The Glory of Gardens [Mr. de Rothschild's famous gardens at
Exbury in Hampshire are known to gardeners throughout the world.] EVER since man had to leave the Garden of Eden he has tried by the, sweat of his brow to reproduce some of its lost glories, and indeed there is nothing more restful than to return from a busy week to the peaceful countryside and forget one's cares in horticulture.
I do not know which time of the year appeals to me most—I think I like the winter work when all my rhododendrons and azaleas take little walks and I arn optimistic enough to think that at last I have got the perfect colour scheme : but when the time comes some flower out of season and something else is not quite right, and I never mind, for it gives me a chance of shuffling them about again.
In these days when every penny counts, the wild garden is the one where most pleasure can be obtained Without undue expense. It is, of course, pleasing to have a herbaceous border round the house, or roses, where they flourish—alas, they do not like the Exbury climate— but these sections of the garden have been reduced, or at any rate they cannot be extended. Even the owner of a small garden has probably an acre or so of shrubberies or woodland—best of all woodland, where he can try the experiment of growing some of the new treasures that have come here from China and Tibet. A woodland with a stream conjures up primulas and azaleas and a patch of that fascinating blue poppy, Meconopsis betonicifolia.
The real art of gardening is to make a plant that has come from distant lands not only look at home but feel at home. The lilac, the laburnum and the scarlet thorn feel at home anywhere and grow in every villa garden, and in mine also, but there are many_ plants as beautiful which are more fastidious and require endless patience to discover their exact likes or dislikes. What a pleasure it is to see one of these treasures really happy, growing vigorously and flowering bountifully, after trying it in other situations where it has only eked out a miserable existence.
The time of year is getting on, and it is almost too late to think of expanding much at this season of the year. The early autumn is the best time for planting all kinds of shrubs ; when the earth is still warm and fresh roots can be made before the winter comes along. Little time also is left for digging, and although for woodland planting often a large hole suffices with the sub-soil well broken up, open spaces are better trenched if labour is available and the plants, once established, will then be better able to look after themselves. But gardens vary so and the true saying that "whit is one man's meat is another man's poison" applies equally well to plants and soil. At Exbury, with the New Forest pan and dry summer, I have to trench ; in Cornwall, a hole in the ground is enough and in many a Surrey garden little more is necessary.
But my advice to the beginner is to join the Royal Horticultural Society, attend their shows, visit their garden at Wisley, where he will see in the wild garden much to copy in his own. If the garden is free from lime he can have rhododendrons from May to August, not merely for the fortnight that they flower in Hyde Park, and then later in the year the different coloured berries from the vacciniums, gaultherias and pernettyas. If the garden is on lime then he will have to content himself with very few of the ericaceous family—an odd rhododendron or two, but there is the large eotoneaster family which flourishes both in lime and lime-free soils and which, attractive in flower, is still more so in berry. A large plant of Cotoneaster Henryi or C. folia floccosa covered with scarlet berries in the late autumn sunshine is most beautiful. So are the maples, with all their varied foliage, many of them colouring brilliantly—Acer osakazulci, blood red, or A. nikoense, pale yellow-pink, or the scarlet tips of the leaves of Acer griseum. The magnolias, too, are eminently suitable for a wild garden, from Magnolia Campbellii, with its glorious pink flowers, which, alas, is too precocious except for the warmest gardens, through M. salicifolia, with its pleasant lemon-scented bark and its butterfly flowers, to kobus, stellata, conspicua, Soulangeana and its many hybrids, Wilsonii, parviflora, hypoleuca and glauca (to mention the easily procurable varieties in their order of flowering), and all quite ready to look after themselves once they are established. Then there are the rarer plants for the woodland, amongst them Staphylea holocarpa rosea, one of the most fairylike of the spring flowering trees with its racemes of tender pink flowers at the end of April or early May ; but it is slow growing unless it likes the situation and must grow up before it flowers—it is a plant for a young man.
But once the woodland garden is planted with shrubs, trees, primulas, or iris, then comes an opportunity of hybridizing and getting something better than what is already in cultivation. There is no greater excitement than to realize that a home-raised seedling has at last got a flower bud ; many disappointments will occur, many plants will be thrown away or burnt, or perhaps given away, but at last will come one which is a real advance. It will be propagated, countless friends will be grateful at receiving parts of it, perhaps it may even gain the coveted first class certificate or award of merit at one of the Royal Horticultural Society's shows.
No garden is too small for some plant to be made a speciality of. Delphiniums, iris and daffodils can be raised in the humblest garden, but the latter perhaps require more special knowledge and greater expense, as it is no use attempting any sort of hybridization unless one uses the very best as parents, and in the daffodil line this is expensive. But with a little study of the Mendelian theory, with the avoidance of what must throw back to some objectionable feature and, especially in the case of rhododendrons, with the use of a species on one side, a fair amount of success can almost be guaranteed. The raising of seedlings and the growing of difficult plants has a fascination which, once it has got a hold, never leaves one. What a treasure Daphne genkwa is, with its little lilac flowers. It only grows a foot or two, there is room for it in every garden, but I have never seen it really flourish. It must have been sent from Japan by the thousand. I had a plant for a few years and was very proud of it, but alas it is no longer there ; some day I shall try it again, but I do not yet know the proper site for it. Epigaea repens, the American mayflower, is another of these plants ; it grows like a weed in a damp corner of the ICnap Hill Nursery underneath some rhododendron bushes. It has been there for years and every May it is a joy, covered with its fragrant white flowers. I tried it at Exbury and got it to grow more or less in a situation where one could never see it, then it died. A specimen was given to me the other day and I found a piece of ground which I thought was similar to one where I had seen it doing so well ; it liked it, and it is now a yard across each way.
But my article is already getting too long and I will end by saying, to The Spectator, if ever you want an article on gardening again, please publish it in the autumn while the winter is still -before us, which is always too short for the preparations necessary to give us °us flowers during the spring and summer months.
Previous page
