Part 17

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

MISS MANNERING]

idea of the general scale of grand effect that follows the carrying out of the design and intention of its accomplished mistress. For here things are done largely and yet without obtrusive ostentation. They seem just right in scale. For instance, in the house are some great columns; huge monoliths of green Galway marble. It is only when details are examined that it is perceived how splendid they are, and only when the master tells the story, that the difficulty of transporting them from the West of Ireland can be appreciated. For they were quarried in one piece, and bridges broke under their immense weight. At one point in their journey they sank into a bog, and their rescue, and indeed their whole journey and final setting up at its end, entailed a series of engineering feats of no small difficulty.

AUCHINCRUIVE

The mild climate of south-western Scotland is most advantageous for gardening. Hydrangeas and Myrtles flourish, Fuchsias grow into bushes eight to ten feet high. Mr. Oswald’s garden lies upon the river Ayr, a few miles distant from the town of Ayr. The house stands boldly on a crag just above the river, which makes its music below, tumbling over rocky shelves and rippling over shingle-bedded shallows. For nearly a mile the garden follows the river bank, in free fashion as befits the place. Trees are in plenty and of fine growth, both on the garden side and the opposite river shore. Here and there an opening in the trees on the further shore shows the distant country. The garden occupies a large space; the grouping of the shrubs and trees taking a wilder character in the portions furthest away from the house, so that, mingling at last with native growth, garden gradually dies away into wild. Large undulating lawns give a sense of space and freedom and easy access.

That close, fine turf of the gardens of Britain is a thing so familiar to the eye that we scarcely think what a wonderful thing it really is. When we consider our flower and kitchen gardens, and remember how much labour of renewal they need--renewal not only of the plants themselves, but of the soil, in the way of manurial and other dressings; and when we consider all the digging and delving, raking and hoeing that must be done as ground preparation, constantly repeated; and then when we think again of an ancient lawn of turf, perhaps three hundred years old, that, except for moving and rolling, has, for all those long years, taken care of itself; it seems, indeed, that the little closely interwoven plants of grass are things of wonderful endurance and longevity. The mowing

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF MR. R. A. OSWALD]

prevents their blooming, so that they form but few fresh plants from seed. Imperceptibly the dying of the older plants is going on, and the hungry root-fibres of their younger neighbours are feeding on the decaying particles washed into the earth.

But whether lawns could exist at all without the beneficent work of the earthworms is very doubtful. Every one has seen the little heaps of worm-castings upon grass, but it remained for Darwin, after his own long experiment and exhaustive observation, partly based upon and comprehending the conclusions of other naturalists, to tell us how largely the fertility of our surface soil is due to the unceasing work of these small creatures. Worms swallow large quantities of earth and decaying leaves, and Darwin’s observations led him “to conclude that all the vegetable mould over the whole country has passed many times through, and will again pass many times through the intestinal canals of worms.” This, indeed, is the only way in which it is possible for a person with any knowledge of the needs of plant-life, to conceive the possibility of any one closely-packed crop occupying the same space of ground for hundreds of years. The soil, as it passes, little by little, through the bodies of the worms, undergoes certain chemical changes which fit it afresh for its ever-renewed work of plant-sustenance.

There are some who, viewing the castings as an eyesore on their lawns, cast about for means of destroying the worms. This is unwise policy, and would soon lead to the impoverishment of the grass. The castings, when dry, are easily broken down by the roller or the birch-broom, and the grass receives the beneficent top-dressing that assures its well-being and healthy continuance.

The only part of the garden at Auchincruive that is obedient to rectangular form, is the kitchen garden and the ground about it. The kitchen garden lies some way back from the house and river, and, with its greenhouses, is for the most part hidden by two long old yew hedges which run in the direction of the river. One of these appears in the picture, with its outer ornament of bright border of autumn flowers. Here are Tritomas, Gypsophila in mist-like clouds, tall Evening Primrose and Campanula pyramidalis, both purple and white, with many other good hardy flowers.

The red-leaved tree illustrates a question which often arises in the writer’s mind as to whether trees and shrubs of this coloured foliage, such as Prunus Pissardi and Copper Beech and Copper Hazel are not of doubtful value in the general garden landscape. Trees of the darkest green, as this very picture shows by its dark upright yews, are always of value, but the red-leaved tree, though in the present case it has been tenderly treated by the artist, is apt to catch the eye as a violent and discordant patch among green foliage. Especially is this the case with the darker form of copper beech, which, in autumn, takes a dull, solid, heavy kind of colour, especially when seen from a little distance, that is often a disfiguring blot in an otherwise beautiful landscape.

The same criticism may occasionally apply to trees of conspicuous golden foliage, but errors in planting these, though often made, may easily be avoided by suitable grouping and association with white and yellow flowers. Indeed it would be delightful to work out a whole golden garden.

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF MR. GEORGE E. B. WREY]

YEW ARBOUR: LYDE

It is not in large gardens only that hardy flowers are to be seen in perfection. Often the humblest wayside cottage may show such a picture of plant-beauty as will put to shame the best that can be seen at the neighbouring squire’s. And where labouring folk have a liking for clipped yews, their natural good taste and ingenuity often turns them into better forms than are seen among the examples of more pretentious topiary work.

