Part 4

First and foremost a kindly gift; two large clumps of Arundo donax, easily supreme anywhere as pond-side decoration, the more so, as they quickly attain to their full size. No other plant of the reedy order, not even excepting a bamboo, gives quite the same impression of vigorous, of almost insolent energy as does this one. It adapts itself moreover perfectly to our sandy soil, and so long as one sees that it receives a reasonable amount of moisture, seems to ask for little else. Next follow two or three plants of Arundinaria japonica, and below these again Arundinaria, or Bambusa palmata, skirting the edge of the pond, and passing on into the so-called bog. This last came from Kildare, where it has established itself, and run practically wild along the edge of a lake. Here it seems to do its growing more slowly, but the plants are spreading, and I think promise fairly. Below the other bamboos, but above palmata come two large plants of Astilbe rivularis, placed so that their arching leaves will overhang their lower neighbours, and all but touch the water. Next, turning the corner of the pond, come various low-growing bushes. Berberis Darwini below, with the faithful Aquifolium, and the taller stenophylla above, ending in a fringe of bog-myrtle, and of Rodgersia podophylla, among which some Solomon’s seal are now barely discernible. After these come a few plants of Hemerocallis, both fulva and flava, which need continual dividing in the borders, but seem to flower well, and give no further trouble so long as they are within reach of an occasional splash. Acanthuses appear to be in the same position, the difference between their growth in wet and dry soil being extraordinary; indeed when one remembers how they abound in Spain and Italy, one fails to understand the limp and desolated aspect they see fit to assume here, under a very much more moderate dispensation of drought.

Next follows Funkia Sieboldi. Funkias are all meritorious plants, but Sieboldi, to my mind, towers head and shoulders above the rest. Apart from the beauty of the flower, its grey-green, almost iridescent foliage is like no other leaf that grows, and when the two are combined the result is High art, art at its best point. Such praise is, however, merely impertinent. It is more pertinent to say that the whole genus, but especially Sieboldi, belong to that very limited category of plants that are at once fit for the most orthodox of beds or borders, while at the same time they are free enough, and independent-looking enough, not to seem ridiculous in a bit of pure “wildness” such as this little pond-side purports to be. This is far from being a common virtue. One only needs to run over such words as “Hollyhock,” “Begonia,” “Pelargonium,” to perceive in a moment what would be intolerable outside of a more or less stiff parterre. It is not so much a question of beauty, as of fitness and adaptability, perhaps also of freedom from certain set associations, which, having once rooted themselves in our minds, make it impossible for us ever to rearrange our impressions, and recast them in a new form. This however is a digression. To go on with my list.

Upon the actual edge of the pond we are at this moment planting some two dozen varieties of Iris Kæmpferi. These have recently come from Haarlem, and being still new-comers, have their destiny ahead of them. The common yellow iris, best and handsomest of all native, water-edge plants, had only to be transplanted, as it was already flourishing close at hand. As a successor to it comes Ranunculus Lingua, another indispensable native, but one that requires sharp watching; its capabilities as a coloniser being unlimited, the long, pink-tipped suckers pushing forward into the water at a rate that would soon turn any limited space of it into a mere jungle of triumphant buttercups.

In the part of the bank which, sloping rather quickly away, inclines towards the “glade,” come various low-growing shrubs, which carry the line down to the region of heather, which in its turn brings it to the level of the grass. The tallest of these,--rather too tall for the place,--is Viburnum opulus, common beside many a Surrey pond, but not nearly enough grown in gardens, as the best of amateur gardeners has recently reminded us. Its cultivated relation, Viburnum plicatum, is just beyond it, placed there, not because there is the slightest occasion for its being upon the water’s edge, simply because it happens to be one of those plants that never seem quite happy unless they have abundance of space to move about in, the long shoots, laden with blossom, having a wonderful power of reaching out to distances that at first sight seem to be quite beyond their grasp. Another plant of which the same may be said is Hydrangea paniculata. So far ours have spent their existence dully in tubs, the idea being that they required winter protection. Judging by some that were experimented upon last winter this seems to be a mistake, and I propose to try a few here, by way of successors to the foregoing, with which their equally industrious sprays seem to possess a sort of kinship.

