THE end of June and beginning of July—when the days are hot and long, and the earth is warm, and our summer flowers are in fullest mass and beauty—what a time of gladness it is, and of that full and thankful delight that is the sure reward for the labour and careful thoughtfulness of the last autumn and winter, and of the present earlier year!
The gardens where this reward comes in fullest measure are perhaps those modest ones of small compass where the owner is the only gardener, at any rate as far as the flowering plants are concerned; where he thinks out good schemes of plant companionship; of suitable masses of form and stature; of lovely colour-combination; where, after the day’s work, comes the leisurely stroll, when every flower greets and is greeted as a close friend, and all make willing offering of what they have of scent and loveliness in grateful return for the past loving labour.
This is the high tide time of the summer flowers. It may be a week or two earlier or later according to the district, for our small islands have climatic diversities such as can only be matched within the greater part of the whole area of middle Europe, though inclining to a temperate average. For the Myrtle of the Mediterranean is quite hardy in the South and South-West, and Ivy and Gorse, neither of which is hardy in North and Middle Germany, are, with but few exceptions, at home everywhere. Given, therefore, a moderately good soil, fair shelter and a true love of flowers, there will be such goodly masses as those shown in the pictures.
Advisedly is the word “true” lover of flowers used, for it is now fashionable to like flowers, and much of it is pretence only. The test is to ascertain whether the person professing devotion to a garden works in it personally, or in any way likes it well enough to take a great deal of trouble about it. To those who know, the garden speaks of itself, for it clearly reflects individual thought and influence; and it is in these lesser gardens that, with rare and happy exceptions, the watchful care and happy invention of the beneficent individuality stamps itself upon the place.
ORANGE LILIES AND LARKSPUR
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
MR. GEORGE C. BOMPAS
There is nothing more interesting to one of these ardent and honest workers than to see the garden of another. Plants that had hitherto been neglected or overlooked are seen used in ways that had never been thought of, and here will be found new combinations of colour that had never been attempted, and methods of use and treatment differing in some manner to those that had been seen before.
There is nothing like the true gardening for training the eye and mind to the habit of close observation; that precious acquirement that invests every country object both within and without the garden’s bounds with a living interest, and that insensibly builds up that bulk of mentally noted incident or circumstance that, taken in and garnered by that wonderful storehouse the brain, seems there to sort itself, to distribute, to arrange, to classify, to reduce into order, in such a way as to increase the knowledge of something of which there was at first only a mental glimpse; so to build up in orderly structure a well-founded knowledge of many of those things of every-day out-door life that adds so greatly to its present enjoyment and later usefulness.
So it comes about that some of us gardeners, searching for ways of best displaying our flowers, have observed that whereas it is best, as a general rule, to mass the warm colours (reds and yellows) rather together, so it is best to treat the blues with contrasts, either of direct complementary colour, or at any rate with some kind of yellow, or with clear white. So that whereas it would be less pleasing to put scarlet flowers directly against bright blue, and whereas flowers of purple colouring can be otherwise much more suitably treated, the juxtaposition of the splendid blues of the perennial Larkspurs with the rich colour of the orange Herring Lily (Lilium croceum) is a bold and grand assortment of colour of the most satisfactory effect.
This fine Lily is one of those easiest to grow in most gardens. The true flower-lovers, as defined above, take the trouble to find out which are the Lilies that will suit their particular grounds; for it is generally understood that the soil and conditions of any one garden are not likely to suit a large number of different kinds of these delightful plants. Four or five successful kinds are about the average, and the owner is lucky if the superb White Lily is among them. But Lilies are so beautiful, so full of character, so important among other flowers or in places almost by themselves, that, when it is known which are the right ones to grow, those kinds should be well and rather largely used.
