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MY GARDEN
Series. Edited by
R. Hooper Pearson,
Managing Editor,
Gardeners 1
Chronicle.
My Garden in Spring
Uniform Volumes in Preparation.
MY GARDEN IN SUMMER.
MY GARDEN IN AUTUMN
AND WINTER.
2088069
My Garden in Spring
By E. A. Bowles, M.A.
New York
Dodge Publishing Company
214-220 East 23rd Street
TO
MY FATHER
HENRY C. B. BOWLES
WHO HAS SO KINDLY AND PATIENTLY ALLOWED
TO EXPERIMENT WITH HIS GARDEN FOP
THE LAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
PREFACE
IT is a pleasure and a privilege to be asked to write about
a real garden. There are nowadays so many gardeners
that gardens are growing every year more rare. Every
one must have their " rock-work," and the very rich are
out to purchase the glories of the Alps at so much a
yard with all the more contentment if the price be heavy,
so that their munificence may be the more admired.
Passion for display appears the ruling note in English
horticulture of every kind and in every period : we want
a show. It is now not so very long since carpet-bedding
went out of fashion with a roar of contemptuous execra-
tion ; and for a short period we were all for a return to
what we spoke of as " Nature," but what was merely
wobbly anarchy reduced to a high art. But in those
days at least the rock garden was a place of plants, and
if such a thing existed in one's ground at all, it was not
a mere dog's grave to trail Nasturtiums over, but a fabric
framed because its owner really wanted to do his best for
Dianthus glacialis or Campanula pulla. But now the accursed
thing is once more rearing its head, and carpet-bedding is
bursting up to life again in the midst of the very rock
garden itself, of all places impermissible and improbable.
For the rich must have their money's worth in show ;
culture will not give it them, nor rarity, nor interest of
My Garden in Spring
the plants themselves : better a hundred yards of Arabis
than half a dozen vernal Gentians. So now their vast
rock-works are arranged like the pattern of a pavement :
here is a large triangle filled neatly with a thousand plants
of Alyssum saxatile, neatly spaced like bedded Stocks, and
with the ground between them as smooth and tidy as a
Guardsman's head ; then, fitting into this, but separated
by stone or rock, more irregular great triangles of the
same order one containing a thousand Aubrietia " Laven-
der," and the next a thousand Lithospermum prostratum
But nothing else ; neither blending nor variety nothing
but a neat unalloyed exhibit like those on " rock- works "
at the Chelsea Show. But what a display is here ! You
could do no better with coloured gravels. Neat, unbroken
blanks of first one colour and then another, until the
effect indeed is sumptuous and worthy of the taste that
has combined such a garden. But " garden " why call
it ? There are no plants here ; there is nothing but
colour, laid on as callously in slabs as if from the paint-
box of a child. This is a mosaic, this is a gambol in
purple and gold ; but it is not a rock garden, though tin
chamois peer never so frequent from its cliffs upon the
passer-by, bewildered with such a glare of expensive
magnificence. This is, in fact, nothing but the carpet-
bedding of our grandfathers, with the colour-masses laid
on in pseudo-irregular blots and drifts, instead of in
straight stretches ; and with outlines of stone between
each definite patch, instead of the stitching that divides
similar colour patch from patch in the crazy quilt. Well,
such artists in the grand style have their reward.
Preface
What would they say now if they were led into the
garden through which we are now going to be conducted
by its creator ? Never before having seen a place for
growing plants in, never having heard the names of Ella-
combe or Wolley-Dod or, if they have, connecting them
with no vitalising work or idea how will their noses not
corrugate in scorn on merely perceiving plants only
plants, plants well grown, plants happy, plants well suited
and consulted and made at home. But there are others,
less rich, who will be glad of traversing such holy ground,
and learning how the hills can be made to yield up their
secret, and their children taught to forget the far high-
lands of their birth, and feel themselves contented and
at home within a dozen miles of London. The essence
of the real garden is the insignificance of the garden
itself ; the soul of the real garden lies in the perfect pros-
perity of the plants of which it is the home, instead of
being merely, by the modern reversal of right laws, the
expensive and unregarded colour-relief of its titanically-
compounded cliffs of stucco and Portland cement. Come
into Mr. Bowles's garden and learn what true gardening
is, and what is the real beauty of plants, and what the
nature of their display.
A lowly piece of ground, wandering here and there
in gentle natural ravines and slopes. No vast structures,
but bank added to bank as the plants require it, and
nothing asked of the structure except that it be simple
and harmonious, and best calculated to serve the need of
the little people it is to accommodate to accommodate,
and not be shown off by. For here the plants are lords,
My Garden in Spring
and the rocks take their dim place in the background as
helps and comforts indeed, but by no means as the raison
d'etre and pompous origin of the whole edifice. And the
result ? Let the lovers of display go home abashed before
a display such as not a hundred bedded-out Aubrietias
can give. If it were ever to be thought for a moment
that the real rock garden is a place of minute moribund
plants and microscopic minutenesses, so that the only
alternative lies between this and the gorgeous soullessness
of the Portland cementery, let those who have held such
notions only visit Mr. Bowles's garden at almost any
moment of the year, and wander past great tuft after
tuft of the rarest and most difficult brilliancies that have
quite forgotten they are rare or difficult at all or in exile,
but are here making individual masses individually be-
loved and tended, as full of rich colour and the blood of
life as they were on the Cima Tombea or the Col de
Tenda. There is no lack of show, indeed, as we wander
past blazing old clump after clump of glorious Tulips that
no one else can make survive two seasons, or wonder at
the glowing rows of Primulas that no one else can flower,
here gorgeous in their patches as on the ridge of the
Frate di Breguzzo itself. Indeed, the most passionate
admirer of Aubrietia will have to confess that his eye is
no less completely filled here, and filled with more satis-
faction and less monotony than in the most expensive
show-garden, filled with plants at so much per thousand.
And what are the secrets of this display, this freshness
of effect, this profound satisfaction that one takes away
with one, wrapped up in sighs of envy ? Far be it from
Preface
me to bring a deeper blush to the cheek of Mr. Bowles
than mantles on his Primulas in May, but facts, as Sairey
has so justly said, are stubborn and not easy drove.
Therefore we must speak the plain truth : Mr. Bowles
is a real gardener, and the real gardener works with love
and knowledge and personal devotion, and not with money
and orders issued to a nurseryman. The highest art is to
conceal art ; and accordingly the first and last essential
of the good rock garden is that it should not look like a
garden at all, but like the unharvested flower-fields of the
hills effortless, serene, and apparently neglected. And
to achieve this effect, as all who have tried it well know,
is the final ambition of the real gardener, and the very
last to be attained. For nothing is harder, in any walk
of art, than to strike the perfect note of calm assurance
which is the supreme success, and nothing short of it
without falling into the death in life of spick and spanness
on the one hand, or the more ferocious life in death of
slovenliness and anarchy on the other. But at first sight,
like all great works, from the Monna Lisa downwards, the
really good garden looks so simple and unaffected and
easy that those who base their admiration on a sense of
money spent and obvious artificial difficulties surmounted,
will be inclined to conclude at a glance that such a mass
of intermingled happy plants is a simple matter of luck
and neglect that any one could achieve. And this verdict
is the crowning prize of the good gardener, more worth
than many Standard cups. For let these complacent
people only try, that's all ; let them learn by experience
what it is to cope with things that want to be weeds, in
xi
My Garden in Spring
such a way that they do not succeed, and yet retain their
own spontaneous happiness ; then they will ere long begin
to learn that right letting alone and right meddling are
the beginning and the ending of good gardening, and that
the simplest effects are just precisely those which defy
money and ambition and effort, and everything but tireless
patience, attention, and knowledge bought at first hand
with pain.
Come straight from the high hills into this garden of
Mr. Bowles, and it is not by any difference in the look
of the ground or its plants that you will know you are
not still there : here are no precious plants pining for
company in a grim and tidy isolation ; here are no vener-
able ancient persons perpetually picking weeds until all
the soil between every plant is bald as a billiard ball.
But here only the noxious is removed, the plants are
given free scope for enjoying themselves in the company
they love, and rare difficult treasures are jostled into health
and happiness again by the rough-and-tumble of life as
they lived it on the hills ; and the earth is clothed in a
thousand new promises, each one of which may in time
reveal some treasure in the way of Crocus or Pink or
Pansy, until here, more than ever, does one realise the
devilish damage done by weeding in the ordinary garden
where, in fact, there should be a local black-list Cress
and Groundsel, and so forth (though Mr. Bowles would
even leave the Groundsel on the chance of its one day
producing ray-florets or a striped leaf) while all other
offers of the gods are left to flower and show what gift
indeed it was they were suggesting. There is one special
Preface
corner of Mr. Bowles's garden of which I know that he
will not choose adequately to talk, but of which I, there-
fore, must, seeing that it has long appeared to me quite
the finest piece of real gardening that I know. It is a
roughly triangular piece of ground, and is filled with the
Dwarf Almond, a blaze of pink and white in spring. But
in spring, too, all its ground is surfaced and crammed and
overflowing with rare Crocus and Primrose and Bland
Anemone, and every vernal bulb that is usually looked
after and cleansed and cossetted, but here left alone to
make itself a wild plant and seed and establish in perfect
naturalness under the eye of the gardener who knows and
loves each one as a shepherd knows his lambs. So much
for early spring ; and then, barrenness ? Or else digging
and fussing and planting ? Not a spade touches that holy
ground, any more than iron had been laid to the un-
harvested meadow of Hippolytus, but as the Anemones
and the Crocus fade, up spring Daffodils and rare Tulips
and difficult Fritillaries that are everybody else's despair
and have to be treated as annuals, but here look as if they
had just been poked in casually and forgotten by our late
sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth, so that the whole patch,
under the light trellis of the Almonds growing green,
becomes anew, or continues, a dancing sea of light and
colour.
And so the tale goes on, and the glories of spring
give way to those of summer, till the sea turns blue
with Campanulas, and the copse, for so it now has grown,
is floating in blue peat-reek of Campanula patula, while
high overhead tower the stately heads of C. lactiflora,
xiii
My Garden in Spring
which carry on the generosity of the world, while the
great waxen snow-cup and stars of Hellebore are begin-
ning to think of the autumn, and keep the copse in loveli-
ness until everywhere the Winter Cyclamen light up their
little lamps of incandescent carbuncle. So is the wheel
of nature followed in a good garden, and loveliness brought
to birth from day to day, as no money and no loveless or
ignorant desire for display could ever breed it. And how
different here is the apparently effortless compilation of
nature's best wealth from the " display " (admirable word)
of those gardens that are always yelling of the number of
bedded plants they contain. There was once a man who
stood upon the Mont Cenis when all the earth was indeed
a burning deck of blossom, filmed into the uttermost dis-
tances with the gold and violet veils of the Pansies, and
with the flanks of the great mountains snow-flaked with
Anemone alpina; he stood with one boot on a foot- wide
patch of Gentiana verna, and the other trampling a blossom-
hidden carpet of Dryas, and he looked round with that
scorn-corrugated nose of which I lately spoke, and he
bitterly observed, " I don't think much of this for a dis-
play." Only such wealthy-minded persons, I am sure,
could have such a feeling about any garden so real as
this of Mr. Bowles, where nature's poor little efforts are
so watched and followed, and nature's wide carpet of blue
and saffron and gold and rose and violet rewoven in
a tissue of loveliness, how different from the neatly-
partitioned unhappiness of Alpines bought by the hun-
dred and bedded out for show. It is from such a garden
as this that one comes away both humbled and consoled
xiv
Preface
to think such things can be done, and that one has never
yet succeeded in doing them oneself ; comes away also
uplifted by the encouragement of the garden's wizard,
as well as weighed down beneath the precious treasures
he will so casually lop off and pile into your crowded
basket, until at last you grow quite bashful in your efforts
to avoid the crowning generosity of a Nettle with variegated
foliage, or a Plantain mottled with some perennial leprosy,
which may have kept this nature-worshipper kneeling in
an ecstasy for a quarter of an hour upon the mountains
in the teeth of a bitter snow-gale, and despite the hardly
less bitter cries of his escort, not in the least enthusiastic
for such things, and longing to exclaim " Excelsior ! " did
not a certain lingering knowledge of Latin forbid.
REGINALD FARRER.
xv
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. WHEN DOES SPRING COMMENCE? . i
II. THE GARDEN 9
III. EARLY IRISES 21
IV. SNOWDROPS 40
V. SPRING CROCUSES 62
VI. NUMEROUS EARLY COMERS 95
VII. DAFFODILS 117
VIII. PRIMULAS. 134
IX. MARCH WINDS 149
X. APRIL SHOWERS 161
XL THE LUNATIC ASYLUM 178
XII. TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND 191
XIII. ANEMONES 203
XIV. THE IRIS WALK IN MAY 221
XV. TULIPS 234
XVI. MY ROCK GARDEN 252
XVII. THE CULMINATION OF SPRING 279
INDEX 297
ILLUSTRATIONS
BLACK AND WHITE PLATES
The Morning-room Window in May .... Frontispiece
FACING
PAGE
Galanthus Imperati var. Atkinsii " Backhouse's Variety " . . 8
Primula longiflora 24
Primula pulverulenta, " Mrs. Berkeley " 40
Magnolia stellata in the Rock Garden ...... 56
Some of the Lunatics 72
Double-flowered Anemone appenina . . . . .88
Anemone nemorosa purpurea 104
Anemone sylvestris grandi flora . . . . . . .120
The Pond the large Bog Myrtle and the Steps . . . .148
Steps at end of Terrace with London Bridge Balusters . .152
Tulipa Kaufmanniana . . .156
Helicodiceros crinitus 168
Hardy Palm in Flower 184
Eremurus Elwesianus 200
Eremurus Bed 216
Iris florentina in May 222
Eucalyptus cordata 232
A Happy Accident in grouping 248
One of the Slopes in the Rock Garden 260
Sundial in the Pergola Garden 264
Old Cross from Enfield Market-place ...... 272
Solanum crispum in May 280
Symphytum asperrimum 288
My Garden in Spring
COLOUR PLATES
FACING
PAGE
Iris bucharica : one of the best of the Early-flowering Species . 16
Hybrids of Narcissus triandrus 32
Narcissus, Grand Monarque. By E. Fortescue Brickdale . . 48
Narcissi: Christalla (w/h'te) and Homespun 64
Narcissi : Elegance (top flower) and Gloria Mundi ... 80
Crown Imperials. By Margaret Waterfield 96
Crown Anemone. By E. Fortescue Brickdale . . . .112
Iris longipetala : a fine Apogon Iris 128
Iris Susiana : A typical Oncocycluo Iris 144
Tulipa praestans .160
Darwin Tulips : Mr. Farncombe Sanders, Suzon . . . .176
Darwin Tulips: Euterpe, Frans Hals ...... 192
Cottage Tulips : Beauty of Bath, Carnation 208
Saxifraga Burseriana Gloria (white) and S. oppositifolia . . 224
Four White, Rayless Violas : Purity, Mrs. H. Pearce, Mad. A.
Gray, Snowflake . 240
Four Yellow Violas : Redbraes Yellow, Klondyke, Maggie Clunas,
General Baden-Powell 256
XX
MY GARDEN IN SPRING
CHAPTER I
When does Spring Commence ?
IF we could take a census of opinion on the question,
" When does Spring commence ? " the answers would be
almost as variant in character as in number.
The majority of people would most likely declare
that the 2ist of March was the first day of Spring, though
there still exists a sentimental preference for the i4th of
February, the feast of St. Valentine, while a large number
of people over a certain age would insist that Spring
no longer exists, and would probably endeavour to prove
this assertion by lengthy reminiscences of halcyon days
of yore, which provided early opportunities for picnics
and thin raiment.
Who has not heard their great-aunt Georgina hold
forth on the Indian muslins that in bygone Mays were
all-sufficient for her comfort ?
Argument with such is useless, and it is much better
to pile fresh logs on the fire and shut the windows to
preserve her tweed-clad frame from a chill.
"Many lands, many climates," is as true as the old saying,
My Garden in Spring
" Many men, many minds," so of necessity the answers to
this question must be as varied as the aspects from which
the subject is viewed, and I think some of them possess
sufficient interest to warrant investigation.
First we may take the astronomical point of view, and
I like the impression of powder and pigtails and snuffboxes
derived from this pompously-worded quotation from an
eighteenth-century writer : 1 " Spring in cosmography
denotes one of the seasons of the year commencing in the
northern parts of the world on the day the sun enters the
first degree of Aries, about the tenth day of March, and
ending when it leaves Gemini. More strictly, when the sun's
meridian altitude from the zenith, being on the increase,
is at a medium between the greatest and least." Which
holds back Spring until the Snowdrops have departed,
and the equinox gives us March, in its most violently
leonine mood. To go much further back, we learn from
Hesiod's Works and Days, which dates from an age
but little later than Homer's poems, that the Greeks
reckoned the commencement of Spring by the evening
rising of Arcturus, sixty days after the winter solstice.
Happy Greeks, with a southern sky to light the fire of
scarlet Anemones on the hillsides and announce the lesser
Eleusinia ! It was once my good fortune to spend early
March in Athens, and enjoy the feast of the Greek Anemone
(A. hortensis, var. graeca), the most glorious of all scarlet
flowers. I often long to do so again, but next
time I hope some epidemic may have destroyed the
goats of the district, that all the buds may escape
1 Encyc. Brit. 1796.
2
When does Spring Commence ?
their hungry mouths, and not only those growing among
thorny plants.
Here is another view from Pliny's Natural History*
as translated by Philemon Holland : " To proceed, then,
the Spring openeth the sea for sailors ; in the beginning
whereof the west winds mitigate the winter weather, at
what time as the Sun is in the twenty-fifth degree of
Aquarius, and that is the sixth day before the Ides of
February."
Meteorologists give us a more exact and practical con-
ception in dating the beginning of Spring when the
average daily temperature reaches 48 F.
This of course varies with the latitude, and works out
like this for Europe :
March i. Bordeaux, Barcelona, Marseilles, Genoa.
15. Brest, Turin, Venice.
April i. S.W. Ireland, Land's End, Paris.
,, 15. N.W. Ireland, London, Brussels.
May i. Edinburgh, Moscow, N. Alps.
15. N. Scotland, St. Petersburg.
June i. N.W. Norway.
15. S. Iceland.
July 1-15. N. Cape.
It is, however, from the gardener's point of view we
must regard the question, and the wise one will follow
Bacon, and be content with nothing less than ver perpetuum
in his garden. Reference to the celebrated Essay shows
that Bacon was satisfied with mere evergreens for the
greater part of winter, and he writes : " For December
1 Plin. i, II, Cap. xlvii, C. p. 23.
3
My Garden in Spring
and January and the latter part of November, you must
take such things as are green all winter ; holly, ivy, bays,
Juniper, cypress trees, yew, pine-apple trees, fir trees,
rosemary, lavender ; periwinkle, the white, the purple, and
the blue ; germander, flags, orange leaves, lemon trees,
and myrtles, if they be stoved; and sweet marjoram
warm set." So that, so long as a plant bore green leaves,
even though they were fully developed and no fresh growth
was being produced by it, it was all he demanded to keep
his perpetual Spring alive ; but in these later times, when
so much more of the world has been rummaged and
ransacked to provide treasures for our gardens, it must be
a very poor one that, except during times of severe frost
or deep snow, cannot show some plants if not actually in
flower yet in active growth. Surely this starting into
growth is the true Spring in plant life, whether it be an
awakening due to the melting of a covering of snow
as with the high alpines, or the commencement of the
rains in the African veldt ; and so long as we can see some
plant in the garden starting off vigorously for its annual
round of existence, so long in that spot is Spring with us.
It is interesting to note how differently certain plants
behave when removed from their native surroundings.
Some will quickly become acclimatised, and accommodate
themselves to the new conditions ; others seem to get
confused, and attempt to flower at most unseemly times.
This is especially noticeable with certain recently collected
Alpine plants, and Soldanellas, Gentians, and certain Pri-
mulas such as P. pedemontana, P. minima, and P. Auricula,
which are accustomed to form their flower buds or crowns
4
When does Spring Commence ?
in the early autumn and then to go to rest until the
Spring under a covering of snow. These evidently miss
Jack Frost's annual visit to their bedsides, to tuck them up
with his icy fingers, and to bid them good-night till the
sunshine of next May shall pull off their snow duvets
layer by layer. A November frost may close their eyes
for a few days, and then a sou'wester in December with
its warm rain will trick them into the belief that winter is
over, and they lose their heads actually as well as
figuratively, for the poor little blooms they produce all in
a hurry are mere caricatures, and generally fall a prey to
a roving slug.
On the other hand, I find that most species of Dian-
thus, Ranunculus, Anemone and Leontopodium from the
same localities are never deceived into making a too early
start. I think all New Zealand plants accept our seasons
within a twelvemonth of their arrival, and alter their flower-
ing time to suit them, but certain Cape and S. American
plants never swerve from the traditions of their race ; thus
Oxalis lobata from Chili, and the S.African O.purpurata, better
known as Bowiei, will not learn to start into growth before
autumn, although O. vespcrtilionis from Mexico, O. brasiliensis
and O. floribunda from Brazil come up smilingly in early
Spring. I suspect the reason is that plants which have in
nature a season of rest imposed by drought or heat, of
which Amaryllis Belladonna and certain autumn flowering
Croci are good examples, have become thoroughly adapted
to rushing into flower and growth with the advent of
autumn rains. At the same time there is a kind of freewill,
an individuality that leads plants of one genus in a similar
5
My Garden in Spring
environment to take opposite lines of action, as may be
seen in two of our wild Scillas, S. verna and S. autumnah's,
which are so plentiful on some of the sea cliffs but have
totally different seasons of growth and flowering.
I feel I have now freed my conscience from any need
to adhere to the almanac for the limitation of Spring, the
plants themselves having taken a like licence, but as in
the case of house-hunting with no obligation of being
within reach of some special town, and the world to
choose from, the difficulty of choice is enormously
increased, so if we allow that any freshly-started flower
brings its own Spring with it, as fire to frying-pan or
Charybdis to Scylla so stands the fresh basis of choice to
the old.
I have a strong conviction that the first real breath
of Spring that I inhale in the garden comes from Iris
unguicularis. I always look for, and generally find a bud
or two in the last week of September, or in later
seasons in mid-October, usually before Crocus longiflorus
is fully open. The scent of those two flowers is remark-
ably alike. When we were children one of our favourite
games was a trial of nose-power : one of us was blind-
folded and the others submitted samples of leaves and
flowers to be smelt and recognised. In those days we had
neither this Iris nor Crocus to play with, but I feel sure
the two would have proved indistinguishable. We then
relied mostly on the similarity of the odours of an untimely
shed cucumber, begged from the peppery but kindly old
gardener, and young growths of Philadelphus crushed and
matured to the acme of redolence by confinement in a
6
When does Spring Commence ?
chubby hot hand ; or a well-sucked Gooseberry skin and a
spray of Shepherd's Purse or Arabis.
Many people admit that the sense of smell brings
things more vividly to the memory than that of sight. I
know that it is so with me, and a whiff of Ins unguicularis
or Crocus longiflorus, though several other Crocuses are
almost equally endowed (C. laevigatus and vitellinus among
the autumnal species and C. Imperati in early Spring cer-
tainly are), recalls a feeling of Spring in autumn far more
vividly than the sight of the flowers of a Snowdrop such
as Galanthus Olgae, which is in bloom at the same time.
We greatly want a chart of scents with descriptive names
for the distinct groups, and when it comes I should like to
patent the name of " Pure Spring " for the odour of these
flowers. It is fuller than the scent of Primroses, with
a promise of honey in it strong enough to wake any bee,
yet you feel it is not such brown-heather honey as Alyssum
maritimum and Buddkia globosa advertise, for there is a
correcting sharpness in it, like that of lemon with the
sugar of a Shrove Tuesday pancake, and such as we find
in the scent of Cylisus racemosus and stronger still in
Narcissus Tazetta.
Again, in the soft lilac colouring and crystalline texture
and frail substance of their blooms these two Irids are
markedly springlike. Except in orchids from seasonless
glasshouses and Iris Kaempferi, summer and autumn
flowers, so far as I can remember, lack the crystalline
texture of Spring flowers such as Daffodils, Hyacinths,
Crocuses, and all early Irises.
Begonias have it, but I do not like their fat, meaty
7
My Garden in Spring
blossoms and floppy habits, and cannot be bothered with
them, however much their petals may sparkle.
So as this chapter has already wandered too far, like
Campanula excisa in the sand-moraine, I shall elect Iris
unguicularis as the first flower of Spring, and arrange
further chapters more on the flowers themselves than on
the dates of their flowering.
CHAPTER II
The Garden
BEFORE touching the flowers I must speak of the garden
itself, as its conditions are answerable for many of the
limitations that govern the variety and conditions of its
occupants.
The garden, then, is situated in the parish of Enfield
in the county of Middlesex, but so near to the Hertford-
shire boundary that our postal address is Waltham Cross,
Hertfordshire : and I envy but do not share the celebrated
rose-growing soil of that district. By comparing a bench-
mark in the wall with the Ordnance Survey maps, I learn
we are 111.4 f eet above the sea-level. Helleborus niger
tells me that this is not a sufficient altitude for its comfort,
and I must provide it with shade, and moisture beyond
that of the atmosphere, if I wish it to " grow for me," as
Irish gardeners say so pleasantly. I like the personal
reciprocal touch in these words. How different a vision
of mutual understanding they conjure up from that mild
reproach and suggestion of wilful suicide conveyed in the
other Hibernian garden phrase, " It died on me," which
so neatly lays the blame on the plant.
The nearest milestone tells me it is but ten miles from
London, and smutty evergreens, blackened tree trunks,
and grimy fingers continually corroborate that milestone,
9
My Garden in Spring
in spite of the richness of our avian fauna and well-wooded,
countrified surroundings. Fortunately, being due north
of London, we do not get so many second-hand London
fogs as our nearness suggests. South winds rarely follow
a period of fog, nor do fogs often last for several days in
London, until their own weight spreads them out as far as
this place, so we do not get the genuine article so badly or
so often as do Kew and Acton and other places on the
south side of London.
I cannot believe there is a drier garden to be found
in England. It is on the edge of that district which I
think is classed with Yarmouth as having the lowest rain-
fall of Great Britain, and lies in a centre seldom visited by
heavy thunderstorms ; the higher ground running from
Enfield to Potter's Bar and Hatfield, and the Lea Valley
on our other side, seem to lure away our rain-clouds.
Storms often divide within sight of khaki-coloured lawns
and flagging flowers to flood the railway lines at Ponder's
End and Waltham, and do equally damp and doughty deeds
for St. Albans, leaving us as dry as ever, an insulting sort
of wind perhaps blowing down a barrowful of dead Lime
leaves on to the lawn even in mid-July. This alone seems
sufficient to make the garden as designed by nature fit
only for xerophytic plants from desert and steppe and
soilless cliff, or even the Moon itself when a collector gets
as far. But the wonder is that anything else besides
Opuntias, Sedums, and Houseleeks can exist through a
summer, for the soil is in league with the climate. In the
greater part of the garden, digging below the surface
brings one face to face with gravel, splendidly healthy
10
The Garden
drainage to build one's house upon of course, and when it
is a good red binding sample, a positive luxury for garden
paths. There the advantages end, however, for although
we have made plenty of paths, gravelled them unstintingly,
and got out a good deal of the material from the garden
itself, there still remain untold supplies below, and much
of it so coarse and unprofitable that getting it out entails
carting it away and finding some pond or hollow that
needs filling to justify the labour. This coarse gravel
discouraged all my childish schemes for digging ponds,
gold mines, and that passage to the Antipodes that generally
has to be tried during some flowerless month in the
children's gardens. Perhaps it turned my mind off from
all thoughts of engineering and drove it to the surface and
the tilling thereof. As in our deepest excavations in all the
upper part of the garden, we have never yet got through
this vein of coarse gravel, perhaps I may be forgiven for a
belief that our gravel runs right through the centre of the
earth to our antipode whatever it is ; I don't know, but I
hope it is New Zealand, because then perhaps the water that
soaks away so quickly here may be interesting hot geysers
at the other side and my nourishing manurings conveyed
to the roots of antipodean Cabbage Palms and Ratas.
The greatest evil of a gravel subsoil is its unsuitability
for deep roots. Trees will not enter it, but they turn
their main roots out over its surface, and so go a-hunting
into all the newly dug and enriched beds.
Old trees are precious possessions in gardens, and
must be respected, but I do feel cross with them when I
find an underground bird's nest of strong, fibrous roots
II
My Garden in Spring
in a vacant spot in a newly-arranged border kept empty
for a month or so for some choice plant. I have very
seldom come across a gardener who does not complain of
his soil or climate, or both, and there are but few so
happily placed that his complaints would be easily detected
as absurd and groundless, for there can always be too
much lime for some Rhododendrons or too little for an
exacting Clematis or two. Yet in grumbling at my
gardening conditions I do not feel a parallel case to the
lunatic who, in spite of believing himself in heaven, was
never happy, and told an inquirer it was because he had
a second-hand halo that did not fit and his harp was out
of tune, and I turn and rend any who base their claims
for pity and indulgence for starved plants on the possession
of a sandy soil, for well do I know the way trees make
long tap roots and find moisture deep down in most
varieties of sand, in which, besides showing an honest re-
spect for the nutriment allotted to surface rooters, these
tap rooters anchor themselves so pleasantly and save much
labour and worry of staking. But here young Conifers
and hobbledehoy Eucalypts are sources of anxiety and
often of farewell lamentation at every equinox. So on
most days in the year I would barter my smooth, firm
paths for a good deep sand, with its storage of moisture
deep down.
Of water there seems to be plenty, for the New River runs
right through the very centre of the garden ; but though it
may carry many millions of gallons through it, clever
Sir Hugh Myddleton made its clay banks so strong that
even after 300 years they let no water soak away, and I
12
The Garden
smile quietly when people say, " Of course your Irises do
so well all along by the river, as they get moisture from
it," for I know those beds under the old Yews are about
the driest in Europe. The water is there in the river bed,
but as a gardener once said to me, " Yes, sir, there's
plenty of water but it's very low down." I often think of
his plaint when I too have been dragging it up in fat,
lumpy water-cans, and wish I had standpipes and hose
and sprinklers and the many luxuries of people lucky
enough to have water high up, on the top of their own
hill, like good old Tom Smith's ideal nursery at Newry, or
in the water-tower of the neighbouring town. I must
enumerate my difficulties, or my readers will not appre-
ciate the skill and energy necessary here to grow the
things they have to tear up as weeds in their own gardens,
and one of my troubles is the well-known hardness of
New River water. Derived mainly from chalk wells, it is
so hard that one feels it would be scarcely a miracle to
walk on it, and when the well nearest to us is in full work
there is a distinct bluish-green colour in the river, rather
attractive to look at, but as I have found by experience,
rendering it an absolute poison for certain calcifuge plants.
