have no time for it; much better give them window-boxes and a spade. A taste for gardening raises the most uneducated, and the mixed elements of chance and skill secure perennial freshness, giving a zest to the pursuit that makes it like the best kind of game. Mrs. Free, of St. Cuthbert’s Lodge, Millwall, is doing an excellent work in encouraging a love of flowers among her poor. About four years ago, through her efforts, a Window-box Society was started. Members (there are now about seventy) pay twopence annually, and in return receive gifts in kind of bulbs and plants. Prizes are awarded for...
11 minute read
“When spring unlocks the flowers.” Now and again we meet with beginners who really seem hardly to know one end of a plant from another. Always buying their flowers in bunches, they have no idea how they look when growing, and seeing flowers placed side by side that have been sent from the widest different zones and climates, they are not even very sure which of them may be claimed as English grown. Shiploads of flowers from warmer latitudes keep London and other large towns far in advance of the seasons as seen in country districts, and it is misleading. At last some enterprising spirit begins to long for the pleasure of the growing plant. It is a trial to be always buying and bringing home fresh flowering plants only to see them die off in their new quarters (for this is what they generally do), so a balcony or...
5 minute read
“Oh, give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall.” “Sweet leaves to the air.” We have said a good deal about Flowering Plants for town decoration; there are also non-flowering sets of plants to choose from, which are just as lovely and far more uncommon; I mean the grand array of foliage plants. Some years ago it was my good fortune to be present at one of the prettiest weddings of the season. Not one of the bridesmaids wore a flower. Every bouquet was made of leaves, shaded, striped and coloured; they were as bright as they were graceful, the effect was indescribably fresh and charming, and was a lesson for ever on what can be done with leaves. Furnishing the box or balcony with foliage-plants may be more costly than flowers in the first place, and they require more consideration in arrangement; but they have useful qualities which...
9 minute read
Air is invisible, and earth a very tangible thing indeed, which makes us forget sometimes how much air does for us, to feed and nourish. We do not only live in it, we live of it; and by we I mean all breathing creatures, whether men or lower animals or plants. What brings the truth most home to us is having to do without air—in a London fog, for instance. We have been talking a great deal about the flowers and plants of London. Alas! very few of them are grown there; most of them have to be imported. During the winter months fog is too terrible an enemy, so insidious is it, playing havoc even with our indoor and conservatory plants. It is interesting to learn from the researches of the savants, that the evil effect of urban fog on flowers and foliage is twofold. The injuries are produced...
9 minute read
During the rush of the London season many hostesses, much as they love to have their houses made sweet and beautiful with flowers, find it impossible to attend to the work of decoration themselves; they must entrust the task to others. To meet the want of châtelaines such as these, there is the lady decorator, with her train of flower-fairies, ready to fill the breach. And they will not only bring us flowers; lights, too, they can adjust at will, not fire-flies but electric, which, after all, are most to be depended on. Arranging flowers is one of those things that every woman in the world thinks nobody can do but herself; she is as much addicted to self-esteem in this direction as a man is over mending the fire; and who does not enjoy the pleasing excitement of setting out the flowers for a ball or dinner-party? The very...
12 minute read
“The size of a garden has very little to do with its merit,—it is the size of the heart and brain and the goodwill of the owner that will make his garden either delightful or dull.”— G. Jekyll. The small Suburban Garden—it is time some one said a good word for it. What other place has been so much abused, maligned? It may, it does, in fact, go on improving with the march of time and the general up-waking of the gardening world; but the ill name sticks, and will most likely continue to do so till the cult of the motor-car drives everybody out of the towns to live in the suburbs. Yet, if the truth were known, for the last thirty years at least the little garden spaces that skirt our towns have, for the room they occupy, given more pleasure and done more good than the like...
5 minute read
“United, yet divided.” One matter of the deepest import confronts the owner of the small suburban garden, from which his prototype in the country is generally free; it is the question of “next door.” Inevitable, critical, all-important, almost uncontrollable as it is, “next door” has to be faced and made the best of. Sometimes the best is very good indeed; sometimes there is no best, but a thorn. In the suburbs a kind of etiquette exists which helps to smooth the way. People must not stare at each other, children must not throw things over the wall. Nobody should play games on Sunday, or make much noise if one or other of the neighbours has a garden-party. (Suburbia revels in garden-parties.) Snails must never be dropped over the fence, nor stones, and boughs that hang over are not to be robbed of fruit; rules as to fallen fruit vary, but...
7 minute read
“Where a green, grassy turf is all I crave.” When people first take possession of the new suburban garden, be it ever so small or empty, three things are sure to be found in it; even the builder bestows as much as that upon them, though it may not be much to boast of either in quantity or quality. The three things are grass, ground, and gravel; grass for the tiny lawn, ground for the flower-beds, and gravel for the paths. Now, how are these to be apportioned? Some people crave for nothing but flowers and vegetables, so they are keenest about soil and ground; others desire to have a dry place always ready to walk about or sit in, cheap to keep up, and handy for their dog-kennels and other fancies. They are gravelites. Another set of folk are only to be made happy by grass, and I am...
10 minute read
A TOWN FERNERY “How I do envy you your bank of Ferns” is the remark made to me almost daily during the summer months when the green background of our outdoor fernery looks so pretty as it throws up the colours of the flower-beds on the little lawn that flanks it. This is the brightest bit of the whole garden, and its beauty is very largely due to the Ferns. Then we get talking about Ferns, and everybody says, “What a pity Ferns are out of fashion.” This is what I think. There was a Fern-craze about five and thirty years ago, when crinolines were worn, and long riding-habits, and every drawing-room had its tank of sea-flowers; but times have changed, and the day of the outdoor fernery is over. One reason given for its disappearance is what people say is its untidiness. “We cannot have Ferns near the house,...
