Part 13 (1/2)
Pheasants are very bad gardeners; what they seem to enjoy most are Crocuses--in fact, it is no use planting them. I had once a nice collection of Crocus species. They were in separate patches, all along the edge of one border, in a sheltered part of the garden, where pheasants did not often come. One day when I came to see my Crocuses, I found where each patch had been a basin-shaped excavation and a few fragments of stalk or some part of the plant. They had begun at one end and worked steadily along, clearing them right out. They also destroyed a long bed of _Anemone fulgens_. First they took the flowers, and then the leaves, and lastly pecked up and ate the roots.
But we have one grand consolation in having no slugs, at least hardly any that are truly indigenous; they do not like our dry, sandy heaths.
Friends are very generous in sending them with plants, so that we have a moderate number that hang about frames and pot plants, though nothing much to boast of; but they never trouble seedlings in the open ground, and for this I can never be too thankful.
Alas that the beautiful bullfinch should be so dire an enemy to fruit-trees, and also the pretty little t.i.ts! but so it is; and it is a sad sight to see a well-grown fruit-tree with all its fruit-buds pecked out and lying under it on the ground in a thin green carpet. We had some fine young cherry-trees in a small orchard that we cut down in despair after they had been growing twelve years. They were too large to net, and their s.p.a.ce could not be spared just for the mischievous fun of the birds.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BEDDING FAs.h.i.+ON AND ITS INFLUENCE
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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 devastating tide, and to restore the healthy liking for the good old garden flowers. Many soon followed, and now one may say that all England has flocked to the standard. Bedding as an all-prevailing fas.h.i.+on is now dead; the old garden-flowers are again honoured and loved, and every encouragement is freely offered to those who will improve old kinds and bring forward others.
And now that bedding as a fas.h.i.+on no longer exists, one can look at it more quietly and fairly, and see what its uses really are, for in its own place and way it is undoubtedly useful and desirable. Many great country-houses are only inhabited in winter, then perhaps for a week or two at Easter, and in the late summer. There is probably a house-party at Easter, and a succession of visitors in the late summer. A brilliant garden, visible from the house, dressed for spring and dressed for early autumn, is exactly what is wanted--not necessarily from any special love of flowers, but as a kind of bright and well-kept furnis.h.i.+ng of the immediate environment of the house. The gardener delights in it; it is all routine work; so many hundreds or thousands of scarlet Geranium, of yellow Calceolaria, of blue Lobelia, of golden Feverfew, or of other coloured material. It wants no imagination; the comprehension of it is within the range of the most limited understanding; indeed its prevalence for some twenty years or more must have had a deteriorating influence on the whole cla.s.s of private gardeners, presenting to them an ideal so easy of attainment and so cheap of mental effort.
But bedding, though it is gardening of the least poetical or imaginative kind, can be done badly or beautifully. In the _parterre_ of the formal garden it is absolutely in place, and brilliantly-beautiful pictures can be made by a wise choice of colouring. I once saw, and can never forget, a bedded garden that was a perfectly satisfying example of colour-harmony; but then it was planned by the master, a man of the most refined taste, and not by the gardener. It was a _parterre_ that formed part of the garden in one of the fine old places in the Midland counties. I have no distinct recollection of the design, except that there was some principle of fan-shaped radiation, of which each extreme angle formed one centre. The whole garden was treated in one harmonious colouring of full yellow, orange, and orange-brown; half-hardy annuals, such as French and African Marigolds, Zinnias, and Nasturtiums, being freely used. It was the most n.o.ble treatment of one limited range of colouring I have ever seen in a garden; brilliant without being garish, and sumptuously gorgeous without the reproach of gaudiness--a precious lesson in temperance and restraint in the use of the one colour, and an admirable exposition of its powerful effect in the hands of a true artist.
I think that in many smaller gardens a certain amount of bedding may be actually desirable; for where the owner of a garden has a special liking for certain cla.s.ses or mixtures of plants, or wishes to grow them thoroughly well and enjoy them individually to the full, he will naturally grow them in separate beds, or may intentionally combine the beds, if he will, into some form of good garden effect. But the great fault of the bedding system when at its height was, that it swept over the country as a tyrannical fas.h.i.+on, that demanded, and for the time being succeeded in effecting, the exclusion of better and more thoughtful kinds of gardening; for I believe I am right in saying that it spread like an epidemic disease, and raged far and wide for nearly a quarter of a century.
Its worst form of all was the ”ribbon border,” generally a line of scarlet Geranium at the back, then a line of Calceolaria, then a line of blue Lobelia, and lastly, a line of the inevitable Golden Feather Feverfew, or what our gardener used to call Featherfew. Could anything be more tedious or more stupid? And the ribbon border was at its worst when its lines were not straight, but waved about in weak and silly sinuations.