A liberal dose of New River water given in a spirit of
kindness to a collection of dwarf Rhododendrons during
a time of drought killed all but one in about a fortnight.
The survivor is with me still, being evidently a lime lover,
a hybrid of R. hirsutum.
With these limitations to the possibilities of watering
and manuring I dread a spell of drought, and always
prefer that a garden visitor coming for the first time
13
My Garden in Spring
should do so before the middle of June. A wise old
farmer once said to me, in speaking of the new Parlia-
mentary candidate, " Why, he promises 'em anything, a
shower of rain every night and a shower of manure on
Sundays." I have ever since felt that the fulfilment of
those promises is what my garden and I need, from June
to October anyway.
As gardens go, I suppose this must be called an old
one, for as far as I can make out it seems to be about
400 years since a certain row of Yews were planted.
They are in a crescent-shaped line, and the course of the
river follows the same bend. Those who are knowledg-
able about the rate of growth of Yews in a hungry soil
declare them to be older than the river. So it seems
probable that their owner in 1609, to save his trees,
insisted on this otherwise meaningless bend in the river.
It was not until another century had passed that my
Huguenot ancestors bought the property and settled down
here, and I was always told that two quaint old Flemish
figures in carved stone were in the garden when they
bought it. Huguenots ought to have left a heritage of
Mulberry and Catalpa. The old Mulberry tree was
blown down before my day, but the remains of a Catalpa,
starved and driven to a horizontal line of growth by a fine
old Beech, may be of their planting, for certainly no one
with a grain of gardening sense would have placed it so near
even a half-grown Beech. It is so fascinating to hunt up
evidence in the trees themselves of otherwise unrecorded
work of one's forbears that I am sorely tempted to linger
among these vegetable documents, but will try to confine
The Garden
myself to those that are necessary to explain the present
condition of the ground.
The most evident signs of gardening date from the
earliest years of the nineteenth century, when the place
belonged to my great-grandmother, the last of the
Garnaults, for on her marriage in 1799 the pleasant old
French name was changed for the unromantic-sounding
patronymic which I think must be the longest mono-
syllable in the English language, and unless carefully spelt
as well as pronounced in shops and stores suffers strange
vagaries in form, some of them exceedingly unpleasing to
the polite eye. This Ann Garnault has left her mark on
the garden by planting a deciduous Cypress (Taxodium
distichum}, which, in spite of a subsequent draining of the
pond by which it was planted, has grown into a really
fine tree.
In one favourable season it matured a few cones, but
the catkins seldom get a fair chance of full development.
They are formed in the autumn, and remain green when
the foliage turns to that deep red so characteristic of this
tree the red of a fox's coat, or of Devon cattle. They
remain on the tree after the falling of the leaves has covered
the beds with an apparent mulch of cocoanut fibre, but
severe winters bring many of them down, and even the
few tassels of male catkins left generally fail to effect
perfect fertilisation of the queer little solitary female
blossoms for lack of dry sunny days with mild breezes
in early Spring. The good example of Great-grand-
mother Ann has been followed by the two succeeding
generations, but the younger Cypresses are of course
15
My Garden in Spring
far behind the big tree. After his wife's death my great-
grandfather pulled down the old red-brick gabled house
and built the present one of the then fashionable yellow
brick brought from as far away as Suffolk, wherefore it
has been my constant aim to smother it in creepers of
all kinds. Some contemporary water-colours of the old
house show a hearty middle-aged Larch on what was
then the bowling-green, but before I can remember it
had lost its formal rectangular shape and become an
ordinary lawn, bounded by various paths. The Larch
still stands, and is a venerable specimen, but has only
been able to grow on its northern side, having always
been crowded on the south by other trees. Plantations
of Scots Pines shown in these drawings as saplings are
now replaced by either fine old trees, or some dead and
dying trunks rather puzzling to deal with, and spaces
from which others have gone. For the period of active
planting must have been followed by one of passive
inattention, taken advantage of by certain Horse Chestnuts
and Sycamores to place their greedy, grabbing offspring
out in the world. How these robbers grow ! They
throw a light on the Psalmist's phrase of lurking in
thievish corners : unobserved they get a foothold and
turn their corner into a den for receiving stolen goods,
and then up they go, and their betters are choked and
starved by these arboreal garotters. I can scarcely
believe, when looking at the garden, that I have one by
one displaced such a forest of these coarse, garden un-
desirables. It has been a very gradual process, spread
over twenty years, for I only garden in my father's
16
Iris bucharica : one of the best of the early flowering species
The Garden
garden, and I hope something of filial piety, as well as
the realisation of the impossibility of having one's own
way under such circumstances, has led me in the path
of gentle and gradual elimination of these devouring
hordes, which from other views are of course trees, and
therefore not to be lightly felled.
One of the last of the Horse Chestnuts dropped several
stout limbs on a row of garden seats last summer, and pro-
vided a powerful argument for the removal of the trunk
that shed them. So from the garden proper they have
gone to the timber yard, and as firelogs serve to warm my
bones instead of offending my eye. To anyone who may
follow my example I offer this hint : be quite sure the
wood is well dried before sawing it up for bringing into
the house ; otherwise the scent of sour sap will be as
offensive to the nose as the misplaced tree was to the
eye. To sum up the present conditions of the garden ;
climate, soil, and trees contrive to make it the driest and
hungriest in Great Britain, and therefore arises the line of
gardening I have been driven into. It is perhaps better
described as collecting plants and endeavouring to keep
them alive, than as gardening for beautiful effects or the
production of prize-winning blossoms. Many find the
garden too museumy to please them. I plead guilty to
the charge, knowing there is more of the botanist and
lover of species and natural forms and varieties in me
than there is of the florist or fine cultivator. In fact
I gladly give a home to the class of plant the writers in
early numbers of the Botanical Magazine and Botanical
Register faintly praise as being suitable for the gardens
17 B
My Garden in Spring
of the curious. It gives me more pleasure to have got
together the three distinct forms grey-leaved, golden,
and major of Sedunt spathulatum, and to make them
share a flat-topped rock with at least six other species
of Sedum, than to have the same space monopolised
by Sedunt pilosum, new, rare, and lovely though it be.
Again, Euphorbias are plentiful here, but Zinnias,
Clarkias, and bedding Begonias find no welcome, and
Gaillardias, Cactus Dahlias, and such plants are few. After
such a confession will you care to wander round my
garden with me? Will you have enough patience to
let me talk of the differences between the blue Wood
Anemones of Norway and those of Southern Ireland
or Western England and Wales? It is only fair to
state that colour scheming is impossible in the circum-
stances, and though I have enjoyed having eight fingers
and two thumbs in several iridescent pies for other
folks' gardens (and some of them have proved " pretty
eating," as is said in Ireland and seems to fit the
metaphor), except for one effort in grouping coloured
foliage with suitable flowers of which I am rather proud,
most of my effects, blends, and contrasts have been
the result of accident, or rather the placing and grouping
of plants in surroundings I hoped would be suitable for
their health rather than their appearance.
I fear I am a little impatient of the school of garden-
ing that encourages the selection of plants merely as
artistic furniture, chosen for colour only, like ribbons
or embroidery silks. I feel sorry for plants that are
obliged to make a struggle for life in uncongenial situa-
18
The Garden
tions because their owner wishes all things of those shades
of pink, blue, or orange to fit in next to the grey or
crimson planting, and I long to shift the unhappy Lilium
pardalinum away from its sun- loving Alstroemeria part-
ners and plant it across the path among the shade-loving
Phloxes. The distribution of plants in this garden has
been governed chiefly by a sort of extra sense that seems
to be developed by many enthusiastic gardeners, a sym-
pathetic understanding derived from a new plant's appear-
ance only when the power is perfected ; but in others,
less qualified as clairvoyants, a knowledge of its native
country will often suggest its future neighbours.
One of the finest collections of trees and shrubs to
be found in any private garden in England is arranged
by grouping them according to their native continents
or the larger countries, such as China. But that garden
is so well favoured in situation and climate that almost
any plant will grow in almost any part of it. Without
such a strict geographical system, however, one finds that
certain portions of the garden get allotted to N. American,
Mediterranean, and other plants with marked preferences
for sun or shade. But the sense I mean is an inexplic-
able knowledge and feeling, a sort of wireless message
from the plant to the invisible antennae of the gardener.
Such an one sits down to unpack a box of novelties
and can divide them out Trilliums to the left-hand basket
for the cool border, Viola bosniaca to the right for the
sand-moraine, with Wahlenbergia gracilis and Leucocrinum
montanum for companions.
So here my sixth gardening sense, as in the last
19
My Garden in Spring
instance, does not shrink from associating eastern Euro-
pean plants with New Zealanders and Californians, and
it is rather the physical geography of the borders than
the native countries of their occupants that has settled
the question of position.
It would be more pleasant to be able to refer to a
border as China or South Africa instead of such names
as position or quality of soil suggest. Here, for instance,
we have the Damp Bed, but I must warn all who read
that it is but a courtesy title, due to the fact that it is
not quite so dry as other beds because it lies on the
north side of some tall trees, and when last we turned
it out during autumn manoeuvres, we put a good layer
of peat moss two feet underground.
20
CHAPTER III
Early Irises
SUPPOSE a wicked uncle who wished to check your gar-
dening zeal left you pots of money on condition you grew
only one species of plants : what would you choose ? I
should settle on Iris ungm'cularis, as in summer one could
get whiffs of other folks' roses and lilies and all the dull
season enjoy the flowers of this beautiful Iris. It was some
twenty-four years ago I first saw it in the gardens at La
Mortola. Sir Thomas H anbury parted its forelock of long
leaves and displayed a mass of lilac blossoms, and then
and there I vowed I must grow it, and grow it well too.
I had some difficulty in finding out where to get it,
and I suppose it was not so well known then as now, as I
could hear of no one among my gardening neighbours
who could flower it. I was fortunate in getting hold of
a good variety for my first plant, and in trying to imitate
its warm home at La Mortola, I planted it against the
front wall of a peach-house, where a southern exposure and
warmth from the water-pipes brought it into flower within
a year of planting, and set me to work to get other forms
and find further suitable sites for them. So many people
complain of its shyness of flowering that I feel bound to
give my experiences of it rather fully, hoping to help
others thereby. I soon found that the varietal forms in
21
My Garden in Spring
commerce had very well-marked idiosyncrasies, not only
as to outward appearance but in period and freedom of
flowering. The paler flowered forms are those that flower
earliest and most surely in autumn. That known as
ntarginata is generally the first, and the white one and the
variety liladna often come in a dead heat for second place.
Pale colouring is correlated with early flowering, it seems,
and the varietal name liladna is fully justified, both it and
marginata bearing flowers of a softer and bluer shade than
any others ; marginata has a narrow but regular white
edge to the falls, not wide or distinct enough to add to the
beauty of the blossom, but sufficient to warrant the use of
the name, and both forms have wider leaves than the type,
and, what is better, larger flowers. I strongly advise any-
one wishing for autumn and early winter flowers to plant
these two forms along with the white one. Half a dozen
good plants of each ought to provide buds for picking in
constant succession through November, December, and
in open weather in January. It is curious that the white
form should flower with the pale lilac ones, as in appear-
ance it is evidently an albino of the type, having leaves of
medium width and flowers rather diminished in size, as is
so often the case with an albino form.
I once heard of a larger, white form, but diligent
inquiry and an ever-open eye have failed to discover it.
I believe all the white flowered plants in cultivation in
Britain are divisions from a single plant found about
thirty-five years ago by Mr. Edwyn Arkwright when
riding through the then wild scrub on the hillside near
Algiers, but seedlings raised from it ought to show variation,
22
Early Irises
and careful selection should give us larger forms. I am
watching a family of yearling babes, and hoping the leaves
are increasing in width sufficiently to promise good results.
What I imagine must be the type form, because it is
the commonest in cultivation, has medium-sized flowers
of a distinctly warm lilac : perhaps it is not going too far
to say they are flushed with rose, after the manner of the
compilers of catalogues. I never expect them to flower
until New Year's Day has come and gone, so in making a
planting for picking purposes it will save time and trouble
by keeping the early flowering sorts together, for except
during spells of settled mild weather, which Heaven knows
are as rare as spare moments, it is best to pick the buds a
day before they open, and at that time they are not very
conspicuous, as the under sides of the falls are then of a
pale, dingy buff shade, slightly tinged with greyish lilac at
their edges, and are very hard to distinguish from browned
tips of old leaves. In consequence of this it is often
necessary, not only to examine the clumps at close
quarters, but to lift the longer leaves with one's hand, and
all that means stooping, and a gardener's back never
requires more of that sort of physical drill than is
absolutely necessary, neither is it good for his temper to
hunt over clumps of late flowering forms before the reward
for so doing is due.
This plan of inconspicuous colouring for unexpanded
buds and closed flowers has been adopted by many winter-
flowering plants. It would seem they are cryptically
coloured for the purpose of avoiding observation and
consequent destruction by enemies. Thus many of the
23
My Garden in Spring
early lilac Crocuses have the outer surface of the exterior
segments coloured buff, as in Crocus Imperati and C. etruscus,
or of a neutral grey shade, as in C. Tomasinianus, while
others are striped or freckled with browns and purples in
a manner that renders them very hard to see among
their own leaves or grass in the case of stripes, or against
bare ground on a dull day or when closed for the night
if suffused externally. A spell of sunshine changes this
in a few minutes, and the glowing interior of the flower
shows up from afar, and is ready for fertilisation by any
insect visitor which may be rendered active and hungry
by the same bright spell. I have been unable to discover
what are the enemies of such flowers in their own homes,
but judging from the evil habits of that vulgar little pest
the sparrow, one is inclined to fancy they may be birds
of sorts. But for the sake of those to whose charitable
sentimentality all members of the avian fauna are the " dear
little birds," repaying winter doles of crumbs with spring
carols, I will offer a scapegoat in the form of some
beetle of the family of Cantharidae such as our British
Oil Beetle, Meloe Proscarabaeus, to which a fresh young
flower is a toothsome breakfast, for I notice that those
who can overlook anything in a bird " a dear little bird"
of course, ostriches and eagles being outside their
spheres of experience are ever ready to denounce or
bring about the destruction of nasty creeping things."
For myself, I am too light a sleeper to appreciate the
cheeping of newly-awakened sparrows in the Wistaria
round my window, and too fond of its flowers to forgive
their chewing the swelling bloombuds.
24
Primula longiflora. (Seep 138.)
Early Irises
I think the longest word in the Greek Lexicon was
invented for use in a maledictory imprecation against
sparrows. One feels that to pronounce it rapidly, or to
write it clearly on lintel and sidepost, ought to kill them
off in flocks. Try it ; it is quite simple, only this : opOpotyoi
ToirvKocpavToSiKOTaXaiTrwpo?, which being translated is
" early -prowling base -informing sad-litigious plaguey
ways," almost as beautiful in its hyphened English as in
the original Greek.
The success of 7. unguicularis as a cut flower depends
so much on careful picking, and experience has taught me
how to grapple with so many sources of difficulty and
injury, that details are perhaps worth recording. The
first thing to note is that this Iris, after the fashion of the
Crocus and Colchicum, produces no flower stem above-
ground at flowering time, a long perianth tube doing duty
for it until the seedpod is raised up on the true stem just
before the seeds are ripe. A careful examination will
show that this Iris has a short scape among the bases of
the leaves, and that in healthy specimens it is about half
an inch in length and bears three buds at its apex.
Scape and buds are wrapped by one or two tough green
spathes, and each separate bud has two more spathes of
its own, of thinner texture and closely wrapped round the
fragile perianth tube. The central bud of these three is
always first to lengthen and flower, and generally is ready
for picking before the other two show above the tough
outer spathes. Therefore to avoid picking all three buds
at once, and so wasting the two undeveloped ones, it is
necessary to pull away the two outermost tough spathes
25
My Garden in Spring
a little, until you are sure you are holding only the two
belonging to the bud ready to be gathered. Then a
sharp pull will generally bring it away, leaving the other
two buds to push up a week or ten days later. They
sometimes do this simultaneously, and as it is not difficult
to see whether the central bloom has been already
gathered, one can then allow oneself the luxury of picking
the whole stiff bunch of spathes and buds.
If the nights are mild it is as well to leave the buds
on the plant until the perianth tube has lengthened
sufficiently to stand above the surrounding spathes. But
although the perianth segments when exposed just above
the spathes will safely stand several degrees of frost, I
find once the perianth tube is out in the world and un-
protected, a few degrees of frost will render it transparent
and limp, burst its cell walls in fact, and ruin that
blossom's future.
So in doubtful weather I prefer to pull the buds when
the coloured parts of the flower appear just above the
spathes. I find it best to place them at once in water
and to immerse them up to their necks. Then they
lengthen rapidly, and one by one burst open and are
ready to transfer to the flower vases. If placed directly
after picking in water that only reaches an inch or so up
their length, they are rather inclined to flag and fall over,
and even to get too much exhausted of sap to open
properly. Their own foliage is rather too coarse to
arrange with them, so I often use the leaves of young
plants of Libertia formosa, which are of the same shade of
green but neater than the Iris leaves. They look best
26
Early Irises
arranged in the old-fashioned tall champagne glasses with
Libertia leaves, but when they are plentiful I like to fill a
bowl with some short sprigs of Cypress greenery and
spear the Irises into it.
The deepest coloured variety is known as speciosa, and
has narrow leaves and throws its blossoms up well above
them, and so is much more showy in the garden than the
paler forms, whose broad, arching leaves often hide the
flowers a good deal. Also it seldom flowers before
February, so that the blossoms can generally open and
escape injury better than those of the earlier forms.
Later still comes the variety now known as angustifolia,
which has also masqueraded under the names of Eliza-
bethae, cretensis, and latterly agrostifolia. This last would
be a good name for it, as its leaves are very narrow and
grassy, but it is possibly a result of copying angustifolia
from some indistinct handwriting or worn-out label, as it
has no authority that I know of beyond a catalogue or
two and labels at shows. Anyway, this narrow-leaved
form is a good thing, and when established it flowers very
freely, and is a suitable subject for a warm nook in the
rock garden or at the foot of a pedestal or stone in a
southern exposure. I grow it in both such situations, and
during March and April the clumps frequently open halt
a dozen or so of their showy flowers at one time. They
stand up well among the leaves, and have a dainty,
butterfly expression about them as the standards arch
outward at a pleasant angle. They vary somewhat in
the amount of white markings on the fall, but all of them
have far more white than other forms of Iris unguicularis,
27
My Garden in Spring
some so much that the falls appear to have a white centre
edged with a bluish lilac band. The texture of the
flowers is rather firmer and crisper than in the larger
varieties, and I find they last quite two or three days
longer, either when picked or when left in the open.
These endearing qualities make them well worth growing.
I grow one other form, but I do not care much for
it. I got it first from Herr Sprenger of Naples as Iris
unguicularis, var. pontica, and lately from Holland as
/. lazica. It has wide leaves, which somewhat resemble
those of Iris foetidissima, and the flowers are of a rather
starry, poor form, and a washy, pinkish lilac, the falls
being mottled with a yellow brown much too freely to
look clean and fresh. It has some rather interesting
botanical characters, such as a trigonous pedicel and
markedly keeled spathe, but though I should be sorry to
lose the variety I do not want any more plants of it.
The growth of the pollen tube and its passage down
the style must be as remarkable and rapid in these Irises
as in any known flower. If you examine the distance it
has to go from the stigma down to the ovary and consider
the very short duration of the blossom you will readily
see what I mean. It is quite worth while dissecting a
full-blown blossom and extracting the slender style from
out of the perianth tube to get an idea of the delicacy and
wonder of its mechanism. As great length of style is such
a marked character of this Iris it is a pity that Desfon-
taine's name slylosa cannot be maintained for it, but as
Poiret's Voyage en Barbarie, in which the first description
of it occurs, was published in 1789, his name of unguicularis
28
Early Irises
must stand by the law of priority, for the other was not
published until nine years later.
In most gardens the best position for planting a good
row of this useful plant is along the south front of a
greenhouse. It frequently happens that there is such
a low space of wall quite unutilised where a narrow
border can easily be made. I believe in planting them
just after their flowering season, that is to say as soon as
they can be procured in late April or May ; and I like to
jam them up against the foot of the wall, pressing the root-
stock right against it, as I believe they will flower much
sooner if they cannot spread out on both sides.
I have seen good results obtained by raising their bed
a few inches and placing a shallow board along the front
of it to hold up the soil, and I should strongly advise this
plan in moist or heavy soils. If there are hot-water
pipes on the other side of the wall against which they are
planted so much the better, you will be all the more sure
to get flowers in the winter months. But look carefully
to the guttering that almost always forms a roof over
their heads in such positions, as a leak into the heart of
a clump will soon destroy it. Another trouble may arise
from the melting of snow on the glass of a heated house
from the warmth within, and the consequent drip and
formation of icicles on the young leaves. It is worth
while to keep a piece of board to lay over them during
such times of trouble. Once planted they need but little
care. It is wise to pull away in Spring any of their leaves
that have died, to let air and sunlight in to ripen the
rootstock. In autumn any dead leaves that have blown
29
My Garden in Spring
into their hearts are best removed before they rot, and a
careful search should be made from time to time for
slugs and snails, which are very fond of the tender, juicy
buds. By carefully bending the leaves forward from the
wall and peering down among the crowns these evil
gasteropods may generally be discovered ; but the cater-
pillars of the Yellow Underwing and Angleshades Moths
are more troublesome to catch. The only successful
method is to go out on a mild evening with an acetylene
bicycle lamp, which will show up the marauders in their
true colours.
Patience seems to be the only manure these Irises
need, poor soil inducing flowering instead of production
of leaf, and the older a clump grows the better it flowers,
so long as it does not raise itself too much out of the
ground to be able to get nourishment ; but I have
some old clumps that by pressing their rhizomes against
the wall have climbed up it some six or seven inches ;
these aspiring individuals flower well, and I respect their
ambitious habit so long as the leaves look strong and
vigorous and I receive my rent in flowers.
Last winter we picked about fifty buds a week from
the time the frosts had killed off the Asters and outdoor
Chrysanthemums until March brought us sufficient
Daffodils to keep the dinner-table supplied. As a
producer of ver perpetuum during the dullest months of
the year I feel sure no outdoor plant can beat Iris
unguicularis.
Next in order as bringers in of Spring among the
Irises come the members of that puzzling little group of
30
Early Irises
bulbous-rooted ones known as the reticulata section, from
the curiously beautiful coat that covers their corms. This
tunic is well worth examining with a good lens. To the
naked eye it looks as if composed of parallel strands of
a towlike substance, but if pulled away from the corm
the strands stretch away from each other, and show
lesser strands branching out from them and uniting the
stronger ones, so that then it becomes a veritable net-
work. So many local forms and varieties exist in this
section that their systematic arrangement is not easy, and
certain of them get chivied about as varieties of first
one species, then of another, according to various
authors' views, and this is the case with an old favourite
of mine. I used to call it Iris reticulata, var. sophenensis,
but Mr. Dykes, in his sumptuous new monograph of the
genus, points out that it resembles /. histrioides in its
manner of increase, viz. by a host of tiny cormlets
surrounding the base of the parent corm, and in its stout
leaves and hasty way of bursting into flower soon after
the leaves and spathes have pierced through the ground,
so as /. histrioides, var. sophenensis, it must now be known.
If it flowered at Midsummer we should either fail to
notice it or turn up our rose and lily-surfeited noses at
its humble charms, but in the darkest days of the year, in
old December or young January, it is a joyous sight.
Quite unintentionally it found its way into the cold frames
sacred to my rarer Crocuses, and at once showed me
plainly that it liked the treatment given to its neighbours,
by multiplying as rapidly as the rabbits the small girl who
was slow at sums envied so much.
My Garden in Spring
The small spawnlike corms are but feebly attached to
the large central one, and fall off so easily that it is hard
to lift the colony intact, and once off they are hard to
collect, many of them being about the same size and dingy
colour as the pupal cocoons of the common black ant,
known as ants' eggs to bird-fanciers and gamekeepers.
These soon get dispersed in the dry soil, and apparently
every one grows into a fair-sized corm with babes of its
own before next lifting-time. In the open border they are
rather more delicate, and require a very warm, well-
drained corner and frequent lifting. They are worth
some trouble, for the sturdy little flowers are prettily
shaded with plum-purples and deep blues, and last fresh
and fair for several days, but they open so close to the
ground that they are not suitable for picking, though a
patch of a dozen or so is worth looking at in the rock
garden at that flowerless time of year. The typical form
of /. histrioides varies a good deal in size and in period of
flowering, so that a clump of it, unless formed of off-
sets from one form, will send up a flower or two at a
time for some weeks. In its best forms it is very lovely,
and surprisingly large and blue to be smiling at one from
the surface of the cold, wet soil so early in the year.
The best form I have came from Messrs. Van Tubergen,
who seem to have been fortunate in receiving this superior
variety from their collector, for they allow it to appear in
their list without any additional varietal name, but I have
seen it labelled "var. major" when shown by others.
It is not only larger than the old form, but also earlier
and of a better substance, and as 45. will purchase
32
Hybrids of Narcissus triandrus
Early Irises
a dozen, no garden should be without a good clump of it.
The variety has never increased with me as lavishly as little
sophenensis does, but then I have not tried it in the cold
frame which is the main source of my compound interest
harvest of the ants' eggs produced by sophenensis.
I do not believe it would prove so prolific as that
generous-minded midget however it were treated, for I
sent a few corms of sophenensis to a friend who gardens
in Cheshire, and she wrote to tell me that now after three
years they have grown to the number of 168. Yet the
last time I saw it shown in flower at Vincent Square its
proud owner named 35. 6d. as the price of its departure
into other hands.
There are other early Irises, but they are not found
here, for I have been obliged to renounce as expensive
luxuries needing annual renewal such delights as 7. histrio
and 7. Vartanii. They insist on producing long and tender
leaves before they flower, and winds and frost soon take
the tucker out of them, and, limp and browned, they cannot
collect the necessary carbon dioxide to feed the plant, and
no fat corm results for next season. Wise old histrioides,
to be contented with those stumpy, stiff leaves until
warmer days advise their lengthening ! 7. alata ought to,
and sometimes does, illuminate this dark spell, but though
it lives in sunny rock- nooks here it is only after excep-
tionally grilling summers that it plucks up heart to flower
outside. It used to do fairly well in the Crocus frame,
but has been crowded out for my more beloved children.
Before the last lag-behind forms of 7. histrioides have
faded, I look to some precocious seedling forms of 7.
33 C
My Garden in Spring
reticulata. These were surprise gifts to me from my
garden, spontaneous seedlings, unbirthday presents, as the
Red Queen called such pleasant windfalls. I believe their
mother was the dwarf, early plum-red form known as
Krelagei, which is a great seeder here, but, as so often
happens with plants that seed freely, after producing well-
filled pods it feels it has done its duty, and is content
to die. Except for its precocity in flowering, and its
motherliness, 1 do not greatly care for this variety, but
as a parent I advise all to grow it until they have a
generation of its babes from which to select better forms.
Experiments carried out by Mr. Dykes and others
show that the purple red colouring of Krelagei appears
in self-fertilised seedlings of the deep blue form known
in gardens as the typical reticulata. This dark blue is
furthermore the rarest colour form in its native home,
and here without artificial fertilisation I have never seen it
set seed. The red forms, on the contrary, bear pods in
most seasons when left to natural causes for pollination.
If their seeds only reproduced the squat, liver-coloured
charms of their dowdy mother they would not be worth
sowing. But among the gifts of the gods that appeared
round my dead-and-gone Krelagei's label, then only its
tombstone, first came a deep, indigo-blue youngster with
only a slight improvement in stature, not a first-class
plant, but as early as ever its mother was, then came
one of the greatest surprises and joys of this garden, a
posthumous son and heir to a once-cherished treasure,
/. reticulata, var. cyanea. This variety cyanea is now
nothing more than a mysterious memory. Mr. Dykes
34
Early Irises
thinks it may be identical with the form now known as
Melusine. Both have " died on me " here, alas : but as I
recall them to mind, I would gladly get cyanea again, but
do not wish for Melusine. Mr. Dykes in the great
monograph, says of it, " In the best examples the colour
is an approach to a light Cambridge blue." If my memory
is not too much affected by the weakness which makes
all long-past summers warm and sunny, all childish
haunts vast and magnificent, and in a fuller development
turns all passably good-looking grandmothers into noted
beauties of their day my cyanea was fit to compare
with a turquoise, and taller than all the Melusines I see
now. Its clear blue colouring and length of perianth
tube have passed into my joy of a seedling, and so far, it
has proved of good constitution, and has steadily increased.
Please note that I have said " so far," for here I must
make a confession. I rather pride myself on being free
from superstitions about most things, and have even
lectured at local debating societies on the inconsistency of
superstitious fears with a Christian belief. But I believe
most people, though able to make light of certain super-
stitions, and perhaps ready to walk under ladders, or
dine comfortably though one of thirteen, yet cannot quite
shake off some idea, probably an ingrained result of
nursery teaching, that it is just as well to avoid giving
and receiving scissors, or cutting one's nails on a Friday.
A curious chain of experiences in the former case, and a
haunting doggerel rhyme in the latter, make me weak
about these. My greatest weakness of all, however, takes
the form of an uncomfortable feeling, that the unseen
35
My Garden in Spring
powers lie in wait with trouble or failure for him who
boasts of continued success, just as surely as the clerk of
the weather does with a sudden shower, for those who
venture afield without mackintosh or umbrella.
At no time am I more timid of these avenging fates
than when openly rejoicing in some garden success, and
more especially so in print. So often has dire calamity,
sudden death, or uprooting by storm, followed the publi-
cation of a photograph and exultant note describing one
of my best specimens, not only with Clematis, and
Mezereon, and such "here to-day and gone to-morrow"
subjects, but with many steady-going old plants, that I feel
an uncanny dread creeping over me, that unless I touch
wood in some way to disarm the overlooking witch and
blind the Evil Eye, I had better not describe my successes.
Now, as I do not wish for a blasted heath, or a landscape
like that around the chemical works at Stratford, in place
of my crowded old garden, and as I always use a stylo-
graph pen made of vulcanite, and won't go back to a
wooden penholder, my epistolary method of touching
wood must consist of an assumed distrust in the future
prosperity of my treasures, and so readers will please help
me by understanding that the "so fars" and " apparently
establisheds " I must sprinkle among my descriptions of
flourishing colonies of healthy plants are amulets designed
to protect my darlings from the maw of the mollusc and
the blasting of the bacillus.
So far, then, my turquoise treasure which I call
Cantab has thriven, and besides two clumps here, I have
been able to send it out a little way into the world, J?y
36
Early Irises
sharing its offsets with a few friends whose openly ex-
pressed raptures have convinced me it would find a good
home and loving care in their gardens.
