Читать книгу The Flower-Patch Garden Book - Flora Klickmann - Страница 4

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One of my London friends, a woman teacher, lives alone in a flat, aided by a daily domestic assistant, who leaves the flat before her employer’s return in the evening.

One day, as a present, the helper brought a flower-pot containing one leaf and a small root, taken from a plant she herself cherishes. Possibly she thought the flat could hardly be called a home without that particular ornament in the front window. Or she may have felt lonely, and wanted it there as company for herself. At any rate, she never fails to water it; and at intervals shares with it a penny packet of fertiliser bought for her own plant.

At the conclusion of her daily session, she invariably leaves a note on the kitchen table, reporting the outstanding events of the day. This was the bulletin left on one occasion:

“The man came to see the electrick meter. The cat has three kittens. I’ve fed the Asperdistrer.”

That note sums up many a woman’s day—routine duties small and large with, over all, a perennial craving for, and a desire to foster, beauty. Men may come, and kittens may go; but we continue our undaunted efforts to secure what stands to us for sheer beauty, even in the most unpropitious surroundings.

The poor “asperdistrer” has become a national joke; yet it often is representative of the better part of us—the desire for the loveliness of undiluted Nature, as distinct from the tawdry glitter of the town.

It is pathetic to see the way we who live in crowded cities hold out our hands for anything that will bring Nature nearer to us, though it be but dyed beech leaves or gilded cones.

It is true that we can go to magnificent Flower Shows in our big cities. This is a gain. We see the marvels produced by experts, and think how wonderful it would be if we, too, could own a garden or a greenhouse radiant with such blooms—while we are painfully aware that we can’t!

Yet in many cases I think it would be possible to do more in the flower-growing line than is being done; only we must divest our minds of the Flower Show effect, and get down to simpler beginnings.

The gorgeous Shows, despite their educational value, are positively hypnotic.

The sight of the wonderful specimens that are the result of years of care and selection, and bringing up by hand, often make us lose our heads, and we exclaim:

“Oh! I must have that!” (which is exactly what the grower hoped it would do!), forgetting that those choice varieties need specialised treatment as a rule, otherwise they will fail.

Fortunately, there are people still left in our happy islands, who, in addition to paying their taxes, can afford to give the choicest plants all the attention they require. But I am not writing for such. They don’t need garden books, because, for one thing, they seldom do any gardening. They are usually deprived of the joy of digging and planting, by the discouraging presence of head-gardeners and their assistants. One is sorry for such people if they really love dabbling in the earth.

I lived for some years next door to a millionaire—a real millionaire, who had risen from small means to wealth he scarcely knew how to spend. But he loved his huge garden, a hobby that enabled him to get rid of a fair amount of cash annually, because his head man always pointed out to him the expensive rarities at the Chelsea Shows, and saw to it that he bought them.

Unfortunately, though the millionaire was a man of firmness where his business was concerned, he never seemed to have the courage of his gardening opinions any day of the week, excepting Sundays—when the presiding dignitary of the estate was smoking a pipe peacefully in his kitchen at an out-of-sight lodge by the hammered-iron gate; and the underlings were absent. Then it was that the poor rich gentleman would step out cheerfully with a kneeling mat, a broken knife, and a basket, and prod away at any weed he could discover. His only sorrow, as he told us, was the fact that they were so hard to find. His men kept the place as tidy as a hospital.

We did wish our neighbour would notice that there were weeds enough to satisfy the most ardent enthusiast in our humbler domain. But he was entirely engrossed in searching for an erring blade of grass in his own.

For millionaires, the great Flower Shows hold no pitfalls. They can order whatever takes their fancy, with the comfortable knowledge that each plant, when it reaches them, can be pampered as much as it desires.

But people with lesser purses, and scant outside assistance, must proceed on more circumspect lines, and only order what they know they can rear.

Just as we have developed a wholesale labour-saving campaign indoors, with the reduction of servants, abolishing things that are no earthly use, and taking short cuts whenever possible, so we might easily simplify some of our gardening, when we have to do much of it ourselves, or supervise ignorance.

It is often possible to get gay results, with less expenditure of time than was thought essential in the past. The amateur should keep this in mind.

The modern flower-garden aims, as a rule, at colour effects—masses, or clumps, of vivid colour. It is immaterial what form the flowering surface takes—rock garden, herbaceous border, woodland vista—we want colour and still more colour.

This desire is a physical need. We require colour in our surroundings, just as we need flavour in our food. Of course we can exist in neutral or drab surroundings, just as we can exist on flavourless food. But human nature doesn’t thrive if deprived of colour, any more than if deprived of flavour.

