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                                  THE

                        ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN.

[Illustration: LOGO]

                                  THE

                         ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN

                        WITH ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES


                                  BY

                            HENRY A. BRIGHT

              AUTHOR OF “A YEAR IN A LANCASHIRE GARDEN.”


                                London:
                           MACMILLAN AND CO.
                                 1881.

       _The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved._




                                LONDON:
                      R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
                          BREAD STREET HILL.




PREFACE.


IT is just a year ago since this Essay on “The English Flower Garden”
was published in the _Quarterly Review_.

It was written with a twofold object: to give in the smallest compass
an outline history of English gardens, and to show once again what
makes the true charm and happiness of a garden. Many—perhaps too
partial—friends have urged me to reprint this article. They have
reminded me that, when the immediate circulation of any one number of
a Review has ceased, its articles are virtually lost and buried, and
they assure me that there are readers who may not have already seen,
and who would yet care to read, this Essay. I hardly know how this may
be, but I do know how very much I am indebted to the proprietor of the
_Quarterly_ for his great kindness in allowing me the opportunity of
this reprint. Should this little book succeed in retaining the friends
that _A Year in a Lancashire Garden_ was happy enough to make, it will
indeed be fortunate. It has been to me a matter of no little surprise
(as, naturally, of pleasure) to find from the generous notices of the
Press and from numerous private letters from owners of gardens, to
whom I am entirely a stranger, that the views I have expressed as to
the necessity of a reform in our gardens are very widely held. So long
as a garden is only regarded as a means for displaying masses of gay
colouring, half the delight and all the real interest of it are gone.
It is only when we learn to make friends of individual plants, and
recall their history and associations, that a garden becomes a pleasure
for the intellect as well as for the senses. But I do not wish to
carry my opinions to any extravagant length. It is Voltaire, I think,
who says that “a man may have preferences but no exclusions,” and I
certainly would exclude nothing that is good in the present system.
Bedding-out is occasionally very effective and sometimes necessary;
and, on the other hand, a garden—such as I saw suggested somewhere the
other day—which should contain only flowers known to Chaucer, would
be extremely disappointing. However, bedding-out can take very good
care of itself, and Chaucerian gardens will not be largely popular.
Meanwhile, I sincerely hope that flowering shrubs and hardy herbaceous
plants may be far more generally grown and cared for than they are at
present.

It has seemed on the whole best to leave this Essay as it was written.
I have made a few verbal corrections and inserted one or two short
sentences, and that is all. I have, however, added illustrative Notes
on points which seemed of some little interest.




               CONTENTS.


                                PAGE

  LOVE OF GARDENING                1

  EARLY ENGLISH GARDENS            3

  TOPIARIAN WORK                   8

  LANDSCAPE GARDENERS             11

  BEDDING-OUT                     16

  CARPET-BEDDING                  23

  SPRING GARDENING                26

  THE SEMI-TROPICAL GARDEN        27

  THE ALPINE GARDEN               29

  FOUNTAINS                       31

  THE WILD GARDEN                 32

  THE SHRUBBERY                   35

  HARDY SHRUBS                    39

  THE WALLED GARDEN               43

  OLD HERBALS                     45

  FLOWERS OF WINTER               47

  SPRING FLOWERS                  49

  ROSES                           51

  SUMMER FLOWERS                  52

  BIRDS AND BUTTERFLIES           55

  EXPLORERS                       57

  BOTANISTS                       60

  GARDEN ASSOCIATIONS             65

  FLOWER PAINTING                 67

  FLOWER SHOWS                    71

  THE INTEREST OF THE GARDEN      74

NOTES.

    I. THE GARDENER BOWER-BIRD    78

   II. ARS TOPIARIA               82

  III. A POET’S FLOWER-BED        86

   IV. THE EVENING PRIMROSE       87

    V. THE CHRISTMAS ROSE         92




                                  THE

                        ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN.




THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN.


AS spring comes on, the fancy of any man who cares about a garden,
“lightly turns to thoughts” of flowers and the gardens where they grow.
Never, perhaps, was the art of gardening so popular,—I wish we could
say so intelligent,—as at present. The stately homes of England,
the villas that line the roads of suburban districts, the cottages
clustering round a village green, often even a back yard or window-sill
in the heart of some manufacturing town, all testify in their different
ways to the desire of having an adornment of flowers. Indeed this
desire, as Bacon long ago pointed out, in his famous and often-quoted
essay, is as old as man himself; or, if any one prefer to trace back
the instinct, not to the Garden of Eden, but to the habits of a bird,
he may be reminded of the Gardener Bower-bird (_Amblyornis inornata_)
of New Guinea, who, making a bower for the pleasure of his mate, will
decorate the front of it with flowers carefully stuck into the sod.[1]