I think it is one of the loveliest of Spring flowers, and
do not believe it is only that sort of paternal pride vented
in one's own seedling, that leads me to believe it is of the
colour of a Delphinium Belladonna, and that the bee guide
on the fall is just the right shade of apricot-orange to
attract any flying insect and please an artistic eye with its
colour contrast, producing much the same effect that you
get in the deeper colouring of Linaria alpina.
The same crop of seedlings gave me a tall red-purple
form, and yet one more that, so far as I can see, is iden-
tical with that sometimes sold as /. reticulata major.
These two last flower in the order in which I have
placed them, and are both somewhat earlier than the
old garden form, which is too well known to need my
praise. It is generally recommended that they should be
lifted frequently, and just after the leaves have died down,
to be stored in dry sand till September. But I found
this plan unsatisfactory when I tried it, and prefer to re-
plant them just as they are going out of flower. The
ground is generally moist enough then to prevent their
flagging, and the corms grow larger and stronger for
their shift to fresh soil, and also at that time of year
one can see just the sort of place and neighbours that
will suit them at flowering time better than when the
autumn plants are in full swing. If I have missed this
golden opportunity I have sometimes lifted them in
early August, but have then replanted them within
37
My Garden in Spring
an hour or so. They are among the plants that deterio-
rate rapidly when out of the ground, so when buying
new ones it is as well to get them as early as possible
after the bulb lists appear. Although they bloom with
the Daffodils, some of the Juno Irises deserve a place
among the early ones. They are queer creatures with
folded leaves arranged in two ranks, bulbs that produce
long storage roots from their base, which it is very diffi-
cult to avoid breaking off in planting, and yet most essen-
tial to the plant's well-being that they should remain
intact, and again they have standards that refuse to stand,
but either hang downwards or sprawl out horizontally. I
can think of no better word to express such unstandardly
conduct unless I draw upon the forceful legends on con-
tinental railway carriage windows, and anglicise them into
sporgering and hinauslehning. They appear to me to
prefer a stiff bit of soil to root into, but to have their
bulbous body in something lighter, and unless I fuss over
them they do not grow very vigorously. My favourite is
the variety of I. persica whose right name is stenophylla, but
which often appears as Heldreichii. The combination of
its lavender-blue groundwork with the white and deep ame-
thyst purple of the tips of the falls is so lovely, that I have
not grudged renewing my little stock when bad seasons
have brought it low. /. Sindjarensis is more reliable but not
so lovely, but its hybrid Sind-pur Amethyst is a gem quite
worth the trouble of constant lifting and rebedding in choice
soil, even sand and leaf of the best the garden can produce.
The most satisfactory here, and capable of being left
alone for several seasons, are the forms of /. orchioides
38
Early Irises
and the closely-allied 7. bucharica. The old yellow form
of orchioides is really the best, the white one having a
lingering taint of the hue of jealousy too much in evidence,
and the so-called coerulea form is a very washy affair and
no bluer than a basin of starch, but I rather like sulfurea,
its name being justified by its colouring. ' All are suitable
for a sunny slope in the rock garden, but if you have
room for only one, choose /. bucharica. It is a charming
plant with its tier upon tier of paired, gracefully arching
leaves, like some design for free-hand drawing, and its
creamy-white flowers with bright yellow falls, and in my
garden it is the strongest and tallest of the Junos, and
I think must rank as the last of the earlies.
39
CHAPTER IV
Snowdrops
ONE can hardly picture an English garden without the
Snowdrop. Yet not only are we forbidden by the com-
pilers of lists of British plants to say it is indigenous to
our woods, but much has been written to prove it was
but little known in our gardens till well into the seven-
teenth century. The chief evidence for this view is found
in Bacon's omission of the Snowdrop from his list of
plants for the early months of the year, and Johnson's
remark, when editing his edition of Gerard, published in
1633, that "some call them also Snowdrops," as though
the plant as well as the name were still not well known.
One great writer on such subjects, who so seldom makes
a mistake that I feel almost as though I must be dream-
ing and ought not to believe my own eyes, has stated
that Gerard omitted the Snowdrop in 1597 and Parkinson
did so also in the first edition of the Paradisus in 1629,
but it appears in both as Leuconium bulbosum praecox minus,
and there are figures given in both books. Anyway,
whatever the seventeenth century gardens contained, I
should be greatly disappointed if this twentieth century
one could not show me a Snowdrop at all times from late
October until the advent of April brings so many other
flowers that one scarcely notices their disappearance.
40
Primula pulverulenta, "Mrs. Berkeley." (See p. 147.)
Snowdrops
This garden is not very well suited to Snowdrops:
they do not colonise or settle down and require no further
treatment as in cooler soils, but I take so much interest
in the various forms and seedling varieties that I have
diligently collected all I can get, and labour earnestly
to keep them here. Most of them require frequent
division and replanting, and I believe in doing this just
as they are going out of flower, and if the roots are
not broken in lifting but carefully spread out in their
new soil, they seem to gather up nourishment for the
newly-forming bulb without a check. The bulb of a
Snowdrop is well worth examining. If dug up and
well washed at flowering time, you will find it consists
of first a very thin brown skin, easily broken and rubbed
off, leaving a shining, white surface below, which is the
outside of a thick, fleshy wrapping enclosing the whole
bulb, and having a small round opening at the top, out
of which the shoot of the present year has grown. By
carefully slitting one side of this white wrapper you
can peel it off, and will see that it is about the same
thickness throughout, and has an inner membranous
lining that is only attached to it at the top and base.
What remains of the bulb appears wrapped in a second
similar fleshy covering, but by slitting and removing
this you will find that its inner surface is three times
as thick on one side of the bulb as on the other, and
the thicker side is fluted with nine or more ridges, which
remind one of those on the corrugated cardboard so
useful for packing fragile objects (and even plants for
the post when one cannot find a long and narrow box
My Garden in Spring
just to fit). This second bulb scale has an inner lining
similar to the first, and so has the third and innermost
one, which also has one side fluted and thicker than the
other, and its fluting is on the opposite side of the bulb
to that of the second scale. These three scales form the
whole of last season's bulb, and directly inside them you
will find a long tube, thick and fleshy below and gradually
becoming thinner upwards, till it emerges in the centre as
the almost transparent sheathing leaf that wraps round
the lower part of the two real leaves. A section of its
base will show that it is of uniform thickness, and is the
counterpart of the outer scale of the bulb, only a year
younger, and will form the outer scale of next season's
bulb. Inside this sheath come the two leaves, and if you
can follow them down carefully to the point where they
join on to the base of the bulb, you will notice that one
grows gradually wider and thicker till it wraps right
round the other, and by cutting through their thickened
bases and examining them with a lens, traces of ridges
may be seen, and also that one side is thicker than the
other. So we learn that the bulb is formed annually of
the bases of the sheathing leaf and the two true leaves,
which swell out and store up all the nutriment gathered
by roots and leaves during the period of growth. I do
not know of any other bulb so wonderfully yet simply
constructed from three pieces, and that yields up its secret
so easily to the inquirer.
Another interesting characteristic of the Snowdrop
that gives me annual pleasure to notice is its method of
piercing through the hard ground. The two leaves are
42
Snowdrops
tightly bound round by the sheathing leaf, so that their
tips are pressed together to form a sharp point that cleaves
the ground and makes way for the fragile flower, in much
the same way that you put your two hands together and
hold them in front of your head when diving into the water.
The point of the uprising Snowdrop is strengthened for
pushing aside stones and hard substances by a thickening
of the tip of each leaf into a tough white cushion, a
plan also followed by the leaves of Daffodils, Hyacinths,
and many other bulbous plants, but I think only in
Snowdrops do these white or cream-coloured tips persist
so noticeably in the full-grown leaf.
Forbes-Watson has rhapsodised very beautifully about
the artistic value of these dots, but I think their mechanical
service to the plant is their raison d'etre and perhaps
more admirable side.
There is much pleasure to be derived from watching
the thrusting through of one's plants in the dull, wintry
days. I love to see a great cracking and upheaval of the
soil as forerunner to the appearance of the blunt, white
nose of a really strong Eremurus Elwesianus, and would far
rather see this vegetable mimicry of an enlarged poached
egg in the border than any Venus rising from the sea. If
the white, sheathing leaves appear in this knob-like form
you know there is a good strong spike below, and that
forking over in the autumnal cleaning up has not injured
the shoot ; but if a point of green leaves first appears it
is too often presage of a flowerless crown. The arch
method employed by many dicotyledons is worth contrast-
ing with the plan of spearing through adopted by most
43
My Garden in Spring
monocotyledons. It is marvellous what power lies in a
growing shoot of a Crocus. It makes light work of a
hard, well-rolled gravel path. A single Crocus leaf is a
flaccid, weak instrument, but the whole series of leaves,
varying from four to fifteen according to the species, when
tightly bound by the tough, sheathing leaves, and the
sharp and toughened points of the true leaves thus all
brought together, form almost as sharp and strong a
weapon as the underground shoot of one of the running
bamboos. Still more wonderful are those, mostly
autumnal bloomers, that flower without leaves, for in their
case it is only the tips of the sheathing leaves that pierce
the soil, and once through into daylight open a little way
to allow the fragile flower-bud to pass upwards. But this
seems to me as child's play compared with the task under-
taken by the Winter Aconite, the Wood Anemones, Bon-
gardia Rauwolfii, and the Epimediums, which bring their
flower-buds almost to maturity below ground, and then
lift them through backwards by means of an increased
rate of growth in the lower portion of the floral stem and
the consequent raising of the centre of the arch into
which they are bent. It is the same method by which so
many dicotyledons lift the cotyledons out of the seed husk,
and is a case of " Don't push, just shove," as boys say, the
top of the arched stem being forced straight ahead until
it is not only through the surface of the ground but has gone
up high enough to lift the flower-buds clear of the soil,
when they will straighten up, and further growth may be
uniform throughout the length of the flower-stalk.
Certain of the autumnal-flowering Snowdrops blossom
44
Snowdrops
before the leaves are produced, and with them, as with
the naked flowering Crocuses, the sheathing leaf opens
the road to the surface only, and, once there, parts to
allow the blossom to emerge from its protection ; but they
have not the same charm for me as those which flower
with their leaves, looking rather forlorn, hanging above
bare earth. Most of these come from Greece, and one,
Galanthus corcyrensis, from Corfu, and are generally regarded
as forms of the common Snowdrop G. nivalis.
Except in time of flowering there is not much differ-
ence between them, and they are none of them very easy
to please, evidently expecting the winter to be mild and
sunny and kind to their young leaves in return for their
early heralding of Spring. So they are only safe in the
open in specially sheltered nooks, while a cold frame makes
a still happier home for them. Galanthus Olgae is the first
to appear here, and generally does so in the latter part of
October, and looks sadly out of place at that season. It
has been described as a species, and retained as such by
some authors, because it is said to have no green marking
on the inner segments. But the original description
distinctly states that when dried the inner segments appear
to have no green markings, and I notice that in this form
more than in any other the green fades to yellow, and
sometimes disappears altogether if an elderly blossom is
dried. It has been rather largely collected of late years,
and can be bought much more reasonably than other
autumnal Snowdrops, and is well worth a trial wherever
a cosy nook can be spared to it. G. Rachelae is my
favourite of the first comers, but alas ! it is so rare that it
45
My Garden in Spring
can only be procured by love and not for money. It was
found in Greece by Professor Mahaffy on Mount Hymettus
in 1884, and found a home with that kindest of good
gardeners the late Mr. Burbidge, at Trinity College, Dublin.
From him it found its way into a few gardens whose
owners could love an autumnal Snowdrop. From Mr.
Arnott's generous hand it came to me, and I am glad to
say, when some years later he unfortunately lost his plants,
I was able to restore him of his own. For some years it
seemed to be very happy with me in the rock garden, and
I was able to make two clumps of it, then the larvae of the
Common Swift Moth (Hepialus lupulmus), one of my worst
enemies, found it toothsome and hollowed out its bulbs.
One clump disappeared altogether, and I am still strug-
gling anxiously with the remnant of the other, but hoping
some day to recover the lost ground, and be able to send
it still further afield. When robust it sends up two or
three blossoms from a strong bulb, and they are larger than
those of any other early autumnal form, but for all that
leafless. I have a bed I call the sand-moraine because
parts of it are surfaced with granite chips, and it is pro-
vided with an underground pipe for watering, and because
it must have some name, and further it is fashionable now
to call any bed of carefully-mixed, gritty soil a moraine.
Anyway, in a corner of this bed which is filled with yellow
builders' sand mixed with a little good leaf mould, G.
Rachelae has so far looked happy again, and has escaped
gnawed vitals. I have lately been converted to this parti-
cular sand, which I believe is called yellow builders' sand
by those who stock such things, meaning of course that
46
Snowdrops
the sand is somewhat yellow not that the builder is
a Mongolian but it is the old friend we have bought
from grocers and seed-merchants as birdcage sand, and
is really a reddish-orange in colour.
Plants love it, at any rate when new, and even if it
deteriorates with age I hope to find some means of
doctoring it up to full fertile strength again. I should
never have thought of trying Snowdrops in it but for Mr.
Wilks's kindness in letting me dig up a fine specimen of
Galanthus Allenii from his garden for me to figure ; and
when I saw how clean its bulb looked, and how strong
and fair were its roots in that sandy soil, I resolved it
should go into this newly-made sand-moraine, and its
apparent content there has caused other kinds to gather
round about it. G. octobrensis behaved badly here, and
flowered later and later each season, until it became
merged with the ordinary Snowdrop. I had hoped it
would have continued, and after becoming the latest of all
would go on until it was a summer flowerer, and then
come round to October again, but it has never done so.
G. byzantinus is my great link between Autumn and Spring.
It is interesting as being a supposed natural hybrid
between Elwesii and plicatus, having the flowers of the
former with their extra basal green spot, and the folded-
edged leaf of the latter. I find that freshly-imported
bulbs, if planted as soon as received, generally in August,
will give a succession of flowers from November to
February. Some of the earliest flowering forms I have
removed to the rock garden, and I find, though not so
early as in their first season, yet they have been in flower
47
My Garden in Spring
before Christmas for the last four years. So every year I
like to buy a few hundred collected bulbs to make fresh
colonies, and enjoy their early flowers. G. Elwesti, though
not quite so early, yet will make a fair show in December
if planted as soon as the bulbs are imported in August or
September. Until I bought and planted them so early in
the season I never had much success with either of these,
but last season a three-year-old planting had not only
increased well by offsets but seedlings appeared in most
promising profusion, and especially round the byzantinus
parents. Before the old year has gone I look for G. cilicicus
to be showing buds at least. It is a tall, slender form of
G. nivalis, with very glaucous leaves. Although described
in catalogues as November flowering, I do not get
blossoms here until late December or January, and expect
it is only newly-imported bulbs that flower in November. 1
It was especially good in the winter of 1911-12, as though
it appreciated the extra cooking it got that summer.
Between Christmas and the New Year I like to clean
up some corners where I have clumps of a very fine form
of the Neapolitan Snowdrop, G. Imperati. I believe it to
be the one that should be called var. Atkinsit, after its
introducer, Mr. Atkins, of Panswick in Gloucestershire,
whose name lives also in the fine garden form of Cyclamen
ibericum known as Atkinsii. Canon Ellacombe gave me
this Snowdrop and quite half of my garden treasures
besides, and it is one of the floral treats of the year to see
it in January growing over a foot high under the south
1 G. cilicicus has given me the lie, as plants love to do, by opening several
Bowers on the 3oth November 1913 on clumps undisturbed for three years.
48
Narcissus, Grand Monarque. I5y E. Kortescue Brickdale
Snowdrops
wall at Bitton. As I have neither the soil, climate, nor
south wall of Bitton to give it, it is never quite so fine
here, but every season when I see it reappear I hail it as
one of the finest if not the loveliest of all Snowdrops.
The outer segments are wonderfully long and very perfect
in shape, making the flower resemble a pear-shaped pearl,
and it stands up well except, of course, during days of keen
frost. Very near to it in early flowering and stature, but
falling short in symmetry, is a form that I believe should
be known by the rather House-that- Jack-built sort of
name of G. Imperati, var. Atkinsii of Backhouse. It is a
fine thing, but very seldom produces a perfectly sym-
metrical flower, for either one of the inner segments is as
long as the outer ones, or there are four outer segments,
or yet again a petaloid bract may appear just below the
ovary but not quite so purely white as the flower proper,
and all these vagaries give a clump rather an untidy
appearance when looked at closely. I find it hard to say
which I consider the most beautiful Snowdrop, and
should pick out four as candidates for the prize, but I have
never ranged them all four together for comparison, so
when I look at any one of them I wonder whether the
others can possibly be more beautiful. I think if only I
could grow it here as I once received it for figuring straight
from its home in Ireland, the Straffan Snowdrop would
win the golden apple. It is a Crimean form, and like its
relations bears two flowers from each strong bulb, one
rather earlier and taller than the other. It is a fine large
form, but so beautifully proportioned that it is not a bit
coarse or clumsy, as I think some of the very globose
49 D
My Garden in Spring
forms of G. Elwesii are. It is known botanically as
G. caucasicus grandis, and is a late flowering form of the
Caucasian form of nivalis. It was brought to Straff an by
Lord Clarina on his return from the Crimean War together
with bulbs of G. plicafus, which was the Snowdrop that
spoke so sweetly of home to our soldiers when the Spring
melted the snow and the trenches were covered with white
blossoms instead. Lovely grandis has never been really
comfortable here, and I fear is decreasing in numbers,
though its few flowers were very lovely last March.
As this beauty returns my affection and care so
coldly I turn to a more generous-natured form which
the late Mr. Neill Eraser sent me without a name, so
shortly before his death that my letter of thanks and
inquiries was too late to bring an answer. The bulb
he gave me has grown so well that I am now re-
minded of his pleasant friendship from several corners
of the garden, but the original clump is the best placed.
It is at the foot of a large bush of Erica scoparia, a
heath seldom seen in English gardens, as it has little to
recommend it save a very graceful habit and good ever-
green colour, the flowers being very inconspicuous, small,
and of a brownish green, but an interesting plant, as it
is one of the species of heath which produce burrs or
knots on the roots, and though the best are those from
E. arborea, in the Landes district (where E. scoparia is
very plentiful) its root-burrs are collected and exported
for making the pipes known here as briar-root pipes, a
corruption of the French name Bruyere. I grubbed up
my plant in the woods round Arcachon, and though I
5
Snowdrops
tried many that looked like removable seedlings, it was
some time before I hit upon one that had not a root
fit for a pipe-factory with many large knobs already
formed, and even if such as these were likely to live I
jibbed at the postage I should have to pay. Now, twenty
years after, it is a fine bush five feet in height, and at
its feet and under its spread my souvenir of Patrick
Neill Fraser attracts everyone in February more than any
other Snowdrop clump in the garden. I take it to be a
hybrid, and the parents probably nivalis and some form of
caucasicus. It is rounder in flower than the Straffan one,
but has much the same graceful outline on a slightly
smaller scale, but has not inherited the Crimean character
of bearing a second flower from each pair of leaves. It is
at its best as the Ditto n Imperati is going over, and while
the Straffan princess is still a sleeping beauty, so these
three can reign as queen each for her season.
The fourth claimant may not appeal to everyone,
for it is somewhat of a freak, the best-known of the
so-called white Snowdrops, which means the flowers
have little or no green marking on them. It is known
as G. nivalis poculiformis, and appears now and then
among the typical common Snowdrops. It originated at
Dunrobin among seedlings raised by Mr. Melville, who
kindly sent me plants of it. It is inclined to revert
to the normal form, but when a flower is as it should
be, it makes up for a few lopsided ones. The inner
segments should be long and pure white just like the
outer ones, and in this condition it is very graceful
when half expanded, as without the usual stiff green-
Si
My Garden in Spring
spotted petticoat to hide the golden anthers they show
out more, and set off the purity of the six equal seg-
ments. It is a lowly gem, but it is worth bending
one's back and knees to enjoy it from its own level,
rather than playing King Cophetua. In fact, no Snow-
drop looks so well plucked as growing, unless one cuts
it off at ground level, so preserving it between its twin
leaves and bound by the sheathing leaf, and Heaven
forbid I should so treat and sacrifice poculiformis. Mr.
Allen raised an interesting seedling from it, which he
called Virgin. The inner segments are about two-thirds
the length of the outer, and curiously shaped, their
sides being rolled and forming two semi-cylindrical tubes
with the tips bent inwards, and the usual green horse-
shoe mark is reduced to two round green specks ; it is
curious and interesting, but not so beautiful as its mother.
One Snowdrop time, when Mr. Farrer was here, he
astounded me by scorning the charms of poculiformis,
even of a perfectly-formed blossom, because he said
he possessed a much larger, taller, and finer form,
also earlier in flowering, and therefore over for that
season, so I bottled up my curiosity for eleven months
until, in the following year, he bade me make pil-
grimage to Ingleborough and see the marvel. It was
a long, cold journey, and how I hated it ! but at last,
on my knees before the object, I felt well rewarded,
for it was a fine form of G. Elwesii that had poculiformed
itself with great success. Moreover, it had increased to
an extent that permitted of division, and my kind host
and I dug it up, replanting the bulbs with great care,
52
Snowdrops
with the exception of one fine specimen, with which he sent
me home rejoicing. Both our gardens have benefited
(so far, of course) by this replanting. He tells me his
have been much finer ever since, and mine was re-
planted and spread out a little this February. It has a
solid, waxy white flower of great beauty, not so dainty
as the nivalis form, and of rather a colder or greener
white, but is a noble and early white Snowdrop.
Yellow Snowdrops sound abominable, and look some-
what sickly when the blossoms are young, for the green
of the ovary and inner segments is replaced by a rather
straw-coloured yellow ; but on a sunny day a well-
expanded bloom, showing the yellow glow that the mark-
ings lend to the inside of the flower, is not to be
despised, and makes an interesting change from the
green and white garb of the rest of the family. The
best known is lutescens, a form of nivalis, but a larger
and more robust form is called flavescens. Both were
found in gardens in Northumberland, the first by Mr.
Sanders and the other by Mr. W. B. Boyd, who has
a better collection of Snowdrops and knows more about
them than anyone else. To his generosity I am in-
debted for roots of the lovely double-yellow one which
was found in a garden near Crewe, a loosely-formed,
graceful double, with the usual markings of the inner
segments of a good bright yellow, and a very charming
thing when looked full in the face.
It seems to revert occasionally to its ancestral green
markings, and I was rather dismayed to see so much
green where I looked for yellow this season, but Mr.
53
My Garden in Spring
Boyd tells me it behaves similarly with him after removal,
but after a season or two repays patience with pure gold.
Green Snowdrops suggest the dyed atrocities seen in
continental flower-markets, and even our own streets at
times, whose unopened buds have been placed in ink
instead of water, and so forced to drink up the dye and
fill their vessels with gaudy hues foreign to their nature.
But several Snowdrops have chosen to add to their
greenness by natural means. One of these is a charming
little plant. It appeared in the Vienna Botanical Garden,
and from thence travelled into Max Leichtlin's garden at
Baden Baden, that wonderful centre of distribution for
rare plants which, alas ! is now a thing of the past. It is
said that he sent two bulbs to England, one to Mr.
Harpur-Crewe, the other to Mr. Allen, and I believe all
that exist over here now are descendants of that brace
of bulbs. It is known as virescens, and thought to be a
variety of G. caucasicus, though except that it flowers very
late in the season it has no character that I can recog-
nise as connecting it with that tall Russian. It is a very
dwarf form, with glaucous leaves and stem, and the outer
segments of the flower are striped from their junction
with the ovary for two-thirds of their length with a
delicate duck's-egg green, and the inner segments are
wholly green, except for a narrow white margin that
gives a delightful finish and charm to a very lovely
flower. Better known is a very curious freak form of G.
nivalis, which was found in a wood in Western Prussia
and named G. Scharlokii by Prof. Caspary of Konigsberg
after its discoverer. Its claim to greenness rests in a
patch of short green strips on the tips of the outer seg-
54
Snowdrops
ments, but its chief peculiarity is the very curious pair of
leafy spathes that replace the narrow green keels with
their membranous connective that are common to all other
Snowdrops. In G. Scharlokii, these queer little leaves
stand up and spread out over the flower with an expres-
sion like that of hares' ears. In some seasons a number of
the flowers may have the leafy spathes partially united,
even for about half their length, and then after a year
or two all may be divided to the base again. Mr. Allen
raised some seedlings that showed a slight inheritance
of these characters, but they are not improvements : one
of them is a double flowered form, and I think quite the
ugliest Snowdrop I possess, only having enough sugges-
tion of green on the outer segments to make it look dingy.
I have also a form known as Ward which has the
green-tipped segments without the leafy spathes, and is
rather pretty. The greenest of all I have saved to the
last, a double green Snowdrop that doesn't hang its head,
which sounds what children call " perfectly hijjous," but
I assure you it has a quiet beauty and charm of its own.
One might not wish for a bouquet of it, or to decorate
a dinner-table with nothing else, but when Mr. Boyd
kindly sent it to me I greatly enjoyed examining and
painting it, and am very proud of possessing so great a
rarity. It was found at Ashiesteel near Melrose, in a
garden where no Snowdrops but the common G. nivalis
are grown, so its peculiarities must be entirely its own
invention, a parallel case to that of the small girl charged
with biting, scratching, and spitting at her dear kind nurse,
who in answer to Mother's explanation that such be-
haviour was very bad as being put into her head by the
55
My Garden in Spring
Devil, replied, " Perhaps the biting and scratching were,
but I assure you the spitting was entirely my own inven-
tion." But it is a very curious case of a sudden mutation,
for every one of the segments have become long and
narrow and heavily striped with green as bright as that of
the leaves. The outer segments are slightly longer than
the inner, which still retain the emarginate apex, to drift
into botanical terms, but in more ordinary English, the little
snick round which the green horseshoe mark is generally
found. The whorls of these segments occur fairly regu-
larly and alternately till a tassel-like flower is formed, but
instead of hanging as tassels, and good little Snowdrops
should, it holds its head up with a "bragian boldness"
unsurpassed even by Bailey Junior.
I have a pretty form of G.plicatus with green markings on
the outer segments, and have had, and heard of, similar va-
garies in forms of Elwesii, and Mr. Allen had some very well-
spotted forms of Fasten, so green spots evidently run in the
family, and encourage the idea that perhaps a cross between
a Snowdrop and the Spring Snowflake might be possible.
Many of the species hybridise freely, and some beauti-
ful seedlings were raised by the late Mr. Allen of Shepton
Mallett. Unfortunately many of these have quite died out,
and are only known from the mention of their names in
his paper on Snowdrops in the R. H. S. Journal of August
1891, in many cases, alas! without any description.
These seedlings were never distributed by the nurserymen,
and so are only to be found in a few gardens of the per-
sonal friends of Mr. Allen, and as I began collecting this
family too late to get in touch with him I am indebted to the
kindness of his friends for most of my varieties. I think
56
Snowdrops
Robin Hood is one of the best of his hybrids ; it is Elwesii
X plicatus, and a fine bold flower with a great deal of deep
green on the inner segments. Galatea is a very well-
formed, glistening white seedling, apparently nivalis x plicatus.
A distinct one is Magnet, in which the pedicel is very long
and slender, and the large nivalis-formed flowers hang and
sway in the breeze in a way that reminds one of a
Dierama. He also raised a double form with the same
peculiarity of a long foot-stalk that I like very much, be-
cause, like another of his doubles called Charmer, there
are no more than three outer segments, the doubling
consisting entirely of a neat rosette of inner segments,
instead of the mixed muddle of inner and outer segments
found in the ordinary double form of G. nivalis. The
beautiful G. Allenii named after him is a wild species, and
very remarkable for its immense leaves, which at maturity
measure about a foot in length and an inch and a half in
width. When the flower is at its best they are much shorter,
however, but even when first they unfold they look more
like the leaves of some Tulip than of any Snowdrop. The
flower is very round in form and of a good size, though
not in proportion to the promise of the leaves for then
it would have to be as large as a good-sized Daffodil.
There is more than one form of this species, and
I have some that it is hard to decide whether they should
be placed as varieties of Allenii or of the much smaller but
similarly-shaped G. latifolius, a dull little thing that might be
attractive if it could be induced to flower more freely.
The leaves have a very cheery appearance, being very
bright green and beautifully polished, but here the flowers
are always few, and too insignificant for the foliage. There
57
My Garden in Spring
is another broad-leaved Snowdrop, G. Ikariae from the
Island of Nikara, which is a much better thing, and
valuable as being one of the latest to flower. Its broad,
glossy leaves look as though they belong to some species
of Scilla, but are charming in the way they curve outwards
and set off the large flowers, which are of a very pure
white, and have a particularly effective, large green spot on
the inner segments. In one part of the garden it is sowing
itself freely, and I hope for great things from these babes in
years to come. I think it likes a warmer situation than
most other Snowdrops, except perhaps G. Imperati, for both
of these do best under a south wall or in a very sunny spot.
I have never seen more than one variety of it, that is
an early flowering seedling with deeper coloured leaves
that appeared under the celebrated south wall at Bitton.
A bulb, kindly given to me by Canon Ellacombe, has re-
tained its character here, and is always over before the
true Ikariae is out. By the side of this in the rock garden
I grow another beautiful seedling given me by Mr. Elwes,
who found it among a group of G. Elwesii at Colesborne.
I call it Colesborne Seedling, and believe it must be a
hybrid between Elwesii and caucasicus, as it has the inner
segments marked with the second green spot of the former
but has the leaves of the latter. The flowers are very
large and of a fine globose form, but it has too short
a stem to lift them up sufficiently, otherwise I should rank
it among the most beautiful of all. I suppose I must not
linger much longer over my beloved Snowdrops, nor
mention all the forms I grow, but must say a word
in praise of a few more. One of these is G. nivalis
58
Snowdrops
Melvillei, another Dunrobin Snowdrop, and named after its
raiser. It is a very well-shaped, round flower, but still
quite of the nivalis type, and very slightly marked with
green ; in fact in one form I have, sent to me by Mr.
