17 minute read
1899 All rights reserved Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. At the Ballantyne Press...
5 minute read
From its simple nature, this book seems scarcely to need any prefatory remarks, with the exception only of certain acknowledgments. A portion of the contents (about one-third) appeared during the years 1896 and 1897 in the pages of the Guardian , as "Notes from Garden and Woodland." I am indebted to the courtesy of the editor and proprietors of that journal for permission to republish these notes. The greater part of the photographs from which the illustrations have been prepared were done on my own ground—a space of some fifteen acres. Some of them, owing to my want of technical ability as a photographer, were very weak, and have only been rendered available by the skill of the reproducer, for whose careful work my thanks are due. A small number of the photographs were done for reproduction in wood-engraving for Mr. Robinson's Garden , Gardening Illustrated , and English Flower...
6 minute read
There are already many and excellent books about gardening; but the love of a garden, already so deeply implanted in the English heart, is so rapidly growing, that no excuse is needed for putting forth another. I lay no claim either to literary ability, or to botanical knowledge, or even to knowing the best practical methods of cultivation; but I have lived among outdoor flowers for many years, and have not spared myself in the way of actual labour, and have come to be on closely intimate and friendly terms with a great many growing things, and have acquired certain instincts which, though not clearly defined, are of the nature of useful knowledge. But the lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives. I rejoice when I see any one, and especially children,...
14 minute read
Beauty of woodland in winter — The nut-walk — Thinning the overgrowth — A nut nursery — Iris stylosa — Its culture — Its home in Algeria — Discovery of the white variety — Flowers and branches for indoor decoration. A hard frost is upon us. The thermometer registered eighteen degrees last night, and though there was only one frosty night next before it, the ground is hard frozen. Till now a press of other work has stood in the way of preparing protecting stuff for tender shrubs, but now I go up into the copse with a man and chopping tools to cut out some of the Scotch fir that are beginning to crowd each other. How endlessly beautiful is woodland in winter! To-day there is a thin mist; just enough to make a background of tender blue mystery three hundred yards away, and to show any defect in...
16 minute read
Distant promise of summer — Ivy-berries — Coloured leaves — Berberis Aquifolium — Its many merits — Thinning and pruning shrubs — Lilacs — Removing suckers — Training Clematis flammula — Forms of trees — Juniper, a neglected native evergreen — Effect of snow — Power of recovery — Beauty of colour — Moss-grown stems. There is always in February some one day, at least, when one smells the yet distant, but surely coming, summer. Perhaps it is a warm, mossy scent that greets one when passing along the southern side of a hedge-bank; or it may be in some woodland opening, where the sun has coaxed out the pungent smell of the trailing ground Ivy, whose blue flowers will soon appear; but the day always comes, and with it the glad certainty that summer is nearing, and that the good things promised will never fail. How strangely little of...
16 minute read
Flowering bulbs — Dog-tooth Violet — Rock-garden — Variety of Rhododendron foliage — A beautiful old kind — Suckers on grafted plants — Plants for filling up the beds — Heaths — Andromedas — Lady Fern — Lilium auratum — Pruning Roses — Training and tying climbing plants — Climbing and free-growing Roses — The Vine the best wall-covering — Other climbers — Wild Clematis — Wild Rose. In early March many and lovely are the flowering bulbs, and among them a wealth of blue, the more precious that it is the colour least frequent among flowers. The blue of Scilla sibirica , like all blues that have in them a suspicion of green, has a curiously penetrating quality; the blue of Scilla bifolia does not attack the eye so smartly. Chionodoxa sardensis is of a full and satisfying colour, that is enhanced by the small space of clear white...
15 minute read
Woodland spring flowers — Daffodils in the copse — Grape Hyacinths and other spring bulbs — How best to plant them — Flowering shrubs — Rock-plants — Sweet scents of April — Snowy Mespilus, Marsh Marigolds, and other spring flowers — Primrose garden — Pollen of Scotch Fir — Opening seed-pods of Fir and Gorse — Auriculas — Tulips — Small shrubs for rock-garden — Daffodils as cut flowers — Lent Hellebores — Primroses — Leaves of wild Arum. In early April there is quite a wealth of flower among plants that belong half to wood and half to garden. Epimedium pinnatum , with its delicate, orchid-like spike of pale-yellow bloom, flowers with its last year's leaves, but as soon as it is fully out the young leaves rush up, as if hastening to accompany the flowers. Dentaria pinnata , a woodland plant of Switzerland and Austria, is one of...
