Part 15

THE FRIENDSHIP GARDEN

It was a pleasant thought, that of the lover of good flowers and firm friend of many good people, who first had the idea of combining the two sentiments into a garden of enduring beauty.

Such a garden has been made at Easton by the Countess of Warwick. The site of the Friendship Garden has been happily chosen, close to the remains of an ancient house called Stone Hall, which now serves Lady Warwick as a garden-house and library of garden books.

The flower-plots are arranged in a series of concentric circles; the plants are the gifts of friends. The name of each plant and that of the giver are recorded on an imperishable majolica plaque. Many well-known givers’ names are here, from that of the very highest in the land downward. The plants themselves comprise many of the best and handsomest.

The picture shows the garden as it is about the middle of September; the time of the great White Pyrethrum, the perennial Sunflowers and the earliest of the Michaelmas Daisies. The bush of Lavender is blooming late, its normal flowering time is a month earlier. But Lavender, especially when some of the first bloom is cut, will often go on flowering, as later-formed shoots come to blooming strength. Let us hope that the giver is not shortlived like the gift, for Lavender bushes, after a few years of strong life, soon wear out. Already this one is showing signs of age, and it would be well to set a few cuttings in spring or autumn, or, still better, to layer it by one of the lower branches, in order to renew

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

THE COUNTESS OF WARWICK]

the life of the plant when the strength of the present bush comes to an end.

Such a garden, full of so keen a personal interest, sets one thinking. What will become of it fifty or a hundred years hence? The flowers, with due diligence of division, and replanting and enriching of the soil, will live for ever. The name-plates, with care and protection from breakage, will also live. But what will these names be one or two generations hence? Will the plants all be there? And what of the Friendships? They are something belonging intimately to the lives of those now living. What record of them will endure; or enduring, be of use or comfort to those who come after?

Then one thinks and wonders--what hand, perhaps quite a humble one--planted the old apple-tree that has its stem now girdled by a rustic seat. Its days are perhaps already numbered; the top is thin and open, the foliage is spare; it seems to be beyond fruit-bearing age, and as if it had scarcely strength to draw up the circulating sap.

And then, for all the carefulness given to the making of the garden and its tender memories of human kindness in giving and receiving, the plant that dominates the whole, and gives evidence of the oldest occupation from times past, and promises the greatest attainment of age in days to come, is the Ivy on the old Stone Hall. Probably it was never planted at all--came by itself, as we carelessly say--or planted, as we may more thoughtfully and worthily say, by the hand of God, and now doing its part of sheltering and fostering the Garden of Friendship. Should not the Ivy also have its heart-shaped plate and its most grateful and reverent inscription, as a noble plant, the gift of the kindest Friend of all, who first created a garden for the sustenance and delight of man and put into his heart that love of beautiful flowers that has always endured as one of the chiefest and quite the purest of his human pleasures?

There is a rose-garden beyond the bank of shrubs to the left, where each Rose, on one of the permanent labels, here shaped after the pattern of a Tudor Rose, has a quotation from the poets. Here are, among others, the older roses of our gardens, the Damask and the Rose of Provence, the Cinnamon and the Musk Rose, the bushy Briers and the taller Eglantine that we now call Sweetbrier.

Close at hand there is also a Shakespeare Garden, designed to show what were the garden-flowers commonly in use in his time. Here we may again find Rosemary--that sweetly aromatic shrub, so old a favourite in English gardens. Its long-enduring scent made it the emblem of constancy and friendship. And here should be Rue, also classed by Shakespeare among “nose-herbs,” and the sweet-leaved Eglantine, and Lads-Love, Balm and Gilliflowers (our Carnations), a few kinds of Lilies, Musk and Damask Roses, Violets, Peonies, and many others of our oldest garden favourites.

THE DEANERY GARDEN, ROCHESTER

Those who know the Dean of Rochester, either personally or by reputation, will know that where he dwells there will be a beautiful garden. His fame as a rosarian has gone throughout the length and breadth of Britain, and far beyond, and his practical activity in spreading and fostering a love of Roses must have been the means of gladdening many a heart, and may be reckoned as by no means the least among the many beneficent influences of his long and distinguished ministry.

These lines were in print before the lamented death of Dean Hole.

