Part 18

By August we are in autumn; and it is the month of the tall Phloxes. There are some who dislike the sweet, faint and yet strong scent of these flowers; to me it is one of the delights of the flower year.

No garden flower has been more improved of late years; a whole new range of excellent and brilliant colouring has been developed. I can remember when the only Phloxes were a white and a poor Lilac; the individual flowers were small and starry and set rather widely apart. They were straggly-looking things, though always with the welcome sweet scent. Nowadays we all know the beauty of these fine flowers; the large size of the massive heads and of the individual blooms; the pure whites, the good Lilacs and Pinks, and that most desirable range of salmon-rose colourings, of which one of the first that made a lively stir in the world of horticulture was the one called Lothair. In its own colouring of tender salmon-rose it is still one of the best. Careful seed-saving among the brighter flowers of this colouring led to the tints tending towards scarlet, among which Etna was a distinct advance, to be followed, a year or two later, by the all-conquering Coquelicot. Some florists have also pushed this docile flower into a range of colouring which is highly distasteful to the trained colour-eye of the educated amateur; a series of rank purples and virulent magentas; but these can be avoided. What is now most wanted, and seems to be coming, is a range of tender, rather light Pinks, that shall have no trace of the rank quality that seems so unwilling to leave the Phloxes of this colouring.

Garden Phloxes were originally hybrids of two or three North American species; for garden purposes they are divided into two groups, the earlier, blooming in July, much shorter in stature and more bushy, being known as the suffruticosa group, the later, taller kinds being classed as the decussata. They are a little shy of direct sunlight, though they can bear it in strong soils where the roots are always cool. They like plenty of food and moisture; in poor, dry, sandy soils they fail absolutely, and even if watered and carefully watched, look miserable objects.

But where Phloxes do well, and this is in most good garden ground, they are the glory of the August flower-border.

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In the teaching and practice of good gardening the fact can never be too persistently urged nor too trustfully accepted, that the best effects are accomplished by the simplest means. The garden artist or artist gardener is for ever searching for these simple pictures; generally the happy combination of some two kinds of flowers that bloom at the same time, and that make either kindly harmonies or becoming contrasts.

In trying to work out beautiful garden effects, besides those purposely arranged, it sometimes happens that some little accident--such as the dropping of a seed, that has grown and bloomed where it was not sown--may suggest some delightful combination unexpected and unthought of. At another time some small spot of colour may be observed that will give the idea of the use of this colour in some larger treatment.

It is just this self-education that is needed for the higher and more thoughtful gardening, whose outcome is the simply conceived and beautiful pictures, whether they are pictures painted with the brush on paper or canvas, or with living plants in the open ground. In both cases it needs alike the training of the eye to observe, of the brain to note, and of the hand to work out the interpretation.

The garden artist--by which is to be understood the true lover of good flowers, who has taken the trouble to learn their ways and wants and moods, and to know it all so surely that he can plant with the assured belief that the plants he sets will do as he intends, just as the painter can

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF LADY MOUNT-STEPHEN]

compel and command the colours on his palette--plants with an unerring hand and awaits the sure result.

When one says “the simplest means,” it does not always mean the easiest. Many people begin their gardening by thinking that the making and maintaining of a handsome and well-filled flower-border is quite an easy matter. In fact, it is one of the most difficult problems in the whole range of horticultural practice--wild gardening perhaps excepted. To achieve anything beyond the ordinary commonplace mixture, that is without plan or forethought, and that glares with the usual faults of bad colour-combinations and yawning, empty gaps, needs years of observation and a considerable knowledge of plants and their ways as individuals.

For border plants to be at their best must receive special consideration as to their many and different wants. We have to remember that they are gathered together in our gardens from all the temperate regions of the world, and from every kind of soil and situation. From the sub-arctic regions of Siberia to the very edges of the Sahara; from the cool and ever-moist flanks of the Alps to the sun-dried coasts of the Mediterranean; from the Cape, from the great mountain ranges of India; from the cool and temperate Northern States of America--the home of the species from which our garden Phloxes are derived; from the sultry slopes of Chili and Peru, where the Alströmerias thrust their roots deep down into the earth searching for the precious moisture.

So it is that as our garden flowers come to us from many climes and many soils, we have to bear in mind the nature of their places of origin the better to be prepared to give them suitable treatment. We have to know, for instance, which are the few plants that will endure drought and a poor, hot soil; for the greater number abhor it; and yet such places occur in some gardens and have to be provided with what is suitable. Then we have to know which are those that will only come to their best in a rich loam, and that the Phloxes are among these, and the Roses; and which are the plants and shrubs that must have lime, or at least must have it if they are to do their very best. Such are the Clematises and many of the lovely little alpines; while to some other plants, many of the alpines that grow on the granite, and nearly all the Rhododendrons, lime is absolute poison; for, entering the system and being drawn up into the circulation, it clogs and bursts their tiny veins; the leaves turn yellow, the plant dies, or only survives in a miserably crippled state.

An experienced gardener, if he were blindfolded, and his eyes uncovered in an unknown garden whose growths left no soil visible, could tell its nature by merely seeing the plants and observing their relative well-being, just as, passing by rail or road through an unfamiliar district, he would know by the identity and growth of the wild plants and trees what was the nature of the soil beneath them.