22 minute read
Cowslips — Morells — Woodruff — Felling oak timber — Trillium and other wood-plants — Lily of the Valley naturalised — Rock-wall flowers — Two good wall-shrubs — Queen wasps — Rhododendrons — Arrangement for colour — Separate colour-groups — Difficulty of choosing — Hardy Azaleas — Grouping flowers that bloom together — Guelder-rose as climber — The garden-wall door — The Pæony garden — Moutans — Pæony varieties — Species desirable for garden. While May is still young, Cowslips are in beauty on the chalk lands a few miles distant, but yet within pleasant reach. They are finest of all in orchards, where the grass grows tall and strong under the half-shade of the old apple-trees, some of the later kinds being still loaded with bloom. The blooming of the Cowslip is the signal for a search for the Morell, one of the very best of the edible fungi....
14 minute read
The gladness of June — The time of Roses — Garden Roses — Reine Blanche — The old white Rose — Old garden Roses as standards — Climbing and rambling Roses — Scotch Briars — Hybrid Perpetuals a difficulty — Tea Roses — Pruning — Sweet Peas, autumn sown — Elder-trees — Virginian Cowslip — Dividing spring-blooming plants — Two best Mulleins — White French Willow — Bracken. What is one to say about June—the time of perfect young summer, the fulfilment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade? For my own part I wander up into the wood and say, "June is here—June is here; thank God for lovely June!" The soft cooing of the wood-dove, the glad song of many birds, the flitting of butterflies, the hum of all the little...
10 minute read
Scarcity of flowers — Delphiniums — Yuccas — Cottager's way of protecting tender plants — Alströmerias — Carnations — Gypsophila — Lilium giganteum — Cutting fern-pegs. The seedlings were well grown for two years in nursery lines, worthless ones being taken out as soon as they showed their character. There is one common defect that I cannot endure—an interrupted spike, when the flowers, having filled a good bit of the spike, leave off, leaving a space of bare stem, and then go on again. If this habit proves to be persistent after the two years' trial, the plant is condemned. For my liking the spike must be well filled, but not overcrowded. Many of the show kinds are too full for beauty; the shape of the individual flower is lost. Some of the double ones are handsome, but in these the flower takes another shape, becoming more rosette-like, and thereby...
10 minute read
Leycesteria — Early recollections — Bank of choice shrubs — Bank of Briar Roses — Hollyhocks — Lavender — Lilies — Bracken and Heaths — The Fern-walk — Late-blooming rock-plants — Autumn flowers — Tea Roses — Fruit of Rosa rugosa — Fungi — Chantarelle. I had no space for a shrub wilderness, but have made a large clump for just the things I like best, whether new friends or old. It is a long, low bank, five or six paces wide, highest in the middle, where the rather taller things are planted. These are mostly Junipers and Magnolias; of the Magnolias, the kinds are Soulangeana , conspicua , purpurea , and stellata . One end of the clump is all of peat earth; here are Andromedas, Skimmeas, and on the cooler side the broad-leaved Gale, whose crushed leaves have almost the sweetness of Myrtle. One long side of the...
16 minute read
Sowing Sweet Peas — Autumn-sown annuals — Dahlias — Worthless kinds — Staking — Planting the rock-garden — Growing small plants in a wall — The old wall — Dry-walling — How built — How planted — Hyssop — A destructive storm — Berries of Water-elder — Beginning ground-work. In the second week of September we sow Sweet Peas in shallow trenches. The flowers from these are larger and stronger and come in six weeks earlier than from those sown in the spring; they come too at a time when they are especially valuable for cutting. Many other hardy Annuals are best sown now. Some indeed, such as the lovely Collinsia verna and the large white Iberis, only do well if autumn-sown. Among others, some of the most desirable are Nemophila, Platystemon, Love-in-a-Mist, Larkspurs, Pot Marigold, Virginian Stock, and the delightful Venus's Navel-wort ( Omphalodes linifolia ). I always think...
23 minute read
Michaelmas Daisies — Arranging and staking — Spindle-tree — Autumn colour of Azaleas — Quinces — Medlars — Advantage of early planting of shrubs — Careful planting — Pot-bound roots — Cypress hedge — Planting in difficult places — Hardy flower border — Lifting Dahlias — Dividing hardy plants — Dividing tools — Plants difficult to divide — Periwinkles — Sternbergia — Czar Violets — Deep cultivation for Lilium giganteum . The early days of October bring with them the best bloom of the Michaelmas Daisies, the many beautiful garden kinds of the perennial Asters. They have, as they well deserve to have, a garden to themselves. Passing along the wide path in front of the big flower border, and through the pergola that forms its continuation, with eye and brain full of rich, warm colouring of flower and leaf, it is a delightful surprise to pass through the pergola's...