The cottager has the undoubted advantage that, as his tree is usually an isolated one, he can see by its natural way of growth the kind of figure it suggests for his clipping; whereas the gardener in the large place usually has to follow a fixed design. So it is that one may see in a cottage garden such a handsome example as the yew in the picture.

The lower part of the tree is nearly square in plan, with a niche cut out for a narrow seat. There is space enough between the top of this and the underside of the great mushroom-shaped canopy, to allow the upper surface of the square base to be green and healthy. The great rounded top proudly carries its handsome crest, that is already a good ornament and will improve year by year. The garden is raised above the road and only separated from it by a wall which is low on the garden side and deeper to the road. It passes by the side of the yew, so that the occupier of the seat commands a view of the road and all that goes along it, and can exchange greetings and gossip with those who pass by.

The cottagers of the neighbourhood--it is in Herefordshire, about four miles from Hereford--have a special fancy for these clipped yews; many examples may be met with in an afternoon’s walk. Not very far from this is a capital peacock excellently rendered in conventional fashion. It stands well above a high pedestal, one side of which is hollowed out for a little seat.

One may well understand what a pride and pleasure and amusing interest these clipped trees are to the cottage folk; how after each year’s clipping they would discuss and criticise the result and note the progress of the growth towards the hoped-for form. A pile of cheeses is a favourite pattern, sometimes on a square base, with the topmost ornament cut into a spire or even a crown.

The English peasant has a love for ornament that always strives to find some kind of expression. In many parts the thatcher makes a kind of basket ornament on the top of his rick; and the pattern of crossed laths, pegged down with the hazel “spars” that finishes the thatched cottage roof near the eaves, is of true artistic value. The carter loves to dress his horses for town or market, and a fine team, with worsted ribbons in mane and headstall, and quantities of gleaming highly-polished brasses, is indeed a pleasant sight upon the country high road.

Now, alas! when cheap rubbish, misnamed ornamental, floods village shops and finds its way into the cottages, the cottager’s taste, which was always true and good as long as it depended on its own prompting and instinct, and could only deal with the simplest materials, is rapidly becoming bewildered and debased. All the more, therefore, let us value and cherish these ornaments of the older traditions; the bright little gardens and the much-prized clipped yew.

A usual feature of these cottage yews is that the seat is for one person alone. The labourer sits in his little retreat enjoying his evening pipe after his day’s work, while the wife puts the children to bed and gets the supper. Probably he has been harvesting all day, and his strong frame is tired, with that feeling of almost pleasant fatigue that comes to a wholesome body after a good day’s work well done; and when the hardly-earned rest is thoroughly enjoyed. So he sits quite quiet, with one eye on the possible interests of his outer world, the road, and the other on the beauty of his flower-border. And what a pretty double border it is, with its grand mass of pink Japan Anemone and well-flowered clump of Goldilocks (one of the few yellow-bloomed Michaelmas Daisies), looking at its near relation in purple over the way.

A graceful little Plum-tree shoots up through the flowers; its long free shoots of tender green seem to laugh at the rigid surface of the clipped yew beyond. Don’t be too confident about your freedom, little Plum; it is more than likely that you will be severely pruned next winter. But you need not mind, for if you lose one kind of beauty, you will gain others; the pure white bloom of spring-time, and the autumn burden of purple fruit; and be both handsome and useful, like your neighbour the old yew.

AUTUMN FLOWERS

How stout and strong and full of well-being they are--the autumn flowers of our English gardens! Hollyhocks, Tritomas, Sunflowers, Phloxes, among many others, and lastly, Michaelmas Daisies. The flowers of the early year are lowly things, though none the less lovable; Primroses, Double Daisies, Anemones, small Irises, and all the beautiful host of small Squill and Snow-Glory and little early Daffodils. Then come the taller Daffodils and Wallflowers, Tulips, and the old garden Peonies and the lovely Tree Peonies. Then the true early summer flowers.

If you notice, as the seasons progress, the average of the flowering plants advances in stature. By June this average has risen again, with the Sea Hollies and Flag Irises, the Chinese Peonies and the earlier Roses. And now there are some quite tall things. Mulleins seven and eight feet high, some of them from last year’s seed, but the greater number from the seed-shedding of the year before; the great white-leaved Mullein (Verboscum olympicum), taking four years to come to flowering strength. But what a flower it is, when it is at last thrown up! What a glorious candelabrum of branching bloom! Perhaps there is no other hardy plant whose bulk of bloom on a single stem fills so large a space. And what a grand effect it has when it is rightly planted; when its great sulphur spire shows, half or wholly shaded, against the dusk of a wood edge or in some sheltered bay, where garden is insensibly melting into woodland. This is the place for these grand plants (for their flowers flag in hot sunshine), in company with white Foxglove and the tall yellow Evening Primrose, another tender bloom that is shy of sunlight. Four o’clock of a June morning is the time to see these fine things at their best, when the birds are waking up, and but for them the world is still, and the Cluster-Roses are opening their buds. No one can know the whole beauty of a Cluster-Rose who has not seen it when the summer day is quite young; when the buds of such a rose as the Garland have just burst open and the sun has not yet bleached their wonderful tints of shell-pink and tenderest shell-yellow into their only a little less beautiful colouring of full midday.

By July there are still more of our tall garden flowers; the stately Delphiniums, seven, eight, and nine feet high; tall white Lilies; the tall yellow Meadow-Rues, Hollyhocks, and Sweet Peas in plenty.