Melville, the horseshoe has disappeared, leaving in its
place only the heads of two of its nails, little round green
dots on each side of the nick. It is a dwarf form, but so
sturdy that it lasts a very long time in flower. Dwarfer
still is a curious seedling of Elwesii that my own garden
gave me. When first it begins to flower the immense glo-
bular flowers are borne on such short stems that when the
buds hang free from the goldbeater-skin covering of the
spathe, their tips rest on the ground, but later the stems
lengthen and lift them. Mr. Farrer suggested the name
of " Fat Boy " for it, when he first saw its solid obesity,
and it now behaves as strangely in his rock garden in
Yorkshire as it does here. The most curious thing about
it is that it produces three and sometimes four flowers
from between each pair of leaves, and these follow each
other, and each succeeding one is lifted on a taller stem above
the swelling ovary of the last and now fading flower. So
that it begins as a dwarf early form and ends as a tall and
late one. Among some imported bulbs of Elwesii I picked
out a very late flowering one ; I see by the figure I made
of it that it was on the 6th of March 1906. It was also
very large, and had the second green spot converted into
a band across the centre of the inner segment. This one
bulb has flowered every year until this, but has made no in-
crease, and in some seasons the flower has lasted quite fresh
into April, being the latest of all my Snowdrops. This year
59
My Garden in Spring
I noticed it had failed to open its flower-bud, so I dug it
up to see what was wrong, and found some evil under-
ground grub (the Swift Moth, probably) had tunnelled right
through it. I much doubt whether it can possibly recover
after such an injury, and I shall have to rely upon one of
Mr. Allen's plicatus seedlings called Belated to keep up my
Snowdrop supply from October to April by filling up the last
fortnight after G. Ikariaehzs turned its attention to seedpods.
The Spring Snowflake is so nearly a Snowdrop and
flowers with the later ones that I shall praise it here.
My favourite form is that known to science as Leucoium
vernunt, var. Vagneri, but which lies hidden in catalogues
and nurseries as carpathicum. Both are larger, more
robust forms than ordinary vernutn, and strong bulbs
give two flowers on each stem, but whereas carpathicum
has yellow spots on the tips of the segments, Vagneri has
inherited the family emeralds. It is an earlier flowering
form than vernum, and a delightful plant to grow in bold
clumps on the middle slopes of the flatter portions of the
rock garden. Plant it deeply and leave it alone, and learn
to recognise the shining narrow leaves of its babes, and to
respect them until your colony is too large for your own
pleasure, and you can give it away to please others.
L. Hernandezii, also known as L. pulchellum, has won a
place in my affections by its useful preference for wet feet.
Like the larger and finer, but later L. aestivum, it thrives
well on the very edge of water, and looks so much better
there than anywhere else, that I advise such a planting.
Hernandezii flowers over a long period, throwing up a succes-
sion of flower-stems, and it comes in Daffodil days, at a time
60
Snowdrops
when other white water-side flowers are asleep. A clump
of it that has been slightly overrun by our beautiful
evergreen Sedge, Cladium mariscus, makes a pretty picture
every Spring, growing an extra few inches under shelter
of the Cladium. How seldom one sees this grand plant
in a garden, and I think no nurseryman stocks it. Yet
there are acres of it in the Norfolk Broads, and half of
Wicken Fen is full of it too full for my taste, for it is
only fed upon by one of the rare insects of the district,
and crowds out reed and other suitable food plants, and
seems to be increasing rather fast in the fen. My plants I
hauled up and lugged home from Norfolk not a very easy
job, as I was entomologising at the time, and a pocket-knife
and my own fingers were my only digging weapons, whilst
its root system is a wide-spreading mass of the toughest
fibres, interlaced with those of every imaginable sedge and
rush and weed. Once home it made up for all pains of
transit, and its great arching leaves are a rich green
throughout the year, unlike those of any other water-side
plant, resembling some extra fine Pampas-Grass. With the
exception of the New Zealand Arundo conspicua, which alas !
is none too hardy here in wet places, nor too vigorous in
dry ones, Cladium the Fen Sedge is, so far as I know, the
only truly evergreen plant of similar bold grassy habit, fit
for the water-side. The effect of its deep green among
the tawny browns of reeds and bulrushes in autumn and
winter is very fine. Nurserymen take note, also take a
holiday in the Broads, take a spade and a sack, and make
a fortune out of three-and-sixpenny snippets in thumb-pots
of Cladium mariscus.
61
CHAPTER V
Spring Crocuses
FOR me, starting this chapter, there are great searchings
of heart, compared with which those of the divisions of
Reuben were as nothing. If but one of them possessed a
flat object with diverse and recognisable sides to it they
might toss up and decide whether to go and help smash
up Sisera or stay and listen to the music of their baa-
lambs, and they seem to have decided pretty unanimously
for the ovine concert. But for me, the very inmost cockle
of whose heart glows more for a Crocus than for the most
expensive Orchid, every cockle in me (though I haven't a
notion what portion of my internal anatomy is meant by
that borrowed appellation of marine molluscs) is full of
searchings and divisions how to do justice to my first
garden love and avoid wearying and driving away readers
to whom my raptures may appear the vapourings of a
love-sick monomaniac.
We treat Crocuses au grand se'rteux in this garden,
giving over two double-light frames to their service in the
very sunniest part of the kitchen garden, and we always
have two sets of pots sunk in ashes containing the seeds or
seedlings of two past seasons, finding that method the best
way to prevent the worm who will turn from waltzing the
seeds of one variety into the middle of a patch of another,
62
Spring Crocuses
as invariably happens when they are sown in parallel lines
in open ground. Also Crocus seedlings have a habit of
descending about an inch each season, and not always
perpendicularly. Their method of obtaining what Maud's
young man desired in his delirium is curious and worth
noting.
They bury themselves deeper by forming a peculiar
outgrowth called a starch root, which is a semi-transparent,
fleshy affair, something like the storage root of an
Alstroemeria, and at first serves the same purpose of con-
taining a store of nutriment, but there the similarity ends,
for Alstroemerias retain these storage roots throughout
their resting period, whereas a Crocus at the ripening-off
season loses its starch root, its store of starch being
absorbed into the newly-formed corm. The starch root
withers and contracts in a series of corrugations after the
manner of closing of a concertina, and as its long lower end
is firmly fixed in the soil the corm is pulled down lower
into the space formerly occupied by the once plump
starch root, which has now grown as lean as the soup-hating
Augustus of the Struwwelpeter. It frequently happens
that one of these roots grows out from one side of the
corm, and will then cause an oblique descent, and in two
seasons carry a corm more than an inch out of the line
in which it was planted.
So that what with worms and starch roots it is
necessary either to leave a wide space between each row
of seedlings or to place buried slates between them to
prevent the different stocks becoming hopelessly mixed.
Slates are costly and space is precious, for I hate a vacuum
63
My Garden in Spring
in a bed of good soil as much as Nature does universally.
So we sow each variety of seed in a separate pot, and
sink the pots, and their gradually narrowing sides not only
prevent the wandering of the babes but force them to
draw nearer, and after two years in pots, if all is well
with them, it should be possible to turn them out in
August and find a layer of corms, each about the size of a
pea, a tender young green pea of the first picking, and all
at the bottom of the pot. Raising Crocus seedlings has
proved such a source of interest and pleasure to me, and
such a means of enrichment to my collection, that I wish
I could persuade more garden lovers to carry it on. It
has certainly the great disadvantage of a wait of at least
three years for the first flowering, but years pass only too
swiftly in a garden, and once that period is over every
succeeding season brings fresh babes to flowering strength,
and I know no garden joy equal to a visit on a sunny
morning to the Crocus beds when seedlings are in full
flowering. To see a dozen, a score, or better still a
century, of some old favourite reproduced in a new
generation is good, but still better is the thrill of spotting
a pure white bloom in a row of orthodox lilac ones.
Forms with larger flowers, deeper or lighter colour, or
extra markings as compared with the normal type, fill the
heart with joy and pride when found in one's own seed-
beds, and it is a happy being who carefully lifts them out
from among the common herd with the only instrument
really suited to the purpose, a cook's fork. Poor mere
man that I was, I stumbled along for years in unenlightened
masculine ignorance, using a mason's trowel, old dinner-
64
Narcissi : Christalla (white} and Homespun
Spring Crocuses
knives, and such bungling, root-cutting tools for the fine
work of seedling selecting, until a practical cousin of the
fairer sex caught me using one of the best silver forks that
I had taken out in a bowl of breakfast scraps, the daily
portion of my gulls, and she said, " What you want is a
cook's fork, and I will send you one." How was I to know
cooks had forks designed by Heaven for the use of gar-
deners ? But when it came I wanted others, and as I often
leave them stuck about in jungles of the rock garden I am
a frequent customer at the ironmongery counter of the
Army and Navy Stores, where cook's forks are obtainable.
Go thou and buy two, one of the largest size for general
use and one a size smaller for weeding out grass, Poa
annua especially, among delicate bulbous things, and you
will bless me every time you use them, or ought to do if
your heart is not of stone. The Crocus treasure-troves go
from the seed-beds into the Crocus frame, and generally
suffer no check from their removal, but ripen up a good
bulb for next August's lifting. I wish I could breathe some
germs of the Crocus Seedling Fever into the words I write
and set all who read aflame to embark on such interesting
work. Do start this very spring. When you see your
Crocuses wide open in flower sally forth with a stick
of sealing-wax or the amber mouthpiece of an old pipe
in your hand, not as a charm, talisman, phylactery, or
whatever you call that sort of thing, but for practical use.
Rub whichever of the two unusual accompaniments of a
garden stroll you have chosen, on your coat-sleeve if it
be woollen, and hold the rubbed portion as soon as pos-
sible after ceasing rubbing near the anthers of an open
6 5 E
My Garden in Spring
Crocus, and you will find the electricity thereby generated
will cause the pollen grains to fly up on to the electrified
object, and, what is more, to stick there, but so lightly that
directly they are rubbed against the stigma of another
Crocus they will leave the amber and be left where you,
and Nature before you, intended them to be. For fer-
tilising flowers with small pollen grains you will find this
plan much more satisfactory than the use of a camel's-hair
brush. The sealing-wax can be wiped clean very easily
between each crossing, but pollen grains work in between
the hairs of a brush, and are not easily induced to leave
it and adhere to a stigma, so that it is hard to be sure you
have not left some to work out afterwards and muddle up
your crosses. It is best to label the bulb with the name
of the pollen parent, and either to remove other flowers
from it or fertilise them with similar pollen as they appear.
The ovary of a Crocus flower is below ground, of course, at
flowering time, and does not appear in the upper world
until the seeds are nearly ripe. From early May onwards
and throughout June the ripening capsules may be looked
for, and it is best to pick them before they split and scatter
their contents. A gentle pinch will soon tell you whether
the seeds inside are hard enough for gathering. I find the
nested willow-chip boxes used so much by entomologists
very useful for keeping the seed in : the capsules ripen well
in such dry quarters, and the names of the sorts can be
written in pencil on the lid. Next best and less bulky are
those strange wee packets sold for about nothing three
farthings the hundred as pence envelopes. I have often
wondered who uses them for their original purpose, buying
66
Spring Crocuses
them by the hundred for it, but cannot imagine a grade of
society so refined as to clothe their pennies in these paper
jackets.
For seed collecting they are Ai though, and I generally
wear half a dozen in the ticket pocket of my coats, even
my Sunday best, and have often acquired a new plant by
having one at hand when a pod or two of poor little orphan
seeds were crying out for adoption. Next time I go to the
A. and N. Stores for some cook's forks and pence envelopes
shall I find a queue at either counter ? The seeds are best
sown as the year's harvest is gathered in, but they will be
none the worse (unless lost or devoured of mice) for being
kept unsown until the middle of September. Then you
will remember the pots are plunged out in the open in a
bed of ashes for two years, until the cormlets are gathered
together as peas in a pod at the bottom of the pots.
Then they get turned out in August, cleaned a little
of worn-out coats, and are pricked out in rows in a specially
prepared bed of rather gritty soil in an open, sunny place,
and are left there to flower. Here we always have two
seasons' pots sunk in the ashes, and three seed-beds, each
with one year's seedlings in it, so that in their third year
the seedlings go out into a bed and should begin flowering,
but it is in their fourth year that the main crop of flowers
should appear, and in the fifth the lag-behinds should show
if they are good for anything. After that we turn that bed
out, sort out what is left, and prepare it for another batch
of two-year-olds.
Yes, we treat Crocuses seriously here, even alluding to
them sometimes as Croci, but I could never bring myself to
67
My Garden in Spring
use the correct Greek pronunciation and call the first syllable
Crock. I should like to do so if I could remember, and
thought anyone would know what I was talking about, for
I like to be consistent, and one always uses the short o for
Crocodile, and it would be pleasant to try to believe in the
derivation of KpoKo-Sei\os (Crocus-fearer) given by some of
the ancients.
It is not very likely that the huge reptile of the Nile,
than which, according to Pliny, " there is not another crea-
ture againe in the world, that of a smaller beginning groweth
to a bigger quantity," ever came in contact with the Crocus,
or would take the slightest notice of it if he did, unless he
turned up his nose at it, as his movable upper jaw would
permit. But one must remember that the word Croco-
deilos was also used for smaller Saurians, even for his poor
relations the lizards, and on the authority of Stephanus we
learn that Saffron mixed with honey was good to anoint
beehives and scare off the land Crocodiles.
It is interesting, too, to note that the Latin name Crocus
has entirely supplanted the English one of Saffron in
popular use for the plant, providing a handy argument
against the inventing of lengthy and often confusing new
English names for plants, such as Cape Fuchsias for Correa
and Cape Cowslip for Lachenalia.
Saffron is now used almost entirely for the drug, and
Meadow-saffron as a name for the Colchicum is not
commonly used for the garden forms, and I hope never
will be, for the Crocus and Colchicum are too frequently
confused as it is. "What is the Crocus found in the
meadows in the Alps, or Germany, in the autumn ? " is a
68
Spring Crocuses
question I am asked so frequently I have sometimes
thought of having a short reply form printed to hand or
post to the inquirers. It should state that a Colchicum
belongs to the Lily family, and shows it by having six
stamens, while Crocus, as an Irid, has only three.
This very elementary fragment of botanical lore once
stood me in good stead. Very many years ago, more
than I care to count up exactly, when I was a fledgeling
gardener and beginning to learn and collect plants, I was
taken to Coombe-Fishacre, a veritable Golconda of floral
treasures, and Mr. Archer Hinde, their kind custodian, was,
I knew, a great authority on plants. Imagine, then, my
nervousness when on going out to the garden I was asked
the name of a group of rosy-lilac flowers. " A Colchicum,"
I cautiously replied, " but I am not sure which," and then
came the reassuring remark, "Oh, that will do. It's
speciosum, and I knew, but I always ask people, and if they
call it a Crocus I won't give them a thing."
I still grow and value many of the plants I carried
away with me that afternoon, and bless my luck in having
known just enough to avoid calling a Colchicum a Crocus.
I feel Meadow-saffron to be almost as bad a misnomer,
for Saffron is only the Arabic Zahferan, and in but slightly
altered forms the word is found in both Oriental and
European languages to denote Crocus sativus itself or the
drug procured from it.
Crocus must be one of the oldest names given to a
flower and still in common use. If there is an older I
cannot recall it. It is the Latin form, from the Greek, of
a very ancient word-root which appears in Sanskrit as
69
My Garden in Spring
Kunkuma, in Indian languages as Kurkum, and in Hebrew
as Karkom. In these Eastern languages the consonants
are more important than the vowels, and are written first,
the vowels being mere dots and dashes placed above or
below the line. So K.R.K.M. would represent this word,
the name of the drug so highly prized in the ancient world
as a sweet scent, a golden dye, and a medicine. It is easy
to imagine how merchants would carry it about the world
for sale, and how nations speaking different languages
would alter the name a little ; Crocum is a form found
in the writings of some Romans, and doubtless the result
of their not quite catching the pronunciation of the name
by which the Phoenician merchants called the precious
drug. We have plentiful instances in our own land of
the way a vowel gets tranferred from before to after an r
as one tracks the word northward.
I shall not speak here of autumnal Crocuses, though
I know it is not quite consistent with my plan and the
way I treated Iris unguicularis and the Snowdrops, but I
like a change, and hope you do. The Spring and Autumn
bloomers are not varieties of the same species, unless
graveolens be, as botanists declare, a form of vitdlinus.
Nor, except in the case of three widely differing species,
do any flower continuously from Autumn to Spring. Of
these last, two (C. caspius and laevigatus) flower mainly in
the autumn, with just a few poor remnants of flowers for
the New Year, so are best classed as autumnal. The
third species, C. Cambessedesii, is the only one with
sufficient originality of mind to baffle all attempts at
classification by time of flowering.
70
Spring Crocuses
It is a lovely but tiny species, endemic to the Balearic
Isles, and was quite lost to cultivation until a few years
ago, when a cousin of mine, who lives in Spain, kindly
managed to get some collected for me ; but not before
every species of Merendera, Romulea, and Colchicum
found on Majorca and Minorca had arrived here, trium-
phantly announced as the precious Crocus. This is ever
the case when the amateur collects some wild Crocus for
me, and in many places Sternbergias are also to be met
with, and come along regardless of their weight for
postage ; and then, when all these members of other genera
are exhausted, if my friends' patience holds out there will
arrive a specimen of the real thing, with the query, " Can
this common weed be the one you want ? It is so
common here, we thought it cannot be any good." So
C. Cambessedesii came at last. It is one of the smallest
of all, and looks as though it might have been the fairies'
first model when they were designing C. Imperati, being
very much like it, only so much smaller, and only just
washed with colour. Its segments are about half an inch
long, palest lilac within, and the three outer ones are pale
straw colour externally, and beautifully marked with purple
featherings. The flowers appear at intervals from October
till March, among leaves almost as slender as a hair. I
always like to pay a visit to the Crocus frames, on my
way back from church on New Year's Day, to see what
promise of Spring they have as a present for me. For
many years I have been greeted by newly-arrived blooms
of the typical brilliant yellow form of C. chrysanthus, and
in most seasons it will have appeared, in the open border
My Garden in Spring
too ; and as among the autumn Crocuses only the first,
C. Scharojanii, and the last, C. vitellinus, are yellow, and
both of these are very rare, the golden buds of C.
chrysanthus are a veritable foretaste of Spring. It is quite
otherwise with Spring-flowering Croci, a large proportion
of which have either yellow flowers or at least the three
outer segments of some shade of buff or straw colour on
the outside. Of those now in cultivation, for the one truly
autumnal yellow, Scharojanii, we have eleven Spring ones,
with flowers entirely yellow on the inner surface, four
that have yellow forms as well as white or lilac ones, and
several with buff outer segments, at any rate in some of
their forms. They may be divided as follows :
Normally yellow :
Aureus, susianus, stellaris, ancyrensis, gargaricus, Korol-
kowii, Olivieri, Suterianus, graveolens, Balansae, chry-
santhus.
With yellow forms :
Candidus, reticulatus, biflorus, a?rius.
With buff exterior :
Imperati, suaveolens, dalmaticus, etruscus, versicolor, and
vernus.
The two last are seldom seen with any yellow about
them, but I have some versicolor collected near Mentone
that in some forms have straw-coloured outer segments,
and a seedling I got here from vernus Mme. Mina has quite
a Nankeen tint outside when in bud. I have never seen
a yellow Crocus growing wild, and without close acquaint-
ance with them in their homes it is impossible to say what
causes this preponderance of yellow in vernal species.
72
Spring Crocuses
It may be more conspicuous to insect visitors among
withered grass and stones or bare earth, while the lilac and
white of autumnal species form a greater contrast with the
browns and tawny reds of fallen or dead leaves.
I have before alluded to the way external stripes, after
the manner of those of the zebra and tiger, render the
buds and closed flowers inconspicuous, and it is worth
noting that these stripes are particularly well developed on
Spring Crocuses, and in the yellow species ; in fact only
three, gargaricus, Olivieri, and Suterianus, have so far
never been found with stripes or feathered markings, for
ancyrensts, which has been described as never varying in
this way, has of late years given me seedlings with
featherings and suffusions of dark brown. The most
extreme of all in this respect is C. Balansae, one form of
which has the three outer segments externally of a deep
mahogany colour, and in bud looks nearly black and is
very hard to see, but the moment these deep-coloured
segments part, the rich orange of the inner segments
makes a most conspicuous and beautiful object of the
flower. A half-expanded one forms as striking a colour-
contrast as any flower I can think of. Every one who sees
it for the first time is astonished at its beauty, and can
hardly believe it is real, like the little girl at the Zoo, who
after gazing at the Anteaters said, " But there aren't really
such animals as those, are there, Nurse ? " Other forms
of C. Balansae are pretty, especially those well feathered
with bronze on the orange ground, but they are quite
credibly tame and dull after the mahogany one. It has
never borne a varietal name, so it is not possible to buy
73
My Garden in Spring
it for certain from any nursery I know of, and it does not
come quite true from seed.
Of yellow Crocuses the best known is the old Dutch
form of aureus, too well known to need description, but it
deserves mention as it is a very curious plant, for though
its anthers are larger than those of any other Crocus it
has a deformed, atrophied stigma, and is quite sterile,
never producing seeds, and has been like that for a very
long time, and so must have been propagated solely by
offsets, by vegetative instead of sexual reproduction, and
yet it shows no sign of deterioration, and is, I should say,
one of the most widely cultivated of all plants that cannot
be raised from seeds, for there can be but few gardens
that do not contain a few hundreds of the common yellow
Crocus. The Saffron Crocus (C. sativus) is another similar
case. It has been cultivated for centuries for the sake of
its stigmata, which being dried become the Saffron of
commerce, from Kashmir to the Bay of Biscay, and was
at one time largely grown in England at Saffron Walden.
But it has never produced seeds in the memory of man
or since he has written about it. I have a curious, dull-
coloured, and smaller flowered form of aureus that in
other respects is much like the Dutch Crocus, but does
produce a few seeds in favourable seasons. I cannot
trace its origin, but have heard rumours of a stock of
yellow Crocus that exists in Holland and is of an inferior
quality, and I suspect it is my fertile but dingy old friend.
The wild type of C. aureus is a very free seeder, and varies
a good deal in its seedlings. The best forms of it are of
an intense glowing orange : one I get from Mr. Smith's
74
Spring Crocuses
wonderful nursery at Newry under the name of moesiacus
(which is rightly but a synonym of aureus) is larger and
deeper in colour than any other orange-coloured Crocus
that can be grown outside. I think these deep orange
aureus forms grow best in slight shade such as is given
by some small light bush, and when they are allowed to
seed about and colonise are simply glorious in the rock
garden.
Sometimes I get a seedling which is the form Dean
Herbert named lutescens and figured in the Botanical
Magazine, a beautiful flower of several shades, as though
cream were mixed with apricots, and there was more
cream than apricot at the edges of the segments. This
season I have a white seedling which is of course the old
named form, v. lacteus, but I hope from this year's
behaviour it will prove an earlier flowerer like the type, a
few flowers of which generally flare up before the paler
Dutch appears, whereas the old lacteus is the latest of all
the forms of aureus to pierce through, and often manages
to keep back a flower or two to be company for vernus
var. obesus and compete for the honour of being the last
Crocus of that Spring. Lacteus is an ivory white in
colour, distinct from any other, and you can see it is a
yellow turned white, reminding one of that beautiful
softened shade of white that in old age replaces red hair of
the shade euphemistically called auburn, but colloquially
carrots or ginger.
No present-day seedlings of the orange wild aureus
are anything like the old Dutch variety, whose origin is
lost in mystery, as also is that of another section of this
75
My Garden in Spring
species, which is most likely of garden origin. It is of
slender build and pale colouring, and is known as sulphureus,
and there are three varieties of it : a self-coloured one known
as sulphureus concolor, almost as pale as butter ; a rather
faded-looking one, shading nearly to white at the tips of
the segments, which is sulphureus pallidus ; and the other,
sulphureus striatus, is slightly larger and deeper in colour
than concolor, and striped outside with reddish brown.
All of them are pretty and interesting, especially in the
rock garden, and they have always been perfectly sterile,
and the anthers are reduced to mere rudiments. It is
curious that C. aureus should have been so sportive long
ago and produced such widely different breaks and then
ceased to give more, and the sterility of the new forms is
so contrary to general experience with a sportive form,
which nearly always, if the flowers are not double, shows
greater fertility. Every garden ought to have large clumps
of the old yellow Crocus to brighten up the bare soil in
February, and I find a good place for such is towards the
back of borders, round the feet of deciduous shrubs or
permanently planted herbaceous plants that cover a large
space when in full leaf. They have a fine effect in such
places, especially if planted in a thick central mass and
with outlying smaller groups as if naturally spreading
from the main clump, and to my mind look better than
when in bands or small clumps in the front of a border,
and they are quite capable of taking care of themselves in
the middle distance, whereas the edge is so valuable for
more delicate plants. Wherever they can be planted in
grass that can be left unmown till their leaves ripen they
76
Spring Crocuses
show to the very best advantage, and the yellow Crocus
is best planted alone, unless some early flowering white
vernus form be mixed with it, each in fairly large clumps,
and a few outliers of both kinds hobnobbing occasionally.
I meant to treat of the yellow Crocuses first, but find
it a bore to be too systematic, and I want to go on talking
of bold plantings in big borders and grass. The fat,
prosperous, gone into trade and done well with it, garden
forms of Crocus vernus are best used for colour masses.
The individual blooms strike me as coarse after the refined
true species. But used as I like the Dutch Yellow, they
look well. Margot, a soft lavender one, is best of all, and
looks more like some species a giant Tomasmt'anus, per-
haps than a florist's vernus, and I should like to have it in
thousands, and generally plant a new patch of about a
hundred each season. Purpureus grandiflorus is a fine
effective thing, especially if near a clump, and the scouts of
either army intermingling, of some lilac or striped variety
such as Mme. Mina or Sir Walter Scott. I do not care so
much for large clumps of any white form. At the back
of the borders they look too cold, and suggest unmelted
snowpats. One of the lawns here is divided from meadow
land by a light iron fence, and as usually happens the
mowing machine spares a strip a few inches in width of
the grass at the foot of the fence on the lawn side. I
noticed in a Norfolk garden a charming effect, where such
a sanctuary was peopled with a long line of Harebells and
Lady's Bed-straw, and the following autumn we turned
back our turf at the foot of the fence and planted Crocuses
as thickly as we could set them, and replaced the turf
77
My Garden in Spring
counterpane, tucking them snugly in bed. In the first
stretch I planted we mixed up three forms, purpureus
grandijlorusj Mme. Mina, and Mont-blanc, stirring them well
together, but in a later planting we did a stretch with one
colour, and then began mixing in another form, about one
of the new to four of the old, and gradually increased the
percentage of the new until we had used up our stock of the
old, and the line became all of one sort again. This has
a very good effect, and if colours that blend prettily are
chosen is the better plan to follow.
Now back to the Yellows. Among them are some very
dainty gems, suitable for the rock garden. C. ancyrensis has
several good points; it is inexpensive, early, seeds freely, and
sows itself, and it has such a rough netted jacket that it is
avoided by mice (has been so far, I must write, or perhaps
to-morrow I shall find holes, empty corm tunics and room
for repentance). That does seem to be a fact, though :
they will dig out certain species with soft jackets, especially
Salzmannii and Tournefortei, and finish off a whole clump if
not trapped first, but they leave Sieberi, susianus, and such
reticulated armoured kinds alone. I suppose it would be
rather like having the tennis-net entangled in our front
teeth to chew such tunics. C. Korolkowii, especially Van
Tubergen's large forms from Bokhara, are good for a warm
nook, and often commence flowering in the old year. They
are mostly of a glistening clear yellow, like that of a Lesser
Celandine, and have deep bronze and purple frecklings on
the outside. They make the largest corms of any Crocus
I know, and when first sent from Bokhara were planted
for a Gladiolus species. The older form of Korolkowii from
78
Spring Crocuses
further East is a washy little imitation of these better
forms, greenish on the back, rather the colour you some-
times find on the outside of the yolk of a hard-boiled egg,
and suggestive of dirty metal German silver, or Britannia
metal, " which goes green and smells nasty," as Mrs.
Brown knew by experience. C. Olivieri is for all intents
and purposes an orange-coloured Balansae without external
markings but gargaricus has character of its own, its first
flowers coming without leaves, and they are of a soft
warm orange, like the reflected depth in the heart of a
Van Zion Double Daffodil. It has an original sort of corm
too, very small and round, and it splits up in some seasons
into a multitude of little yellow pills, very hard to collect
out of the soil at lifting time, and you know will require
two seasons to grow to flowering size again. But a patch
in flower on the rock garden makes up for it all. One
little yellow Crocus has an obnoxious trait in its character,
and is a little stinking beast, as Dr. Johnson defined the
stoat. It is well named graveolens, and its heavy scent is
generally the first intimation I get of its having opened its
flowers. Sometimes I get a whiff of it even before I reach
the Crocus frame an abominable mixture of the odour
of blackbeetles and imitation sable or skunk, or one of
those awful furs with which people in the next pew or in
front of you at a matinee poison you. A dried specimen
of this Crocus retains its scent for years, and so does the
blotting paper it has been pressed in. I think it emanates
from the pollen grains, and I suppose it must be of some
use to it in its native country perhaps attractive to some
insect of perverted olfactory tastes. It is a vegetable
79
My Garden in Spring
equivalent of the egg of the Fulmar Petrel, which retains
much the same awful scent for years after it has been
blown.
Though I began with a reference to it I have saved my
account of Crocus chrysanthus for the last of the Yellows
because it is my favourite, and also it varies into so many
other colours it will lead us away from the livery of
jealousy. In most of its forms it is one of the smaller-
flowered species, but it produces buds so lavishly that a
few corms give a solid colour-effect when in full bloom,
though of course this means they should be placed at the
edge of the border among choice and neat plants, or in
the rock garden. One race of chrysanthus, of which
more must be said later, shows promise of great increase
in size, and there may be a great future for my favourite if
size can be added to its other charms of varied colouring
and beauty of shape. It is what the older Crocus-lovers
called gourd-shaped, and would have borne the latinised
equivalent laganae-florus, better than the form of aureus
to which it was once applied. I greatly admire a gourd-
shaped Crocus ; it means that the throat is wide and full,
and the segments ample and rounded, at least at their
bases, so that an unopened blossom has a distinct waist
about two-thirds of the way down, and below that there
is a second swelling oval formed by the throat ; when
fully expanded the segments bend outwards from above
this waist, forming a round rather than starry flower, as
the segments in well-developed gourd-mimics overlap
well. In bud, then, we have the outline of a Pilgrim's-
bottle Gourd, standing on its head but not flattened
80
Narcissi : Elegance (top flower) and Gloria Mundi
Spring Crocuses
enough to stand the other way as a real one should, and
in an open flower we get a solid effect that would charm
the eye of such a florist as the great Glenny.