16 minute read
Giant Christmas Rose — Hardy Chrysanthemums — Sheltering tender shrubs — Turfing by inoculation — Transplanting large trees — Sir Henry Steuart's experience early in the century — Collecting fallen leaves — Preparing grubbing tools — Butcher's Broom — Alexandrian Laurel — Hollies and Birches — A lesson in planting. The giant Christmas Rose ( Helleborus maximus ) is in full flower; it is earlier than the true Christmas Rose, being at its best by the middle of November. It is a large and massive flower, but compared with the later kinds has a rather coarse look. The bud and the back of the flower are rather heavily tinged with a dull pink, and it never has the pure-white colouring throughout of the later ones. I have taken some pains to get together some really hardy November-blooming Chrysanthemums. The best of all is a kind frequent in neighbouring cottage-gardens, and...
16 minute read
The woodman at work — Tree-cutting in frosty weather — Preparing sticks and stakes — Winter Jasmine — Ferns in the wood-walk — Winter colour of evergreen shrubs — Copse-cutting — Hoop-making — Tools used — Sizes of hoops — Men camping out — Thatching with hoop-chips — The old thatcher's bill. It is good to watch a clever woodman and see how much he can do with his simple tools, and how easily one man alone can deal with heavy pieces of timber. An oak trunk, two feet or more thick, and weighing perhaps a ton, lies on the ground, the branches being already cut off. He has to cleave it into four, and to remove it to the side of a lane one hundred feet away. His tools are an axe and one iron wedge. The first step is the most difficult—to cut such a nick in the...
20 minute read
A well done villa garden — A small town garden — Two delightful gardens of small size — Twenty acres within the walls — A large country house and its garden — Terrace — Lawn — Parterre — Free garden — Kitchen garden — Buildings — Ornamental orchard — Instructive mixed gardens — Mr. Wilson's at Wisley — A window garden. The size of a garden has very little to do with its merit. It is merely an accident relating to the circumstances of the owner. It is the size of his heart and brain and goodwill that will make his garden either delightful or dull, as the case may be, and either leave it at the usual monotonous dead-level, or raise it, in whatever degree may be, towards that of a work of fine art. If a man knows much, it is more difficult for him to deal with...
13 minute read
The ignorant questioner — Beginning at the end — An example — Personal experience — Absence of outer help — Johns' "Flowers of the Field" — Collecting plants — Nurseries near London — Wheel-spokes as labels — Garden friends — Mr. Robinson's "English Flower-Garden" — Mr. Nicholson's "Dictionary of Gardening" — One main idea desirable — Pictorial treatment — Training in fine art — Adapting from Nature — Study of colour — Ignorant use of the word "artistic." Many people who love flowers and wish to do some practical gardening are at their wit's end to know what to do and how to begin. Like a person who is on skates for the first time, they feel that, what with the bright steel runners, and the slippery surface, and the sense of helplessness, there are more ways of tumbling about than of progressing safely in any one direction. And in...
19 minute read
The flower-border — The wall and its occupants — Choisya ternata — Nandina — Canon Ellacombe's garden — Treatment of colour-masses — Arrangement of plants in the border — Dahlias and Cannas — Covering bare places — The pergola — How made — Suitable climbers — Arbours of trained Planes — Garden houses. I have a rather large "mixed border of hardy flowers." It is not quite so hopelessly mixed as one generally sees, and the flowers are not all hardy; but as it is a thing everybody rightly expects, and as I have been for a good many years trying to puzzle out its wants and ways, I will try and describe my own and its surroundings. There is a sandstone wall of pleasant colour at the back, nearly eleven feet high. This wall is an important feature in the garden, as it is the dividing line between the...
5 minute read
It must be some five-and-twenty years ago that I began to work at what I may now call my own strain of Primroses, improving it a little every year by careful selection of the best for seed. The parents of the strain were a named kind, called Golden Plover, and a white one, without name, that I found in a cottage garden. I had also a dozen plants about eight or nine years ago from a strong strain of Mr. Anthony Waterer's that was running on nearly the same lines; but a year later, when I had flowered them side by side, I liked my own one rather the best, and Mr. Waterer, seeing them soon after, approved of them so much that he took some to work with his own. I hold Mr. Waterer's strain in great admiration, and, though I tried for a good many years, never could...
