I GOSSIP ABOUT GARDENS.
IT is with a certain feeling of relief, almost amounting to
positive pleasure, that we see the approach of Autumn. With its shortened days and bright hearths, indoor pursuits may again be followed, without the feeling of discontent that we cannot be enjoying ourselves out-of-doors. Though much time this summer has necessarily been passed in the house, there has been no sense of comfort in the indoor hours. Cold driving rain, hail, and wind have been rattling their tale of mischief at the windows of the room. In spite of the fires that all sensible people have kept daily lighted, it is impossible to forget that our gardens are exposed to the fury of the storm. When its rage abates for a brief season, and the sun again re- sumes its sway, what a scene of ruin meets the eye. It may show a want of public sympathy if, in the face of fields laid flat and saddened, it is still possible to grieve over the acre or two of garden that bear such dire marks of this un- genial summer. Still, perhaps, it is our one ewe-lamb, and to lose the pleasure of a garden for a whole year is to lose a large slice out of life's enjoyments. Those to whom a garden means nothing of more interest than a fine show of bedding. plants, have only experienced the annoyance of 'seeing it pre- sent a more or less dashed appearance. But te those who really love their garden and know each plant individually, the summer has brought deeper and more lasting pangs. Many people think they love flowers, and. only really love the effect produced by prismatic lines of colour. To love a garden truly is to care for each separate flower, and this cannot be done when the beds are filled with plants that every succeeding spring brings to life 'merely to be killed the following winter. The compara- tively new plan of bedding-out does not even share in the interest of annuals. An annual is a flower that attains in the course of Nature its full growth in the given year, and when this is accomplished we are willing enough it should die in giving' life to the future seed. But it is different with flowers like pelargoniums and calcoolaria,e. They are merely tender pinuts intended for a greenhouse; and 1w:el1& live and prosper if left there. instead of this, they are put out in the ground for a season, and when frost kills them they are thrown away, and their work is done They can be caret for only as a passing acquaintance is cared for. They fill spacesin the gardens, as our acquaintances fill spaces in our time, but they do not become our friends. In the garden we are picturing will be found instead the old-faehioned flowers, with the quaint names that poets loved to give them. Bright flowering shrubs and sweet-scented lilies abound there, and the fruit-garden adds its quota to the general effect. But to bring out the full enjoyment of such a garden as this something more is required than an eye for beauty. There must be the love of gardening itself, the actual personal tending of the plants and borders, before the highest delight in a garden is truly attained. Then will each day of sunshine or rain be appreciated at its real value, and the effect of a summer like the present one be thoroughly realised. A wet season means the practical loss of the enjoyment that a whole year's work has been storing up.
" A year in a garden "—we owe the phrase to Mr. Henry Bright —what hosts of memories tile words call up, from the Christmas- rose, like a delicate ghost of its summer sisters, to the hardy chrysanthemums, to whom the attribute of "unselfish kindli- ness " has been so justly ascribed by the same author. The long summer day spent among the flowers that we tend our- selves,—who can find it dull P The day-lily, opening at sunrise in perfect form and fading away gently as the day fades, greets our eyes as in the early morning we wander round our garden, to find fresh treasures awakening to bloom. The freshly-hoed border, finished, late the evening before, is dark with the re- freshing dew that our work enabled to reach the tender rootlets lying near the surface, The day wears on, and the hot sun opens the Safrauo rose-buds which were forgotten to be gathered in the dewy morning, and makes them flaunting and sad. Greedy roses, no sunshine is too much for them, and they drink their pleasure to the dregs. There is no rose more beautiful in 'early youth, none so forlorn in its full-blown state. Then comes that loveliest of all times, the late afternoon, with its cool air and its sweet repose. The level rays of the sun glint across the lawn, throwing long shadows, and lighting up the colours of the flowers that they touch with a brilliancy which the noon-day light cannot equal. Each flower stands out distinct, and the bees go home with a slow, heavy sail, that tells of the freight they carry. Only the poor humble-bees remain behind, drunk with the rich honey of the single dahlia. If you approach them as they cling on to the flower, and touch them gently with a twig or blade of grass, they only raise a leg in meek supplication, or fall stupefied on the ground, to rise again and return to their drunken revel. Sometimes three or four will be on the same dahlia, and if carried to another, they will use the little strength that remains to them to return to their first-love. Night in such a sweet, old-fashioned garden brings its own peculiar delights. Night-scented stocks perfume the borders, and the evening-primrose brightens the departing day,—kind, thoughtful plants, keeping their beauty and fragrance till we have had our fill of pleasure, and might otherwise feel sad and depressed at the loss of thR sunshine. Those who do not care for a garden lose one of the most lasting enjoy- ments of life. Our children grow up and leave us, but our gardens are ever young. There is always some old friend to return to us each succeeding summer, and some new untried ones to interest us in their growth.A garden can absorb as few other