And when bedding as a fas.h.i.+on was dead, when this false G.o.d had been toppled off his pedestal, and his wors.h.i.+ppers had been converted to better beliefs, in turning and rending him they often went too far, and did injustice to the innocent by professing a dislike to many a good plant, and renouncing its use. It was not the fault of the Geranium or of the Calceolaria that they had been grievously misused and made to usurp too large a share of our garden s.p.a.ces. Not once but many a time my visitors have expressed unbounded surprise when they saw these plants in my garden, saying, ”I should have thought that you would have despised Geraniums.” On the contrary, I love Geraniums. There are no plants to come near them for pot, or box, or stone basket, or for ma.s.sing in any sheltered place in hottest suns.h.i.+ne; and I love their strangely-pleasant smell, and their beautiful modern colourings of soft scarlet and salmon-scarlet and salmon-pink, some of these grouping beautifully together. I have a s.p.a.ce in connection with some formal stonework of steps, and tank, and paved walks, close to the house, on purpose for the summer placing of large pots of Geranium, with sometimes a few Cannas and Lilies. For a quarter of the year it is one of the best things in the garden, and delightful in colour. Then no plant does so well or looks so suitable in some earthen pots and boxes from Southern Italy that I always think the best that were ever made, their shape and well-designed ornament traditional from the Middle Ages, and probably from an even more remote antiquity.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GERANIUMS IN NEAPOLITAN POTS.]
There are, of course, among bedding Geraniums many of a bad, raw quality of colour, particularly among cold, hard pinks, but there are so many to choose from that these can easily be avoided.
I remember some years ago, when the bedding fas.h.i.+on was going out, reading some rather heated discussions in the gardening papers about methods of planting out and arranging various tender but indispensable plants. Some one who had been writing about the errors of the bedding system wrote about planting some of these in isolated ma.s.ses. He was pounced upon by another, who asked, ”What is this but bedding?” The second writer was so far justified, in that it cannot be denied that any planting in beds is bedding. But then there is bedding and bedding--a right and a wrong way of applying the treatment. Another matter that roused the combative spirit of the captious critic was the filling up of bare s.p.a.ces in mixed borders with Geraniums, Calceolarias, and other such plants. Again he said, ”What is this but bedding? These are bedding plants.” When I read this it seemed to me that his argument was, These plants may be very good plants in themselves, but because they have for some years been used wrongly, therefore they must not now be used rightly! In the case of my own visitors, when they have expressed surprise at my having ”those horrid old bedding plants” in my garden, it seemed quite a new view when I pointed out that bedding plants were only pa.s.sive agents in their own misuse, and that a Geranium was a Geranium long before it was a bedding plant! But the discussion raised in my mind a wish to come to some conclusion about the difference between bedding in the better and worse sense, in relation to the cases quoted, and it appeared to me to be merely in the choice between right and wrong placing--placing monotonously or stupidly, so as merely to fill the s.p.a.ce, or placing with a feeling for ”drawing” or proportion. For I had very soon found out that, if I had a number of things to plant anywhere, whether only to fill up a border or as a detached group, if I placed the things myself, carefully exercising what power of discrimination I might have acquired, it looked fairly right, but that if I left it to one of my garden people (a thing I rarely do) it looked all nohow, or like bedding in the worst sense of the word.
[Ill.u.s.tration: s.p.a.cE IN STEP AND TANK-GARDEN FOR LILIES, CANNAS, AND GERANIUMS.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: HYDRANGEAS IN TUBS, IN A PART OF THE SAME GARDEN.]
Even the better ways of gardening do not wholly escape the debasing influence of fas.h.i.+on. Wild gardening is a delightful, and in good hands a most desirable, pursuit, but no kind of gardening is so difficult to do well, or is so full of pitfalls and of paths of peril. Because it has in some measure become fas.h.i.+onable, and because it is understood to mean the planting of exotics in wild places, unthinking people rush to the conclusion that they can put any garden plants into any wild places, and that that is wild gardening. I have seen woody places that were already perfect with their own simple charm just muddled and spoilt by a reckless planting of garden refuse, and heathy hillsides already sufficiently and beautifully clothed with native vegetation made to look lamentably silly by the planting of a nurseryman's mixed lot of exotic Conifers.
In my own case, I have always devoted the most careful consideration to any bit of wild gardening I thought of doing, never allowing myself to decide upon it till I felt thoroughly a.s.sured that the place seemed to ask for the planting in contemplation, and that it would be distinctly a gain in pictorial value; so there are stretches of Daffodils in one part of the copse, while another is carpeted with Lily of the Valley. A cool bank is covered with Gaultheria, and just where I thought they would look well as little jewels of beauty, are spreading patches of Trillium and the great yellow Dog-tooth Violet. Besides these there are only some groups of the Giant Lily. Many other exotic plants could have been made to grow in the wooded ground, but they did not seem to be wanted; I thought where the copse looked well and complete in itself it was better left alone.
But where the wood joins the garden some bold groups of flowering plants are allowed, as of Mullein in one part and Foxglove in another; for when standing in the free part of the garden, it is pleasant to project the sight far into the wood, and to let the garden influences penetrate here and there, the better to join the one to the other.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MULLEIN (VERBASc.u.m PHLOMOIDES) AT THE EDGE OF THE FIR WOOD.]