9 minute read
I am always surprised at the vague, not to say reckless, fashion in which garden folk set to work to describe the colours of flowers, and at the way in which quite wrong colours are attributed to them. It is done in perfect good faith, and without the least consciousness of describing wrongly. In many cases it appears to be because the names of certain substances have been used conventionally or poetically to convey the idea of certain colours. And some of these errors are so old that they have acquired a kind of respectability, and are in a way accepted without challenge. When they are used about familiar flowers it does not occur to one to detect them, because one knows the flower and its true colour; but when the same old error is used in the description of a new flower, it is distinctly misleading. For instance, when...
13 minute read
The sweet scents of a garden are by no means the least of its many delights. Even January brings Chimonanthus fragrans , one of the sweetest and strongest scented of the year's blooms—little half-transparent yellowish bells on an otherwise naked-looking wall shrub. They have no stalks, but if they are floated in a shallow dish of water, they last well for several days, and give off a powerful fragrance in a room. During some of the warm days that nearly always come towards the end of February, if one knows where to look in some sunny, sheltered corner of a hazel copse, there will be sure to be some Primroses, and the first scent of the year's first Primrose is no small pleasure. The garden Primroses soon follow, and, meanwhile, in all open winter weather there have been Czar Violets and Iris stylosa , with its delicate scent, faintly violet-like,...
9 minute read
Several times during these notes I have spoken in a disparaging manner of the show-table; and I have not done so lightly, but with all the care and thought and power of observation that my limited capacity is worth; and, broadly, I have come to this: that shows, such as those at the fortnightly meetings of the Royal Horticultural Society, and their more important one in the early summer, whose object is to bring together beautiful flowers of all kinds, to a place where they may be seen, are of the utmost value; and that any shows anywhere for a like purpose, and especially where there are no money prizes, are also sure to be helpful. And the test question I put to myself at any show is this, Does this really help the best interests of horticulture? And as far as I can see that it does this, I...
7 minute read
When I look back over thirty years of gardening, I see what an extraordinary progress there has been, not only in the introduction of good plants new to general cultivation, but also in the home production of improved kinds of old favourites. In annual plants alone there has been a remarkable advance. And here again, though many really beautiful things are being brought forward, there seems always to be an undue value assigned to a fresh development, on the score of its novelty. Now it seems to me, that among the thousands of beautiful things already at hand for garden use, there is no merit whatever in novelty or variety unless the thing new or different is distinctly more beautiful, or in some such way better than an older thing of the same class. And there seems to be a general wish among seed growers just now to dwarf all...
8 minute read
Weeding is a delightful occupation, especially after summer rain, when the roots come up clear and clean. One gets to know how many and various are the ways of weeds—as many almost as the moods of human creatures. How easy and pleasant to pull up are the soft annuals like Chickweed and Groundsel, and how one looks with respect at deep-rooted things like Docks, that make one go and fetch a spade. Comfrey is another thing with a terrible root, and every bit must be got out, as it will grow again from the smallest scrap. And hard to get up are the two Bryonies, the green and the black, with such deep-reaching roots, that, if not weeded up within their first year, will have to be seriously dug out later. The white Convolvulus, one of the loveliest of native plants, has a most persistently running root, of which every...
9 minute read
It is curious to look back at the old days of bedding-out, when that and that only meant gardening to most people, and to remember how the fashion, beginning in the larger gardens, made its way like a great inundating wave, submerging the lesser ones, and almost drowning out the beauties of the many little flowery cottage plots of our English waysides. And one wonders how it all came about, and why the bedding system, admirable for its own purpose, should have thus outstepped its bounds, and have been allowed to run riot among gardens great and small throughout the land. But so it was, and for many years the fashion, for it was scarcely anything better, reigned supreme. It was well for all real lovers of flowers when some quarter of a century ago a strong champion of the good old flowers arose, and fought strenuously to stay the...
31 minute read
Now that the owners of good places are for the most part taking a newly-awakened and newly-educated pleasure in the better ways of gardening, a frequent source of difficulty arises from the ignorance and obstructiveness of gardeners. The owners have become aware that their gardens may be sources of the keenest pleasure. The gardener may be an excellent man, perfectly understanding the ordinary routine of garden work; he may have been many years in his place; it is his settled home, and he is getting well on into middle life; but he has no understanding of the new order of things, and when the master, perfectly understanding what he is about, desires that certain things shall be done, and wishes to enjoy the pleasure of directing the work himself, and seeing it grow under his hand, he resents it as an interference, and becomes obstructive, or does what is required...
3 minute read
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. Edinburgh & London...