pursuits can. The busy life outside, with its ambitions and its worries, has a wonderful knack of disappearing from view the moment our gardening tools are in our hands. The rivalries of the garden are no wearing rivalries. They are only generous emulations, giving us the means of a gentle self-glori- fication, by enabling us to be generous to others, without robbing ourselves. • But a garden has its sad days, as well as its joyous ones and the maddest of all come at the close of the year. The year's pleasures are over, and hope lies buried with the sleep- ing plants. Even the cold, frosty days of January are better than these closing ones. The small yellow winter-aconite is more cheery than the lingering rosebud born too late to:bloom. In November we can hardly make up our minds to keep the garden neat, Freshly falling leaves flutter down, and the "flying gold of the ruined woodlands" is a sad enemy to all order. Still, no part of the year is quite without its interest. Chrysanthemums, in their wholesome robustness, greet us all through the late autumn, and there is a charm in the hazy fog, as it gives way before the wintry noon-day sun. There are few days up to Christmas, during -which it is not possible to sit in some sheltered spot and be freshened for the work indoors. In the country there is often no need to talk of winter. It is either late autumn or early spring ; all the sweeter for coming BO very early, and bringing such delightful hopes for the future. How delicious it is to walk among crisp, fallen leaves. One is tempted to become a child again, and shuffle through tho great heaps, scattering them around with a pleasant, crackling sound. The little chestnut-husks among them may contain a neglected chestnut, but it requires real childhood to enjoy the eating of an English chestnut ; still, they bring back soft memories, which do as well. Another charm of a herbaceous garden is the power of combining the future with the present, In bedding-out, the plants, to make the bed per- fect, should all come out at once ; and as a rule, their beauty is • ruined about the same time. As, however, the owners of such gardens generally are wise enough to take their departure about the time the early frosts blacken their geraniums, there is no need to prepare for future enjoyment. With a more thoughtful way of treating a garden, it is different. Here horticultural ingenuity helps to keep the garden attrac- tive from April till December. Our Elizabethan forefathers could only make theirs bright in the earlier summer, and this, no doubt, was one reason why the poets of that age dwell so much on the beauties of spring. The lilies of the old writers were the early-flowering ones,—the Orange and Turk's Cap, and the common white lily, beautiful in its matchless purity, and sug- gestive of comparison with all that is graceful and pure in human nature. The Atuatum, so grandly free in its growth, and the other Japanese sorts, that flower all through our autumn, were quite unknown to them. The roses, too, were chiefly summer-flowering ones, or monthly roses with their thin petals forming loose cups, which grow in lovely clusters. Still, we gain much in some of the new perpetual ones, though in their autumn flowering many of them are mere shadows of their more glorious selves. But the height of folly is attained when we cultivate a rose without a smell simply because it is large and round. It is then time to protest against the theory that all progress is gain, and it is almost insulting to name such a rose after some well-known personage when it has been denuded of its chief charm. Scent is a subtle virtue, however, and belongs, perhaps, to earlier days, when people had more time to linger over the flowers. Like many charms of the old times, it may be destined to pass away along with them.
The pleasures of a garden are endless. Not half of them can be mentioned hero. Those who only come into the country in :late summer and leave again at the first suspicion of autumn 'damp, never hear the singing of the birds. Spring is the time for that, when the birds are pairing, and are building their nests with twig and moss. Each spring brings the new cares of a household, and the birds sing blithely over their work. It is a fresh honeymoon every year, and it is pleasant to see a large family brought up with so little carking care to the parents. Possibly it is the concentration of effort on the one pursuit, and the consequent freedom from clashing interests, that makes the birds so cheerful about it. Anyhow, it can be watched without any undue call upon our sympathies, except when a terrible quarrel in the nest ends in the expulsion and death of one or more of its inmates. With wild creatures, however, we can be of no avail to repair Nature's cruelties. They are so far removed from us, that they endure us only so long as we do not try to bring our world and theirs into too close a contact. They have lived without us, and they wish to die without us, but above all, they love to die in the open air. They are Nature's children, and they are true to her to the end.
Some of our readers, no doubt, will think we have been lavish in our praise of the pleasures of a garden ; but if so, it will be those who have not experienced them themselves. There are 90 many drawbacks to most pleasures, that few can be in- dulged in without a sense of satiety. When one is found that grows more pleasant in the pursuit, and can be enjoyed when sorrow and increasing years make our earlier plea- sures only a pain and weariness to us, it is well to speak of it with grateful words. The unconscious beauty of our plants can receive no harm by outspoken admiration, and though we may have loved and tended them, they are not of our own creating. Let those who have no pleasure in a garden rather be sorry for themselves that such a faculty of enjoyment is lacking in their nature.
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