THOSE who know the Dean of Rochester,[A] either personally or by reputation, will know that where he dwells there will be a beautiful garden. His fame as a rosarian has gone throughout the length and breadth of Britain, and far beyond, and his practical activity in spreading and fostering a love of Roses must have been the means of gladdening many a heart, and may be reckoned as by no means the least among the many beneficent influences of his long and distinguished ministry.
A few days’ visit to Dean Hole’s own home at Caunton Manor, near Newark, will ever remain among the writer’s pleasantest memories. It must have been five and twenty years ago, and it was June, the time of Roses. To one whose home was on a poor sandy soil it was almost a new sight to see the best of Roses, splendidly grown and revelling in a good loam. Not that the credit was mainly due to the nature of the garden ground, for, as the Dean (then Canon Hole) points out in his delightful “Book about Roses,” the soil had to be made to suit his favourite flower. In this, or some one of his books, he feelingly describes how many of the visitors to his garden, seeing the splendid vigour of his Roses, at once ascribed it to the excellence of his soil. “Of course,” they said, “your flowers are magnificent, but then, you see, you have got such a soil for Roses.” “I should think I had got a soil for Roses,” was the reply, “didn’t I mix it all myself and take it there in a barrow?” I quote from memory, but this is the sense of this excellent lesson. The writer’s own experience is exactly the same. Of the quantities of garden visitors who have come—their number has had to be stringently limited of late—not one in twenty will believe that one loves a garden well enough to take a great deal of trouble about it.
In fact, it is only this unceasing labour and care and watchfulness; the due preparation according to knowledge and local experience; the looking out for signal of distress or for the time for extra nourishment, water, shelter or support, that produces the garden that satisfies any one with somewhat of the better garden knowledge; a knowledge that does not make for showy parterres or for any necessarily costly complications; rather, indeed, for all that is simplest, but that produces something that is apparent at once to the eye, and sympathetic to the mind, of the true garden-lover.
It must have been a painful parting from the well-loved Roses and the many other beauties of the Caunton garden, when the new duties of honourable advancement called Canon Hole from the old home to the Deanery of Rochester; from the pure air of Nottinghamshire to that of a town, with the added reek of neighbouring lime and cement works. But even here good gardening has overcome all difficulties, and though, when the air was more than usually loaded with the foul gases given off by these industries, the Dean would remark, with a flash of his characteristic humour, that Rochester was “a beautiful place—to get away from,” yet the Deanery garden is now full of Roses and quantities of other good garden flowers, all grandly grown and in the best of health. Roses are in fact rampant. A rough trellis, simply made of split oak after the manner of the hurdles used for folding sheep in the Midlands, but about six feet high, stands at the back of the main double flower-border. Rambling Roses and others of free-growing habit are loosely trained to this, their great heads of bloom hanging out every way with fine effect; each Rose is given freedom to show its own way of beauty, while the trellis gives enough support and guides the general line of the great hedge of Roses.
The Dean is not alone among the flowers, for Mrs. Hole is also one of the best of gardeners.
The picture shows a portion of a double flower-border where a curving path connects two others that are at different angles. In the distance, rising to a height of a hundred feet, is the grand old Norman keep; the rare Deptford Pink (Dianthus Armeria) grows in its masonry. The ancient city wall is one of the garden’s boundaries. Another old wall, that is within the garden, has been made the home of many a good rock-plant. On the left, in the picture, are masses of Poppies, Roses and White Lilies, with Alströmeria, Love-in-a-Mist, and Larkspurs, both annual and perennial; the background is of the soft, feathery foliage of Asparagus. The Roses are of all shapes; single and double; show Roses and garden Roses; standards, bushes and free-growing ramblers. On the right are more Larkspurs, Irises in seed-pod, Lavender, and some splendidly-grown Lilium szovitsianum, one of the grandest of Lilies, and, where it can be grown like this, one of the finest things that can be seen in a garden. Its tender lemon colouring has suffered in the reproduction, which makes it somewhat too heavy.
THE DEANERY GARDEN, ROCHESTER
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
MR. G. A. TONGE
The upper part of a greenhouse shows in the picture. It is sometimes impossible to keep such a structure out of sight, but one like this, of the plainest possible kind, is the least unsightly of its class. It is just an honest thing, for the needs of the garden and for a part of its owner’s pleasure. The fatal thing is when an attempt is made to render greenhouses ornamental, by the addition of fretted cast-iron ridges and fidgety finials. These ill-placed futilities only serve to draw attention to something which, by its nature, cannot possibly be made an ornament in a garden, while it is comparatively harmless if let alone, and especially if the wood-work is not painted white but a neutral grey. In all these matters of garden structures; seats, arbours and so forth, it is much best in a simple garden to keep to what is of modest and quiet utility. In the case of a large place, which presents distinct architectural features, it is another matter; for there such details as these come within the province of the architect.
[A] These lines were in print before the lamented death of Dean Hole.