Nothing more strikingly shows the interest that is now taken in
gardening than the number of books that are published on the subject.
Besides those that deal less with the craft of the gardener than with
the flowers themselves, we have Manuals of gardening, with their
annual and monthly calendars of gardening operations, their practical
advice and technical knowledge. Then there are the almost countless
catalogues of the nurserymen and seedsmen, which often add excellent,
and sometimes, engravings, and always supply much useful
information. Moreover, in addition to the gardening articles


that appear in the _Field_ and elsewhere, there are no less than six
weekly newspapers, and five monthly periodicals, all devoted to
gardening. Lastly, from time to time some publication comes out in
parts, as a monograph on some particular species or group of plants,
which, with its beautifully-painted illustrations, will one day take
its place among other magnificent folios in the botanical libraries of
the world.

So much has been written about the old English or Elizabethan garden,
that I need hardly enter into great detail on the subject. Bacon has
told us what his ideal garden was—the outside lawn, the enclosed
garden, and the wilderness. Of course few gardens can ever have
approached the perfection of which he dreams, but his general type was
the type of the garden of his day. He does not approve of “the making
of knots or figures with divers  earths” near the house; but
in the garden proper, which is enclosed by hedges with green alleys
running past them, he will allow of “variety of device.” Each month
is to have its own flowers, and he values flowers, as Milton seems
to have done, more for fragrance than for colour. And the variety of
flowers of the old garden was, even in comparatively small places, far
greater than we might at first suppose. Thomas Tusser, who was then a
Suffolk farmer, published his _Points of Husbandry_ in 1557, and he
gives a long list of the plants he grew for the kitchen, for salads,
for physic, and of flowers for “windows and pots.” The New Shakespeare
Society, too, has lately been reprinting Harrison’s _Description of
England_, first printed in 1577, and he, in a chapter on gardening,
describes his own “little plot, void of all cost in keeping,” as
having, “in the varietie of simples,” “verie neere three hundred of
one sort and other contained therein, no one of them being common or
usually to be had.”

Two of the most celebrated gardens of those days were Nonsuch and
Cobham. Nonsuch seems to have had a number of statues, and a wonderful
fountain, with Diana and Actæon; and its lilac-trees are particularly
mentioned. Of Cobham, in Kent, then belonging to Lord Cobham, but now
to Lord Darnley, Holinshed says, “No varietie of strange flowers and
trees do want, which praise or price maie obtaine from the furthest
part of Europe or from other strange countries, whereby it is not
inferior to the Garden of Semiramis.” A little later, Lord Fairfax’s
garden at Nun-Appleton was glorified by Andrew Marvell. It was built,
as was supposed to be appropriate for a soldier’s garden, in the form
of a fort with five bastions, and

        “the flowers as on parade
  Under their colours stand displayed,
  Each regiment in order grows,
  That of the tulip, pink, and rose.”

Later on still (in 1685) Sir William Temple, in his celebrated essay,
described the gardens in his day as not often exceeding six or eight
acres, enclosed by walls, and “laid out in a manner wholly for
advantage of fruits, flowers, and the product of kitchen gardens.” He
goes on to say, that

 “In every garden four things are necessary to be provided for,
 flowers, fruit, shade and water, and whoever lays out a garden
 without all these must not pretend to any perfection. It ought to lie
 to the best parts of the house, so as to be but like one of the rooms
 out of which you step into another. The part of your garden next your
 house (besides the walls that go round it) should be a parterre for
 flowers, and grass-plots bordered with flowers; or if, according to
 the newest mode, it be cast all into grass-plots and gravel walks, the
 dryness of these should be relieved with fountains, and the plainness
 of those with statues.”

He then quotes the garden at Moor Park, made by the Countess of
Bedford, as “the perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw.” He
says, “the length of the house, where the best rooms or of most use
or pleasure are, lies upon the breadth of the garden:” the “great
parlour” opens upon a broad terrace walk, and then three flights of
steps descend to a very large parterre, with its standard laurels, its
fountains, and its statues. This garden must obviously have been a
garden of an architectural rather than of a horticultural character,
and was not at all the ordinary garden of the ordinary country house.
But the garden, which we properly associate with those described by
the poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was the garden
“enclosed by walls,” within which were flower-beds and herb and
kitchen gardens, divided by flowering shrubs, and green walks, and
verdant alleys. It was in such a garden that Spenser’s butterfly met
its untimely end, and such were

  “The gardens of Adonis, fraught
  With pleasures manifold.”

It was in the “pleached bower” of such a garden, where the ripe
honeysuckles obscured the sun, that Shakespeare’s Beatrice was to hide.
Of such a garden Andrew Marvell was thinking when he described the
lilies and roses, on which Sylvio’s fawn was wont to feed. In these old
gardens Cowley wrote his essays; and Herrick gathered the fancies of a
poet, or the warnings of a moralist, with his early violets and fading
daffodils.