The garden in which these fine groups were painted has a good loamy soil, such as, with good gardening, grows most hardy flowers well, and therefore the grand White Lily also thrives. A few of the Lilies like peat, such as the great Auratum, and the two lovely pink ones, Krameri and Rubellum. But the garden of strong loam should never be without the White Lily, the Orange Lily, and the Tiger Lily, an autumn flower that seems to accommodate itself to any soil. The Orange Lilies are grandly grown by the Dutch nurserymen in many varieties, under the names bulbiferum, croceum, and davuricum, and their price is so moderate that it is no extravagance to buy them in fair quantity.
Flowers of pure scarlet colour are so little common among hardy perennials that it seems a pity that the brilliant Lilium chalcedonicum of Greece, Palestine, and Asia Minor, and its ally L. pomponium, the Scarlet Martagon of Northern Italy, should be so seldom seen in gardens. They are some of the most easily grown, and are not dear to buy. Another Lily that should not be forgotten and is easy to grow in strong soils is the old Purple Martagon; not a bright-coloured flower, but so old a plant of English gardens that in some places it has escaped into the woods. The white variety is very beautiful, the colour an ivory white, and the flower of a waxy texture. They are the Imperial Martagon, or Great Mountain Lily of the old writers; the scarlet pomponium, of the same shaped flower, was their Martagon Pompony. The name “pompony,” no doubt, came from the tightly rolled-back petals giving the flower something of the look of the flattened melons of the Cantaloupe kind, with their deep longitudinal furrows; the old name of these being “Pompion.” Another name for this Lily was the Red Martagon of Constantinople. It is so named by that charming old writer Parkinson, who gives evidence of its popularity and former frequency in gardens in these words: “The Red Martagon of Constantinople is become so common everywhere, and so well known to all lovers of these delights, that I shal seem unto them to lose time, to bestow many lines upon it; yet because it is so fair a flower, and was at the first so highly esteemed, it deserveth his place and commendations, howsoever increasing the plenty hath not made it dainty.”
WHITE LILIES AND YELLOW MONKSHOOD
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
MR. HERBERT D. TURNER
One more of the Lilies, indispensable for loveliness, should be grown wherever it is found possible. This is the Nankeen Lily (L. testaceum). It is a flower as mysterious as it is beautiful. It is not found wild, and is considered to be a hybrid between the White Lily and the Scarlet Martagon. Whether it occurred naturally, or whether it was the deliberate work of some unknown benefactor to horticulture, will now never be known; we can only be thankful that by some happy agency we have this Lily of mixed parentage, one of the most beautiful in cultivation. The name Nankeen Lily nearly, but not exactly, describes its colour, for a suspicion of pinkish warmth is added to the tender buff-colour usually so named.
Many other Lilies may be grown in different gardens, but the tenderer kinds from Eastern Asia are not for the hardy flower-border, and the vigorous American species have not yet been with us long enough to be familiar as flowers of old English gardens.
A July garden would not show its true character without some masses of the stately blue perennial Larkspurs. No garden plant has been more widely cultivated within the last fifty years, and our nurserymen have produced a large range of beautiful varieties. They have, perhaps, gone a little too far in some directions. The desire to produce something that can be called a novelty often makes growers forget that what is wanted is the thing that is most beautiful, rather than something merely exceptionally abnormal, to be gaped at in wonderment for perhaps one season, and above all for the purpose of being blazoned forth in the trade list. The true points to look for in these grand flowers are pure colour, whether light, medium or dark, fine stature and a well-filled but not overcrowded spike. There are some pretty double flowers, where the individual bloom loses its normal shape and becomes flattened, but the single is the truer form. They are so easily raised from seed that good varieties may be grown at home, when, if space may be allowed for a line of seedlings in the trial-ground, it is pleasant to watch what they will bring forth. Such a good old kind as the one named “Cantab” is a capital seed-bearer, and will give many handsome plants. They must be carefully observed at flowering time, and any of poor or weedy habit in their bloom thrown away. Some will probably have interrupted spikes, that is to say, the spike will have some flowers below and then a bare interval, with more flowers above. This is a fault that should not be tolerated.