9 minute read
No cottage, villa, hut, nor any other human dwelling, however small and gardenless, need be without some leaves and flowers, for it must have walls, and up them may the Ivy wander and the Jasmine cling. Quaintly enough, both Vine and Fig tree are tolerant of town air, and, suggestive as they are of sylvan and patriarchal life, might flourish in Seven-Dials if there were room enough for them to grow. The Vine, in fact, is one of the best climbers it is possible to find for London and the suburbs; one regrets that it is not oftener made use of, for, to say nothing of its fruits, the foliage is so exquisitely decorative: in summer of a pure green, and in autumn rich in yellows, reds, and browns. The Fig tree is another handsome plant, well worth growing if only for the sake of its comfortable triple leaves that...
10 minute read
A rock-garden , even in a simple way, is a great joy, and there is no reason why we should not try to possess one even in a town or in the suburbs. Writers in the best horticultural papers are sometimes a little discouraging; they tell us that the rock-garden near a house is out of place, and that it should never be made near trees, nor buildings, nor any other objects, but stand apart in stony isolation; they also tell us by no means to make a rockery ourselves, any more than we should try to mend a broken limb without the doctor: we are to call in an experienced garden-artist blessed with good taste, a knowledge of rocks, and the requirements of Alpine plants. No doubt, the owners of large grounds and long purses will do well to take this advice, but people must cut their coats according...
9 minute read
Under the General Editorship of HARRY ROBERTS Price 2 s. 6 d. net, each. Crown 8 vo. Illustrated. Price $1.00. Vol. I.—The Book of Asparagus. With Sections on Celery, Salsify, Scorzonera, and Seakale; and a chapter on their cooking and preparation for the table. By Charles Ilott , F.R.H.S., Lecturer on Horticulture to the Cornwall County Council. The Speaker. —“The work of a specialist. Mr. Ilott gives us—for a matter of half a crown—the ripe experience of a life-time.” Vol. II.—The Book of the Greenhouse. By J. C. Tallack , F.R.H.S., Head Gardener at Shipley Hall. The Outlook. —“A serviceable handbook for the practical gardener, written with exceptional knowledge of horticultural work. A special chapter deals with the little town greenhouse.” Vol. III.—The Book of the Grape. Together with a chapter on the History and Decorative Value of the Vines. By H. W. Ward , F.R.H.S., for twenty-five years Head...
1 minute read
An Illustrated Series of Practical Handbooks dealing with Country Life. Suitable for the Pocket or Knapsack. Edited by HARRY ROBERTS Fcap. 8vo (6½ by 4 in.). Price 3 s. net, bound in Limp Cloth. $1.00 net. Price 4 s. net, bound in Limp Leather. $1.20 net. Vol. I.—The Tramp’s Handbook. By Harry Roberts . With over fifty Illustrations by Walter Pascoe . A volume written in defence of vagabondage, containing much valuable advice to the amateur gipsy, traveller, or cyclist, as to camping-out, cooking, etc. Vol. II.—The Motor Book. By R. T. Mecredy . With numerous Illustrations. An invaluable handbook that should find a place in the library of every motorist, or even in the car itself. Vol. III.—The Tree Book. By Mary Rowles Jarvis . Containing varied and useful information relating to forests, together with a special chapter on Practical Forestry. Vol. IV.—The Still Room. By Mrs. Charles Roundell...
2 minute read
A SERIES OF VOLUMES EMBRACING MEMOIRS, HISTORY, BELLES-LETTRES, POETRY, NATURAL HISTORY, Etc. Crown 8 vo. Price 5 s. net, postage 4 d. Price $1.50 net. First Volumes. I. The Natural History of Selborne. By Gilbert White . Edited, with an Introduction, by Grant Allen , and containing 291 Illustrations by Edmund H. New , and Photogravure Portraits of Gilbert White’s Correspondents: Daines Barrington and Thomas Pennant. This volume includes White’s “Observations on Nature” and “Poems”; also some interesting Notes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. II. The Compleat Angler. By Isaac Walton and Charles Cotton . Edited, with an Introduction, by Richard le Gallienne , and containing 237 Illustrations by Edmund H. New , and Photogravure Portraits of Walton and Cotton. Mr. Edmund H. New spent some two years in following the footsteps of the Father of Angling, and the present edition includes drawings of the majority of the places mentioned in...
1 minute read
Seven Gardens and a Palace. By “E. V. B.,” Author of “Days and Hours in a Garden.” Illustrated by F. L. Griggs and Arthur Gordon . Price 5s. net. Crown 8vo. Price $1.50. Third Edition. The Chronicle of a Cornish Garden. By Harry Roberts . With Seven ideal Illustrations by F. L. Griggs . Price 5s. net. Crown 8vo. Price $1.50. Of Gardens: An Essay. By Francis Bacon . With an Introduction by Helen Milman and a Cover-design and Frontispiece by Edmund H. New . Demy 16mo. Price 2s. 6d. net. A Garden in the Suburbs. By Mrs Leslie Williams . With Eight Illustrations. Price 5s. net. Crown 8vo. Price $1.50. Stray Leaves from a Border Garden. By Mrs Milne-Home . With Eight Illustrations by F. L. Griggs . Price 6s. net. Crown 8vo. Price $2.00. My Vicarage Garden. By Canon Ellacombe , Author of “In a Gloucestershire Garden,” &c....