Читать книгу The Book of Old-Fashioned Flowers - Harry Roberts - Страница 6

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Strictly, of course, the term is indefinite, for old-fashioned flowers and old-fashioned gardens mean to different people different things. Probably to most people—at all events to the present writer—old-fashioned gardening means that system which is in direct opposition to prim geometric beds and to the imitation of carpet patterns by arrangement of flowers. By an old-fashioned garden, the present writer means an informal "garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permit to be noursed up," as Parkinson put it; and by old-fashioned flowers he means sweet williams and gilly flowers, mignonette, sweet peas, roses and honeysuckle, "daffodils, fritillaries, jacinthes, saffron-flowers, lilies, flower-deluces, tulipas, anemones, French cowslips or bearseares, and such other flowers, very beautifull, delightfull and pleasant." After the severe, monotonous, formal arrangements which still too often constitute the gardens around our finest houses, how interesting and restful it is to stroll round a delightful garden such as Canon Ellacombe's "Vicarage Garden" at Bitton, where the shape of the beds or borders is not prearranged, where all the soil is occupied, where every plant looks healthy and at home, where every yard brings one a surprise and a fresh interest, where the old walls have growing from their crevices such plants as the Cheddar Pink, Sedums and Sempervivums; where, too, every plant in its glory hides the decay of its predecessor in bloom and shelters the birth of its successor.

There is a class—and a very large class—of folks who are so constituted that continual prize or applause hunting are essentials to happiness. For such, the topiary-victimised trees, the glaring carpet beds, and the flower show are useful and comparatively harmless instruments for the indulgence of their little weaknesses. But it goes sorely against the grain to give to such the honourable and historic title of gardener, just as one hesitates to describe as a gardener the issuer of that curious "catalogue of greens" which Pope satirically described in No. 173 of The Guardian:—

"Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm; Eve and the serpent very flourishing. Noah's Ark in holly, the ribs a little damaged for want of water.

"The tower of Babel not yet finished.

"St George in Box; his arm scarce strong enough, but will be in a condition to stick the dragon by next April.

"A green dragon of the same; with a tail of ground-ivy for the present.

"N.B.—Those two are not to be sold separately.

"Edward the Black Prince in Cyprus....

"A Queen Elizabeth in Phyllirea, a little inclining to the green sickness, but of full growth.

"An old maid of honour in wormwood.

"A topping Ben Jonson in Laurel.

"Divers eminent modern poets in bays."

As a matter of fact, what we understand as old-fashioned gardening has never been a fashion at all. When Addison wrote in The Spectator that he would "rather look upon a tree in all its luxuriancy and diffusion of boughs and branches, than when it is cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure," and that he fancied that "an orchard in flower looks infinitely more delightful than all the little labyrinths of the most finished parterre," he was declaiming against—not with—the fashion of his day. In truth there is no escape from the fact that in old times, as they are at present, real lovers of plants and of flowers for their own sakes were few indeed. In the time of Elizabeth and thenabouts, however, the gardening spirit seems to have been purer and more wholesome than during the succeeding centuries. John Lyly, for instance, was, in sentiment at least, a genuine "old-fashioned" gardener:—"Heere be faire Roses, sweete Violets, fragrant Primroses, heere wil be Jilly-floures, Carnations, sops in wine, sweet Johns, and what may either please you for sight, or delight you with savour." At that time also was written what is perhaps the greatest or at any rate one of the most important pronouncements on gardening ever written—the essay "Of Gardens," by Lord Bacon. Here, indeed, is the real touch, the genuine gardening spirit: "I do hold it in the Royal Ordering of Gardens, there ought to be Gardens for all the Months in the year, in which, severally, things of Beauty may be then in season;" and again, "because the Breath of Flowers is far Sweeter in the Air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of Musick), than in the Hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that Delight, than to know what be the Flowers and Plants that do best perfume the Air. Roses, Damask and Red, are fast Flowers of their Smells, so that you may walk by a whole Row of them and find nothing of their sweetness; yea, though it be in a morning Dew. Bays likewise yield no smell as they grow, Rosemary little, nor Sweet-Marjoram. That, which above all others, yields the sweetest smell in the air, is the violet, especially the white double Violet, which comes twice a year, about the middle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the Musk Rose, then the Strawberry Leaves dying with a most excellent Cordial Smell. Then the Flower of the Vines; it is a little Dust, like the Dust of a Bent, which grows upon the cluster at the first coming forth. Then Sweet-Briar, then Wall-Flowers, which are very delightful to be set under a Parlour, or lower Chamber Window. Then Pinks, especially the Matted Pink, and Clove Gilly-Flower. Then the Flowers of the Lime-Tree. Then the Honey-Suckles, so they be somewhat afar off.... But those which perfume the Air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being Trodden upon and Crushed, are three: that is Burnet, Wild-Time, and Water-Mints. Therefore you are to set whole Alleys of them, to have the Pleasure when you walk or tread." The essence of "old-fashioned" gardening is here expressed.

Our modern "florists" are wont to sneer at the lack of variety possessed by the old gardeners, but they must be curiously unfamiliar with the writings of such men as Gerard, Gilbert and Parkinson. To give but one or two examples, the last named writer, in his "Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris," gives a descriptive list of twelve distinct varieties of Fritillaries, eight varieties of Grape-Hyacinths, and no less than twenty-one varieties of Primroses and Cowslips, whilst of Lilies and of Roses the kinds described are even more numerous.

The greatest joy which a garden can yield is a feeling of restfulness and peace, a feeling which no garden of staring beds and ostentatious splendour can afford, but which is yielded—as by nothing else in the world—by a garden of happy, homely, old-fashioned flowers.