Our grassy “glade” being now all but reached the remaining corner of the bank has been filled with various grass-leaved flowering plants, which seemed to come in appropriately. Of these the largest is Libertia formosa, green all the year round, and in summer bristling with white, iris-like flowers, and, by way of plant-fellow to it, Sisyrinchium Bermudianum (Plague upon these polysyllabic dog-latinists!), one of the friendliest of little plants that ever pined for a decent English name. Put it where one will--on a bank, in a bog, in a flower-bed--it seems equally happy and appropriate; always compact, yet increasing as rapidly as any weed; above all continually in flower, even, so I noticed last winter, in the middle of frost and snow, and when its leaves were so brittle that they snapped when they were touched, like any icicle.

My list seems to be already stretching to a tolerable length, yet there are plenty of things that have not yet found their way into it. Here is Bocconia cordata, for instance, impossible to do without in such a spot. Here are the spider-worts, both blue and white. Here are various spiræas, chiefly low-growing ones, such as “Anthony Waterer” and palmata, the latter only happy in a more or less damp place. In the peat-filled hollow beyond quite a little crowd of claimants rise up for notice. A good many of these are now only satisfactory in the retrospect. Of such are Primula japonica, and Primula rosea, sorry-looking tufts of brown shreds, with no new leaves as yet showing. Cypripedium spectabile is in the same plight, but Hellonias bullata is still green, Gentiana asclepiadea has a flower or two showing, Lobelia cardinalis, both the older and newer varieties, look red and happy, and Schizostylis coccinea promises fairly, though it never behaves with us quite as it ought to do, and as I have known it behave in kindlier soils.

Turning to the region of mere dryness, three or four rough stone steps, and a ridiculous little ridge, lead towards the azalea corner.

Here cistuses of various kinds have their home, and, being fairly sheltered, do well, though several require remembering in the winter. I find the same to be the case here with regard to the rosemaries, especially the younger plants, as they grow older they seem to harden. Lavenders fortunately are safe everywhere, in all weathers, and the same may be said of Skimmia japonica and Fortunei, two of the most satisfactory of small winter-flowering shrubs. These with a few tufts of Andromeda floribunda, and a small jungle of alpine rhododendron, bring us up to the azalea corner.

All these plants, especially the more recently planted ones, will need pretty constant looking after during the next year or so, but once that crucial period of their existence is over, it is my hope--possibly only my delusion--that they will learn so to arrange their affairs as merely to require the sort of attention that is necessary to see that they do not overcrowd one another, or--what is more serious--become invaded by wild neighbours, rose-campions, and the like, swarming in upon them to the point of suffocation. The safest way of avoiding this is undoubtedly to cover the ground with low, carpeting growths, which will remain green nearly all the year round, and at the same time not make too severe a demand upon the soil. The number of such kindly little evergreens, or semi-evergreens is a constant surprise when one comes to collect them, and the fact that there should be so many speaks volumes for a climate that we are none of us ever weary of abusing. Apart from absolute rock-plants, nearly all of which are evergreen, there are a number of others, which rarely or never lose their leaves, and whose presence saves banks and hollows like these from the reproach of bareness, and further takes away--certainly ought to take away--all excuses for visitations from that Tool of the Destroyer, the pitchfork. Of such plants none are better than certain campanulas, including our own hairbells, both the blue and the white. Wood-sorrels again are excellent in a shady place, or, for a sunnier one, there is their energetic cousin Oxalis floribunda, in this soil the most undaunted of colonisers, growing all the winter. “Creeping Jenny” again, and “Blue-eyed Mary,” delightful things with delightful names, will cover as much space as they are allowed to do. Of the more easily grown forget-me-nots there are at least four kinds--palustris, for planting close to the water, or in it; dissitiflora, happy all the summer, so long as it gets a little shade; sylvatica and alpestris, growing anywhere, and everywhere. Epimediums, again, are excellent, though apt to get a little rusty in the winter. So is Tellina grandiflora, an unwisely named plant, since its strength lies, not in its flowers, but its leaves. Thymes, too, are always available; likewise potentillas, erysimums, and veronicas, though these last may seem to be trenching upon the rock-plant region. Then, if we want larger growths, are there not all the megaseas, which may be torn in pieces two or three times a year, if we like? Of low-growing shrubs, such as Euonymus radicans, the various creeping cotoneasters, the savin, Gaultheria shallon, and others, there is no lack. Yet another, and one of the best of them all, Cornus canadensis, a true shrub, and an evergreen one, although no larger than a wild wood-strawberry.