A few days’ visit to Dean Hole’s own home at Caunton Manor, near Newark, will ever remain among the writer’s pleasantest memories. It must have been five and twenty years ago, and it was June, the time of Roses. To one whose home was on a poor sandy soil it was almost a new sight to see the best of Roses, splendidly grown and revelling in a good loam. Not that the credit was mainly due to the nature of the garden ground, for, as the Dean (then Canon Hole) points out in his delightful “Book about Roses,” the soil had to be made to suit his favourite flower. In this, or some one of his books, he feelingly describes how many of the visitors to his garden, seeing the splendid vigour of his Roses, at once ascribed it to the excellence of his soil. “Of course,” they said, “your flowers are magnificent, but then, you see, you have got such a soil for Roses.” “I should think I had got a soil for Roses,” was the reply, “didn’t I mix it all myself and take it there in a barrow?” I quote from memory, but this is the sense of this excellent lesson. The writer’s own experience is exactly the same. Of the quantities of garden visitors who have come--their number has had to be stringently limited of late--not one in twenty will believe that one loves a garden well enough to take a great deal of trouble about it.

In fact, it is only this unceasing labour and care and watchfulness; the due preparation according to knowledge and local experience; the looking out for signal of distress or for the time for extra nourishment, water, shelter or support, that produces the garden that satisfies any one with somewhat of the better garden knowledge; a knowledge that does not make for showy parterres or for any necessarily costly complications; rather, indeed, for all that is simplest, but that produces something that is apparent at once to the eye, and sympathetic to the mind, of the true garden-lover.

It must have been a painful parting from the well-loved Roses and the many other beauties of the Caunton garden, when the new duties of honourable advancement called Canon Hole from the old home to the Deanery of Rochester; from the pure air of Nottinghamshire to that of a town, with the added reek of neighbouring lime and cement works. But even here good gardening has overcome all difficulties, and though, when the air was more than usually loaded with the foul gases given off by these industries, the Dean would remark, with a flash of his characteristic humour, that Rochester was “a beautiful place--to get away from,” yet the Deanery garden is now full of Roses and quantities of other good garden flowers, all grandly grown and in the best of health. Roses are in fact rampant. A rough trellis, simply made of split oak after the manner of the hurdles used for folding sheep in the Midlands, but about six feet high, stands at the back of the main double flower-border. Rambling Roses and others of free-growing habit are loosely trained to this, their great heads of bloom hanging out every way with fine effect; each Rose is given freedom to show its own way of beauty, while the trellis gives enough support and guides the general line of the great hedge of Roses.

The Dean is not alone among the flowers, for Mrs. Hole is also one of the best of gardeners.

The picture shows a portion of a double flower-border where a curving path connects two others that are at different angles. In the

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

MR. G. A. TONGE]

distance, rising to a height of a hundred feet, is the grand old Norman keep; the rare Deptford Pink (Dianthus Armeria) grows in its masonry. The ancient city wall is one of the garden’s boundaries. Another old wall, that is within the garden, has been made the home of many a good rock-plant. On the left, in the picture, are masses of Poppies, Roses and White Lilies, with Alströmeria, Love-in-a-Mist, and Larkspurs, both annual and perennial; the background is of the soft, feathery foliage of Asparagus. The Roses are of all shapes; single and double; show Roses and garden Roses; standards, bushes and free-growing ramblers. On the right are more Larkspurs, Irises in seed-pod, Lavender, and some splendidly-grown Lilium szovitsianum, one of the grandest of Lilies, and, where it can be grown like this, one of the finest things that can be seen in a garden. Its tender lemon colouring has suffered in the reproduction, which makes it somewhat too heavy.

The upper part of a greenhouse shows in the picture. It is sometimes impossible to keep such a structure out of sight, but one like this, of the plainest possible kind, is the least unsightly of its class. It is just an honest thing, for the needs of the garden and for a part of its owner’s pleasure. The fatal thing is when an attempt is made to render greenhouses ornamental, by the addition of fretted cast-iron ridges and fidgety finials. These ill-placed futilities only serve to draw attention to something which, by its nature, cannot possibly be made an ornament in a garden, while it is comparatively harmless if let alone, and especially if the wood-work is not painted white but a neutral grey. In all these matters of garden structures; seats, arbours and so forth, it is much best in a simple garden to keep to what is of modest and quiet utility. In the case of a large place, which presents distinct architectural features, it is another matter; for there such details as these come within the province of the architect.

COMPTON WYNYATES

In the very foremost rank among the large houses still remaining that were built in Tudor times is the Warwickshire home of the Marquess of Northampton. The walls are of brick, wide-jointed after the old custom, with quoins, doorways, and window-frames of freestone, wrought into rich and beautiful detail in the heads of the bays and the grand old doorway, whose upper ornament is a large panel bearing the sculptured arms of King Henry VIII.

Formerly the house was entirely surrounded by a moat, which approached it closely on all sides but one, where a small garden was inclosed. Now, on the three sides next the building, grass lawns take its place. On all sides but one, hilly ground rises almost immediately; in steep slopes for the most part, beautifully wooded with grand elms.