To most people, and more particularly to most women, one of the chief uses or functions of a garden is to provide flowers to be cut for the decoration of rooms. But I hold that a flower cut from its plant and placed in a vase is as a scalp on the walls of a wigwam—a trophy showing how one more beautiful plant has been defeated and victimised by its powerful and tasteless owner. The cut flower is no longer part of a manifestation of the will of nature; rather it is a slave—beautiful, it may be, but branded and soul-destroyed.

Regarded as decoration, I consider cut flowers in a house much as fashion now looks on shell ornaments, or picture-frames made of acorns, as things inappropriate and childish. Of course, in a town there is some excuse for them, for even cut flowers carry the mind to beautiful associated conditions; but cut flowers in the country seem ludicrously like lumber, just as bedsteads and toilet-services and cruet-stands placed in a garden would be lumber too.

The love of cut flowers is really but another manifestation of the spirit which hankers after "yews carved into dragons, pagodas, marmosets," and the other tree-monsters scoffed at by Rousseau, who added that he was convinced that "the time is at hand, when we shall no longer have in gardens anything that is found in the country; we shall tolerate neither plants nor shrubs; we shall only like porcelain flowers, baboons, arbour-work, sand of all colours, and fine vases full of nothing."

Indeed, there is in many quarters even now a growing desire for the kind of "new garden," which old William Lawson advocated: "Your Gardiner can frame your lesser wood to the shape of men armed in the field, ready to give battell: or swift running Greyhounds: or of well sented and true running Hounds, to chase the Deere, or hunt the Hare. This kinde of hunting shall not waste your corne, nor much your coyne. Mazes well framed a man's height, may perhaps make your friend wander in gathering of berries, till he cannot recover himselfe without your helpe."

Of course, the cutting of flowers is a long way from this; still it is difficult to see where a line can be drawn once the worship of "gardeners' gardens" has begun.

Through the open windows of house or cottage the eyes should be able to feast on the beauty of freely growing flowers quite as easily as if they were cut and stuck in glass or porcelain vase like so many heads of traitors on the city gates.

It has been said that all children are born scientists, but that only a small number of them ever pass on to the condition of artists; and it has always seemed to me that there is much truth in the statement. Children are ever putting the eternal "why?" to the great confusion of their parents, pastors, and masters; and it is the curious, the gigantic, the rare, which always calls forth their attention and admiration. Struwelpeter is more to a child than all the beauties of a Charles Robinson, and to few men or women is it given to derive as much pleasure from beauty as from that which is usually called "interesting." Hence, the ordinary criticisms of gardens; hence, also, the usual aims of gardeners. So many people desire the gaudy, or the unique, or the curious, that we are apt to look upon gardens merely as appliances for the production of quaint or monstrous flowers.

The analysis of beauty has ever a dissecting-room-feel about it; still, as he who would become a skilful surgeon must be first a practical anatomist, and as he who would be a painter must first study his materials and the "dodges" of his craft, so must the would-be artist in gardening dissect the beauty of perfect gardens, and study such apparently dull materials as earth and manure, and practical garden books.

I have said that the beauty of an old-fashioned garden is due largely to the feeling of repose and settled-down-ness which it yields. Every plant looks as though it "belongs" (as we say in Cornwall) to be where it is, as though it always was there, and as though there is no intention of shifting it in a week or two to some glass-house, store-room, or other site. The plants in most gardens look as though they have merely come to pay an afternoon call, dressed exactly à la mode, speaking always "cumeelfo"—like the people of Troy Town, and elsewhere—giving one the certain knowledge that they will only say the right thing, look the right thing, and leave at the right time, unregretted and unmissed. The "comfortably-at-home" effect is produced mainly by three causes—firstly, the presence of abundant deciduous trees and shrubs, giving infinitely varied effects of light and shade; secondly, the arrangement of the plants in bold groups of single species; and, thirdly, the provision of each separate plant with depth of suitable soil, and space to develop its individual form. There is plenty of background, and not too much episode.

Country people often think that the way to enjoy London is to spend day and night in one continuous round of "sight" seeing. In like manner, people often have an idea that the perfect garden is a continuous sheet of wonderful flowers. How great is the fallacy contained in this idea it should be needless to point out. Leaf and stem, light and shade and fragrance, these are quite as essential parts of a garden as are the "blooms" of the gardening showman.

An eye for beauty is largely a product of training and experience. A soul and a brain there must be as a basis, but "taste" is to a large extent cultivated. One must have read much before one is able to appreciate the style of a Ruskin or a Pater, a Maeterlinck or a Le Gallienne; one must have studied many pictures before being able to realise the beauty of the works of the great artists; and in like manner one must needs have loved and watched plants long and steadfastly before the beauty of winter twig and summer leaf comes home to him.

Many a man with a garden looks upon winter as a season to be got through as soon as possible, as a season when nothing short of necessity shall drag him into the garden. I am sure that even in the very heart of December, one should find in the garden more of real beauty than ninety-nine gardens out of a hundred contain in June. I recall in particular one little heather path bordered by large bushes of blue-grey Lavender and green-grey Rosemary, in the bays being great Mullein plants and clumps of Pink and Alyssum. Ferns, Periwinkles, Holly, Satinleaf, Hellebores, Winter Aconites and Barberries are but a few of the plants which help to make this walk bright and pleasant even in the depths of winter; but most important of all in the Christmas display are the Furzes, single and double, than which, according to Mr Alfred Russell Wallace, the tropics can produce nothing more brilliant or more beautiful.

Continuous beauty all the year through, rather than a continuous display of flowers, is a goal at which gardeners might wisely aim, for not only is the result far more restful and suggestive of reserved force and becoming modesty, but also the individual plants are far more likely to have a fair chance of development at the hands of one who appreciates beautiful leaves and healthy growth, than when cultivated by one who looks at plants merely as flower-making machines.