But I find myself growing breathless, and the list of such kindly “carpeters” is in reality only begun. Flinging down woodruffs, wild pansies, foam-flowers, sedums, mossy saxifrages, waldsteinias, and periwinkles, as one might out of a basket, I will only now delay to find room for a few rock-pinks, particularly for these four--cæsius, cruentus, atro-rubens, and deltoides,--all of which may be sown broadcast in the spring, and all of which, especially the last, may be trusted to hold their own against any but the biggest and most ferocious of natives.

We have been honest caterers for our clients, as far as preparation went, and my hope, I may say my ideal, is that they will henceforward be content with receiving merely surface nourishment from time to time, and will neither look for or need that eternal process of renewal, and as a consequence of disorganisation, which is the bane, though I am willing to admit the unavoidable bane, of nearly every flower-bed and border.

Ideals are odd things, and this one of mine seems, even as I write it down, about as ridiculous and puny an ideal as any forlorn idealist was ever driven into making a boast of! Such as it is, however, I cling to it tenaciously. After all what does it mean? Written out a little large it means repose of mind, and a freedom from the strain of change; it even means a certain sense of finality, and that at a very sensitive spot in one’s small environment.

To a greater or less extent we all sigh for finality. Nobody has ever attained to it, that I have heard of, and not many people would perhaps relish it if they could do so. None the less it remains, something haunting; a dimly descried presence, to us vaguely desirable. To sit at ease under their own vines; to be at rest in their own shaded places, has from the earliest days flattered the imaginations of men, busy and idle ones alike. Dawdlers in sunny places, and haunters of gardens like ourselves are naturally assigned to the second of these categories. Since we have to support the reproach of idleness, let us at least then take heed that we secure the comfort of it. If Leisure is an acquaintance of ours he is an acquaintance of so few people nowadays, that we had better make the most of him. Now fuss the good man detests, and change, merely for change’s sake, is undoubtedly one of the very worst forms of fuss. Like every other pursuit and following, horticulture no doubt has its battlefields, and those who go out upon them must expect charge and countercharge, rapid assault and varying vicissitude, like other heroes upon other battlefields. For me such combats, I am free to confess, have not even a vicarious charm; Peace being the only deity to whom I would willingly raise even the smallest of garden altars. With other out-of-door conditions we all aver that it is their stability, their adorable unchangeableness, which lends them in our eyes their most persistent charm. Why then are we not to look for the same charm in our gardens, which after all come nearest home? That it is a charm easy of attainment I were loth to asseverate, but that seems hardly a reason for not endeavouring to attain to it. It is in this direction at all events that my own private plottings and plannings propose to turn. If I must moil and delve; if I must plant, dig, and contrive now, it is with the fixed and fond determination of before long sitting resolutely down, and doing absolutely nothing!

OCTOBER 27, 1899

Who dare forecast even his nearest future?

