COUNTRY LIFE
November or May?
Summer warmth in the presence of a low sun continues to give us more and more untimely pictures. The bees swarm out of the hive and find a good supply of various flowers, some utterly unexpected. Penzance briars are smothered with blossom in the midst of fading leaves, are indeed as full of flower as those boasted flowerers, the Poulsens. Both gorses and brooms have opened tentative flowers and several rock-plants, led by the Aubretias, have acted as if spring had really come. We continue to pick the one mushroom that is usually regarded in England as edible, to wit Agaricus ccanpesrris, and the host of other mushrooms and fungi is quite fantastic.
The Wild Garden One of the most completely English spots in England is Gravetye Manor with its garden and the meadows and woods into which the garden fades away. The place, it will be remembered, was left to the nation by Robinson, not only one of the greatest gardeners of his generation but also the founder of a school of wild gardening. His dictionary of gardening remains a standard work. He had an intense affection for the old Manor, for the garden he made and for the Sussex qualities of its setting. He wished ardently that such a thing of beauty might survive, both for its own sake and because it expressed, like some living lyric, the sort of beauty on which his heart was set. For this reason he left his home to the nation, making some reservations that should ensure to the public the right of entry. The nation after due consideration accepted the gift, and with it the responsibility of its upkeep in something akin to its original form.
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A Neglected Gift What would Gravetye seem to the shade of the donor if he could revisit the old haunt ? He could only lament. The old house, eloquent of Southern English history and in itself a glorious present home, has been empty since it came into national hands ; and it has suffered from a penalty common to a state of emptiness. It has, in the opinion of its neighbours, degenerated from neglect as well as the passage of time. The one reason, as many think, why it has remained empty, in spite of its almost unique attractions, is that the new owners have set a very high price on the privilege of living there. The garden is not so lovely as it was. The fir woods, towards which Robinson's gorgeous pergolas and paths led you, have been drastically thinned; and by way of compensation the landscape is being changed by an immense nursery of beeches. Not all these innovations are unwise ; and it was a good enough idea to give the place over to the Forestry Commission, which, it was thought at first, would have some human use for the house ; but whatever use is made of the place, the first obligation of all was to retain the charm of Gravetye and keep in lively being the lesson in gardening that it was Robinson's mission to convey. How much better things would be if the bequest had been made to the National Trust, which is much more sympathetic and has a wiser hand.
The National Trust A reference to the National Trust is timely. That beneficent organisation last week - celebrated its fortieth birthday. It is older than one had thought and is associated with historic names. One of its founders, for example, was Octavia Hill, whose centenary is presently to be celebrated. It had a severe struggle for existence for a good many years ; and indeed though its scope and its income have continued to increase, it has still a struggle. It cannot accept all the gifts that are offered it, because the financial burden would be too heavy, though it may well be that such properties would become valuable in the course of time. A great many wise people (Mr. C. S. Orwin is one) have their special scheme of land nationalisation. The only one, that everyone approves, is controlled by the National Trust. Of course the Trust is not National in the technical sense. It does not receive a penny of national money ; and it is an immense tribute to Its organisers that they have combined sympathetic treatment with financial soundness. If one day the Government should arrange to subsidise any gift or bequest that would entail a
deficit, this beneficent form of Nationalisation might be expected to proceed at a greatly accelerated pace, to the great benefit of the Nation. In so highly humanised a landscape as ;ours, the preservation of county homes and houses is of peculiar importance, as the National Trust has realised more thoroughly than anyone else. A glance at their beautiful calendar for 1939 will emphasise this point.
A Farm Frontage
Perhaps the most melancholy event in the annals of rural England is the break-up of a good farm for the sake of growing fungoidal buildings ; and so profitable is this form of metamor- phosis that even farmers, or their executors, give way to it. This week a farm familiar to me is up for sale. It has produced good crops and good stock and may continue to do this service to the nation ; but in some of the advertisements of the sale
not a word is said of the excellence of the tilths or the quality of the grass. The emphasis is wholly on the extent of frontage. The farm is well away from even a village, but is sufficiently near "the Wen" or is thought to be sufficiently near, to make it worth while to tempt the speculative builder. In this district as in many others the first act of the builder is usually to root up the trees, often a needless as well as a Gothic act. The opposition of some countrymen to this form of" develop- ment "—save the mark !—is so strong that schemes for supplying cottagers with the water and light that they so acutely need are strenuously. resisted, because the moment that the water and light are supplied the developer steps in. Water and light become a drawback. I know of one small and old country house at the edge of a developed area which could not be let until it was advertised as having "no modern con- veniences." This negative recommendation brought a host of applications.
Fine Feathers
The garden of an Oxfordshire cottage is visited by a jay and a green woodpecker who feed almost side by side ; and observers could not but be struck by the almost startling brilliance of their plumage. If the sunlight falls on his head and neck, you feel inclined to claim this woodpecker as the most brilliantly coloured of all our birds. The red and green suggest one of the brighter parrots of the Amazon. The glorious blue feathers of the jay's wing and the pink patches have no resemblance to any of the woodpecker colours but are not less salient. Both birds are garden-lovers for different reasons. The woodpecker will daily visit any lawn that happens to be infected at all by ants, and the jay is, of course, as greedy for green peas as any hawfinch or tit. At one time the light blue feather on the jay's wing was in great demand by those salmon-fishers who made their own flies—a, habit that is now almost extinct. In New Zealand fishermen found the feathers of a particular heron so killing a bait that the bird was in some danger of extinction. I saw the bait used and felt inclined to believe that in the eyes of the fish it was taken not for a fly but a small fish.
In the Garden
In some country ditches and in some root-fields poppies are now flowering in no little splendour ; and they may provide a hint to gardeners. Close to one of the poppy-full ditches is a small garden now very bright, as it has been bright for months, with the charming little stocks, pleasantly known as hundreds-and-thousands. It is the custom in the garden to sow them in succession, and they come up and flower more or less independently of the season. It happens that in the same garden wallflowers are now in bloom, thanks wholly to a beginner's mistake in date of planting. Now the poppies in the ditch are the seedlings of poppies that seeded about harvest time, and they hint the truth that we can give annuals a much longer season than is usual with conventional gardeners. Sutton's taught us all in the War that we can sow carrots profitably at the end of July or even the beginning of August. Similarly we can sow annuals, to flower the same year, at dates that seem altogether absurd. Success, of course, is likely to be much greater in an open season such as this ; but the cost of seed is a small sacrifice, and the gamble is usually worth while. W. BEACH THOMAS.
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