THE Earl of Mayo’s residence in County Kildare, Ireland, lies a few miles distant from the small market town of Naas. The house is of classical design, built within the nineteenth century. Around it is extensive park-land that is pleasantly undulating, and is well furnished with handsome trees both grouped and standing singly. In the lower level is a large pool with Water-lilies, and natural banks fringed with reeds and the other handsome sub-aquatic vegetation that occurs wild in such places.
There was an older house at Palmerstown in former days, whose large walled kitchen garden remains. It is a lengthy parallelogram, divided in the middle into two portions, each nearly a square, by a fine old yew hedge with arches cut in it for the two walks that pass through. The paths are broad, and some width on each side has been planted as a flower border, giving ample space for the good cultivation and enjoyment of all the best of the hardy flowers, so willing to show their full growth and beauty in the soft genial climate of the sister island.
It is a place that shows at once the happy effect of wise and sure direction, for Lady Mayo is an accomplished gardener, and the inclosure abounds with evidences of fine taste and thoughtful intention. One length of border is given to Lavender and China Rose, always a delightful and most harmonious mixture. There is a length of some twenty yards of this pleasant combination—the picture shows one end—with a few groups of taller plants, such as Bocconia, behind. Fruit-trees, trained as espaliers, form the back of the border, or sometimes there is a hedge of Sweet Pea. Vegetables occupy the middle portions of the quarters. The flower-bordered paths pass across and across the middle space, with others about ten feet within the walls and parallel with them. Quite in the middle the path passes round a fountain basin, and there are four arches on which Roses and Clematis are trained.
Such flower borders give ample opportunity for the practising of good gardening. The task is the easier in that only one of the pairs of borders can be seen at a glance, and a definite scheme of colour progression can easily be arranged. Such schemes are well worth thinking out. The writer’s own experience favours a plan in which the borders begin with tender colourings of pale blue, white and pale yellow, with bluish foliage, passing on to the stronger yellows. These lead to orange, scarlet and strong blood-reds. The scale of colouring then returns gradually to the pale and cool colours.
It is by such simple means that the richest effects of colour are obtained, whether in a continuous border or in clump-shaped masses. A separate space of flower-border may also be well treated by the use of an even more restricted scheme of colouring. Purple and lilac flowers, with others of pink and white only, and foliage of grey and silvery quality, the darkest being such as that of Rosemary and Echinops, make a charming flower-picture, with a degree of pictorial value that any one who had not seen it worked out would scarcely think possible.
The right choice of treatment depends in great measure on the environment. When this, as at Palmerstown, consists of old walls and a grand hedge of venerable yews, a suitable frame is ready for the display of almost any kind of garden-picture.
The yews are ten feet high and six feet through. Over a seat one of them is cut into the form of a peacock. To the left of the green archway in the Lavender picture, the yew takes the form of the heraldic wild-cat, the Mayo crest. Outside the garden is a yew walk of untrimmed trees; they show in the picture to the right, over the wall. Here, in the heat of summer, the coolness and dim light are not only in themselves restful and delightful, but, after passing along the bright borders, where eye and brain become satiated with the brilliancy of light and colour, the cool retreat is doubly welcome, preparing them afresh for further appreciation of the flower-borders.