These last four weeks have been so charged with anxiety--not only, or even chiefly, war anxieties--that I have not made so much as a single entry in this diary. In fact there has been nothing to record. The poor little garden; its flowers; its weeds; the copse surrounding it; the entire mise-en-scène, with all the quips and jests which in sunnier hours it gives rise to, seems to have vanished bodily. It is as though the whole thing, erstwhile not without its own little importance, had dwindled to the size of one of those infinitesimal specks, which one sometimes sees in feverish dreams; specks so dim and small, so well-nigh invisible, that one wonders how in the first place one ever discovered them, and why, having done so, one should take the trouble of trying to keep them in sight. That being the case it is as well that I am leaving home to-morrow for several weeks, and, since I shall be chiefly in London, have a good excuse for leaving the garden diary, like the garden itself, behind me. Possibly, by the time I return to them, the old, now submerged, landmarks may have risen once more to the surface, or I may have grown a little better used to this changed landscape; seeing that we all have to get used to every variety of landscape; every admixture of weather; every cruel, blinding storm; every rain-washed shore, or bitter, wreck-strewn sea, which meets us in this very odd journey that we call our lives.

CHRISTMAS-DAY, 1899

There was a slight sprinkling of snow this morning, yet the garden looks exceedingly black. Save for a scarce discernible white line here and there, everything in it seems stiff, and hard, and black as iron; crumpled iron leaves against an iron floor. Black is the livery, not alone of sorrow, but of dismay, so that the garden does very well just now to wear it. There are moments in the individual life, moments, so it appears, even in an entire nation’s life, when the ordinary scheme of things seems to dissolve and change; when all the familiar landmarks for the time being melt away, and disappear under our eyes.

Standing here, staring blankly out of the window, I feel myself for the moment a sort of embodiment of all the other, vacant-eyed starers out of windows, up and down over the face of the country this Christmas morning. How many of them there must be! How many must be staring down at the dull ground, and telling themselves they will never care to walk in, or to look at their gardens again. It may not be an actual garden, but at least it will be a figurative one; some special plot of happiness; some quarter-acre of habitual enjoyment. I hope, indeed I feel sure, that in the great majority of cases they will sooner or later enjoy it again. Father Time is at bottom a kindly creature, kindlier than when in trouble we are inclined to believe him to be. For the moment however the idea seems unrealisable, and would scarcely be welcome if it were realised.

For hardly-pressed humanity there is, I believe, only one really satisfactory way of dealing with misfortune, which is--to refuse to believe in it! That is, I find, the method that our excellent Cuttle in the garden has adopted with regard to most of the recent events in South Africa. Anything exceptionally disagreeable, especially anything that has to do with the surrender of Englishmen, no matter under what circumstances, he simply declines to believe in. It is not that he is ignorant. He reads his paper diligently; he knows everything that is in it, but he refuses to accept more of the contents than he considers proper. When, a few weeks ago, the first of our Natal mishaps occurred, and the number of English prisoners captured was posted up in the village hall, Cuttle informed me the next morning that he had seen it, but that there wasn’t a word of truth in it! I demurred, but he stuck to his guns steadily. It was the same last Monday, when I saw him for the first time after our two most recent misfortunes, that of the Modder and the Tugela.

“This is bad news, Cuttle,” I said, as we met outside the greenhouse.

“Well ma’am, they do try to make it out to be baddish, but I wouldn’t believe it, if I was you.”

“But it is in all the papers, Cuttle.”

“Very likely it is ma’am, but what of that? I don’t hold with none of those papers. They must be a-stuffing themselves out with something.”

“But I’m afraid the generals admit it themselves.”

“Excuse me ma’am, but that’s just where you’re making a great mistake. We don’t know nothing about what the generals admit. All we know is that the papers say they admit it, which is a very different story. Mark my words, you’ll find that it’ll turn out to be some of their muddlings. Just you mark my words for it, that’s how it is.”

I said meekly “I hope so, Cuttle,” and walked away, for really I had not the heart to try and shake his incredulity. Not that I imagine I could have done so had I tried. That good, homespun garment of British pride in which he had wrapped himself was proof against any assaults that I could have brought to bear upon it. I wish with all my heart that he would lend us each a piece of it. We want it badly. Pray heaven and all its saints that we may none of us ever need it much worse than we do this Christmas-day, 1899!

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