Читать книгу A Year in a Lancashire Garden - Henry Brighton - Страница 2

Introductory – The House – The Latest Flowers – The Arbutus – Chrysanthemums – Fallen Leaves – Planting – The Apple-room – The Log-house – Christmas.

December 3.– These notes are written for those who love gardens as I do, but not for those who have a professional knowledge of the subject; and they are written in the hope that it may not be quite impossible to convey to others some little of the delight, which grows (more certainly than any bud or flower) from the possession and management of a garden. I cannot, of course, by any words of mine, give the hot glow of colour from a bed of scarlet Ranunculus with the sun full upon it, or bring out the delicious scent of those double Tuberoses, which did so well with me this autumn; but I can at least speak of my plans and projects, tell what I am doing, and how each month I succeed or fail, – and thus share with others the uncertainty, the risks and chances, which are in reality the great charm of gardening. And then, again, gardening joins itself, in a thousand ways, with a thousand associations, to books and literature, and here, too, I shall have much to say.

Lancashire is not the best possible place for a garden, and to be within five miles of a large town is certainly no advantage. We get smoke on one side, and salt breezes on another, and, worst of all, there comes down upon us every now and then a blast, laden with heavy chemical odours, which is more deadly than either smoke or salt. Still we are tolerably open, and in the country. As I sit writing at my library window, I see, beyond the lawn, field after field, until at last the eye rests on the spire of a church three miles away.

A long red-gabled house, with stone facings, and various creepers trained round it, – a small wood (in which there is a rookery) screening us from a country road, and from the west, – lawns with some large trees and several groups of evergreens, – and the walled garden, the outer garden, and the orchard; – it is to these that I invite you. Exclusive of meadow-land there are only some four acres, but four acres are enough for many gardening purposes, and for very great enjoyment.

These are certainly what the American poet Bryant calls "the melancholy days, the saddest in the year." The late autumn flowers are over; – the early spring ones are still buried under the soil. I could only find this morning a single blighted monthly Rose, a Wallflower or two, an uneasy-looking Polyanthus, and some yellow Jasmine against the house – and that was all. Two days of early frost had killed the rest. Oddly enough, however, a small purple flower caught my eye on the mixed border; it was a Virginian Stock, – but what it was doing at this unwonted season who can say? Then, of course, the Arbutus is still in bloom, as it has been for the last two months, and very beautiful it is. There is a large bush of it just as you enter the walled garden, and, though the pink clusters of blossom are now past their best, they are more welcome than ever in the present dearth of flowers. Can any one tell me why my Arbutus does not fruit? It has only borne one single berry in the last four years; and yet the Arbutus fruits abundantly in other places in Lancashire, and at Lytham, close to the sea, I saw clusters of berries only the other day. Sometimes I fancy there is a better chance of the fruit setting if the pollen is from another tree, and I have lately planted a second Arbutus for the experiment. I am very fond of the Arbutus; it carries me back to the days of Horace, for we remember how his goats, wandering along the lower slopes of Lucretilis, would browse upon the thickets of Arbutus that fringed its side.

Lastly, the Chrysanthemums are in flower, though not in the inner garden. Some I have tended and trained, and they are now looking handsome enough in the porch and vestibule of the house. Some I have planted, and allowed to grow as they like, in front of the shrubbery borders; these have failed very generally with me this year – they look brown and withered, and the blooms are small, and the stems long and ragged, while many have entirely disappeared. The best of them all is Bob, with his bright, red, merry face, only surpassed by a trained Julia Lagravière in the porch. Another favourite Chrysanthemum of mine is the Fleur de Marie, with its large white discs, all quilled inside and feathered round the edge. Fastened up against a wall, I have seen it, year after year, a mass of splendid snowy blossom. The Chrysanthemum has three merits above almost every flower. It comes in the shortest and darkest days; it blooms abundantly in the smoke of the largest cities; it lasts longer than any flower when cut and put into water. If flowers have their virtues, the virtue of the Chrysanthemum is its unselfish kindliness.

