A FLORAL WILDERNESS.
SOME of our readers may recollect a description of a visit of Sydney Smith to a magnificent country-house, where the gardens and grounds were kept in all the perfection that money and a cunning landscape artist could accomplish. For a day or two the guest was enraptured, and wondered why all creation had not been arranged on this neat and irreproachable system, but a sad reaction set in. The trim, faultless beds and exquisitely tidy walks began first to weary and after- wards to irritate him to such an extent, that he fled to a neigh- bouring common, where he revelled in cart-ruts, coarse, un.- gentlemanlike grass, and all the originality of a vegetation freed from the trammels of an officious art.
Feelings somewhat akin to this are probably familiar to many of us under similar circumstances. Without, perhaps, hankering for the bare common, we sometimes experience amidst exemplary horticulture a longing for a less restricted intercourse with nature, a freer communion with flower and grass and fern, which shall not show themselves only by virtue of the gardener's formal introduction, but spring up spon- taneously under our feet, like a pleasant talk between two chance travellers.
There are many signs of an improvement of public taste in matters floral, and more especially in the gradual recall from cottage-gardens and obscure corners of the whole noble army of simple and beautiful herbaceous plants beloved by our fore- fathers. It is trae that the late duration of the London season and the scarcity of autumn bloomers render an admixture of the masses of colour afforded by flowers bedded out highly desirable and necessary ; yet it is frequently a decided relief to escape from such to the varied and beau- tiful Irises, Lilies, and Columbines of summer, the Japanese Anemones, Heaths, and Tritomas of autumn, without trenching on the fascinating, too much neglected field of spring vegetation.
But apart from either the formal ribbon border and resplendent parterre, or the varied charms of the beds of herbaceous perennials, there is room for yet another order of enjoyment in the remoter parts of a garden, and at the edges of shrubberies and copses. The very disorder and unstudied, rambling luxuriance nature exhibits in such situations, may be enlisted on our side, and an alliance formed with the inexhaustible battalions of wild meadow, woodland, and water- plants which gardeners are so apt to include under the com- prehensive but somewhat unintelligent title of " weeds." In horticulture, as in other concerns, familiarity is prone to breed contempt among those who estimate flowers by the artificial standards of money value or botanical rarity, and not for what they certainly are,—ever freshly springing witnesses to mankind's need of beauty apart from utility, and to the power unseen but felt, which supplies it. The persistence with which certain of our loveliest wildings establish themselves in situa- tions the most commonplace and prosaic—as the harebell on the dusty highway, the primrose in the railway cutting—shows bow stoutly Nature refuses to let the picturesque be crushed out even by the ruthless disciples of Macadam and Stephenson. One of the great merits of a successful wild garden lies in this,--that the spirit of beauty takes possession of just the nondescript corners and repulsive wastes which, abutting as they often do on a pretty garden, have a depressing effect on the mind of the passer-by. Lord Bacon tells us, " You are not to buy the shade in the garden by going in the sun through the green," and similarly there ought to be no need for us to buy a pleasant stroll among our roses by traversing the grim, unattractive no-man's-land too frequently met wish.
In planning such a wilderness, it is well to combine the more choice garden flowers which grow freely and are not easily crushed out, with carefully chosen recruits from our woods -and fields and marshes. The most promising spots for such an undertaking are those where the monotony of an even surface is relieved by rising grounds with their corresponding little valleys, and above all where nature has bestowed water, be it the purling burn of Scotland, the smooth, calm stream of Southern England, or the miniature, sequestered mere,— provided always that through the latter can be ensured a fresh current. The broken ground assists above everything in producing a feeling of mystery, and awakens the desire latent in most of us to explore the unknown, to imagine that " Alps on Alps arise " in a shrubbery of three acres. Another charm of such a semi-wild retreat as we have in our mind's eye is that the inherent love of surprise and the unexpected is so often called into action, which can never be the case when we are walking between rows of faultless bedding plants of one uniform pattern, like the houses of a typical building-contractor's street. But to come suddenly on a Pyrola transplanted by ourselves, which has, after protracted -coyness, at length consented to blossom, or on an altogether unlooked for cluster of Hepaticas in a late and wintry spring; to realise on a July evening that the Villarsia has consented to accept our tarn for its domicile, or to find at an earlier date that the beautiful Trillium has annexed and glorified the ditch our candid friend has so frequently exhorted us to fill up, —such events surely furnish a certain degree of the " emotion" in such request among our neighbours beyond the Channel, and which we do well to create for ourselves, should the even tenor -of our lives fail to produce such mental tonics.