The Monkshoods (Aconitum) are related to the Larkspurs (Delphinium); indeed, it is a common thing to hear them confused and the name of one used for the other. It is easy to understand how this may be, for the leaves are much alike in shape, and both genera bear hooded flowers on tall spikes, mostly of blue and purple colours. For ordinary garden knowledge it may be remembered that Monkshood has a smooth leaf and that the colour is a purplish blue, the bluest of those commonly in cultivation being the late-flowering Aconitum japonicum, and that the true pure blues are those of the perennial Larkspurs, whose leaves are downy.
The great Delphiniums love a strong, rich loamy soil, rather damp than dry, and plenty of nourishment.
There is a handsome Monkshood with pale yellow flowers that is well used in the garden of the White Lilies, and most happily in their near companionship. It is Aconitum Lycoctonum; a plant of Austria and the Tyrol. The widely-branched racemes of pale luminous bloom are thrown out in a graceful manner, in pleasant contrast with the equally graceful but quite different upright carriage of the White Lily. The handsome dark green polished leaves of this fine Aconite are also of much value; persisting after the bloom is over till quite into the late autumn.
Many of the charming members of the Bell-flower family are fine things in the flower-border. The best of all for general use is perhaps the well-known Campanula persicifolia, with its slender upright stems and its numbers of pretty bells, both blue and white. There are double kinds, but the doubling, though in some cases it makes a good enough flower, changes the true character so much that it is a Bell-flower no longer; and we think that a Bell-flower should be a bell, and should hang and swing, and not be made into a flattened flower set rather tightly on an ungraceful, thickened stem.
PURPLE CAMPANULA
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
MISS BEATRICE HALL
Another beautiful Campanula is C. latifolia, especially the white-flowered form. It is not only a first-rate flower, but it gives that pleasant impression of wholesome prosperity that is so good to see. The tall, pointed spike of large milk-white bells is of fine form, and the distinctly-toothed leaves are in themselves handsome. Like all the Bell-flowers, the bloom is cut into six divisions—“lobes of the corolla,” botanists call them. Each division is sharply pointed and recurved or rolled back after the manner of many of the Lilies. This fine Campanula is not only a good plant for the flower-border, but also for half-shady places in quiet nooks where the garden joins woodland, in the case of those fortunate gardens that have such a desirable frontier-land; the sort of place where the instinct of the best kind of gardener will prompt him to plant, or rather to sow, the white Foxglove, and to plant the white French Willow (Epilobium).
Nothing is more commonly seen in gardens than wide-spread neglected patches of Campanula grandis. The picture shows it better grown. It spreads quickly and in many gardens flowers only sparingly, because the tufts should have been oftener divided. It is perhaps the most commonly grown of all, and though, as the picture shows, it can be more worthily used than is ordinarily done, it is by no means so pretty a plant as others of its family.
In good soils in our southern counties the tall and beautiful Chimney Campanula (C. pyramidalis), commonly grown in pots for the conservatory, should be largely used in the borders; it also loves a place in a wall joint. It is a plant that we are so used to see in a pot that we are apt to forget its great merit in the open ground.
Of the smaller Bell-flowers, C. carpatica, both blue and white, is one of the very best of garden plants; delightful from the moment when the first tuft of leaves comes out of the ground in spring till its full blooming time in middle summer. No plant is better for the front edge of a border, especially where the edge is of stone; though it is just tall enough to show up well over a stout box-edging.
The biennial Canterbury Bells are well known and in every garden. Their only disadvantage is that they flower in the early summer and then have to be cleared away, leaving gaps that may be difficult to fill. The careful gardener, foreseeing this, arranges so that their near neighbours in the border shall be such as can be led or trained over to take their places. It should not be forgotten that the Canterbury Bell is an admirable rock or wall plant, where the size of a rock-wall admits of anything so large. The wild plant from which it came has its home in rocky clefts in Southern Italy.