In the outer garden, we have been busy with the fallen leaves, brushing them away from the walks and lawn, leaving them to rot in the wood, digging them into the shrubbery borders. This work is finished now, and we have swept up a great stack for future use at the end of two years. The Beech and the Oak leaves we (in opposition to some authorities) hold to be the most valuable, but of course we cannot keep them distinct from the rest. These fallen leaves – of which we make our loam for potting purposes – what endless moralities they have occasioned! The oldest and the youngest poets speak of them. It is Homer, who compares the generations of men to the generations of the leaves, as they come and go, flourish and decay, one succeeding the other, unresting and unceasingly. It is Swinburne, who says in his poems —

During this open weather we have been getting on with our planting. Those beds of Rhododendrons just under the drawing-room windows have become too thick. They are all good sorts – John Waterer, Lady Emily Cathcart, and the rest – and must have sufficient room. We move a number of them to the other side of the house, opposite the front door, where till now there has been a bed of the common Rhododendrons, and this in turn we plant as a fresh bed elsewhere.

There will be now some space to spare in the hybrid beds, and I shall plant in them a number of roots of the Lilium candidum – the dear old white Lily of cottage gardens. They will come up each year from between the Rhododendrons, and will send their sweet subtle odour through the open windows into the house. And as I write I am told of a recipe showing how, in the Wortlore of old, the firm white petals were esteemed of use. You must gather them while still fresh, place them unbroken in a wide-necked bottle, packed closely and firmly together, and then pour in what brandy there is room for. In case of cut or bruise no remedy, I am told, is more efficacious, and certainly none more simple.

December 23.– The weather is still mild and open. We have had three days' sharp frost, but it soon passed, and, while it lasted, it spared even the Chrysanthemums. "Bob" looks better than ever. During the frost was the time to look over the Apple-room, the Mushroom-bed, and the Log-house.

The Pears we are now using are the Winter Nelis, which I believe is known also as the Bonne de Malines. It is a capital Pear at this season of the year, and in these parts, and trained on my south-west walls, bears well, though the trees are young. I only planted them some four years ago, and, as all the world knows, —

The Mushrooms are late this year; the spawn appeared less good than usual, and I expected a total failure, but, after all, there is promise of a dish for Christmas Day. I do not care to grow Mushrooms when the green vegetables are in full glory but now they are very welcome.

As for the Log-house, it is full. We have cut down several trees, and huge Yule logs lie in heaps, ready for the hall fire. We shall want them before the winter is over. If Horace had to say to Thaliarchus in Italy (this is Lord Denman's version) —

surely in these northern latitudes, and in this dearth of coal, the advice is doubly seasonable. And then a log fire is so charming. It does more than warm and blaze – it glows and sparkles. But Mr. Warner, the American, has just given us in his Backlog Studies long pages about wood-fires, and I need only refer to that very pleasant little book. One quotation, however, I will give: —

"We burn in it Hickory wood, cut long. We like the smell of this aromatic forest timber and its clear flame. The Birch is also a sweet wood for the hearth, with a sort of spiritual flame, and an even temper – no snappishness. Some prefer the Elm, which holds fire so well; and I have a neighbour who uses nothing but Apple-tree wood – a solid, family sort of wood, fragrant also, and full of delightful associations. But few people can afford to burn up their fruit-trees."

But besides the dead wood, we have just cut our fresh Christmas boughs. Up against an outhouse I have an immense Ivy, almost as large as one you see growing up some old castle: it spreads along the wall, covering it all over on both sides; then it climbs up a second wall at right angles to the first, and throws its trailing branches down to the very ground: and now they are one mass of blossom.

It is from this ivy that we gather our best Christmas greenery; but there are also cuttings from the Box, Yew, and Holly; – and one variegated Holly has been beautiful, for its mottled leaves have in some sprays become of a perfectly clear and creamy white – the colour of fine old ivory. Mistletoe does not grow with us, and we have to buy it in the market of our town. By the way, how strangely the idea of an English Mistletoe bough now associates itself with that very uncomfortable Italian story of the bride and the oaken chest. How curious, too, that, in this country at least, the memory of poor Ginevra is due not to Rogers's poem, but to Haynes Bayly's ballad.

To-morrow will be Christmas Eve, and to-morrow (so the legend says), in the vale of Avalon, – at the old abbey, where King Arthur was buried and St. Dunstan lived – "outbuds the Glastonbury Thorn" – the sacred Thorn, which sprang from the staff St. Joseph planted there. Unhappily no such Thorns grow in my Lancashire garden.