THE COTTAGE GARDEN
ACOTTAGE garden. One's mind wanders from those unexpected little Edens in the vast heather stretches of Scotland, little enclosures with their thick fuchsia hedges, their thriftly little patches of kale and potatoes, their unequalled gooseberries and delightfully unexpected flower-plots to the sunny cottage gardens of the home counties with their gnarled old apple trees, their wallflowers, marigolds and lilacs, the delicious warm perfume of the pinks and the drowsy hum of the bees ; from the much loved little plots in the bleakest parts of the Yorkshire dales to the luxuriant bank- surrounded cottage gardens of Devonshire. To how many thousands of those who yearly go forth to the vast Dominions beyond the seas is " home " synonymous with a cottage and a cottage garden ?
The cottage garden is an expression of the genius of our race—typically English and inimitable. As with the real old peasant handiwork no reproduction of it is satisfactory ; the foreigner, much as he admires it, cannot imitate it. No two cottage gardens are alike, for each bears the impress of its owner and in them plants succeed under conditions which are diametrically opposed to all the canons of scientific gardening. More- over, the cottager never regards his little plot of earth as a whole. Of " colour schemes " and such he has no conception. To him, every plant is a familiar friend, he knows them as individuals and understands their idiosyncrasies, but that his plants form part of a whole does not occur to him, and one wonders to what extent the peasant appreciates the beauty of what he creates with such artless skill. For the cottage garden—alas, fast dying out now with the spread of suburbanism, competitive flower shows and similar modern horrors— bears as much resemblance to the ordinary small garden aS a piece of old-fashioned chintz to a garish modern cretonne. The small garden has a beauty of its own, but only one who comes of generations in close contact with the soil can create the inexplicable charm and the simplicity of the genuine cottage garden. The colours blend in a way that is as perfect as it is unreasonable ; the flowers are arranged with an instinctive knowledge which civilization has almost killed in the majority of us. Stately lilies and cabbages, onions and Canterbury bells, marigolds, pinks and beans blend happily ; the owner loves them all and the garden is pervaded with an atmosphere of placid contentment.
There is one remarkable feature—there are no " betwixt and betweens " in the cottage garden ; nothing between the acknowledged sovereigns of the plant world and its humblest members. You will find roses and lilies with humble sweet-williams, pinks and wallflowers, but " florists' flowers " you will not find. The true peasant has no knowledge of the latter and but little curiosity concerning them. Indeed, he understands them as little as he understands the middle classes. In the world of humans he understands the aristocrat, who is more nearly akin to him than a member of any other class, and in his love of flowers he shows the same mind.
Moreover, it is in cottage gardens that one lights on the old favourites, which in spite of their beauty one so rarely sees elsewhere. Red sage, for instance, is a lovely plant with its blue flowers and purplish leaves. Formerly it was far more highly esteemed by cottagers than the green variety, and there are parts of Sussex where to this day a decoction made from the leaves is administered as a sovereign remedy for whooping cough. The belief in the peculiar efficacy of reddish coloured leaves rather than a green variety of the same plant is very ancient and probably dates back to the worship of Thor, red being his sacred colour. The sage recipes one finds in old cookery books are excellent. Joseph Cooper, who was cook to Charles I., gives a recipe for red sage cream made by boiling a quart of cream and adding thereto well pounded red sage leaves, a quart of canary, half a pound of sugar and a quarter of a pint of rose-water. Conserve of sage was made by pounding together a pound of sage leaves and a pound of sugar and leaving the mixture in the sun. Sir John Hill, the great herbalist in George III.'s reign, comments on the superior merit of red sage and adds :- "Sage properly prepared will retard that rapid progress of decay that treads upon our heels so fast in the latter years of life, will preserve the faculties and memory, more valuable to the rational mind than life itself without them ; and will relieve that faintness, strengthen that weakness and prevent absolutely that sad depression of spirits, which age often feels and always fears, which will long prevent the hands from trembling and the eyes from dimness, and make the lamp of life, so long as nature lets it burn, burn brightly."
Fennel is another beautiful plant rarely seen in modern gardens, yet how attractive it is with its stately polished stems, feathery leaves and golden flowers. Formerly the seeds were coated with sugar and eaten like coriander seeds. In the Middle Ages this herb was largely used to make unsavoury food palatable and also as a corrective in dishes made with fish such as mackerel. In an Elizabethan still-room book entitled The Good Housewife's Jewell a decoction made from fennel is recommended " for to make one slender." In Elizabethan and Stuart times this herb was also boiled and stewed as a vegetable and made into an excellent sauce with gooseberries to serve with meat.
Nor can it be forgotten that in the days when the fashion raged for " bedding out " plants the cottager showed his instinctive good taste by ignoring them and continued to bedeck his little plot with phloxes, del- phiniums, pmonies and all the lovable old-fashioned favourites which were well-nigh banished from larger gardens. Again, like his Elizabethan ancestor, the cottager still has a great love for sweet-scented plants. How seldom one sees lad's love, bergamot, balm or even sweet briar in large gardens, and yet what a joy they are to lovers of sweet scents.
Only a tiny piece of earth can be transformed into a cottage garden. It is one of the numerous compensations for lack of this world's goods.
ELEANOUR SINCLAIR ROHDE.
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