I wish I could show you the Crocus frame and the
seed-beds on a sunny morning in early February, that you
might see these gems in the flesh instead of through this
printed page. Let us be childish enough to "make
believe " we are doing it. I will take my garden basket
and all its contents, almost as varied a collection as Alice's
White Knight had, but certainly more useful, even the
mouse-trap on too frequent occasions, while the cook's
forks to extract new treasures, and painted wooden labels
to mark them withal, are indispensable. It is noon, for I
have waited for you, my visitors, and your train was late,
delayed by a fog in town which here was only a rime
frost and white mist that the sun has conquered, and the
lawns are only dewy now in the shadows, so we can take
the short cut over them, passing the Snowdrop clumps and
Aconite carpets and hurrying on to make the most of the
sunshine, over the New River by the bridge guarded by
the weird lead ostriches, which are six feet high and give
some visitors a turn when they first see them. Into the
kitchen garden, and don't look at the peach-house Crocus
clumps yet, but hurry along past the vineries round by
the stove and then are they open ? Yes, even in the
seed-beds in the open air bees are busy on the lines of
colour. There are several lines of uniform lilac without
a break of a pure white or deep purple original-minded
babe ; the labels at their heads tell us they are Sieberi or
Tomasimanus, while solid yellow families are proclaimed
81 F
My Garden in Spring
as ancyrensis, Korolkowii, or aureus, but the variegated lines
are our objects of veneration, where white, cream, sulphur-
yellow, and lilac look as if all the seeds of the season had
been mixed. The label on one such will perhaps say
chrysanthus good white, another c. pal/idus, or even striped
seedling, but except those labelled c. superbus there is no uni-
formity, thank Heaven. You must not mind if I suddenly
yell with joy, for perhaps yesterday was an R.H.S. day, and
I was in Vincent Square from early till late, and Monday
was wet and no Crocuses open, and Sunday had so many
services and Sunday-school classes, I have not seen my
seedlings since Saturday. So, if there is an extra fine
white flower with orange throat, a deeper blue self than
ever before, or some specially peacocky chameleon with an
inventive genius for external markings, I shall shout and
flop on my knees regardless of mud and my best knickers
donned for the visitors, and the cook's fork will tenderly
extract the prize, and you can admire it without going on
the knee, while I am writing a label for it, and before it
goes into a place of honour in the frame. It is not every
day, though, that my variety-spotting eye lights thus
easily on a tip-topper, and even now we must look care-
fully along the flowering rows for promising breaks,
bending some flowers to one side if fully open to see
what external markings they carry. Some will be replicas
of good forms selected in former years, but very seldom
sufficiently exact a copy to be mixed with that stock, so
they, and some that are obviously from the same studio
but by a prentice hand, can be cook's-forked out for you
to carry away if you are bitten with Crocomania. Now
82
Spring Crocuses
move on to the frames. They have four divisions, but
two only are ablaze, for the other twain are devoted
to autumnal varieties, and now contain leaves only, save
for a few rare and tender bulbous plants that share their
home, Romuleas that came masquerading as Croci, and
such people. In the upper part of the frames are squares
of twenty-five to fifty of some Crocus that has increased
well, but nearer the front we get almost as many labels as
plants, for here are the seedlings selected during the last
few seasons, and the miffy, peevish, no-pleasing-'em kinds
that simply won't increase ; but among them are some of
the loveliest, and you will see at a glance that there is a
very large preponderance of varieties labelled as chrysan-
thus seedlings, and yet no two are quite alike. When
I see them here I long to be transported by magic carpet
to the Bithynian Olympus, where C. chrysanthus is found
in its most variable mood. George Maw records in his
magnificent monograph of the genus that it was from
thence he brought the white form he named albidus, the
white with blue external markings which is his variety
coerulescens, and best of all the sulphur form now known
as variety pallidus, which has proved the best seed parent
of all, and given us the race of Anakim of this species
which I have mentioned.
They originated at Haarlem in that centre of creation
of new plant forms, the Zwanenburg Nursery, where Mr.
Van Tubergen and his two nephews, Mr. John and Mr.
Thomas Hoog, always have some fresh revelation of beauty
awaiting the visitor, and frequently delight me by most
kindly posting me some new development among Crocuses.
83
My Garden in Spring
One season they sent a large white form with cream-
coloured outer segments richly suffused with crimson
purple, asking what I thought had produced this sudden
break among seedlings of chrysanthus pallidus. Three
years previously I flowered a batch of seedling chrysanthus
here, among which were forms almost identical with the
Haarlem wonder, but raised from forms of variety coeru-
lescens, so I was able to reply that I believed them to be
pure chrysanthus in descent, and this has been proved by
the seeds of this blue and white form, which is now dis-
tributed and known as " Warley Variety," giving a per-
centage of typical pallidus forms at Haarlem.
These blue and whites are lovely forms and very strong
growers, and I recommend a free use of Warley Variety
for the rock garden and also as a seed parent. For the
best form of my kindred race I have an even greater affection,
perhaps as my own raising to begin with, but it is a rounder
flower with more cream colour in the outer segments, and
the crimson markings are divided into more distinct feather-
ings. I call it Bowies' Bullfinch, having adopted the plan
of calling the best of my chrysanthus seedlings after birds'
names. Yellow Hammer, a light yellow striped with deep
brown, Siskin with bright yellow exterior to the outer
segments but the inner pure white, a very effective little
chap, and Snow Bunting, white with grey lines on cream-
coloured outer segments, have gone forth into the world, and
I wish them to bear the genitival form of my patronymic
before their avian pet name, so as to distinguish seedlings
raised here from others that I know are coming along in
friends' and neighbours' seed-beds. The 22nd of February
84
Spring Crocuses
1905, stands out as an event in the Crocus world for me,
for a little packet post-marked Haarlem lay on my break-
fast table, and had brought me five blooms from Mr. Hoog
of C. chrysanthus pallidus seedlings which for size and de-
licious creamy moonlight yellows surpassed anything I
had dreamt of. One had a band of deep purple on the outer
segment, another greenish-blue feathering, and the largest
of all was as soft a yellow as the pat of butter in front of
me, and with a feathering patch of warm brown-madder
at the base of each segment that set off the yellow in much
the same manner as the apical patch of brownish black
does on the forewing of the lovely Pale Clouded Yellow
Butterfly. My admiration of this new race went to Holland
by return of post, and had a pleasant sequel in a generous
gift of corms of these varieties and the naming of the butter-
coloured giant after me. I wish I possessed a tenth of the
vigour and good temper of my namesake ! " So far " he
has increased well and smiled back at me in the weak
wintry sun, in Crocus frame, rock garden, or ordinary
border, and every one singles it out at a glance as the best
of all the Yellows. Except in the typical, early-flowering
yellow form, the stigmata of these chrysanthus forms I have
described are bright scarlet, and give a brightness and finish
to the open blossoms, but there is another race of chrysan-
thus with gourd-shaped throats but then a falling off, for the
segments are rather pointed and make too starry an open
flower. This race is invariably freckled or feathered ex-
ternally with brown of various shades, and they were called
by Maw vars. fusco-tinctus or fusco-lineatus according to
the patterns of their freckles. They all have plain yellow
85
My Garden in Spring
stigmata, and a curious line of their own in anthers, the
ground colour instead of yellow being smoky -grey or
greenish-black, which, of course, is most conspicuous in a
newly-opened one, before the anther valves have rolled back
and the pollen broken loose. These dusky anthers seem
to be correlated with starry flowers rather than the brown
markings, and are puzzling to account for without getting
inside a bee and seeing with its compound eyes and thinking
with its decentralised ganglionic brains. In the other chry-
santhus forms, with very rare exceptions the little barbs at
the base of the arrow-shaped anthers are tipped with black.
There again, what can that be for ? Why should chrysan-
thus alone of yellow Croci benefit by these minute spots ?
One has to look rather closely to see them at all even in
an expanded flower, and they cannot be visible to a bee
until it has settled on it, and I cannot think they are put
there to help good patient botanists to recognise this other-
wise variable species, or they would surely be on the fusco-
tinctus forms too. At the same time they do often help to
point out a chrysanthus without reference to the corm tunic,
but I have known them absent in some pure yellow and
pallidus forms.
One of the smallest of Crocuses, known as C. biflorus
Pestalozzae, but deserving specific rank I believe, and which
I hope some day to reinstate in that proud position,
always has minute black spots just where the filament
joins on to the perianth, making the flower look as
though some grains of soil had dropped into it. Again,
C. Crewei and a very strange rare little blue one thought
to be a form of C. tauri and called v. melanthorus, have
86
Spring Crocuses
the anthers jet black, and so has a winter flowering one
from Palestine, C. hyemalis, var. Foxii.
Without the means for private interviews with the
bees of their native land these questions must remain
unanswered, and for the present be placed with those
things " no fellah can understand."
Another of these insoluble riddles is why Miller
in the great Dictionary originated the name biflorus for
his species No. 4. It is quite the ordinary rule for
Spring Crocuses to produce at least two flowers from
each set of leaves wrapped round by a spathe or sheath
as Miller puts it. C. gargaricus is the only one I can
recall that is usually one-flowered, but Miller knew
others bore two, and described his No. 3 as so doing.
Dean Herbert goes further, and in his diagnosis states
" scapo (vidi ipse) interdum furcato bifloro," so reading a
deeper meaning into Miller's simple words. Like the
Snark :
" He summed it so well that it came to far more
Than the witnesses ever had said."
But expositors of Browning and commentators on the
deep sayings of other poets as well as Herbert are
equally Snarkish in their powers of summing.
C. biflorus in some forms is hard to distinguish from
chrysanthus. There is a sheet of specimens in Maw's
herbarium in the British Museum, collected above Scutari,
and labelled C. biflorus nubigenus, but most of them have
the tell-tale black barbs, and I find living plants of them
that I have here give me regular chrysanthus seedlings.
87
My Garden in Spring
I have lately raised and received from others forms inter-
mediate between the two species, of the build of biflorus
v. Weldenii, the Dalmatian form of this widely-spread
species biflorus, but instead of a white ground-colouring
they are of exquisite shades of pale sulphur, and variously
freckled or feathered externally, like some Weldenii forms,
with soft lilac, and are very lovely things apart from their
interesting intermediate relationship. Their mixed blood
is further shown by a tendency to grey on the anther,
either as spots on the barbs or on the whole length. This
Dalmatian form Weldenii is represented further east in
Servia and Bulgaria by a large form known as biflorus v.
Alexandri with yet more intense external markings, and
when these form a broad band of amethyst purple, leaving
only a narrow margin of white, it is one of the most lovely
of Spring Crocuses ; the contrast of the pure white inner
surface and the rich purple outer segments is a thing to
sit down and look at. I have now seedlings that have the
ground colour of various shades of lilac and the outer
markings as in Alexandri. The first one appeared with-
out warning in the rock garden, evidently self sown, and
another unbirthday present from the garden, a little thing
of its own compose, as the parish clerk called his doggerel
version of the Psalm of the hopping hills, for it appeared a
year before I had obtained the wild lilac-grounded bi-
florus var. Adami a pretty form from the Caucasus
but not over-robust in the open ground.
C. biflorus is best known in its old garden form of the
Scotch Crocus, large flowered and white, beautifully striped
outside with deep purple, and like other old garden favour-
88
Spring Crocuses
ites quite sterile. Many smaller wild forms come from
Italy, especially from round Florence, where they have a
pale lilac ground-colouring, and vary into the pretty form
estriatus, which has no stripes on the external buff of the
outer segments. This, as a hardy, dainty, and early flower-
ing form, should be in every rock garden and sunny
border where tiny bulbous things have a chance. "Crocuses
everywhere " is my motto here, and the lower shelving
slopes of the rock garden make splendid homes for the
rarer gems, but even there they must fit in with herbaceous
plants such as (Enothera speciosa, Veronica filifolia, &c., which
cover the ground after the Crocuses have finished with it.
And here you will find the forms of aerius, which one
would say was a blue counterpart of chrysanthus from
its round shape and narrow leaves, but below ground
it has a thin jacket instead of the hard, shell-like covering
of chrysanthus. Some of its forms have rich outer mark-
ings as nearly crimson as one can hope for in a Crocus,
and its variety,major,is one of the finest of all lilac Crocuses,
almost deserving to be called blue. There is no real blue
one so far as 1 know, the nearest approach to it being a
quaint, rather ill-tempered midget Messrs. Barr imported
as C. tauri, but not a bit like the great tall thing Maw
figured under the name a'nd pronounced to be more
robust than any Eastern form of biflorus. The autumnal
C. speciosus is in some forms nearly blue, but in many
forms of biflorus there is a spot or line or two of real
Prussian blue at the base of the inner segments, and if
only it could be persuaded to spread over the segments
we might have a turquoise-blue Crocus. How dread-
89
My Garden in Spring
fully its colour would fight with the present mauves and
lilacs of its family !
I must not prattle of the multitude of Crocus forms
for which I have labels. They all possess distinctions
and differences for me, but in many cases are better seen
than read about, and even I am beginning to be alarmed
when I see the rows of labels sticking up in the frames
and seed-beds in August just after replanting. <f Looks
rather like a cemetery, doesn't it ? " friends mockingly ask.
" I don't mind," say I, " so long as it has an annual re-
surrection." I may be forgiven, however, for discoursing
of what should be everybody's Crocuses, such as Imperati
for the first. There are two distinct races going about
under the name. One is the wild plant from the country
round Naples, the other I have never yet traced to its
native home, and rather suspect it is of garden origin.
Herbariums appear to have only the Neapolitan fellow.
The two are very distinct ; the unmistakable point of dif-
ference is in the spathe valves, those wonderful wrappings
of living tissue-paper that enclose every Crocus bud in its
youth. There are either two or only a single one, and
as a rule the number of these floral spathes is a good
specific feature, and a whole species has either a mono-
phyllous or diphyllous spathe, but in Imperati all the
wild Neapolitan ones, so far as I can find out, have
diphyllous spathes, and every author who describes the
wild plant mentions the two spathes but makes no
mention of a form with a monophyllous spathe. Both
have the same colour-scheme, warm rosy lilac within, and
the outside of the three outer segments striped or feathered
90
Spring Crocuses
with purple on a buff ground, but from a garden point of
view the diphyllous form is in most respects the better
plant, having larger flowers and varying endlessly in the
degree, or even absence, of the outside purple featherings,
and even varying in this respect from season to season, I
am sorry to say, for I have sometimes selected especially
fine seedlings for their richness, or absence, of feather-
ing, but after a season or two they have reversed their
scheme of decoration. Except a few forms of C. versicolor
I have never known another species of Crocus vary as to
the markings of the offsets. The diphyllous form flowers
over a long period, and that means that one seldom gets
a mass out at one time on a clump.
On the contrary, the monophyllous form scarcely
varies at all in feathering, and is most punctual in blossom-
ing in the early part of January, and almost every plant
in a clump will be flowering at the same time. It stands
up higher among its upright leaves than the diphyllous
one among its longer recumbent foliage. I used to
know which of the two forms the different nurserymen
stocked, but both forms have done well here, and it is
years since I bought any, and so have lost touch with their
sources. The diphyllous form has sometimes been listed
as C. Imperati longiflorus, or purpureus, and such a name
would, I expect, still bring you that form, but there was
never any distinguishing name to the monophyllous race.
There are some good white forms of the diphyllous one
pure white except for a cream-coloured exterior to the
outer segments, which is the var. albiflos of Herbert.
Another has the rich purple featherings of the type on
My Garden in Spring
the white ground, and is a fine variety. Both forms are
delightful in the rock garden or in any sunny corner, and
the diphyllous race are great seeders, and soon colonise
in a kind home where hoes harrow not too harshly.
C. Sieberi is another indispensable one of the earliest
to appear, generally showing up about Twelfth Night. It
is chubby in shape and a cool, bluish-lilac in colour, with a
very rich yellow throat ; it is a good increaser both from
seed and offsets, and though it comes from sunny Greece
is very hardy, and the blossoms stand snow and frost
better than many others. Max Leichtlin sent out a good
deep-coloured form of it as C. aftt'cus, but it is certainly
no more than a good variety of Sieberi. The Cretan form
is one of the most glorious of all known Crocuses, for the
ground is white, the throat a very rich orange colour, and
the outer segments are marked externally with bands or
streaks of a curious shade of purplish-crimson unlike that
in any other Crocus. Unfortunately it is very rare in
gardens, and has not been collected for a great many
years, as it is said Cretan brigands will murder even good
little plant-collectors honest root-gatherers as Parkinson
would call them for the value of their skins, and C. Sieberi
versicohr grows up among their mountain strongholds.
Although it has as large and conspicuous scarlet stigmata
as any Crocus it produces but little pollen, and flowers
later than other forms of Sieberi, so I, and a neighbour
who has caught Crocus fever from me, have hard work to
get any seeds from this variety, and think ourselves lucky
if we can sow half a dozen each season. Some of the
results have been very encouraging, and we have got a few
with the red markings on a pale lavender ground colour.
92
Spring Crocuses
C. Tomasinianus is the Crocus for spreading by seed into
natural drifts, or filling a border or slope of rock garden.
It replaces vernus in Eastern Europe, and it is not easy
to find any definite botanical character to distinguish it
from that variable species. Here it certainly hybridises
with some forms of vernus. Maw states that its glabrous
throat distinguishes it from vernus, but I have never yet
seen a flower of it that lacks a plentiful supply of white
hairs in the throat, and can only imagine he had some
peculiar form of it. On the other hand, I have a beardless
form of vernus. Tom, as I feel inclined to call it for short
and knowing him so well, is a variable plant ; some races
have nearly white outsides and in bud look dull, but half-
opened and showing the lavender interior are very pretty.
I prefer the deeper-coloured ones though, and have selected
some warm, rosy-purple forms, and have got still deeper-
coloured seedlings from them. I have also a pure white
that is good for contrast, but not an improvement in a
species whose chief charm lies in its peculiarly amethystine
shade of lilac. One day I went into the garden to try
and forget a raging toothache, and nearly succeeded, for
a lovely Tom seedling caught my eye, a rosy-hued one
with the addition of nearly white tips to each segment,
and under each white mark a spot of violet-purple, after
the style of the form of vernus called leucorhynchus. The
treasure was removed to the frame and has increased to
hundreds, and has gone into many other gardens, but if
you want to know the end of the tooth you must ask my
dentist ; it passed from my keeping to his. I want to get
Tom freely grouped in the grass, but it does not increase
much there : in a sunny border it conquers new territory
93
My Garden in Spring
at a surprising rate, being a great seeder, and also splitting
into many small offsets from the larger corms. It is appear-
ing in tufts all along the path edges of the rock garden,
the result of seeds getting swept in among the edging stones.
C. versicolor is the last I shall insist upon your regard-
ing as a garden necessity, and if you cannot get hold of
the wild form from the Alpes Maritimes or the Riviera,
variable, delicately coloured, and feathered beauties of
endless kaleidoscopic possibilities, you should grow a
garden form known as var. picturatus, with white ground-
colour and crimson-purple featherings. Versicolor is the one
Crocus in which the inner segments are as a rule striped or
feathered on the inner surface. A few garden forms of vernus
and the wild one siculus are slightly so, but versicolor seems
to take a pride in internal decoration beyond all others.
I cannot pass to another chapter without mentioning
C. Fleischeri, a starry little creature, but one that wears a
scarlet feather in the centre, the finely-divided stigmata of
course. They are so brightly coloured that they glow
through the white segments of the closed bud much as
the yolk of a woodpecker's egg does through the shell,
giving it a pink glow that, alas ! disappears as soon as it is
blown. Then too there is C. carpetanus, which is peculiar in
two respects ; it has a pale lilac stigma, but not so hand-
some or bright as that of the autumnal byzantinus, and
it also has a leaf that in section is semi-cylindrical, with
raised ribs on the under side, and no lateral blades as in
other Crocuses. It has a very pretty soft lilac flower, but
is not a robust grower. Underground even it is peculiar,
and wears a covering of fibres more like tow than the coat
of a respectable Crocus.
94
CHAPTER VI
Numerous Early Comers
FOLLOWING close on the heels of the Crocuses come Sct'tta
bifolia and Chionodoxa sardensis racing Anemone blanda for
the honour of forming the first blue carpeting of the year,
for not one of these is much use as dots or stiff little rings
in front of a large label, and all are quite unsuitable for the
modern millionaire's made-by-contract, opulent style of gar-
dening a thing I hate rather than envy, so don't make
mental remarks about the proverbial acidity of the immature
fruit of the vine. The filling of so many square yards of
prepared soil with so many thousands of expensive bulbs,
to yield a certain shade of colour for a fortnight and then
to be pulled up to make place for another massing, gives
me a sort of gardening bilious attack, and a feeling of pity for
the plants and contempt for the gardening skill that relies
upon Bank of England notes for manure. But I love a
large colony of some good plant that you can see has
spread naturally in a congenial home, aided by the loving
care of an observant owner. It has the same charm of
refinement and antiquity that one gets from an old house
where the Chippendale chairs and cabinets have stood on
the same polished boards and time-toned carpets ever
since they were new. It is a case of good taste and
knowledge from the first, and watchful care and apprecia-
95
My Garden in Spring
tion and absence of the weathercock giddiness that is
influenced by gusty Fashion with a large F if you please.
Buy as many Scilla bifolia as you can afford, then, but
choose them a permanent home. Among the roots of a
wildish group of briar roses is a good situation, or even
among dwarf heaths, so long as they are not the red carnea
the flowering periods of these two coinciding and proving
somewhat too competitive to please me ; but almost any-
where will do among permanently planted larger plants that
can stand a spring carpet of blue at their feet. Then leave
them alone to seed and multiply and replenish the earth.
There is a great charm about the red, polished noses
they thrust through so early, and which, on a sunny
day, suddenly split asunder and reveal the neatly-packed
flower-buds, looking like a blue ear of wheat. This is
only promise, and the reward comes when the two leaves
lie close to the ground, and the blue spikes are feathery
sprays. It sometimes happens that the collected bulbs
have a few Chionodoxas mixed among them, but there
is no harm in this, as the colours do not fight at all,
and the Chionodoxas carry on the flowering for a week
or two. I have purposely mixed them in a large bed of
briar roses that I am allowing to carpet itself with them.
The Scilla comes first, then C. sardcnsis, followed by the
interesting bi-generic hybrid forms known as Chionoscillas,
which are sure to appear wherever the two genera are
grown together. I believe C. Ludliae enters into most of
these rather than sardensis, but the early flowering of
Scilla is almost always inherited, and the hybrids flower
before Ludliae is fully open. The most easily noticed dis-
tinction between Scilla and Chionodoxa is the difference
96
Crown Imperials. By Margaret Waterfield
Numerous Early Comers
of the filaments of their stamens ; in Scilla they are filiform,
that is slender and threadlike, but in Chionodoxa they are
flattened out, wide at the base, and tapering upwards, so
that they lie close to one another, forming a cone in the
mouth of the flower, and are conspicuously white. In the
hybrids they are of every intermediate width, and readily
catch the eye even if they are the only mark that shows
the mixed parentage. C. gigantea can be used to follow
Luciliae, but its colouring is rather too pink a blue to carry
on the same effect, and the form sold as Luciliae Boissier is
a better colour, being very nearly Luciliae only flowering
later and having more white in the eye, and leading on to
C. Tmoli (wrongly spelt Tmolusii sometimes, as if named
after a man instead of the mountain), but which I, and
also the Dutch growers, find has a habit of dying after
seeding, otherwise it would be a pleasant wind-up to the
Chionodoxa season. Some of the Chionoscillas are worth
looking after, and several have been named. Mr. Allen
took an interest in them, and selected several good ones.
His variety, Volunteer, is one of the best of a good sardensis
blue and very free, and his Queen, a charming soft pink, is
one of my most precious gems, but alas ! a great rarity.
Now and then, a large or extra bright one has appeared
here, and tempted me to burrow to the bowels of the
earth for its bulb, so as to remove it to a safe corner of
the rock garden. This burrowing is difficult when one
has to go some eight or more inches among the plants,
and I use another special tool of my own compose for it.
An ordinary " lady's fork " of four tines furnishes the
raw material for my inventive genius to work upon, a
coarse file my coadjutor : mind and muscle and metal
97 G
My Garden in Spring
then get to work, and off come the two outer tines, and I
have a lovely giant's toothpick that almost always accom-
panies me when in the garden. Hark to a list of its virtuous
uses. It goes to the root of the evil in cases of Dandelions
and Docks unlike any other weapon : a plunge, a twist, and
the tap-rooted fiend lies vanquished at my feet. More
gently and lovingly inserted, it fetches up a choice bulb, a
rogue among the Tulips, or a new seedling of great price
and depth. Again, when the gardening visitor comes with
a basket and wants a bit of something good, nothing
removes a side crown so neatly, without disturbing the
main plant, or so unerringly extracts the very piece your
critical eye selects as best spared, and your affection for
your guest settles the extent of, as this two-pronged
walking-stick. It nearly got patented and put on the
market by an enterprising firm who read Mr. Donald
McDonald's praises of it after a visit here, and I gave
measurements and inspected models, but the Bowles Fork
has not appeared, and being so easily made from the four-
tined variety is perhaps not yet needed.
I have a very superior form of Scilla bifolia here, that
we call var. taurica. It was given me many years ago
by Dr. Lowe of Wimbledon, one of the many mementoes
I possess of his kindness and generosity, and a very
pleasant friendship that has left many marks of betterment
on me and my garden.
Although it is many years since the Scilla came to me,
I have but one small clump, for it never bears seed, and
increase by offsets is rather slow, as friends admire it
so, and I have such a foolishly soft heart that will
persuade me I can spare just one more bulb. Its great
98
Numerous Early Comers
beauty lies in the crimson anthers of a freshly-opened
flower, and a neatness of habit, stiff, sturdy stalks, and
close-set spikes of larger flowers, and a softer tone of blue
than in the type. Those I have bought at various times
bearing the same name have been nothing but strong bulbs
of ordinary bifolia. It is hard to get hold of the forms
of bifolia, for few lists include any but alba and carnea.
The former is a lovely little thing, most suitable for the
rock garden, and carnea is very much like it but only
carnea by courtesy, for, unless within a few hours of its
opening, it will have faded to an ivory white. The rare old
var. rubra is a lovely thing, rosy-salmon in colour, and so big
and strong-looking you would expect it to ramp and fill the
garden, whereas in reality it seldom makes an offset, and
has never set seed here. Mr. Allen's seedling raised from
it and called Pink Beauty is rather earlier and a fainter,
more rosy pink, and rather better at increasing. Another
of his raising, var. purpurea, has deep-red stamens and a
purplish tone of blue, and is distinct but rather heavy in
colour, and not so pleasing as the type unless looked at
closely. There is a little colony of these forms in the rock
garden, in a flat bed that is overrun later in the year by
Convolvulus tenuissimus (the plant generally wrongly labelled
as C. althaeoides, which has a much larger and paler flower
with purple eye, and is more tender, living but refusing to
flower here), which throws a veil of silver leaves and bright,
rose-coloured flowers over the summer sleep of the Scillas.
In the same bed I have the form I like best of Scilla
stbirica, known as var. multiflora. It won my affection by
its habit of blossoming three weeks earlier than the type, and
I prefer its lighter, less aggressively Prussian blue colouring
99
My Garden in Spring
for associating with other Scillas. It seeds freely, and
its children inherit the parental colouring and early rising
habit. The white 5. sibirica grows near, and is also lavish
in seminal increase, and a few early-flowering whites have
appeared that I am watching anxiously, and hoping they
have inherited the best traditions of both families.
Hyacinthus azureus is one of the most exquisite of the
small and earlies, but like eating soup with a fork, one
never gets enough of it. It is cheap enough, only three
shillings a hundred, yet I never saw a garden that
could show so many. I vow that next planting season
I will let six sixpences go bang and try to grow
a century of spikes of its pure turquoise bells. It is
very lovely grown beside Crocus aureus; their colours
are not too violent in contrast, as at their early appear-
ance there is plenty of brown earth for background. Two
quaint, squat little Ornithogalums flower in the very
beginning of the year, opening a flower at a time during
any intervals of decent weather ; one is O. Haussknectii,
which I advise the inventors of English names to call the
Horse's Necktie Bird's-milk, and the other O. libanoticunt,
and Pompey and Caesar are very much alike, especially
Pompey. I won't say they are strikingly beautiful, but
in January one is pleased to see their greyish-white, green-
streaked flowers flattened down among their rosettes of
leaves. One dreadful winter I was obliged to spend in
London helping to nurse my brother through typhoid
fever and all its complications, and on a dreary December
day kind Dr. Lowe came to inquire, and brought with him
from his garden of treasures a bulb or two of a charming
little Muscari in full bloom. He told me he went round
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Numerous Early Comers
his garden to see what he could bring to cheer me, and
this bright little Grape Hyacinth suggested itself. It lived
in my window in that London square until I could bring
it and my Convalescent home, so for association's sake alone
I should treasure it, but I also rejoice in its wee blue
flowers, which never fail to appear in a succession from
December to March.
I never had a name for it, but have called it Dr. Lowe's ;
it is probably a form of M. botryoides, and I have forgotten,
if he ever told me, where he got it from. He was one of a
delightful old school of amateur gardeners, a friend of Miss
Hope, Harpur-Crewe, Miss Marianne North, Isaac Henry,
and many others, only venerated names to me, but many
of their treasures have passed into my hands through
Dr. Lowe's kindness to me when a struggling beginner.
Puschkinia scilloides, the Striped Squill, I owe to him, a
pretty little grey thing like the ghost of a Scilla come back
to earth ; and if you buy what is offered as P. libanotica you
will get scilloides, for they are but one and the same, though
often listed as distinct, and sometimes you are invited to pay
more for one than for the other, so always buy the cheaper.
Cyclamen Count and C. ibericum and their garden-raised
hybrid offspring Atkinsii should have been showing crimson
or white buds lying on the earth since mid-December, and
be raising them up and turning back their petals before the
days grow perceptibly longer. The two first are constantly
confused with each other, but are easy to distinguish, as
Coum has plain green leaves, while those of ibericum have
more or less of handsome, grey spotting or zonal bands, and
it is altogether the larger and handsomer plant. I won't
say that puzzling hybrid intermediates besides Atkinsii do
101
My Garden in Spring
not exist, for I believe there are several in Bitton Garden,
where the two species have grown side by side for nearly a
century, that are distinctly intermediate, but not large and
handsome enough to rank for garden purposes as C.
Atkinsii, which is a bolder plant with larger flowers than
those of either parent. C. Coum album is a difficult plant
to obtain. Many lists contain the name, but the plants
that arrive bearing it are either C. ibericum, as rosy as red
tape, or C. cilicicum, an autumn-flowering member of the
family with conspicuously mottled leaves. One or two
such names seem to exist in catalogues simply to provide
aliases for plants. It is rather amusing to gamble with
some and see what you will get for them. Crocus lactiflorus
I especially recommend ; it is a bran-pie, lucky dip, and
surprise packet all in one ; you never know whether an
order for half a dozen will produce an autumnal or vernal
species, and many of my rarities came to me so named.
Lathyrus magellanicus is another, Anacyclus formosus a third.