The hideous outbreak of violent daubs and garish splashes, that called itself “Art,” after the war, and made our wall-papers and fabrics a series of nightmares, was actually a reaction, after the surfeit of khaki and the depressing coloration of our war-time surroundings. It was the wild orgy of people starving for colour, who, having at last got hold of a few paint-pots, flung the paint about, and indulged themselves crazily and unrestrainedly.

Happily, we are now recovering our sanity where colour in art and decoration is concerned, though this doesn’t mean that we need less; we need even more than in the past. It is a gain that our dress gets brighter as the years go on. Nowadays, middle-aged and elderly people will often wear light or vivid colours that would have amazed the early Victorians. But our ancestors didn’t need imported colour as we do. Nature provided them with handfuls of rainbow at every turn.

Now, alas! all too many of the hills that only half a century ago gleamed green and gold when the sun shone, or purple and blue in the shadows, are now smothered with unsightly small houses, grown dingy with soot and climate. Fields which were yellow with buttercups, or pink and purple with orchises, are now grime heaps, with factory chimneys belching poison. Brooks which were bordered with forget-me-nots, water-flags, and kingcups, are now repulsively edged with empty tins and such-like refuse, or more mercifully hidden away in drains. Woodlands that were carpeted with bluebells, or fringed with foxgloves, have now given place to the devastation of the jerry-builder. Even the sky—with its daily glory of sunrise and sunset, its immeasurable blue lying behind the white and grey cloud-banks—is blotted out in many places by a heavy pall of smoke.

Not everywhere, of course, has this desolation obliterated our heritage of beauty. But that appalling octopus—mechanised civilisation—extends its blighting shadow steadily and persistently as the years go on, depriving us more and more of the colour which is our rightful due, if mind and spiritual vision are to be kept healthily alert.

It is possible, however, to do much more than we are doing at present, to restore Nature’s colours to our land, even though we can’t put back the hands of the clock, and demolish the ugly buildings which have been allowed to disfigure what was once the loveliest of scenery. And the cultivation of individual flower-pots, no matter how small or unpromising, with individual gardens, is one sure method of helping to satisfy that intense love of colour that is born in us.

And we needn’t worry because our acreage is small.

There is such a distinct appeal in a little garden. The extensive borders, and lawns, and rockeries, and water gardens of great estates are impressive as well as delightful. One looks at them with awe, as well as admiration. But not with the sheer love that one feels at the sight of a flower-filled cottage garden, with blush roses by the door, and a crimson and yellow honeysuckle climbing up to the thatch.

A little garden can have a definite personality which is bound to be lacking in big estates when the work is in the hands of many different people.

There is a tendency, too, for gardens on a large scale, and in the possession of restless owners, to bristle with whatever characteristics chance to be the fashion at the moment. At one time pergolas seemed to possess the earth. But I fancy many people have by now discovered that these are not by any means all one’s fancy painted them, when the blossoms contrarily flourish out of sight at the top, with only straggly stems in view down below.

Of recent years there has been an extensive outcropping of sundials on “modern-antique” pillars, also ornamental well-heads, as a central motive, with paved paths around, radiating to various points of the compass. Also lily-ponds, mop-headed shrubs in tubs, white-wood garden furniture, and garden ornaments. All very charming and effective when well placed, but monotonous when encountered in nearly every garden. And often unsuitable when huddled together in the restricted area within a new-villa fencing!

It is a mistake to try to make a small garden a reduced replica of a large one. The cottager seldom does this. Instead she (and it is usually a “she”) plants what she likes, as she likes. She doesn’t clutter up the ground with extraneous matter, but sticks to growing things, the only ornament being the cat! She knows her plants individually; can give you the life history of each, with its likes and dislikes, its whims and vagaries. She tries to provide each with the soil and situation it prefers—one of the secrets of her success. And she allows no alien hand to meddle with her flower family; this secures their safety. Whether her borders be precise or haphazard, they reveal her personality if she be a true flower lover. It is this that makes many a cottage garden so attractive. We react to individuality.

Moral. If your flower garden is not large, keep to a very simple design. But whatever its size, plan it to suit yourself. Avoid what “everybody” is doing. Break away from all fashionable garden-tags, unless you desire them so keenly that you feel you can’t live without them! Be yourself in your garden. Let it represent your own ideas (so far as you can induce it to do so!), your own tastes and preferences.

If you do this, you will produce a much more interesting fragment of landscape than if you had copied some other person’s orthodox lay-out, and incorporated the fashionable garden features, merely because they are fashionable.

We feel the actual value of a small garden more than we do that of a big one. We are like the man who never said Grace when he had abundance, but said it regularly when poverty came.

And in any case, be the acreage great or small, our own gardening failures and mistakes often seem more interesting (to ourselves) than some of the successes of other people!