THROUGHOUT the length and breadth of England it would be hard to find borders of hardy flowers handsomer or in any way better done than those at Arley in Cheshire. The house, an old one, was much enlarged by the late Mr. R. E. Egerton-Warburton, and the making of the gardens, now come to their young maturity, was the happy work of many years of his life. Here we see the spirit of the old Italian gardening, in no way slavishly imitated, but wholesomely assimilated and sanely interpreted to fit the needs of the best kind of English garden of the formal type, as to its general plan and structure. It is easy to see in the picture how happily mated are formality and freedom; the former in the garden’s comfortable walls of living greenery with their own appropriate ornaments, and the latter in the grandly grown borders of hardy flowers.
The subject of the picture is the main feature in the garden plan. A path some fifteen feet wide, with grassy verges of ample width, and deep borders of hardy flowers. What is shown is about one fourth of the whole length. At the back of the right-hand border is the high old wall of the kitchen garden; on the left, as grand a wall of yew, ten feet high and five feet thick, its straight line pleasantly broken and varied by shaped buttresses of clipped yew, whose forms take that distinct light and shade, and strong variations of solidity of green colouring, that make the surfaces of our clipped English yew so valuable a ground-work for masses of brilliant flowers.
The same yew buttresses are against the wall on the right, placed symmetrically with the ones opposite. Near the end, as shown in the picture, the last pair of buttresses come forward the whole width of the border, each buttress ending in an important shaped finial to the front. Between these and the well-designed alcove in stone masonry that so satisfactorily ends the walk, is a space of turf, leading on the left, through an arch cut in the ten-foot-high yew hedge, to the bowling-green. Nothing can make a more effective shelter than such grand yew hedges; the solid wall itself is scarcely better. Even on the roughest days, with a storm of wind of destructive power outside, the space within is calm and sheltered, and the flowers escape that cruel battering from fierce blasts that add so much to the difficulty of gardening in exposed places. But the planting and thus providing this much-needed shelter is just good gardening, and when, in addition, it is done to a design of happy invention and true proportion, with just such refinements of detail and ornament as are suited to the garden’s calibre and the owner’s endowment, then, with the addition of splendid masses of good flowers grandly grown, do we find gardening at its best.
The time of year of this picture is in or near the second week of July, when the White Lily is at its finest, and the Orange Lily is in bloom, with the Blue Delphinium and many another good garden flower. One can see how all the best garden flowers are utilised here. There is the White Sidalcea at the front of the border, one of the many plants of the Mallow family that are so important in our borders; for our grand Hollyhocks are Mallows too. This White Sidalcea has much the same value as the large White Snapdragon, one good variety of which, the precursor of the many good large kinds now grown, was the only one of its kind at the time the picture was painted. Of late their numbers have greatly increased, and also their stature and the variety of their beautiful colourings, so that now they can be used as tall plants of great effect. Six feet two inches was the measurement of one grand spike of soft, rosy colouring in the writer’s own garden last autumn. These capital plants have been “fixed,” as gardeners say, in ranges of different heights; tall, intermediate, and the quite dwarf little cushions whose form is perhaps as little suited to the character of the plant as the foolish little dwarf Sweet Peas, that are only wilfully wanton, freakish distortions of a beautiful and graceful plant, whose duty it is to climb and bring its pretty blooms up to the level of our admiring eyes and appreciative noses. A good strong soil is shown by the well-being of the White Lily and Phlox, Sweet Williams and double Scarlet Potentilla. Carnations are largely grown in the borders; the great Orange Lily (L. croceum) has just given place to the White; Canterbury Bells are in grand masses, and the sturdier plants are interspersed with graceful fragilities, such as the long-spurred yellow Californian Columbine.
THE ROSE GARDEN, ARLEY
from the picture in the possession of
MRS. HUTH
To the left of the alcove an archway cut in the yew hedge leads to the bowling-green. This also is inclosed and sheltered by yew hedges. There is a terrace all round, from which it is pleasant to watch the game. Next to this, and following along the line of the yew hedge, is a square inclosure of turf, with a few clipped yews. This is a kind of ante-room to the rose-garden. High walls of yew are all around except to this garden, where they are low and shaped. The middle space of the rose-garden has beds concentrically arranged, leaving spandrils of beds of other shape. At the end is a garden-house, and a wide way out to lawn spaces with fine trees and flowering shrubs. A broad gravel walk at the boundary of the lawn, with a wide grass outer verge and the knee-high top of the wall of a sunk fence, that separates it from the park, leads leftwards to the house. From this walk there is a very beautiful view across the steeply-falling gradient of the park to the lake. The park has grand old oak trees that fall into picturesque groups. Beyond the lake again are fine masses of timber. The lake is a sheet of water that takes a winding course and disappears among the trees.
The kitchen-garden walls are interesting survivals of an old way of treating fruit-trees. They are three feet thick and honeycombed with flues for heating. It was a clumsy and unmanageable expedient practised in the days before the circulation of water in pipes heated from one boiler was understood. The modern orchard-house is much more convenient and its working absolutely under control.
The kitchen garden lies between the house and the newer gardens that have been described. The maze should not be forgotten. It is at the back of the alcove and the bowling-green. These old garden toys are very seldom planted now. Perhaps people have not time for them. Also they are costly of labour; the area of green wall of a maze of even moderate size, that has to be clipped yearly, if computed would amount to an astonishing figure. Now that the possibilities of other forms of garden delight are so much widened, it is small wonder that the maze should have fallen into disuse. It must have been amusing in the older days when people’s lives were simpler and more leisured; but there are puzzles and difficulties enough in our more complicated days, and the influences that we now want in a garden are soothing tranquillities rather than bewildering perplexities. Near the maze and alcove is a group of three great Lombardy Poplars that tells with extremely fine effect from many parts of the garden.
On one side of the house is an old parterre of the kind now but seldom seen out of Italy; with elaborate scrolls and arabesques of clipped box; the more characteristically Italian form of the “knotted” gardens of our Tudor ancestors. The English patterns were much nearer akin to those used so lavishly on gala clothing in the form of needlework of cording and braiding, and the strap-work of wood-carving, while the Italian parterre designs were drawn more freely in flowing lines and less rigid forms.
Opposite the porch is a sundial, supported by a kneeling figure of a black slave, of the same design as the one in the gardens of the Inner Temple, that was formerly at Clement’s Inn, and is known as the “Blackamoor.” Like this one the figure is of lead.
LADY COVENTRY’S NEEDLEWORK
from the picture in the possession of
MRS. APPLETON