I imagine no plant is grown by the author of the list
under these names, and so the packer turns round three
times and catches what he can. I am not sure that I am
not getting rather extravagant over Cyclamen. I love them
so that I order a few hundreds each season, and sow seeds
as well, but I never yet saw a garden containing too many
of them, and it will be a long day before this one provides
enough to please me. With one species and another they
are in flower very nearly all the year round. Coum and
ibericum begin with the year, and before they are over
C. repandum has opened out its ivy-shaped leaves, pushing
them along underground until they come up far away
from the centre of the corm, making you think they must
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Numerous Early Comers
belong to seedlings. They appear above-ground folded in
two like a butterfly with closed wings, and soon after them
come the buds. I was greatly pleased with a form I got
from Holland in the autumn. It is called var. roseum, and
is a pretty pale pink and marvellously floriferous. I used
to have a fine plant of a pure white form, but it died and
I cannot get another as good, all I have bought lately
for white being nothing but a faded or overworn pink as
the sixteenth century gardeners call it. The bright, rosy
type form is very good, and carries on the season until
C. europaeum, the sweetly-scented gem from Italian woods
and Tyrolean hillsides, begins to flower. It does so about
the end of May here, and goes on until September is
middle-aged and the truly autumnal forms are in full swing.
The largest flowerer of the hardy forms is C. libanoticum,
unfortunately rare, rather expensive, and none too easy to
grow. The happiest I possess are on a burnt-up dry
slope of rock garden overhung by an old thorn ; the soil is
dry as dust all the summer, and I suppose the slopes of
Lebanon are not very different at that season, and so it
feels at home where nothing else but a few Sempervivums
exist for long together.
I am very fond of the Spring-flowering Colchicums, but
unfortunately slugs are also, and those greedy gasteropods
and I have a race for who can see the flower-buds first.
If I win I go out after dark with an acetylene lamp and a
hatpin and spear the little army of slugs making for the
tea-party at the sign of the Colchicum. C, hydrophilum and
libanoticum are two closely-related eastern species ; the
former from the Taurus has the more richly-coloured
flowers, and the Lebanon one the larger and better shaped.
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My Garden in Spring
Both are attractive so early in the year, but the two I like
best are C. luteum, the only yellow one of the family, and
C. crociflorum, a charming, little white flower with purple
lines running up the back of each segment, a very good
imitation of a small Crocus. They have existed for some
years in the rock garden in ordinary soil, but I believe the
sand moraine with underground waterpipe would suit them
best. It certainly agrees with their wilful cousin Bulbocodium
vernum, a plant I could never induce to settle down and be
cosy until I indulged myself in the luxury of what, for
want of a better name, I call a sand moraine.
As I suppose it is inevitable that I write of my moraines,
we might as well discuss the subject here. No one would
read a gardening book nowadays that did not deal with
this latest fashion in gardening. The name and popularity
and prattle of the thing are new, but many good cultiva-
tors had their porous, gritty, raised or sunk beds for alpines,
whatever they called them, long ago. Mr. Wolley-Dod
laughingly called his narrow raised mounds "potato-ridges."
But they proved the ideal home for many difficult plants
that would not exist domiciled otherwise on the cold, sticky
clay at Edge Hall. The ridges were, as I remember them,
about twenty yards long, and mainly composed of grit and
leaf soil, and ever full of rare and healthy plants. The
ridge system was the important factor of success at Edge,
but in the hungry, arid, gravel soil at Cambridge, Mr. Lynch
found a sunk bed of gritty soil made a happy home for
Saxifrages that repined and went into a decline under other
treatment. Then arose the prophet. The abundant rain-
fall of Ingleborough and the local limestone (three or four
lumps of which make any sort of rock gardening a thing
104
Numerous Early Comers
of beauty if only one side of the block be bedded up with
earth), aided and abetted by river silt from the lake's mouth
and chips of all sizes from the mountain side, were only
waiting for Mr. Farrer's master mind to plan their com-
bination and lo ! a new era dawned. The most discon-
tented of his alpine treasures flourished, the great news
went forth to the world, a series of books in slate-coloured
covers became the foundation of conversation, even at
dinner, to the great annoyance of those who wait and there-
fore should expect all things to come to them. This is a
fact: a head gardener, in speaking of the extraordinary wave
of the fashion of gardening, told me that the men in the
house complained bitterly that, whereas once upon a time
they picked up innumerable sporting tips and had much
interesting gossip to listen to, nowadays the talk at dinner
was all Latin names and about soils and gardening books.
Now the moraine holds the field. I wonder will the name
live unrivalled until these words are published, or will
someone invent a terse term for the bed with underground
pipes that promises to replace the plain granite chip
arrangement ? I hope it won't be called the glacier j it is
bad enough to misname as moraine a square yard or two
of a hole in the ground filled up with road-mending
material and bristling with labels, but underground-water-
bed savours of chronic invalids and hospitals, and is also
cumbrous. Melting-snow sounds Japanesque and is what
one is trying to imitate, but as I did not invent the system
I do not feel bound to name it, and I hope it will be in
common use and have gained a familiar name before this
is read. Mr. Grove has perfected the idea in his marvel-
lous garden near Henley, and I have seen hosts of plants
105
My Garden in Spring
that I believed were impossible, in health and vigour and
jostling each other in his piped beds, and we must look to
him for light and guidance. Mr. Malby has experimented
on a smaller scale with beds with impervious floors and an
inlet above and outlet below, and has found them very
successful.
Of course I was an early victim of the moraine
measles after my first visit to Ingleborough, and when
next the Moraine Magician came to see me, he helped in
planning my first attempt at a granite chip one. My
previous experiments had not been over successful; a
range of the rock garden had been built with the debris
of broken Welsh slate, the result of the re-roofing of my
brother's house, but I and the plants find it rather
uninteresting too dry and lean, like a diet of cracknel
biscuits or pulled bread. Another mound composed of
old ceilings, brick rubble, cinders, and gravel exactly suits
my outdoor Cactuses and other succulents, of which more
anon. A sloping pocket of the slate-roof range was
cleared out and filled to the depth of two and a half feet
with granite chips, smaller in gauge than Mr. Farrer
usually advises to meet any arid climate half-way, and
mixed with leaf soil it has suited some plants admirably,
but contrary to all my hopes needs watering morning
and evening in dry weather, and so is not much better in
labour saving than any ordinary bank of the rock garden.
In it Androsace hedraeantha is happy and seeds about ;
Cerastium alpinum, var. lanatum, which refused to live with
me before, now wishes to fill this bed. Edraianthus
species have ceased to be an anxiety, and give me pleasure
and flowers. Saponaria lutea is as happy as the proverbial
106
Numerous Early Comers
king, though no more yellow than the paper of the typical
bun-bag, and were it not a rarity and collected by myself
in happy hunting-grounds I should not greatly care if it
miffed itself away as under former treatment. But some
of them do not like overhead watering in hot weather, so
I tried experiments in a corner of this bed to see whether
I could keep it from burning up so quickly by mixing
sand, my favourite birdcage variety, with the chips and
leaf soil. Plants loved it and grew wondrously, but wore
it out rather quickly, and still it needed watering oftener
than I liked. The next new bed was made on the opposite
side of the path, and planned to hold a rather richer com-
post of leaf soil, peat and sand, with occasional surfacings,
admixtures, or even unadulterated patches of granite chips :
but the most important innovation was a leaden pipe with
a funnel-shaped mouth at one end to receive water, and
two rows of holes bored on the under surface at intervals
of 3 inches. This is buried in the bed at a depth of 6 to 8
inches according to the slope of the bed, and the funnel
comes to the surface and is covered with a flat stone, that can
be easily lifted off when it is wished to pour a can or two
of water in. We arranged the fall of the pipe so that the
water ran out fairly evenly from all the holes, and found it
needed to be very slightly lower at the end farthest from
the mouth. This bed is now nearly two years old, and
has been great fun. In the richer peaty end Primula
pedemontana and P. Bowlesii, the latter a hybrid from
P. pedemontana and P. viscosa, have recovered their strength
after the shock of being collected when in full flower, and
flowered well this Spring. Astrantia minor, said to be
impossible in England, has done well and given me a
107
My Garden in Spring
fine crop of seed. Gentiana verna, collected forms from
Mt. Cenis, mostly of the angulosa type, and G. brachyphylla
have spread into good tufts. Campanula cenisia is a good
test plant, and has settled down in the chippy patch,
while Papaver rhoeticum looks as happy as it did in its
Tyrolean shale beds.
Then in the following Spring the rock garden was
enlarged, a new wing thrown out, and there was a chance
for a fresh venture in underground watering. A steep
bank was divided into large pockets, and some slabs of
old slate from a demolished water-tank were used to pave
the bottom of the pockets, following the line of the slope.
Partition walls of brick and cement below ground and
stone above were arranged so that water, poured down
a portion of drainpipe at the top of the hill, would fill
each pocket up to a certain height and then flow through
to the next. It took some time to construct and harden,
and so was empty for a week or two, and I was chaffed
by all my garden visitors on my fish hatchery or filter
beds, and many pleasantries arose from my adopting Mr.
Malby's ingenious plan of inserting half a hock bottle at
advantageous corners, so that in winter the corks might
be removed and the beds drained. But once filled up
with various cunning mixtures of sand and leaf in some
parts, and old mortar rubble, or even our local gravel
screened and stirred up with something a little more
feeding in others, it looked like any ordinary new rock
garden bed, and many things have astounded me by the
way they have approved of it and spread or seeded.
Viola bosniaca never liked me and my ways before, and I
was quite as much ashamed of myself as any really keen
108
Numerous Early Comers
gardener need be, for so constantly begging bits of it
from more successful growers. Now I weed it up as
well as supplying all who come. Douglasia Vitaliana
never lived here long enough to make it worth while
looking up its synonyms, so as to make up my mind
whether to call it Aretia, Androsace, Gregoria, Primula,
Macrotybus or Vitaliana primuloides, for it has received a
new name almost as often as it has died under my tender
care. After a year in the fish hatchery it has spread
into a grey mat and flowered this Spring almost as solidly
as it does on Mont Cenis, and I have turned its history up
in Pax and Knuth's Primulaceae volume of Das Pflanzenreich,
and hope it will live here as long as it shall remain a
Douglasia, for surely no one will dare alter the genera as
settled by that redoubtable pair during my time. Of
course one must always discount such successes by
realising that many plants will flourish in newly-disturbed
soil for a season or two and then either render it un-
suitable for them or they themselves grow sick of it.
Linaria alpina is an instance of this ; even in the Alps it is
only on landslides or new earthworks that one finds it in
profusion. I have even seen it on a heap of grit that
had been left by the roadside after a part of it had been
used for mixing cement for a new house. Here it will
always thrive in a newly-constructed bit of rock garden,
and after a year or two refuse to grow even if carefully
sown. But to see Soldanellas, Primula frondosa, and the
alpine form of Parnassia palustris, growing in apparently
dry sand, and a little way below Lewisia Howelliis salmon
and orange-coloured flowers contrasting deliciously with
that exquisite gem of Campanulas called C. caespitosa
109
My Garden in Spring
Miranda by Mr. Fairer (but with a big query at present,
and which I owe to his generosity, for it goeth not forth
for pelf at present), the rounded bells of which are a pearly
grey of indescribable delicacy to see all these so con-
tiguous and so happy makes my visitors wonder and fills me
with pride in my fish hatchery. The New River is so close
to the top of it that it is an easy job to pour a can or two
of its contents into the mouths of my two drainpipes, and
this done once a day even in the hot dry time of the last
summer proved sufficient to keep the lower soil moist.
That, then, is the history of my moraines. I call the
first granite chip one the " Farrer " moraine, the second
the "sand" moraine, and the "lead pipe bed" and "fish
hatchery" will refer to the others.
Now to go back to the Bulbocodium, which flourishes
in the lead pipe bed, but do not imagine, in spite of this
lengthy digression, that the moraines were made on
purpose to accommodate it. I put it in there because
I was so pleased to see the way it grew among the
Gentians in certain gullies by the Mt. Cenis lake, and then
found my little purple friend liked it. I am hoping it
will also agree with the Spring-flowering Merendera
caucasica and sobolifera, for although the autumnal M.
Bulbocodium is fairly happy here the other two require
frequent renewal, and I am so fond of their quaint wee
flowers, so much like a Colchicum when first open but so
ragged and untidy when the segments part company after
a day or two of prim neatness. The mark of this genus
is the lack of a perianth tube : the segments are connivent
at first opening, that is, they hang together at the throat,
but when they rise a little out of the leaves each segment
JIQ
Numerous Early Comers
starts away from its neighbour, and you see that they are
divided right down instead of joining to form a tube as in
Crocus and Colchicum. Bulbocodium vernwn behaves in
the same way, but the segments of the perianth are
furnished at the base with spurlike outgrowths which
make them arrow-shaped, and keep them together longer
and more perfectly than in Merendera. I like to grow
these plants and to admire the transition they show from
free perianth segments to the long, perfectly-formed tube
as found in Colchicum.
Tucked away in a sunny corner among Semper-
vivums lives another of my minute favourites. I have
often been accused of growing and loving too many
microscopic plants, and perhaps Allium Chamaemoly is
alone sufficient evidence to convict me. For some years
I was surprised to find seedpods and yet to have
missed its flowers, then a sharp look-out showed me
that they appeared much earlier than I expected, and
were very much smaller than I had hoped. A careful
search in late December and throughout January generally
reveals a flower or two. They are certainly very small,
about the size of a bee's knee their detractors might
say, but they are dainty little green and white stars,
and in January it is very pleasant to find anything
that is a flower.
Another first comer of the year, but different in
every way from Chamaemoly, except that you do not see
it in many gardens, is the Toothwort of the Pyrenees,
Lathraea dandestina. It ought to be in every garden,
for it is very beautiful when in full flower, looking like
a colony of some very dwarf purple Crocus, but when
in
My Garden in Spring
you look closer you see the flowers are of an unfamiliar
shape, more like those of some large Sage or Dead
Nettle, but not a labiate ; indeed, it is a plant hard to place,
for its relations, the Orobanches, are not as a rule well
known to gardeners. The fact that it is a parasite makes
it difficult to establish. First, one must find a suitable
host in a suitable place, and with roots in a condition
to be pounced on by the Lathraea. Poplar and Willow
are the most likely trees to prove hospitable to it, but
it is a queer, cranky sort of plant, and you cannot
reckon on what it will do. After careful planting it
may apparently die away, and then after two or more
years some January day may reveal its white scales
leaves it has none breaking through the ground perhaps
a yard away from the place you planted it in ; a few
years later still, when seeds have had time to form
and fly and grow, it may appear, healthy and vigorous,
far from the range of the roots of the tree. I know
of an instance where it chose to board itself out on a
Gunnera, and in Cambridge Botanic Gardens it thrives
as well across the streamlet in the grass as on the other
side among the willows. Here I chose a Weeping
Willow for its foster mother, thereby paying off a small
grudge I owed it. I made a luxurious bed of good
soil at its feet some years ago for Japanese Irises, but
the Willow said, " First come, first served," and ate up
the fatness and starved out the /. Kaempferi, filling the
bed with its fibrous roots. Among these I planted a
sod or two of Lathraea, some of them kind gifts from
Mr. Lynch, others sent by my Spanish cousins, and
later on some seeds also from Cambridge. I cannot
112
Numerous Early Comers
say which attached themselves, but I know I was plan-
ning a fresh attack, both on the Willow and Mr.
Lynch's generosity, as after three years of waiting I
saw nothing of the Toothwort, and then it appeared
in several places, and since then has spread rapidly.
First it pushes the scale-clad stem out of the ground,
a strange-looking creamy-white mass, of seaweedy or
coral-like appearance or is my memory playing me
tricks ? Yes, I think it is, and you had better not
believe me, good reader, for now it dawns upon me
that I really mean neither a seaweed nor a coral, but
two products of the Mollusca that one finds washed
up at high tide level. The first is Flustra foliacea, some-
times called Scented Seaweed, but really the dry house of
a dead colony of one of those strange compound molluscan
animals called the Polyzoa, and the other is the empty
egg mass of the whelk, both when dry being of the
same creamy white as the Lathraea's scales. Yes, these
are what I am reminded of by the rosette of scales.
It is a foolish plant to appear so early, for although
the white scales seem to be unhurt by severe frosts,
the purple buds which emerge from between them are
ruined by a very few degrees, and look brown and
sick after a cold night. In mild spells of weather I
have enjoyed the soft lilac mass of colour in late January
and February, but it is not until the Crocuses are over,
that is to say early April, that one gets the full effect
from it. It pushes up fresh flowers out of the rosettes
for some weeks longer, and as the grass grows and
shelters them the later flowers are larger and more
attractive than the earlier ones.
113 H
My Garden in Spring
They are followed by fleshy capsules of a dull purple,
not beautiful, but of great and exciting interest, for when
the seeds are ripe enough to go out into the world the
walls of these capsules become tensely turgid and the two
valves press inward on each other very powerfully, so that
a slight shock or touch at the summit causes them to split,
and each valve to curl inwards with such force that
the two enclosed seeds are shot out to a considerable
distance. I greatly enjoyed taking some examples of ripe
capsules up to one of the meetings of the Scientific
Committee of the R.H.S., and as they were new to the
members present, aided by my position as acting chair-
man at the head of the long table, while I was describing
the mechanism I gave them a pinch, and startled the
members at the other end of the table by the sudden
impact of several Lathraea seeds. At the right season I
can always get some amusement by inducing a visitor to
press a bunch of ripe capsules and noting how high he
jumps when the seeds fly into his face, and after this
initiation we aim over the pond with other capsules to see
what distance we can shoot the seeds into the tell-tale
water. This season a self-sown plant has appeared in the
grassy bank of the pond, perhaps the result of one of
these contests.
I have sown our native Lathraea Squamaria on Hazel
roots several times, but have not yet seen it above-ground.
Experience with its more showy relation preaches hope
and patience, so I still look for its appearance, but shall
continue to sow seeds or plant clumps whenever I can
get them.
The list of earliest arrivals cannot be closed without
114
Numerous Early Comers
mention of Winter Aconites. The common one, Eranthis
ht'emah's, like Chionodoxa, is one of the test plants of the
established maturity of gardens : your parvenu, architect-
planned, and colour-schemed affair can seldom include
such a fine drift of its cheery yellow faces in their green
Toby frills as one may see in the garden of many a
parsonage or quiet old grange. It is difficult to establish
a new colony of it unless one can rob an old one, for it
is one of those plants which suffer terribly from being
kept out of the ground any length of time, and here I
find the best time to transplant it is during its period of
flowering. Roots bought in autumn are generally sick
unto death.
This season the extraordinary mildness of early
December brought it into flower quite a week before
Christmas, and the blooms were small, dingy, of thin
texture, with no staying power in them, and they came out
a few at a time and so made no display, being one of the
few flowers that are better for a severe winter if it comes
before their flowering time. Gerard knew this, and writes :
" The colder the weather is, and the deeper that the snow
is, the fairer and larger is the floure, and the warmer that
the weather is, the lesser is the floure, and worse coloured."
This I have noticed, and take to mean that the flowers are
better for being kept back until they are thoroughly
matured as under a covering of snow, and then burst out
with the thaw in full strength and numbers.
The behaviour of seedlings is worth noting : they con-
tent themselves for their first season with no leaves other
than the pair of cotyledons, but find them all-sufficient
to gather enough carbon dioxide from the air to add to
My Garden in Spring
their root-collected store of nutriment to form a neat little
tuber before the summer heat dries them up. E. cilicica
is worth having too, as it comes after the older species has
gone out of flower, and its red stems and more finely
divided frills are attractive. It is beginning to colonise
here by self-sown seedlings, but I fear will never rival the
friend of one's childhood, which is in more than one sense
first in the field.
Are you nervous of scorpions ? If so plant a wide
ring of Winter Aconite, and during its growing season at
any rate you can feel safe in the centre of this magic
circle, for Gerard tells us quite gravely it " is of such
force, that if the scorpion passe by where it groweth and
touche the same, presently he becometh dull, heavy, and
senseless, and if the same scorpion by chance touch the
white Hellebor he is presently delivered from his drow-
sinesse." What fertile imaginations those old gentle-
men had !
116
CHAPTER VII
Daffodils
THE people who talk about flowers may be roughly
divided into two classes, those who ask and those who are
expected to answer the question, " What is the difference
between a Narcissus and a Daffodil ? "
I appear to belong to the latter division, and answer,
" None whatever, one being the Latin and the other the
English name for the same plant " ; but the other class
are never satisfied therewith, for they want a difference,
and like a certain fretful baby we have all seen pictures
of won't be happy till they get it. So I take down
Parkinson's Paradisus and, having impressed them with the
antiquity and authority of that great man, read them his
words of wisdom, for he writes : " Many idle and ignorant
Gardeners . . . doe call some of these Daffodils Narcisses,
when, as all that know any Latine, that Narcissus is the
Latine name and Daffodill the English of one and the same
thing ; and therefore alone, without any other Epithite
cannot properly distinguish severall things." If that does
not subdue their inquisitive spirit Gerard may be called as
second witness to testify that " Generally all the kindes
are comprehended under the name Narcissus, in English
Daffodilly, Daffodowndilly, and Primerose Peereless."
Clearly these two great fathers of English gardening
117
My Garden in Spring
saw no difference except of language between a Narcissus
and a Daffodil. All the same it would be useful to have
a name for those Narcissi that we somehow feel ought not
to be called Daffodils, even though we may not be able
to find one better than the word Daffodil with some
" other Epithite." In spite of Gerard and Parkinson we
shall be in good company in feeling thus, for Turner in
The Names of Herbes writes : " This that we take for
Daffodil is a kind of Narcissus." So in 1548 it was felt
that though all Daffodils were Narcissi yet some Narcissus
might not be a Daffodil : but where they gave Parkinson
a chance of calling them hard names, was in the way they
used the Latin name of the whole genus for certain
members of it, instead of choosing some distinguishing
English word for that particular group. In much the
same way now people use the generic term Viola as
though it belonged only to the particular race of perennial
garden-raised Violas that have been well named Tufted
Pansies. It would be equally wise to start calling the
Irish Single Tea roses, Rosas, or those hairy oubits of dogs,
the now fashionable Pekinese, Canis.
It is unfortunate that our modern idea of a true
Daffodil is not that of Parkinson's day. Hear him on
the subject. "Now to cause you to understand the
difference between a true Daffodil and a false, is this : It
consists only in the flower, and chiefly in the middle cup
or chalice ; for that we do in a manner only account
those to bee Pseudonarcissos, bastard Daffodils, whose
middle cup is altogether as long and sometimes a little
longer than the outer leaves that doe encompasse it, so that
it seemeth rather like a trunke or long nose than a cup
118
Daffodils
or chalice, such as almost all the Narcissi or true Daffodils
have." In fact all those long-nosed ones which we like
to call true Daffodils he calls bastard, which is not a
pleasant " Epithite " to give to an honest flower.
Still we need not let Parkinson's views weigh too
heavily on our conscience, for does he not include as
Narcissi, Sternbergia, Pancratium, and Zephyranthes, this
last as he says tl not finding where better to shroud it " ?
A still more glorious dispensation may be found in Spre-
kelia's appearance as the Indian Daffodil with a red flower !
Narcissus Jacobaeus ! ! The vaunted pink daffodils, this
year's most sensational exhibits, cannot vie with this
crimson glory. Their stripes or flushed yellow perianths
remind one of a hen's egg that was left too long under the
maternal breast to be appetising when boiled, or " lightly
poach " we will hope, for as Mrs. Green knew, "A poach
hegg you sees naked before you, an' if it ain't what it should
be, back it can go without no committin' of yourself in the
way of a broken shell."
Furthermore the word Daffodil is such a thoroughly
home-made English corruption of Asphodel that it was
probably made for our one unquestionably wild species,
N. Pseudo-narcissus, the Lent-lily, which is certainly the
swallows' precursor of Shakespeare, and the Daffodil of
Herrick and the poets generally.
The initial D has never been satisfactorily accounted
for, according to the New Oxford Dictionary, and one
must bow down before its pontifical authority, even though
one misses certain traditional derivatives that lack docu-
mentary support, omitted by its strict plan of relying only
on historical evidence. I am sadly disappointed if an
119
My Garden in Spring
English history omits the tale of Alfred the Great's failure
as a cook, and would like to believe many fanciful deriva-
tions of words to be true. It is a tempting text for a
philological sermon that D, but I must not give you unto
fifthly and lastly, so condense it into the half sheet of notes
which, if cunningly concealed in a book, gives a preacher
or lecturer a reputation for extempore fluency, (i) The
D may be due to playful distortion, as in Ted from Edward ;
(2) part of the definite article ; (3) the final d of and, or the
Flemish article de. I hope it is the playful friendliness of
No. i.
Anyway in English use it was at first confined to the
Asphodel, then confused with the Narcissus, some think
through both plants once bearing the fanciful name Laus
tibi, but I would rather try to believe it was from a desire
to find some wild English equivalent for the Asphodel, 1 and
what would give us as flowery a mead as the wild Lent-lily ?
Both Turner and Lyte testify to this confusion. Turner
speaks of " Asphodillus ... in English whyte affodil or
duche daffodil." Lyte writes of his third kind of Asphodel
" in English also Affodyl and Daffodyl." Botanists, after
unsuccessfully resisting this mis-application, compromised
the matter by retaining affodil ivi the Asphodel, and accept-
ing the more popular daffodil for the Narcissus, which has
lived on as a familiar word, while the other has been
rectified to a form nearer its classic original. That
Daffodil is Affo dyle, " that which cometh early " has been
confidently asserted by some (see Sowerby's English Botany
1 Turner, Herbal, I. b. iii. 6, supports this : " I could never se thys herb
(asphodelos ryght affodil) in England but ones, for the herbe that the people
calleth here affodil (or daffodill) is a kind of narcissus."
120
Anemone sylvestris grandiflora. (See p. 218.)
Daffodils
for an instance), but is ignored by the Oxford Dictionary,
and as I have found no evidence for it beyond bare asser-
tions, this time I thankfully avail myself of the authority
of the great work. Again, that Saffron-lily has given us
Daffadowndilly, and thence Daffodil, is argued by Dr. Prior,
but he confesses the explanation is merely conjectural, and
wants the test of historical evidence. It is a modern idea,
though, that a Daffodil must be yellow, for both Parkinson
and Gerard speak freely of white Daffodils, in describing
N. poeticus, both double and single, and also for polyanthus
varieties, so there is no reason why we should not talk of
Poet's Daffodils instead of using the Latin name Narcissus
for that group or we might revive Gerard's name Narcisse
for them, and Parkinson's name Peerless Daffodil seems
to me a charming one for the Incomparabilis section,
better than the contemporary ones " nonpareille," " none-
such," and " incomparable," and the hideous modern nick-
name of " incomps " one often hears from the lips of Daffodil
growers. Then the scientific name Narcissus might be
reserved for botanical purposes, when the species or their
wild hybrids and varieties are referred to.
Do not expect me to write of the Daffodils of this
garden as an expert. I sit among the great of the
Daffodil world, and see their latest productions, but the
garden knows them not. Birds must be of a feather to
flock together, and Croesus and White Emperor consort not
with paupers. So I have no list of latent novelties to make
your mouths water, only some few that, though neither
new nor worth double figures in pounds, yet are beautiful
enough to be worthy of a sentence or two. Many are
mementoes of kind friends and their richly-stored gardens.
121
My Garden in Spring
I shall begin with my greatest favourite, Dawn, a very
appropriate name for a first comer. I need hardly
describe so well-known and much-shown a flower, but
must rejoice in some of its good points. It has a butterfly
expression in the reflexed white perianth and the graceful
way the segments stand out at rather variant angles,
especially where the twin flowers of each stem touch
each other, and push the segments forward, and cause
their tips to bend over. The slender stem and pendant
twin flowers make it charming as a cut flower, and the
flat, yellow cup is of such a pure colour that it sets off the
white perianth to perfection. I have hitherto grown it
in the peach-house border, a warm and sheltered home
reserved for new and precious plants until they increase
enough to send out their offspring to test their powers of
endurance in less secure quarters. It is a long, narrow bed
facing due south, backed by the peach-house and its low
wall, with water-pipes, heated in Spring, just behind it. It
has been a successful nursery for many a good thing, when
not only protection from chills, but also constant watching
is advisable. I believe many a treasure has done better
here, because the border is so narrow, and the delicate
things are so easily got at to be fingered, or have their
surrounding soil pressed down or scratched up, or some
other slight attentions paid to them, which sometimes make
all the difference to a plant while still half-hearted about
living and growing, much as those of a watchful and tactful
nurse can help an invalid to recovery. Next Spring I
hope to see Dawn out of this nursery, or nursing home,
and waving its butterflies in the rock garden. I have not
outgrown my admiration of Weardale Perfection. There
122
Daffodils
may be more beautiful bicolors for millionaires, but they
have not come my way yet. Lord Muncaster was taking
a proud place in lists quite lately at six guineas each, and I
felt much inclined to sell all mine but one, and lay out the
result in Weardales, but I have never yet sold a plant, and
I hope I am too old to begin. So his lordship is still here.
I will try to tell you what charms I find in Weardale.
It is quite large enough for me. I do not want to sit
under a trumpet during a shower. Beyond a certain point,
size nearly always means coarseness, and I greatly dislike
the huge race of trumpet Daffodils so much to the fore in
some Dutch gardens. A small man might almost feel
nervous of looking down some of their trumpets, for fear
of falling in and getting drowned in the honey, and a life-
belt or two should be hung among the beds. As we have
not yet come to viewing our gardens from aeroplanes, we
can do without Rafflesia Arnoldii in the rock garden, and
the Waterbutt Trumpet Daffodil for mixed' borders. Even
the loveliest of fair damsels, magnified to the size of two
and a half elephants, would be an appalling object to the
stock-sized suitor, and until I have to take to much
stronger spectacles, Weardale is large enough for me.
I like its proportions : the trumpet has not ceased to
be a trumpet and become instead a gramophone's mouth-
piece, but the wide, overlapping perianth segments make
the balance more perfect than would be the case were the
segments of a narrower type such as in the variety Duke
of Bedford. But I lay most stress on the colouring,
and the soft blending of its two main shades that is
so delightful to look at or imitate in paint. The base
of the trumpet pales a little at its base, and also picks up
123
My Garden in Spring
some reflected light from the perianth, so that its high
lights are almost of the same tone as the main ground-
colour of the segments, and the soft lemon-yellow of the
trumpet runs out a little at the base of each segment,
preventing any sudden break of colour, and I always
marvel at the amount of pearly grey in its shadows,
especially in the channelling at the sides of the broad
central beam of each segment. This beam when present
in a Daffodil adds greatly to my delight. It strengthens
the lines of the drawing so well, and generally proclaims
a firm substance and good lasting quality in the flower.
I do not despise Duke of Bedford. It is a fine flower
both in the border and cut, but for lingering over, painting,
or dining in front of, I prefer the softer blending of lemon
and cream of Weardale to the amber and milk of his
grace, but both are lovely flowers, and fortunately they
may be bought for shillings.