Some gorgeous flowers command our attention, like the drums and trumpets of an orchestra, in tones the most imperious ; whilst others, discovered only after patient searching, appeal to us with the low, sweet voice of which the fascination is ever greater still. The stately Foxglove, the queenly white Water-Lily will not be denied, but sweep the stage admired of all beholders ; yet none the less are we enchanted by lighting unawares on the first Siberian Squill, or by discovering in early summer that quintessence of simple, modest beauty and elegance, Trientalis Europma, Chickweed Winter-Green. In entering on our task, our first care should be to provide blooms of the first-named type, which convey smiles of nature hardly to be entirely overlooked by those least observant of flowers, messages which those who run may read. If a judicious observance of natural conditions of growth be adhered to, plants of this description make a grateful and splendid return for the care bestowed on them. The large-flowered St. John's Wort, or Hypericum Calycinum will soon bewitch a bare bank with its grand masses of bright yellow blossoms, each as large as a crown-piece, and has the additional virtue of blooming pretty late. The Purple Loosestrife, Lythrum Salicaria, or Lythrum Roseum Superbum if planted in open, moist meadow-land, will speedily produce some of the most exquisite effects of colour to be enjoyed on a sunny June day; the Mimulus will gild with its rich golden gems yards, or if need be miles of the wimpling brook, and it has, in fact, spontaneously fled from Northern Scottish gardens to consort with watercresses and veronicas in the burns. The Clematis Flammula, or sweet-scented Virgin's Bower, the Lysimachia Nummularia, or Creeping Jenny of London windows, Vince Major. the Greater Periwinkle, will carpet our slopes with a tapestry daintier far than those we owe to Axminster or Khorassan. In the miniature lake we have conjured up, we can challenge instant homage to our yellow as well as our white Water-Lilies; our lovely Menyanthes, the Buckbean ; Caltha, the Marsh-Marigold ; Butomus, the Flowering Rush; and the Yellow Iris. Should it be our lot to dwell on heath-land, few will pass by our Connemara Heath, Menziesia Polifolia ; our Grass of Parnassus, or the wealth of white Heath, Erica Hammondi, which we shall be careful to naturalize. In the woodland portion of our diminutive king- dom, be we Conservative, Unionist, or Gladstonian, the Prim- rose will be with us, and there shall shine the Wild Hyacinth, the Anemone Nemorosa, and the handsome, large-flowered Snopdrop Anemone; with them the Wood Forget-Me-Not, and we shall strive to tempt the Lily of the Valley to abide among the rest. Whatever we omit on opener ground, on a sunny bank beside our brook we shall cherish the wild Briar-Rose with fostering care, nor shall we fail to deck our field with the dazzling Scarlet Poppy.
When we have thus sketched the outline of our picture, we must gradually fill in, as occasion serves, the more delicate and minute details, studying, of course, alike our individual, aste and the special capabilities of our subject. But there will probably be found that welcome early visitor, the Winter Aconite, the graceful Solomon's Seal, the rare English Lady's Slipper, Cypripedium Calceolus, and its North American relative, Cypripedium Spectabile ; in the wetter ground, the Cornish Ivy-Leaved Bellflower, or Campanula. Hederacea ; Pinguicula, the Butterwort ; Menziesia Ccerulea in the heathy ground ; and, as representatives of Alpine plants, the Mountain Avens, Dryas Octopetala, and Solda.nella Alpina on rockwork ; also the beautiful Campanula Carpatica Alba and Linum Flaxum, the gay Yellow-Flax, with Trollius, the Globe- flower. In the shady nooks will doubtless be greeted the Oak, Beech, Parsley, Hart's-tongue, and Lady Ferns. If very enter- prising, we may try among fir-trees the great Swedish botanist's shy favourite, the T.innsea Borealis.
Delightful, however, as is the task of naturalizing wild flowers, it cannot be denied that it is encompassed with many difficulties, and that with the joys of creation are but too frequently interspersed the sorrows of bereavement. Still, herein lies a part of the zest of the pursuit, and by patient observation of the soil and climate of the region we inhabit, coupled with personal superintendence, success is certain at, last, a far greater range of floral beauty being procurable in the manner we have sought to describe, than is afforded in any one district by nature herself.
Lack of space prevents us at present from entering on the closely allied topic of hardy flowering shrubs, which are not turned to nearly sufficient account in beautifying the neigh- bourhood of our dwellings, and of which we hope to speak in another article.
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