THE WISLEY GARDEN.
frHE announcement made in Tuesday's Times by Sir 1 Trevor Lawrence that Sir Thomas Hanbury has with Characteristic generosity presented to the Royal Horticultural
Society the estate and garden of the late Mr. G. F. Wilson, at Wisley, near Woking, will have been read by the Fellows of that Society and by all who love a beautiful garden with the deepest interest and gratitude. The interest taken in the announcement will be felt most deeply, of course, by those who are familiar with the garden itself ; but, as Sir Trevor Lawrence suggests, "all lovers of gardens will gladly know that Mr. Wilson's garden has been rescued from the fate which so often overtakes such pleasaunces when their owner passes away." To those who know something of the intense devotion with which Mr. Wilson regarded his wonderful collec- tion of flowers and trees it will indeed be a satisfaction to hear that this estate has fallen into hands which can be trusted to bring scientific knowledge and enthusiasm to the tending of a " pleasaunce " which was the fruit of so much care and trouble.
To state that this property consists in all of sixty acres, and that part of it (we believe about eight acres) is garden, with " the variety of soil and aspect and the unfailing water-supply which are essential for the purposes of the Royal Horticul- tural Society," is to give but the barest idea of the possibilities and the existing beauties of this delightful spot. Nor could any photograph, or series of photographs, suggest half the varying charm which, from season to season through the year, the lover of flowers will find in it. For its full beauty to be realised the garden must be seen. It lies perhaps five miles from the nearest station, deep in the heart of the commons and pine-woods of Surrey; the roads leading to it run through
broad miles of crimson and purple ling and heather ; the sun is on the heather, and draws up from the carpets of pine- needles lying under ruddy trunks and deep grey-green branches a warm, intoxicating smell of resin and rain. [A short time ago the writer was driven along one of these roads in a motor- car, and made some observation to the driver—a Scotch engineer—on the beauty of the scenery. The rejoinder was unexpected. " There's a terrible deal of waste land," he re- marked, after deliberation.] To-day, perhaps, only the trained eye of the gardener of experience would detect a tithe of the rarities collected in the garden, or would guess at the differ- ence which masses of colour would make in the closely ranged bypaths and shrubberies. The roses are over, and only a few petals, splashed and scattered by the heavy rains, lie here and there, a hint of the piled glories of crimson and chrome and white of a month ago. But even among the prevailing deep August green a few features stand out insistent. There is the magnificent twelve-foot Gunnera, shading the lily-pond like a gigantic rhubarb-plant ; hi the pond itself water-lilies float, of the most delicate cream and rose and white, like egg-cup china on jade-satin ; and edging the water, springing out of deep brambles and rhododendrons, hundreds of Osmunda ferns, apple-green fronds and rufous, spiky flowers, shake in the wind. But this. is Wisley in August, when "the year has shot her yield," so far as most of the flowers are concerned. You must see Wisley earlier in the year ; earlier even than when the lupins, covering almost a whole field with blue and cream and magenta, are in full
bloom, or when the gentian-border, a hundred and twenty yards long, glows in a single line of purple-ultramarine.
Wisley is at its best in the time of daffodils, in the early spring when every corner holds its nodding company of narcissus and wind-flower and violet. Then it is like the margin of Wordsworth's lake :--
." When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."
The drive leading to the garden gate in Spring is edged with clumps of the great golden Maximus, perhaps the purest and deepest of all yellow daffodils; once in the garden, you are almost puzzled to know what to look at, so astonishing are the number and the variety of the flowers. There are daffodils of every shape and size ; daffodils like silver trumpets and spiky stars ; daffodils with perianths of gold broadswords, and cups of orange and scarlet ; here there is a patch of the familiar pheasant's eye, and there a clump of the little cyclamineus, with its tiny canary-coloured petals, set back rather like the ears of a startled rabbit. For hundreds of yards the garden paths wind in and out, and at each turn there is something strange and rare,—flowering shrubs from five continents, bulbs from Japan, the Himalayas, Siberia ; perhaps you stop and ask the name of a queer-looking plant, and are told that it is the only specimen in England ; it bad been supposed to be extinct, but a single plant was detected by a traveller, and sent to the owner of the garden. You emerge from the wooded part of the garden—here and there on a tree-trunk you will see a tiny wooden box, meant to be the home of blue- tit or robin—into open primrose-carpeted spaces, a large pond in front of you with green frogs and bullfrogs among its rushes ; and you are told that reflected in the water, later in the year, there will be lilies flowering ten feet high. And beyond you lie vacant fields which the late owner meant gradually to have brought into his garden ; sweeps of meadow- land which he had dreamed of seeing sheeted with narcissus, and fritillary, and crocus, and anemone. He did not live long enough to realise all his dream, though he realised, perhaps, more than many owners of gardens who have spent more money to less effect.
We hope that this wonderful garden will be treated by the Fellows of the Horticultural Society as something more than merely a sixty-acre property admirably adapted for the grow- ing of rare plants. We hope that the general public will be allowed free access to it; that, in short, it will be added to the number of beautiful places which, as the inalienable property of the nation, form a kind of outdoor National Gallery. To thousands of English lovers of flowers it would be the greatest pleasure in the world to be able on any day of the year to enjoy the sight of so splendid a collection of rare and choice flowers and shrubs, and there could be no better oppor- tunity of affording such a pleasure than that which is provided by a garden situated as Wisley is situated. It is near enough to London to make it easy of access to the man desirous of looking at its beauty ; and it is far enough from a large town, or even a railway station, to prevent it from becoming merely a resort for the idle or the careless. Would the flowers or the garden be in any way damaged by the influx of visitors ? We do not believe so for a moment. Experience has shown that when the public have been given a beautiful thing—we might cite the case of the old walled kitchen garden at Brockwell Park as a recent instance—they are jealous that its beauty shall be pre- served, and they will discountenance strongly anything in the shape of ill-mannered rowdyism in the garden or damage done to the flowers they like to come and see. We do not believe that from January to December there would be a flower wantonly picked or a root stolen ; and though, of course, it might be safest to take certain pre- cautions against such a thing, especially at night, we do not believe the precautions would be found to be necessary. There, then, if the hope of garden-lovers is fulfilled, deep in the Surrey pine-woods and heather it will lie, the key of the garden gate free to be turned by all those whose wish it may be to spend an hour in this oasis of colour and quiet: a garden like the garden of the Beast in the old fairy-tales, daffodil-carpeted and piled with roses and rhododendrons; and to lovers of flowers without number it will give the same pleasure year after year as Wordsworth had from the remembrance of the " jocund company " he saw beside the
lake :— " I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the daffodils."
Mr. Wilson was always generous in his lifetime in granting that pleasure to those who cared to ask for it : we are confi- dent that his generosity (and for that matter the generosity
1 Sir Thomas Hanbury also) will be equalled—and it can be squalled with greater ease and grace by those to whom the garden has been given than it could have been by a purchaser —by that of the Royal Horticultural Society.
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