For a self-yellow trumpet, if there really is such a
thing, or near enough to be called one if there is not,
Hamlet has proved sturdy and generous with its soft, canary-
coloured blossoms, and is one of the earlier flowerers ; as
a late one I can recommend The Doctor, a tall, clear yellow
^Esculapius with a hearty, breezy look that must mean a
cheery bedside manner. All of which good qualities, save
the colour, are typical of the popular physician for whom,
as Americans say, it was named, and who I believe is now
growing Daffodils as well as he does Sweet Peas. This
flower, The Doctor, is very welcome in the garden, in sick-
ness or health, as he comes when other big trumpets have
given us up (this season he was at his best about the
2oth of April), and there is a charm about the long, narrow
124
Daffodils
perianth segments and the fascinating backward curve they
take when fully blown, which added to the King Alfred type
of colouring urges one to send for this Doctor. Monarch
I like and I give him a little square kingdom of border.
Golden Bell is very effective for an irregular planting ; my
best group is among some species of Rosa, but I think its
wide-mouthed bell too heavy for cutting. On the other
hand, I can never quite forgive the long-nosed, drainpipe
effect of Mme. Plemp's trumpet, and even Dorothy Kings-
mill's lovely colouring is marred by the narrow mouth, and
I feel as if the glove-stretchers should be applied gently at an
early stage. On the other hand, in the Pyrenean wildling
N. muticus the use of Nature's scissors has balanced the
flower, and I like the stiff, straight trumpet. One of my
greatest treasures (I feel tempted to write " so far " as a
recurring decimal to guard it from ill for aeons) is the white
muticus. It has been found more than once in Pyrenean
pastures, but so far as I know the only stock in cultivation
came from a single bulb found by Mr. Charles Digby, the
Rector of Warham. It increased slowly with him, but his
generous spirit led him to give away a bulb or two when
offsets appeared, but nowhere have they proved very
vigorous, and many have died out. A promising youngster
came to me from Warham, and a happy inspiration caused
me to plant it on a northern slope of the rock garden. The
cool conditions and good drainage have suited it so far; and
I had seven of its lovely white blossoms this Spring, and
learning of its total disappearance at Warham had the
great pleasure of returning three bulbs to its kind dis-
coverer. White Minor is another of the very elect of the
earth : it was found in an old Irish garden, and has not gone
125
My Garden in Spring
far afield yet, but arrived here last autumn, a token of the
kindly heart and good memory of Mr. Bennett Poe, who
recalled my raptures over its refined beauty when I saw a
bunch of it in his drawing-room at one of those delightful
gatherings for a cup of tea after a long R.H.S. day, alas I
too seldom possible for me, who throughout the Spring have
ever a train to catch to be in my place at a night school
that has grown to be part of my existence. Even among
the choicest orchids and rare exotics from his collection of
rare and lovely plants that always fill his vases, and make
one feel the R.H.S. Hall ought to have a subterranean
passage ending in a door into that room, to let Fellows see
what cut flowers for decoration of a room should be like
even in such company, White Minor held its own as a gem.
I was a prisoner in a sick-room when it flowered this year,
but it came to my bedside and filled me with pride and
gratitude and hope for next season. It is just the plant
for a choice corner of the rock garden, a fitting companion
for N, triandrus, cyclamineus, minimus, and their hybrid off-
spring minicycla, an early flowering, long-lasting darling,
with the charm of both parents. Minimus is not so pro-
lific here as I wish : it once seeded along a path edge, and
I hoped would go on doing so, but no further strays have
appeared. N. juncifolius is rather a late flowerer, but very
charming even though the rock garden is by then full of
flower, and all the Hoop Petticoats in the world may come
to me if they like and I will try to find room for them. I
once collected bulbs of citrinus near Biarritz, and by getting
my feet wet in their boggy home caught a bad cold, but
learnt a valuable lesson as to the right position for this
thirsty soul. This year I flowered and have seeded the
126
Daffodils
true N. dubius, kindly sent me from its wild home by M.
Denis of Iris fame. It is very small, but such a perfectly
formed little flower, and so white that one longs to give a
doll's dinner-party to decorate the table with it. It loves heat
and drought, so I am hoping it will thrive here, and some
bulbs I keep in the Crocus frame have been lifted and re-
planted, and I found they had increased in size. I like any
wild Narcissus in the rock garden, and some of the distinct
hybrids, such as Dawn, Moonbeam, and other triandrus
crosses, but the beds and shrubberies are the homes for
most Daffodils. I have tried to group some of the cool-
coloured ones in the centre of the piece of ground I have
alluded to as my sole bit of colour scheming. This grouping
contains Poets such as Rhymester, Almira, Cassandra and
Lovelace, a few Leedsii varieties, White Lady and Ariadne
among them, and nothing more yellow than Argent, Alba-
tross, and Seagull, and coming between a mass of grey-leaved
things and golden-leaved forms, with silver variegations
among the daffodils, and the whole backed by purple foliage,
the early Spring effect is delightfully clear and cool. White
Lady is fine for this use, being far enough in the middle of
the bed for the cup to pass unnoticed. I quarrel with her
name on account of that cup, for no lady would go out with
so clean and fresh a white skirt over such a bedraggled
petticoat worse than bedraggled, it is a lace-edged one, but
with the lace frayed and torn and wanting mending. The
distant effect may be a white lady, but close at hand the
rags spell white slut. Argent I could never over-praise
either for the border or as a cut flower, whatever rich and
rare adjectives I might bestow upon it : the mingling of its
silver and gold is charming. I have thoroughly enjoyed
127
My Garden in Spring
trying to paint it, and though failing to express the brilliancy
of the reflected gold of the scattered sections of its cup on
the glistening silvery perianth, yet my dull daub brings back
some reminiscence of the real thing. I think it the very
best of all double Daffodils, as it has gained in contrasting
light and shade by its repeated sections of cups, and is not
a bit heavy, owing to the length and scattered position of
the perianth segments.
Plenipo I like, but not nearly so much, as the perianth
is of too deep a yellow to make the contrast so pleasing.
I could fill many pages with prattle of my newer, choicer
treasures, the ordinary garden furnishing of other folks'
beds most probably, so I will only say that they live in
what we call the Pergola garden, where some paved paths
divide it into rectangular beds, and oneof our later additions,
the New Wall, cuts off the east wind, so that there is found
a sheltered home for good little daffs, and one can get at
them easily to admire their beauty or fuss over their needs.
Lemon Queen, White Queen, Solfatare, Lord Kitchener,
Great Warley, Outpost, Incognita, and May Moon are some
of this pampered company, and the end of one bed is filled
with a double row of a fine giant Leedsii of Dutch origin,
named H. C. Bowles after my father. At first we thought
it rather shy flowering, and I was a little disappointed at
its likeness to an enlarged White Queen, only with a less
symmetrical base to the cup. But it has certainly improved
since it became a British subject, and has shown a remark-
able vigour of growth and freedom of flowering, and has
a great deal of substance in it, so that as a cut bloom it
lasts a long time, and the pale sulphur of its cup gradually
tones down with age to a most delicate ivory white. White
128
Iris longipetala : a fine Apogon Iris
Daffodils
Queen is not to be despised, but she must play second fiddle
when this anglicised Dutchman tunes up and plays his best.
Another naturalised Mynheer is Whitewell. I have
always admired it since the day I first saw it among its
sisters and its cousins and its aunts, more numerous than
those of that First Lord who could be reckoned by dozens,
Whitewell's went into hundreds, and yet among them all
this fine cream and soft buff-orange thing kept on catching
my eye. I was in Holland, and for the first time in my
life in that part of the country which is the real Holland
for a flower-lover. I had the good fortune to be there
with Mr. Joseph Jacob, and therefore under his wing, and
for his sake found a kindly welcome in many a quiet, out-
of-the-world nook where the making of new garden plants
was going on. Pleasant as are my memories of those
sunny or showery April days, none please me more than
the mornings in Mr. Polman Moy's holy of holies, where
the pick of his last season or two's seedlings are gathered
together under mystic numbers. Mr. Jacob was choosing
some of these to go to England to keep up the reputation
of Whitewell Rectory for the good things that are always
to be seen in Spring in the long, straight beds of his garden.
He was good enough to pretend he valued my advice
in this selection, and extol as he might the charms of others,
I always declared I preferred this X over a thing like a
fish's tail, No. 1234, and so many notches, or whatever
other hieroglyphics then guarded the identity of the future
Whitewell. I loved the set of its perianth, three ears for-
ward and three back. Not show form, perhaps, but so
good to look at, and the forwards casting such delicious
shadows on the backwards in the sunlight.
129 I
My Garden in Spring
My constancy and a close comparison with other attrac-
tive stocks gradually eliminated its rivals, and one morn-
ing when we met at breakfast I heard the news that an
early visit to the bulb garden had ended in the arrangement
that the stock of my favourite was to go to the Rectory in
Wales. I am glad to say Whitewell made a successful
debut on the show stand and was eagerly sought after,
and its purchaser often tells me he is glad he was overruled
by the fascination the flower had for me. My plants of it
were a gift from him, and every Spring they recall pleasant
memories of my first visit to Haarlem and its bulb gardens.
Hall Caine I first saw during that same visit, and was much
struck by its beauty. A large, loosely-built, sulphur-tinted
Peerless (I mean to live up to my views and use this name),
it seemed just the thing for cutting as well as for a good
effect in a broad planting. The veteran grower who was
showing us his stocks declared it to be "just incomparabilis,"
and quoted what we thought a ridiculously low figure
for it, and we made vows to invest largely in this "just
incomparabilis," but alas ! at the office we learnt it was an
unnamed seedling, and thought too much of to be acquired
as easily as we were expecting. Now it has a name, and
though it is a very charming thing its price is not prohibi-
tive. It is soft and uncommon in colour, and with a fine
tall stem and graceful poise, and is none too well known.
The celebrated white trumpet Peter Barr is among my
choice and petted forms in the bed under the new wall.
I wish he were a trifle taller in the stem and knew how to
make more of his beauty. He came to me by means of ex-
change. I did not give fifty guineas for him fifty shillings
would be more than I should dream of giving for any one
130
Daffodils
bulb and I often wish Mr. Pope had never set the big
price ball a-rolling by paying down ^100 for those three
bulbs of Will Scarlett.
I was one day asked what I thought the most beautiful
novelty of the Daffodil shows of the year, and with happy
unconsciousness replied without hesitation, " Lavender,
which I saw at Birmingham." " How nice of you," came the
reply ; " it is one of my raising, and as you like it you shall
have a bulb," and in his characteristically generous way
my host led me to a newly-planted line and extracted the
treasure just beginning to root, and each succeeding Spring
I have revelled in the delicate colouring of that cup. The
poor dear's perianth is not a thing to boast of, buckling and
curling unless treated in some cunning way unknown to
a simple soul who, like me, is not up to the tricks of the
showing profession, but the cup would save it even if
the perianth were made of spiders' legs. It is more like
some enamelled jewel than a flower. The central hollow
is of a soft emerald green of solid opaque enamel, then
the flattish cup glistens all over and shows radiating lines
of brightness and has an almost indescribable touch of pink
in it. (In painting it I found a wash of Rose madder
needful tmt difficult to subdue.) I think it suggests a
transparent white enamel laid over engraved copper, or
gold heavily alloyed with copper. Then the rim of the
cup is stained with soft orange, of almost a salmon shade,
and exquisite in combination with the green of the eye.
This lovely beauty must never be stared at by the sun, but
should be gathered directly the bud bursts and brought
into the house to open, and I am rather glad to feel that some
flowers are best gathered, and enjoy a vase of Lavender
131
My Garden in Spring
all the more for the knowledge that out-of-doors it would
not look so happy.
Writing of gathering leads me to the final aspect of
Daffodil-growing that I must dwell upon. I grudge pick-
ing blossoms so much from even well-flowered groups,
that we have planted some lines of useful cutting varieties
in the spaces between the currant and gooseberry bushes,
not needing that space for the crop nurses told us in our
early days emanated from that special bit of ground. The
daffodils get a bit of protection there and grow stiff and tall,
and are out of the way before fruit-picking begins. What
have we put there ? Let me see now Sir Watkin of
course, a fine healthy lot of bulbs of giant proportions from
a certain Dutch field of many acres I once crossed with
Sir Watkin up to my knees. I never saw such a sight, and
vowed I must test their vigour here. In this their first
year they have surprised all who had not seen them at
Noordwyk ; and now comes the question, Will they be able
to do so again ? Queen Bess is another indispensable as she
is so early. Hall Caine, whose praises I have already sung
Mrs. Camm, as she is one of the most useful, a delightful
size for old and tall champagne glasses, delicate in colour
and lasting well. Mr. Camm is there, too, but not so much
approved of. Seagull, Albatross, several Poets, and a long
line of mixed Dutch seedlings are those that come to my
mind as most successful. Some beds of Tea Roses are
planted pretty thickly with Barrii conspicuus, the Camms,
and Golden Mary, and provide many a good bunch, while
I hope and believe the Daffodil leaves protect the Rose
shoots. It is good to see that Barrii conspicuus is still in
favour even with experts, for in the voting list returns as
132
Daffodils
shown in the R.H.S. Daffodil Year Book, it heads the list
of cut flowers from the open, those suitable for planting in
grass, and also of the yellow-perianthed Barn't, and is well
up in lists for other purposes. William Backhouse must
have been a happy and proud man when he first saw it in
his seed-bed. I have a great affection for its white peri-
anthed sport Branston, and am amused rather than an-
noyed when some of the flowers come half and half, and
look like cream poured on custard.
133
CHAPTER VIII
Primulas
I USED to think this garden was unsuitable for Primulas
other than the commonest forms of Primroses, but
patience and a certain amount of manoeuvring have some-
what increased the possibilities, though still an extra hot
and dry year like 1911 frizzles up the double garden
varieties and parches P. rosea beyond recovery. The
earliest to flower is P. megasiaefolia, or perhaps I should say
to try to flower, for from December onward this foolishly
precocious plant gets a flower-bud irretrievably damaged
about once a fortnight, and seldom succeeds in opening
one. P. cashmireana often shoots up a mushroom-shaped
mass of buds in January only to be blackened and end in
decay, but P. marginata manages better and, by keeping
close under its leaves at first, opens the earliest of its
flowers with the Hepaticas. It is such a good-tempered
and lovely thing, both in flower and leaf, I wonder one
does not see it oftener. In a real Primrose-beloved
garden it should be possible to have edgings of it, and how
lovely they would be. Here I have to find a cool corner
with stones to keep its roots moist to make it happy, and
some clumps in the rock garden reward my care with a
fine show of flowers : one is a particularly blue form, and
having deeply-toothed leaves is good to look at all its days
134
Primulas
pays rent all the year in fact. I have a rather interesting
set of named forms with widely-differing shapes of leaves
and the much-praised garden form Mrs. Hall Walker,
whose flowers I have not seen yet, but have great hopes of
them next season founded upon the present fatness of the
central crown. I spent a very happy day up in the
Cottian Alps this last June collecting some lovely forms,
and hope to make a good planting as soon as I can get
them out of the sand frame where they are making their
new roots after being pulled to bits.
I once thought I did not greatlycare for Alpine Primulas,
they seemed to me so much given to thin magenta colour-
ing, but a few weeks among them in Tyrol, with Mr.
Farrer as interpreter of their charms, converted me, and
he likes to remind me of my declaration that I should not
collect more than two or three of each and the contra-
dictory reality of the full tins I carried on my poor old
back down those mountain sides. A few of the purple,
almost blue, bells of P. glutinosa on the Venna Thai en-
lightened me, and a mountain side rosy-purple for a mile
or more with P. spectabilis in full bloom, as a Scotch hill-
side might be with heather, finished the work. But then
both in their native hills are revelations of what Primulas
can be. Picking out the largest white-eyed forms of spec-
tabilis and selecting the most rosy and least aniline I found
as fascinating as any bit of collecting I had ever done.
Just picture to yourself a turfy mountain side, worn by
weather and sheep, or goats, into countless horizontal
miniature terraces such as one often finds in a steep bit of
the South Downs, and under the brow of each terrace
fancy clumps of a dozen to twenty rosettes of a green-
135
My Garden in Spring
leaved garden Auricula whose large heads of flowers are of
every shade of rose and crimson, so that looking up the
hill you get the full stare of their friendly eyes and every
one you look at seems to possess some varietal charm of
its own a clearer white eye, a warmer rose tint, or fuller
and rounder flower. Can you wonder that I was on my
knees every other minute plunging my trowel into the
tufts to extract half a dozen of the rosettes ? Just two or
three of the best indeed ! that tin was a heavy load to
carry down, and there was much work sorting and packing
my chosen few. Just the same when I found myself face
to face with it in another district, and where, meeting with
P. minima, there were interesting hybrids, exciting to look
for and so entrancingly beautiful when found that I dis-
covered I could not bear to live without P. Facchinii and
P. Dumoulinii. P. oenensis had to follow, and longiflora with
its charming, mealy stem filled my gardening soul with
greed and every spare corner of my tin with its neat
rosettes, and eventually the boot-bag I carry in a pocket
in case of overcrowding had to come out and hang round
my neck to hold that mealy-leaved golden glory P. Auri-
cula Bauhinii.
A few days later Mr. Farrer took me to another ridge
just to look at other interesting Primulas, but I think he
had long ceased to believe in my intention of just gazing
and then picking out a trinity of mementoes of the vision,
so he was not surprised that, when I had at last got over
staring at the unbelievable, fantastic beauty of the great
Dolomite peak that hung over our heads, I fell to eagerly
on the crevices which harboured P. tyrolensis and hunted
the open turf for its very local minima-bred hybrid P.Juri-
136
Primulas
bella, and at last owned myself vanquished by the beauty
of Alpine Primulas at home, when I saw the peaty hillside
blue with P. glutinosa, there as common as Cowslips in a
home meadow, instead of dotted singly as on the Brenner.
Home they went in the largest tins I could cajole out of
reluctant head waiters, and how will they behave here is
now the burning question. On arrival they were all
pulled asunder, and as separate rosettes planted in lines in
a frame in almost pure sand and leaf soil. By the autumn
they Icoked fat and leafy above, and by experimental lift-
ings were proved to have made long, white roots and to
be ready to go out. An overgrown portion of the rock
garden, hitherto sacred to Geranium species, was torn down
and rebuilt to imitate the Tyrolean homes from which I
had exiled my Primulas. I had to leave out the Cimon
della Parla and the Drei Zinnen, but hope the carefully-
mixed soils I have given them will make them so happy
that they will not look up and miss such trifles.
Peat in small quantities, leaf mould used generously, a
stiffening of the sourfl resulting from these two by a liberal
dose of the old soil, and the main geological formation of
this miniature range was ready for adaptation to the special
wants of its flora. Feeling too poor to invest in granite
chips or even birdcage sand, I commandeered a load of our
native red gravel, well screened, from the estate mason's
storehouse and worked it into my too sticky compost in
varying quantities. The lower slopes, reserved for P.
minima, longiflora, and glutinosa, had only enough to make
the soil feel sharp and gritty, but vertical crevices prepared
for Auricula and tyrolensis had the upper two or three inches
well reddened with the gravel. The hybrids had a middle
137
My Garden in Spring
position of intermediate grittiness and spectabilis has gone
to the upper slopes. How magnificent it sounds ! That
is the fun of writing of one's garden : a steep bank can be
a cliff, a puddle a pool, a pool a lake, bog and moraine
sound as though a guide were needed to find your way
across them, and yet may be covered by a sheet of The
Times. My Dolomites lie within the compass of my out-
stretched arms, and there is not much wasted space now
the Primulas are settled in. So far they have thriven
amazingly, and this Spring, when the curtain rang up, the
Auricula forms first took the stage. The Bauhinii troupe
were quite as fine with their large Daffodil-yellow, white-
eyed flowers on stout stems as on their own hillside. The
ciliata lot with their deep green mealless leaves gave
blossoms as nearly orange as when found wild. Oenensis
took the next turn, and pleased me more here than when
at home : the flowers looked less aniline in colour and had
such pleasant white eyes, but perhaps I had picked out the
best forms only. Longifloras was the star performance,
however. Before going to rest for the winter they formed
fat crowns like small cabbages, and this May each rosette
sent up two stems, and the main one bore twenty or more
blossoms, instead of the half dozen or so I had found them
contepted with at home. I had never seen this species
alive before I went to its home to meet it, as it is
apparently seldom grown in gardens, and in spite of all
this appearance of vigour I cannot help feeling there must
be something wrong about its constitution to have pre-
vented its sharing cottage-garden edgings with Thrift and
Daisies.
So I have saved some seeds to prepare for squalls, and
138
Primulas
I noticed that where the rosettes have waxed so strong they
insist on sending up ridiculous, dwarfed, flower-crowded
stems at intervals all the summer through, and doing
nothing towards a fat cabbage for next winter's sleep.
Several have gone off yellow, as its near relative farinosa
so often does after a good orgy of flowering, and I rather
expect it will be best to starve longiflora into less ambitious
displays or, if it comes easily from seed, treat it as a
biennial. If it can be so grown it will be well worth the
trouble : the mealy calyx and reddish-purple flowers
"reether redder than I could wish " as Bailey Junior said
of his imaginary beard were wonderfully good to see
when at their best. P. glutinosa lives and grows, but, as I
believe to be only too usual in English gardens, has offered
no trace of a flower. No more has tyrolensis, but has made
such deep green rosettes and wide leaves that they must
surely mean a promise of good things later on. Minima
and the hybrids looked so chubby and cheery on their
return to greenness I expected great things of them, but
never a bud appeared until I had given up looking for
them, and at the end of June I was astonished by a goodly
sprinkling of rosy-purple and a few pure white blooms, all
as large and well-coloured as when I selected them. But
the stupid things were so pleased at pleasing me they have
tried to go on with it, and through the Dog Days have kept
on sending up mean, flabby, starry caricatures of their
former successes. P. spectabilis opened a very few eyes,
but has been so busy working up a stock of large green
leaves that it had no time for such frivolities as flowers
this season.
P. pedemontana behaved in the same way its first season
139
My Garden in Spring
in the pipe-bed, and made up for it by a charming display
this May. Its ugly duckling hybrid child P. Bowlesii shot
up its taller scape too. It is ungrateful of me to speak
slightingly of this plant after its dedication to me, but in
case you are thinking of rushing off to Mt. Cenis to hunt
for it I had better be honest and say it is very scarce : a
whole morning of careful search this June rewarded Mr.
Farrer and me with three plants of it, and between us
we do not miss much when we hunt for a thing systema-
tically. Also it is fair to say that in spite of its lovely
parents, rosy pedemontana and the true viscosa of imperial
purple, it is a mawkish magenta in all the specimens we
have found save one, which was a cheery crimson-purple,
and so good that at first sight I thought it too good to be
true Bowlesii. I wonder how this name will be pronounced
should it be tried by Poles and Russians, Germans, Turks
or Prooshians, or an I-talian. I rather fear it will become
Bovvleaysiee. Anyway I was glad to be the first to flower
my Primrose, and to be able to send a scape and leaves
to the British Museum, though it was not in time to appear
at the Primula Conference. It has made the most curious
long and narrow leaves this summer, and at present looks
totally unlike either parent.
P. frondosa is a good plant for the sand and water-pipe
moraine even in fullest sun, and never looked so well here
with other treatment. Whether it be the true frondosa of
Janka or no, has been much debated, and at present it is
comforting to know that the latest authorities pronounce it
genuine, as the type specimen is suspected of having lost
its mealiness through maturity, and therefore Pax and
Knuth's upsetting decree that it must be without meal
140
Primulas
need not be regarded. 1 Where farinosa refuses to settle and
be comfortable frondosa makes a fine substitute, though it
lacks in my eyes the grace of our native plant, and is
rather too leafy and clumsy in build. The new Chinese
P. Knuthiana is a still larger form of the same type of
Primrose, but after flowering appears to make rosettes
without sufficient roots, and so is liable to turn flabby and
then yellow in hot weather, and seems hard to restore to
health. Old plants look very queer here now, in the pipe-
bed, but what appear to be self-sown seedlings are racing
along to fill up their places.
P. Jtiliae, the new comer from Trans-Caucasia, has
behaved here as a real lady, just as the bearer of such a
name should. Two tuffets came from Herr Siindermann
early in the year, their canary-coloured labels the showiest
part of them. Cossetted for a little in a frame and then
put out in cool, leafy soil they flowered brilliantly in late
April. The astonishing crimson-purple of their flowers is
in such sharp contrast with the brilliant yellow eye that every
one exclaims " Oh ! " " Marvellous ! ! " " My stars ! ! ! "
" Crikey ! ! ! ! " or something else according to the richness
of their vocabulary, when they first see it. Not only have
they developed their characteristic runners with new crowns
at their ends, but when I parted the leaves to enjoy a sight
of these promises for next year I found they were indulging
in a little quiet practice for next Spring's flowering, and had
several half-sized blossoms hidden away below, but as
brilliant in colouring as ever. Of the two I possess, the
plant in fat soil in a half-shaded border has done better
1 Since writing this I have seen a plant straight from its native Balkans which
is as mealy as any miller.
My Garden in Spring
than the other in the poorer soil of an old portion of the
rock garden, and it looks as though the right treatment
for it is the same that one would give to the choicer
double Primroses.
They, poor dears, are not very happy here, except in
wet seasons, and a Spring visit to Ireland always fills me
with envy, and longings for a climate that can produce
such double whites, French greys, and lilacs, and also
clumps of Polyanthus of such size, and flowers of such
texture and colouring. Short of digging a ditch for them
I fear I must not expect to see them thrive here.
In this neighbourhood Cowslips are wild in some of
the meadows, but Primroses are very scarce, only occur-
ring along a ditch or two, and possibly not truly wild
there. Among the wild Cowslips in one of our meadows
there occurs an interesting form in which the orange
spots, so characteristic of the plant, are wanting. I have
brought it into the garden, and it remains perfectly true,
and is seeding about freely, and I hope to soon observe
how large a percentage will resemble the parents. I
always look at Cowslips in other places to see if they too
show this variation, but have never seen it elsewhere.
Knuth in his Handbook of Flower Pollination mentions
that " Flowers devoid of this (orange-red) patch have
been observed by Kirchner in Wurtemberg and Appel
(as he tells me in a letter) at Wiirzburg." I have a
great affection for Cowslips, and so grow all the forms
I can get now, and long for the curious green and
double ones figured in the old herbals. A beautiful orange-
coloured form was given to me by Mrs. Robb, who told me
she remembered it from her early childhood, but had
142
Primulas
lost sight of it for many years, till, staying at her old
home Great Tew, one of the children came to say good-
night and carried a bunch of Cowslips, among them the
orange one. " Don't take that dear child to bed, Nurse,
until she has found the plant she picked these from, and
put in a stick beside it," said this imperious old lady, and
as she was generally obeyed the Cowslip found its way to
her charming garden at Goldenfield and thence to me.
" Pick out the best you can see," she bade me ; " they won't
all come true, but you might as well start with the best
form," and I greatly treasure this memento of her generosity
and happy days at Goldenfield. A silver Cowslip of palest
yellow Canon Ellacombe gave me, and other interesting
forms are due to my always collecting a plant or two from
every alpine district in which I meet with it. Most of them
are the form known asColumnae,with cordate leaves on long
petioles and flowers approaching P. elatior. On Mt. Cenis
one finds every sort of intermediate, and a botanist might
spend years there cataloguing their variations. Elatior
itself has overrun a portion of the rock garden, but is so
charming it may keep on running as long as Charlies Aunt.
There have been bold men who declared true elatior
never hybridised, but Mr. Wolley-Dod gave me some living
proofs that such statements were inaccurate, for these
plants have elatior form but the colouring of various red
and pink Primroses, and I myself have found several seed-
lings with flowers bearing traces of Primrose characters.
Pax and Knuth give no less than two pages to the various
hybrid forms due to its liaisons with P. acaulis and P.
officinalis. One of them, P. anisiaca, has been praised for
its floriferous character by Mr. Farrer, and he kindly gave
My Garden in Spring
me part of each of his forms of it, but here it suffers so
from thirst in summer that it does not flower through the
whole Winter and Spring as with him, but is a dwarf and
Interesting form.
I am very fond of the various purple or lilac forms
of Primrose that come from Turkey and the Near East.
The good old plant, sold so unblushingly as P. amoena
the true plant belonging to that name not being in culti-
vation at present should be known as P. acaulis, var. rubra,
say Pax and Knuth, but Dr. MacWatt has raked up the
name of Sibthorpei Pax for it, in spite of the great man
and his coadjutor having placed it as a synonym in their
monograph. It is the single form of the old double lilac,
and in its best forms of that same charming cool colour.
I have also a deeper form, almost a purple another of
Mrs. Robb's good things. She saw it on Mount Olympus,
and much to the annoyance of her magnificent dragoman,
who was dressed in a uniform richer in gold lace than
that of the most distinguished general, she insisted on
his dismounting from his horse and digging up some roots
with a broken potsherd, the only weapon that offered
itself. She told me its purple glory always reminded her
of the rueful face of that glittering dragoman.
These forms require, at any rate here, frequent divi-
sion and replanting in soil freshened by leaf mould and cow
manure. They dwindle if left alone for more than two
years, but if well looked after are very charming in good
broad plantings. P. cortusoides and its garden descendants,
who have not descended but have very much gone up in
the world as to size, appearance, and general affluence,
need more leaf mould and choicer, cool corners than the
144
Iris Susiana : A typical Oncocyclus Iris
Primulas
garden can commonly afford, so they are not broadly
planted, and only to be found in a few nooks of the rock
garden, where the white and lavender forms of Sieboldii
are very welcome to spread if they will do it on their own
responsibility.
P. Veitchii I have tried to like, and failed to do more
than tolerate. A white form I could love, but the type
is so defiantly aniline in its choice of red that I should
neither cry nor purchase a successor should it die of my
cold neglect. On the contrary the smaller-flowered, equally
aniline, Cortusa Matthioli has a firm hold on my affections,
perhaps grounded in the memories of pleasant mornings
in the cool gully, where among fallen boulders and a
dwarf forest of Alnus viridis I first saw its downy leaves
and crimson buds planted by Nature's own hand. It is a
strange place, that gully, part of the only woodland for
miles around, on the shady side of the Mt. Cenis lake.
You must mount up to the col and cross into France and
begin to descend before you find another thicket of the
Alder, but there you will find no Cortusa, for on the Cenis
it is wholly confined to this gully. There it is very abun-
dant under the straggling stems of the Alder, growing in
rich leaf soil, or tufts of moss, or apparently nothing but
rock and atmosphere, but always, always in shade. Snow
lies late in this hollow, and must be very deep in winter,
for the Alders are flattened under it as though a steam
roller had been over them, and what looks from below
like a slope of dwarf bushes is the most difficult thing to
climb among I can imagine ; the long, prostrate stems give
under your feet, catch round your ankles, and whip your
legs, and the upright portions are no good to catch hold of
145 K
My Garden in Spring
for support, as they join on to the long and supple stems
that lie on the ground, but do not root again, and so pull
away with your weight and sway about, and are less help-
ful than a broken reed. But wherever there is a space
among their stems, Cortusa, Soldanella tnontana, and Saxifraga
rotundifolia fill it up. I had often purchased Cortusa and
tried it in various positions in the rock garden, and always
failed to make it happy enough to live the round of a year,
but some of those I brought away from this shady grove
have thriven and increased among Hepaticas and Wood
Anemones in a border shaded by Purple-leaved Hazels.