The picture, then, showing autumn Phloxes grandly grown, tells of good gardening and of a strong, rich loamy soil. This is also proved by the height of the Daisies (Chrysanthemum maximum). But the lesson the picture so pleasantly teaches is above all to know the merit of one simple thing well done. Two charming little stone figures of amorini stand up on their plinths among the flowers; the boy figure holds a bird’s nest, his girl companion a shell. They are of a pattern not unfrequent in English gardens, and delightfully in sympathy with our truest home flowers. The quiet background of evergreen hedge admirably suits both figures and flowers.

It is all quite simple--just exactly right. Daisies--always the children’s flowers, and, with them, another of wide-eyed innocence, of dainty scent, of tender colouring. Quite simple and just right; but then--it is in the artist’s own garden.

MYNTHURST

At the time the picture was painted, Mynthurst was in the occupation of Mrs. Wilson, to the work of whose niece, Miss Radcliffe, the garden owes much of its charm.

It lies in the pleasant district between Reigate and Dorking, on a southward sloping hill-side. The house is a modern one of Tudor character, standing on a terrace that has a retaining wall and steps to a lower level. The garden lies open to the south and south-westerly gales, the prevalent winds of the district, but it is partly sheltered by the walls of the kitchen garden, and by a yew hedge which runs parallel with one of the walls; the space so inclosed making a sheltered place for the rose garden. Here Roses rise in ranks one above the other, and have a delightful and most suitable carpet of Love-in-a-mist. This pretty annual, so welcome in almost any region of the garden, is especially pretty with Roses of tender colouring; whites, pale yellows, and pale pinks. A picture elsewhere shows it combined with Rose Viscountess Folkestone.

Beyond the rose garden, a path leads away at a right angle between the orchard and the kitchen-garden wall. Here is the subject of the picture. A broad border runs against the wall, as long as the length of the kitchen garden. A border so wide is difficult to manage unless it has a small blind alley at the back rather near the wall, to give access to what is on the wall and to the taller plants in the back of the border. But here it is arranged in another way. The front edge of the border is not continuous, but has little paths at intervals cutting across it and reaching nearly to the wall. This method of obtaining easy access also has its merits, though it involves a large amount of edging. Mynthurst has a strong soil, an advantage not always to be had in this district, so that Roses can be well grown, and some of the Lilies. Here the Tiger Lily, that fine autumn flower, does finely. It is one of the Lilies that is puzzling, or as we call it, capricious, which only means that we gardeners are ignorant and do not understand its vagaries. For in some other heavy soils it refuses to grow, and in some light ones it luxuriates; but it is so good a plant that it should be tried in every garden.

It is a pretty plan to have the orchard in connexion with the flower-borders; though from the point of view of good gardening the wisdom is doubtful of having clumps of flowers round the trunks of the fruit-trees. Shallow-rooted annuals for a season or two may do no harm, but the disturbance of the ground needful for constant cultivation, with the inevitable consequence of worry and irritation of the fruit-trees’ roots, can hardly fail to be harmful, though the effect meanwhile is certainly pretty. The evil may not show at once, but is likely to follow.

One does not often see so strong a Canterbury Bell in the autumn as the one in the picture. It must have been a weak or belated plant of last year that made strong growth in early summer. Sometimes one sees such a plant that had remained in the kitchen-garden reserve bed; left there because it was weaker than the ones taken for planting out in autumn. It is not generally known that these capital plants will bear potting when they are almost in bloom, so that when a few are so left, they can be used as highly decorative room plants, and have the advantage of lasting much longer than when in the open border, exposed to the sun. One defect these good plants have, which is the way the dying flowers suddenly turn brown. Instead of merely fading and falling, and so decently veiling their decadence, the brown flowers hang on and are very unsightly. It is only, however, a challenge to the vigilance of the careful gardener; they must be visited in the morning garden-round and the dead flowers removed. It is like the care needed to arrest the depredations of the mullein caterpillar. It is no use wondering whether it will come, or hoping it will not appear; it always comes where there are mulleins, about the second week of June. When the first tiny enemy is seen, any mulleins there may be should be visited twice a day.

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

MISS RADCLIFFE]

In the front of the picture, just under the red rose, is a patch of Mimulus, one of the larger variations of the brilliant little M. cardinalis. All the kinds like a cool, strong soil; they are really bog plants, and revel in moisture. The old Sweet Musk, so favourite a plant in cottage windows, likes a half-shady place at the foot of a cool wall. Many a dull, sunless yard might be brightened by this sweet and pretty plant. The Welsh Poppy, with its bright pale-green leaves and good yellow bloom, is also excellent for the same use, but is best sown in place from a just-ripened pod.

ABBEY LEIX

In a picturesque, but little-known district in Queen’s County, Ireland, lies Abbey Leix, the residence of Lord de Vesci. It is a land of vigorous tree-growth and general richness of vegetation. Hedge-rows show an abundance of well-grown ash timber, and the park is full of fine oaks, a thing that is rare in Ireland, and that makes it more like English parkland of the best character. This impression is accentuated in spring-time when the oaks are carpeted with the blue of wild Hyacinths, and when the broad woodland rides are also rivers of the same Blue-bells.