And so, with but few changes, these Elizabethan gardens grew on from
year to year, till a certain modification occurred when William III.
introduced a taste for whatever was characteristic of Holland: statues
were fewer, and hedges of box or yew, clipped into fantastic shapes,
became all the fashion. These clipped hedges, indeed, were no new
invention, as Sir Walter Scott appears to have thought, for Bacon had
denounced them. He did “not like images cut out in juniper or other
garden stuff, they be for children.” Earlier still, Leland, in his
_Itinerary_, speaks of the Castle of Wrexhill, and says that outside
“the mote” were orchards, and “in the orchards were mountes _opere
topiario_.”[2]

But the most famous specimen of Topiarian work in England is probably
that at Levens Hall in Westmoreland. It was the work of Beaumont, a
well-known gardener of his day, and dates from 1701, the last year of
William III.’s reign. Colonel Graham was at that time owner of Levens,
and some curious letters from his steward still exist, describing the
laying-out of the grounds and the planting of the yews, of which one
group was clipped into the shape of Queen Elizabeth with her maids of
honour.

Long rows of trees, moreover, were now formed on the several sides of
great houses, and at


Cobham (the varied fortune of whose garden is singularly instructive)
a semicircle of trees was planted near the west front, from which
radiated five avenues. But the Dutch fashions and the Topiarian work
and the long avenues were to be of no long duration. It is more than
probable that political feeling, as well as mere fashion, may have had
something to do with the change in many cases; but, however this may
be, those who set themselves up as men of taste began to find fault
with the existing style. Pope was among the first to discover that
there was a monotony when grove nodded to grove and each alley had
its brother, and he insisted that nature must “never be forgot,” and
that one must “consult the genius of the place in all.” So he set to
work to consult the genius of his own villa at Twickenham, and this
genius certainly prevented anything monotonous. He had flower-beds,
and <DW72>s, and mounds, and vistas, and a cypress-grove, and a
shell-temple, and an orangery, and a bowling-green, and, above all, a
wonderful grotto, “finished with shells, and interspersed with pieces
of looking-glass in angular forms.”

And it was about this time that Batty Langley, also of Twickenham,
wrote his _New Principles of Gardening, or the Laying-out and Planting
Parterres, Groves, Wildernesses, Labyrinths, Avenues, Parks, &c., after
a more Grand and Rural manner than has been done before_. This “grand
_and_ rural manner” expresses pretty clearly the confusion we find
all through his book. He must have known Pope’s villa, and probably
the poet himself, and it is evident that he too intended to consult
nature and the “genius” of a place. He says there is not “anything more
_shocking_ than a _stiff regular garden_, where, after we have seen
one quarter thereof, the very same is repeated in all the remaining
parts, so that we are tired, instead of being further entertained with
something new as expected.” He thinks “our gardens much the worst of
any in the world, some few excepted,” and is severe on the late Mr.
London and Mr. Wise for having laid out gardens for the nobility “in
a regular, stiff, and stuft-up manner,” with crowded evergreens and
“trifling flower-knots.” But the compliments which he pays to nature
are, after all, not much more than lip-homage. His principles seem
very right, but his designs, of which we have very many, show that the
“grand” had quite got the better of the “rural.” Even the design of
“a rural garden after the new manner” consists of “a fine large plain
parterre, environed with an easy, agreeable <DW72>,” and “adorned with
Apollo, Minerva, and Pallas (_sic_), the Seven Liberal Arts, Mercury,
and Pytho;” then there is an octagon basin, with Neptune, and avenues
and canals and more statues, and “we can never know when we have seen
the whole.”

And now the period of the so-called “landscape gardeners” began, though
in reality their business was rather with the _grounds_ than with the
garden proper.

Of these Kent was the first of eminence. Their idea was to destroy
all the old-fashioned formalities, at the sacrifice of a certain
stateliness which the style possessed, and to bring the scenery of an
English park up to the house itself. But they were constantly haunted
and harassed by the word “picturesque.” Was Nature more picturesque
when closely followed or carefully improved? Was it the duty of the
landscape gardener to arrange his clumps and belts of trees in the way
in which they would look best in a _picture_? This was evidently Kent’s
idea, and Daines Barrington, speaking of him, says it was reserved for
him “to realize these beautiful descriptions [in the _Faery Queen_],
for which he was peculiarly adapted by being a painter, as the true
test of perfection in a modern garden is that a landscape painter
would choose it as a composition.” Kent’s great work seems to have
been the carrying out of the alterations at Stowe, on which Bridgeman
had been originally employed, and much of the beauty of those famous
grounds—which, however, were at least as artificial as