The Spring Primulas wind up with the dumb-waiter-
like whorled flower-heads of P. japonica and its family.
Their idea of luxury is mud, and it suits their requirements
as well as those of a cockle-gatherer. The margin of a
pond and the bottom of a not too wet ditch provide a
happy home for them, and failing these the richer and
moister soil you can give them, the better will be the result.
There are some good colour forms of japonica, a so-called
salmon, which is much more like anchovy sauce if one must
give it a fishy name, a pure white with large orange eye,
one of the loveliest of Primroses, and a very deep coppery
red one, so there is no need to tolerate the old magenta
forms and still less the speckled and ring-straked abomina-
tions that a bad white strain produces so freely among its
seedlings. Even P. pulverulenta is crude and twangy beside
the best deep japonica. I planted some seedlings along the
pond edge and grouped pulverulenta with the deep red and
white japonicas, and directly I had done so was sorry,
believing the Chinese pulverulenta would kill the colour of
the Japanese. When they flowered it was the Chinese that
146
Primulas
were defeated, and had to be removed to a separate canton-
ment for sake of peace to the eye. By itself the Chinese,
mealy-stemmed fellow is not bad, and among wildish grass
on the edge of a small pool at the bottom of the rock gar-
den I thought its crimson tiers quite lovely enough to leave
them to seed if they will, as their own mother did higher
up, by the trickle that overflows from one little pool and
fills another. From these, poor lady, she was ejected as
she was so cabbage-like in profusion of foliage and so
smothering to choicer neighbours, white Calthas and
Cyananthus lobatus, and this last, like the Princes in the
Tower, died this very stuffy death before I noticed what was
going on. I could forgive almost any plant's death by
overcrowding if it were done by that lovely new mutation
or sport, or whatever the style of its origin may be described
as, which was shown at the Royal International Show and
named Mrs. Berkeley. I understand it appeared at Coombe
Wood without warning among a batch of ordinary
pulverulenta seedlings, and although it has a good sturdy
constitution, so far as I can learn it has refused to bear
seed. I put two plants out in a sort of ditch we made
across a newly-arranged bed. This ditch idea is a try-on
to see if its northern facing slope will be cool and accept-
able to ferns and Primulas of thirsty habits. This one
liked it, and the spikes of flowers were in beauty for a long
period. I cannot think of any name to describe their colour,
but I believe I could mix Naples yellow and Rose madder
and arrive at something like its creamy flesh tint, and it
shades into apricot and tawny orange in the eye, which
gives the flower a warm glow. Yes, I hope it will spread
and the ferns be obliged to flee before it. P. Cockburniana
147
My Garden in Spring
at present has a place in the ditch, but I lose it here after
flowering, but mean to try it up in the fish hatchery, where,
dry above and wet below, it may behave as luckier folk
have found it to do, and grow into a clump.
The lovely hybrid " Unique Improved " did well at first,
and allowed me to split it up into a nice colony, then some-
thing offended it, and every crown yellowed and decayed,
leaving nothing but an orphaned seedling which flowered
this year and was little more than a living image of its
grandpa, Cockburniana.
148
CHAPTER IX
March Winds
A PECK of dust in March, we have all been taught, is worth
a king's ransom. The farmer may find it so ; he generally
wants it dry when others would like it wet, and then
grumbles because some crop has not grown. He is
always waiting for dry weather to get on the land himself
or to get something off it, so he may put that hateful
peck of what the schoolboy defined as mud with the juice
squeezed out, on his credit side, but I do not suppose I am
alone among gardeners in feeling it is more likely to cost
a king's ransom to renew the plants it kills. Those cruel,
drying March winds do so much terrible damage, or at
least they put a finishing stroke to many a struggling
invalid, shaken but not killed by the winter's frosts. If
only they could tide over another week or two the warmer
ground would help along the growth of their new roots,
and enough sap would run up to equalise their loss by
transpiration, but with imperfect roots and an east wind
they shrivel up and give up the struggle in an hour or
two. An aged Cistus bush will often be the first to
show the bill is coming in ; Bamboos, Miscanthus, and
Choisya jot down fresh items, and you are lucky if the
young green shoots of Crown Imperials, Eremuri, and
precocious Lilies are not included. It is an anxious and
149
My Garden in Spring
a trying time, not only because it roughens one's own
skin, making shaving a painful bore, and the corners of
one's smile less expansive, but it is then one notes day
by day some pet plant's failure to put in an appear-
ance, or the flagging and browning of a cherished
specimen.
I hate the grey, sapless look of the pastures during this
spell of dry cold, and the arrest of progress in the flower
beds. They look emptier than a week before, and plants
seem to shrink, and the ground turns lighter in colour and
shows out more conspicuously. There is no scent of
growth or pine trees on the wind, and often a numbing
suggestion of snow that seems to paralyse one's nose just
below the bridge. Spring has come, but one cannot
enjoy it or feel that any plant is safe, for any night
the temperature may drop low enough to kill treasures
January and February have spared.
Here nothing lies between us and the North Pole to
take the teeth out of the north-east wind. By the time
it has bitten and shaken our tender things it has lost much
venom, and before it reaches the west of England is by
comparison a refreshing breeze. Or so it seems to me
when I leave my wind-scorched garden and go west of
Swindon, and find everything green and smiling, and hear
tales of what the east wind has been doing. It suits a few
things to get this dry spell, but chiefly those that are
lowly and sheltered by higher ground and protecting
hedges. Some of the later Crocuses open out wide in the
sunny hours, and are successfully fertilised by insect
visitors. The Spring Mandrake, Mandragora ojficinarum,Qiten
fails to get its earlier February-born flowers set, and now
March Winds
rushes out the remaining buds. Dingy grey-green things
they are, but some insects see and visit them, and if I
happen along and find them agape, I use my amber or
sealing-wax to transfer some pollen, for though I do not
greatly admire the dull flowers, nor later on the coarse,
floppy leaves, I do like to see a good crop of fruit, like
a clutch of emerald-green pheasant's eggs, or a dish of
unripe tomatoes, closely packed in the heart of each plant.
They are at their best when full grown but still unripe,
for they only lose in brightness of green and take on a
dull yellowish tinge when they begin to scent the air
with a mixed odour of bananas and pineapple, and their
next stage is to roll off and rot, and, unless removed, to
produce a crowd of seedlings where they fall. A very
much finer thing is Mandragora autumnalis, but like many
other good things it is as scarce, at any rate in England,
as it is beautiful. Fancy a rosette of handsome deep
green leaves, as it might be those of a mullein, lying flat
on the ground, and clean and vigorous all through the
winter months, and then fill up the centre of this rosette
with a score of purple blossoms, much resembling stem-
less flowers of Anemone Pulsatilla, and you have some idea
of what the Autumnal Mandrake should be. Ever since
last November I had been watching for the reappearance
of two specimens, and though it was not until the middle
of May I rejoiced over their safe return, I write of them
here as they should be in flower at the same time as their
dowdy sister, and I believe should have kept up a succes-
sion of their purple blossoms from the late autumn. But
it is an unpunctual creature, and you never know when it
will choose to flower from season to season. Its name
My Garden in Spring
certainly implies an autumnal habit when at home, but
don't rely on names plants are no more bound by them
than Irish railway officials by the time-table. " Sure, sorr,
and aren't you taking the time-table too seriously ? " was
an Irish guard's reply to a query whether it was possible
the train could make up for an unauthorised stop of three-
quarters of an hour ! Carlina acaulis grows a fine, tall stem
in English gardens, and Caltha polypetala never had a petal,
let alone many of them, so never take a name too seriously.
The only plant of M. autumnalis I have known intimately
for any length of time is the magnificent old specimen
under the south wall at Bitton, and for many years it has
flowered in the early spring, but last autumn it began to
justify its name by an autumnal flowering. I had heard
of plants in Trinity College Gardens, Dublin, and it is in
the Kew Hand-List, so I hope flourishes there, though I
have never seen it, but beyond that I never met it else-
where in England except in extreme youth yearlings,
that I had grown myself or seen at Bitton, raised from
the fruits of the venerable specimen. But neither here
nor there could these one-year-olds be induced, whatever
treatment was offered them, to reappear when once they
had disappeared below ground. They formed a fat little
white root, but it slept like the Sleeping Beauty, and no
prince could be found to wake it. A friend of mine once
described a plant he had seen in Sicily, and I recognised
my long-desired Mandrake, and railed at him for bringing
no roots, so when another good friend told me he was
going to Sicily, and asked could he send me any plant, I,
imagining that island was paved from end to end with
Mandrake rosettes, begged for a couple of middle-aged
152
d of Terrace with London Bridge balusters. (See p. 235.)
March Winds
ones, and they came, rather dry in the leaves after their
journey, but with rich purple flowers still fresh enough to
proclaim them as good forms. Only later I learnt that
my friend, having hunted diligently but in vain, consulted
a high authority, and was told that they only grew in a
limited area near Messina, many miles from his intended
wanderings. Such is the kindness of the hearts of good
gardeners that in spite of all this, those two good men
contrived to get me the plants, and now they have revived
from their first and perilous sleep in their new home.
It must have been to get a higher price for the roots,
and deter others from collecting them, that the herbalists
invented such lies as to the difficulties of digging up the
Mandrake. They declared that it screamed so fearfully
during the operation that all who heard it died, so the
best way to obtain it was to loosen it a little in the ground
and tie it to the tail of a hungry dog and set his meal be-
yond his reach. His struggles to reach it pulled up the
root, its screams killed the dog, and you returned later on
to collect your prize from the corpse. I have dug up
many a one, and though I found the large root took a
deal of digging
" There was silence supreme ! Not a shriek, not a scream,
Scarcely even a howl or a groan,"
and I, and moreover my dog who watched the operation,
were none the worse. Nor have I ever found one with a
root showing more resemblance to the human form than
any bifid Parsnip does. The usual run of old drawings
represented the human-shaped body as below ground
forming the roots, and the leaves and fruits issuing from
153
My Garden in Spring
the head, but in the wonderful old map of the world
which is one of the treasures of Hereford Cathedral may
be seen a Mandrake whose body branches up above-
ground, the head resting on the surface like a Turnip and
the hairs of the head growing down as roots.
The Lesser Celandine, Ranunculus Ficaria, often flowers
during the windy, leonine blustering of this month. The
common wild forms one constantly struggles with but
cannot entirely expel from the garden, but the major form
from Italy does not increase too quickly, and is a fine
thing when well grown, quite three times as large as the
undesirable native. I like the white form of our wild one,
though ; it has a charming, creamy tint and is as beauti-
fully varnished as any Buttercup. It begins to flower very
early in the year, but the later flowers are the larger.
The double form is worth growing, and in ordinary
seasons I notice it flowers when those of the hedgerow
and meadow are almost over. A variegated one I found
in a hedge has kept up its character for two seasons,
and its leaves are prettily blotched with creamy white.
Blotched leaves suggest the Pulmonarias, and though
we need not believe, with those who upheld the Doctrine
of Signatures, that the white blotches proclaimed it a
sovereign remedy for ulcerated and spotted lungs, because
as Robert Turner states, " God hath imprinted upon the
Plants, Herbs, and Flowers, as it were in Hieroglyphicks,
the very signature of their vertues," yet we may admire the
"browne greene leaves sprinkled with divers white spots
like drops of milke," as Lyte has described them. I have
a great liking for them all, and have collected together all
I have met with that show any variation, and the working
154
March Winds
out of the assemblage is one of the jobs I have in store
for that day when I shall have some spare time. Perhaps a
broken leg might fix the date, but at present it does not
appear on my list of engagements. My first affection
for Lungworts dates from a day when I collected some
very distinct forms of P. saccharata from a little wood near
Bayonne, where they grew mingled with Narcissus pallidus
praecox. Purple and red-flowered forms were there,
charming with the sulphur of the Daffodil, and also their
leaves varied with larger or smaller mottling, and one form
had almost the whole leaf grey and white save for a narrow
edging of green. P. saccharata is one of the earliest to
flower, and the redder forms are very attractive ; they look
happier after a little frost than a frozen and thawed blue
one does, and if you cut away the seed heads and so induce
really strong leaves, the variety of their patterns is good to
see till flowering time comes back again. The best of all
red ones is a species, P. rubra, with large, pale green,
unspotted leaves. Its flowers are of a charming soft
scarlet-red, and never die off purple. If frequently
divided, and grown in good soil in sheltered corners, it
will often begin flowering in December and go on im-
proving accordingly as the weather does until May. The
best blue is a mysterious form known by many names, and
as my legs are still both sound I cannot yet hunt it down
accurately. It is generally known as P. azurea, which
authorities make but a form of angustifolia. I have long
known it as Mawson's Blue, and as it has short, wide, heart-
shaped leaves I hope it is not an angustifolia and doomed
to live under so false a name. It is dwarf, free flowering,
early, and easy to grow if divided every third year in fact
155
My Garden in Spring
all that a good little plant should be, and its colour is not
ashamed to sit close by Chionodoxa sardensis. Its leaves
are unspotted and do not become coarse, and it will not
spread too far, for all who see it and have it not are ready
to carry off a portion. The best white is the albino of
saccharata, but it, like ojficinalis alba, is slow of increase :
both are pretty, -with really white flowers that go well
with the spotted leaves. The only other white I know is
a form of P. arvernensis, but though there are many flowers
to a head they are small and crowded, and I do not care
so greatly for it or its typical dark blue form as I do for
the larger flowered species.
I have not yet lit upon a really satisfactory Cambridge
blue form. One that I first saw at Wisley looks as though
it should be a pale edition of Mawson's, but has never
grown or flowered freely here. Half way up a mountain
side in Tyrol I found a pale form lovely to behold in the
shade of its rocks : it disappointed me this Spring, appearing
washy, but did not flower very heartily, and may be all I
fancied it when it settles down. Of purple-flowered sorts
thereare many. P.grandifloralhzve fromGlasnevin,ashowy
thing when fully out, but rather on the coarse side, and not
very long in full beauty. A strong-growing, long-leaved
one from Spain, variable in depth of colour, is good in its
best forms, and very hardy and early, but takes up a great
deal of room in summer with its immense, unspotted and
therefore rather dull leaves. I have a set of puzzling
intermediates, many of them seedlings I expect, from
Captain Pinwill's wonderful garden, and still others from
Bitton, the like of which I have been quite unable to trace
in either of the good monographs by Du Mortier and
156
Tulipa Kaufmanniana. (See p. 237.)
March Winds
Kerner, but that leg-mending period may some day reveal
them among their pages.
Pulmonarias make a good bold edging to a shrubbery
or bed of coarse herbaceous plants : the saccharata forms
are perhaps best used thus, as their handsome leaves
survive ordinary winters so cheerfully. P. arvernensis is
best in the rock garden, and it and our native P. angusti-
folia, which I have collected in the New Forest, die down
entirely in winter.
Among other brave plants that take the winds of
March amicably Hacquetia (Dondia) Epipactis is a good
thing for a shady corner. It looks at first sight like a
green Hellebore, but a closer glance shows that the
golden centre is an umbel of small yellow flowers set in
an involucre of green leaves, and is almost an Astrantia,
and only just saved from such a relationship by a very
slight difference in the shape of the fruit. It has a very
bright and cheerful appearance in these nippy, cold days,
when its glossy green leaves and yellow heads take the
place of the Winter Aconites, but it increases slowly, and
so is never seen in profusion.
Adonis amurensis should also be making a show, but
slugs love its fat round flower-buds when they are first
through and still a bronze colour, and they often lose
their hearts as early in the day as the heroine of a penny
novelette. The double forms are quaint and interesting,
but always flower later than the far prettier single form.
Several Corydalis species join the procession now. C.
angustifolia is generally first, an ivory white, and too
delicate-looking a thing to be out so early ; then follow
the more robust creamy white C. Allenii and C. bulbosa
157
My Garden in Spring
with its dingy, faded-lilac flowers. I have never yet
made up my mind as to whether I like bulbosa to spread
about or no. On the one hand it is so early and
does no harm, but on the other it is not very attractive
and takes up a certain amount of space. C. cava is
brighter in colour and also has a good white form, and
both are welcome to spread where they will. C. Lede-
bouriana and C. Semenowii did well for some years,
but have died, I am sorry to say, for I liked their
glaucous leaves and the pink flowers of the one and
the orange of the other. They would travel under-
ground in their supposed resting season and come up in
most unexpected places, and this made it hard to prevent
their being dug into or getting smothered by a neighbour.
I have not seen them for some years, but always look out
for their reappearance each Spring, hoping they may have
returned from their travels. The beauty of the family is
C. nobilis from Siberia, but it does not produce its light
yellow flowers till May. Each blossom has a curious
blackish-green tip to it, as though a beetle sat upon it.
Except Adlumia cirrhosa, a very near relation, and some
hateful weeds like Cardamine hirsuta, I can remember no
plants that ripen seeds so quickly as this Corydalis family.
It seems one day the flowers look a little faded and wan,
and then the next they fall off, leaving a fat green pod, and
if you break it open the seeds are black and shining and
look ready for sowing.
Petasites nivea is not common in gardens, but is very
much so in subalpine regions : it lacks the delicious scent
of P. fragrans, the Winter Heliotrope, but then it does not
run so violently and become such a nuisance, and its
158
March Winds
flowers are more attractive to the eye, with bright green
bracts and creamy-white blossoms. They generally appear
with the New Year, but are dwarf until March, when they
run up on long stems among the fresh young leaves. It is
a good plant to fill up odd corners among shrubs, especially
at the back of borders where tall herbaceous plants are
grown in front. P. japonica gigantea is not very lavish with
its large flower heads, but a few go a long way, as each
one in the distance looks like a large clump of Primroses,
leaves and all. Its immense leaves are its best part, of
course, and are those one sees in Japanese pictures being
used as umbrellas. They want a swampy bit of ground
and good feeding to grow large over here, and in this dry
garden the poor things look tired and finally sit down on
hot dry days. P. palmata is seldom seen ; its handsome
leaves are worth having, especially as they are happy in
any rough corner. The variegated form of Tussilago
Farfara is one of the most beautiful of variegated plants,
but is as hard to establish and keep as the common green
form is to destroy. It will walk underground quite a yard
between dying down and reappearing, which is annoying
if you have it among other plants which would not
appreciate the cold poultice of a half dozen of its great
leaves pressing down on their chests. It has walked along
one border until it has reached a triangular corner and the
gravel walk, and here it has received a check and huddled
itself together to think how to proceed. It got such a
snubbing for appearing in the middle of the path that I
hope it will not try again and get across to the strawberry
beds. Its flowers are quite pretty ; the stems have much
red and brown on them, but otherwise they are similar to
159
My Garden in Spring
the small dandelion affairs that star the railway banks so
early in the year and puzzle many travellers as to their
identity both when in flower and afterwards in seed, when
they are balls of silvery pappus silk. Very few people
recognise the flowers of this variegated one in the garden,
coming as they do without any leaves, and they do not think
of the old Colt's-foot. Prunus cerasifera atropurpurea, is
the name the authorities command us to use for what
we know better as P. Pissardii. Both it and the newer
form known as Moseri, which has double pink flowers, have
flowered marvellously freely here the last two seasons, and
have been very beautiful throughout March, and would
have been still more so had not the sparrows breakfasted,
lunched, dined, and supped, besides taking odd meals such
as elevens and five o'clock tea in them, the Plum flowers
alone constituting the menu of each meal.
I find it a charming plant to cut before the flower-buds
open, for they expand and last well in water. As a rule
I dislike mixing different kinds of flowers in vases, and
only put their own leaves with them, but the brown
of these Plum leaves is really charming with bright yellow
Daffodils, such as Henry Irving, and Almond blossom
makes a delightful harmony with Iris unguicularis. Some
seasons the early Chinese Almond, Prunus Davidiana, is a
beautiful sight in January, but the last two years when
other things were so forward they hung back, and only
came out a very little before the common Almond. The
white and pink are both worth having because of their
flowering early, but are not to be compared with the real
Almond. I find it is useful to spray them before the
buds swell with quassia and soft soap, to discourage the
sparrows from holding their feasts in and on them.
1 60
Tulipa praestans
CHAPTER X
April Showers
WHAT a blessed time it is for garden and gardener when
the wind goes round to the south-west and warm April
showers begin to fall. The real thing, of course, not the
chilly, wind-driven sorts compounded of sleet, hail, or ice-
cold rain that come from the north with slight variation
to east, and seem arranged on purpose to destroy the
Plum blossoms. They leave the air several degrees
colder, and if followed by a clear sky after sunset are the
forerunners of a killing frost. This form of April shower
belongs to what old country folk call Blackthorn Winter,
an annual spell of bad weather that we never escape in
the Eastern Counties. The only time I have been in
Cornwall in April, my familiar native Blackthorn Winter
accompanied me, and I saw the Rhododendrons and
Camellias turned brown as leather, young Colt's Foot
leaves singed by frost, and thick ice on tanks and pools.
Therefore I trembled to think of what Arctic conditions
must be prevailing here, but on my return found nothing
worse than usual had happened, and the plants, being more
backward than the pampered Cornish ones, had not
suffered very much.
After a week or more of blizzards and squalls, and just
when everybody has decided that it is the most curious
161 L
My Garden in Spring
and disagreeable season they remember, round goes the
wind, hands can be taken out of pockets and yet no
longer turn blue and numb, the dove-coloured flush on
the trees of the woodland turns to a varied shimmer of
tender greyish yellows and faint greens, even the oaks
show raw sienna specklings, somebody hears the cuckoo,
it rains for twenty minutes and the sun then hurries out
and makes a rainbow on the retreating clouds, every
plant glistens with sunlit raindrops, and the air smells all
the sweeter and feels all the warmer for the shower.
Then it is that grass turns to the true green of Spring,
both on lawn and meadow, and the flower stems grow by
inches, leaves fall outwards instead of standing up stiffly
at attention, and in a good garden the borders should look
full once more, and the bare earth should disappear for
the next six months. Then the days are not long enough
to enjoy the rush of flowers and to do all the thinning,
replanting and tying up, and a hundred other things that
always want doing in a garden in full growth.
We always try to anticipate the coming of the April
showers by removing the row of lights, a heritage from an
ancient dismantled vinery, from the bank of the rock garden
devoted to succulent plants hardy enough to stand frost if
kept dry, but too tender to battle through damp and cold
together. If I could have foreseen the trouble and the
ugly effect of this row of lights from November till April,
and the pain caused by their wicked little barbed spines, I
should never have purchased the first three species of
Opuntia that captivated me on the rockwork in Robert
Veitch's Exeter Nursery. That trio grew so well that I
added a few more, and learning that Mr. Andrews of
162
April Showers
Colorado issued a list of many other kinds, besides certain
Cereus and Mammillaria species that were reputed hardy, I
wrote for that list, and then for those Cacti, and by degrees
some of the more ordinary plants have been banished from
this bank and the soil replaced by a mixture of all the
gritty, moisture-scorning materials I could lay hands on,
such as plaster from a fallen ceiling, brick and mortar
rubble from demolished buildings, well-weathered cinders
from the furnaces, road sand and silver sand, until nothing
but a Cactus or other xerophytic succulent plant could
be expected to live in it. It is an anxious moment that
recurs each Spring when the lights are off, and I can once
more get at the fat green lumps I have only been able to
gaze at through the glass before, and can poke them gently
with a bit of stick to discover whether they are hard and
healthy or soft and decaying. By being bold enough to
try almost any succulent plant that came my way and of
which any reasonable hopes of hardiness could be enter-
tained, I have got together a large collection of plants that
look as though they have no business to be out in the open
air. Sir Thomas Hanbury always took a great interest in
this bank when he came to see me, and sent me many
baskets of treasures from La Mortola to experiment with,
Mr. Lynch helped me from the rich collection grown in
front of the houses at Cambridge, and I bought kinds I
thought worth trying from the Continental nurseries. It is
perhaps as well that about half of them have proved too
tender for our winters, or the congestion of prickly things
would have been worse than it is now. I greatly enjoy seeing
these wrinkled Opuntias swell out in the Spring rains and
then show red points where the new growths are budding,
163
My Garden in Spring
and trying to make up my mind which are flower-buds
and which new branches, for years of experience have not
yet taught me any means of distinguishing them at this
initial stage. Then there is Senecio tropaeolioides to look at :
so far, after clearing off its dead leaves, the tuberous root
has contained some sound portions, and these have soon
responded to warm moisture and sent up their glaucous
leaves, as peltate as those of any Tom Thumb Nasturtium,
and quite remarkable even in such a family of mimics as
the Groundsel tribe.
A gentle tug at the centres of various Bromeliads,
Rhodostachys species mostly, with a Dyckia or two, and
most marvellous of all Bilbergia nutans, which is usually
seen in a greenhouse, will show whether they still adhere
to the roots or have rotted off at the collar. Mesembry-
anthemum linguaeforme and M. uncinatum generally show that
they have got to work and begun Spring growth before the
glass lid came off; Agave Parryi and A.utahensis I have never
yet found affected by a winter. A few of our Cape plants
share this protected corner ; a fine old Gerberajamesonii dies
down but regularly reappears soon after the rain reaches
it, and Hypoxis Rooperi and Haplocarpa scaposa, two free-
blooming, yellow-flowered plants that are seldom seen
thriving in the open, behave in a similar way. We try to
remove these overhead lights on the ist of April each year,
to let the rain moisten and wake the plants of course, and
not at all because it is All Fools' Day as you might think,
dear reader. Perhaps some summer day you will see
these Prickly Pears and vegetable sea-urchins with their
great yellow, salmon, or white blossoms wide open in the
sun, and will be allowed to touch the anthers of the
164
April Showers
Optmtias and watch them close spirally like the tentacles
of a sea anemone on a shelled winkle, and then perhaps
you will forgive and justify our apparent folly in giving
them overhead protection during the dull months ; only
overhead, remember, for the sides are not closed in at all,
so that we feel we grow these fat fleshy things in a way
that we can describe as in the open air.
Now comes the rush of the Daffodils, and one can
indulge oneself in picking freely, and getting down extra
flower vases from the shelves, and feel that from now
onwards, till the frosts damage the latest Michaelmas
Daisies, there should always be a plentiful supply of flowers
to pick from the open ground. Crown Imperials (Fritil-
laria imperialis) now shoot up another foot and take on
their full beauty. The two best are those known as maxima
lutea and m. rubra. I prefer the yellow one, but that may
be because it does not grow so well here as the red, and
one always loves most the delicate child. The old red one
does well anywhere I put it, and increases only too fast,
necessitating lifting and dividing the clumps oftener than I
like, for the right moment to do this comes when one is
full of other work, and it is unwise to touch them at all if it
cannot be done soon after the leaves turn yellow, as they
root very early, and soon deteriorate if kept out of the
ground. I have the scentless form here, Fritillaria imperialis
inodora, but it has never done very well and is always a dwarf
plant, very unlike those I have seen in better condition in
Holland, where there exists also a glorious plum-coloured
form that I long to see in this garden, but cannot induce
to cross the water. A good race of scentless Crown Im-
perials would be worth working for. Surely some student
165
My Garden in Spring
of Mendelism might investigate the family to see whether
tall, scentless, and yellow may not be a possible combina-
tion of Mendelian characters. The old forms possess such
an awful stink, a mixture of mangy fox, dirty dog-kennel,
the small cats' house at the Zoo, and Exeter Railway
Station, where for some unknown reason the trains let out
their superfluous gas to poison the travellers. The various
species of Codonopsis possess a similar odour, but have
the decency only to let it loose when broken, and then of
course it is fair for them to retaliate, but Crown Imperials
waft it abroad on a lovely Spring day without being touched.
One can do without the stinking Phuopsis stylosa (the
Crucianella and Old Foxy of my childhood) in the garden,
but I cannot forego Crown Imperials even though I have
to hold my nose sometimes when near them. Like most
things, however, this is a matter of taste, and hunting folk
enjoy this odour in gardens. I love showing children the
tears in a Crown Imperial's eyes, and of all the monkish
legends, I like best that which tells of the origin of these.
How that when Our Saviour entered the Garden of Geth-
semane all the flowers bowed their heads, save the Crown
Imperial, which was too proud of its green crown and up-
right circle of milk-white blossoms to show humility, but on
the other hand expected admiration. When gently reproved
by its Creator, it saw its error and bowed its head, flushing
red with shame, and has ever since held this position and
carried tears in its eyes. These honey drops are very
curious, and though the cavities which distil them and in
which they hang are to be found in some degree in other
Fritillarias, they reach their highest development in F. itn-
perialis, and being lined with white they have a wonderfully
166
April Showers
pearly effect when filled with the honey. What animal in
its native Persia looks up into the flowers and is attracted
by these glistening drops ? Observers have watched honey-
bees alight on the stigma and crawl up to it to reach the
honey, and as this flower is protogynous it can only
receive pollen from an older flower, thus ensuring cross-
fertilisation. These observations were made in gardens in
Germany, but surely this tall drink, this pool of nectar, is
not so cunningly arranged for nothing larger than honey-
bees.
The double flowered forms are not free in flowering nor
very pretty when they do overcome their ungenerous habits,
and if they die, I shall not buy others. The Crown-upon-
crown variety is curious with its second tier of green crown
leaves, and like the fasciated form known as Slagswaard it
is only a very strong, well-grown bulb that produces the
abnormal structure, and in most seasons my clumps cannot
be recognised from the ordinary form. I am fond of the
two variegated forms, both the golden and the silver ; the
mingling of burnt sienna, green and cream colour in a
young shoot, is very beautiful especially when backed by
a group of the green-leaved forms.
F. perstca exists but without happiness, and I should
like more of its curiously metallic effect : the glaucous
leaves suggest weathered copper, greened with age, and
the flowers are like .bronze bells wrought by some
Japanese artist. F. pyrenaica has somewhat similar
flowers, but they are parcel-gilt, and also lack the plum-
like bloom so suggestive of aged and weathered metal
which is the great charm of persica. I have a fine
tall form with yellow flowers, which is by repute and
167
My Garden in Spring
tradition a form of pyrenaica, but quite unlike it in appear-
ance and habit, as here pyrenaka increases so freely it
requires frequent thinning to get a good flowering, but
this yellow beauty is very slow to spread. A single bulb
given me by Dr. Lowe, who told me he had it from Miss
Hope of -Edinburgh, has in twenty years only trebled
itself. Very much like it in build, but with a pleasing
dull crimson bell, F. gracilis is both rare and beautiful.
It came to me through a kind friend who travels to strange
out-of-the-way places and often sends me unusual plants
from distant lands. This one has a very limited range in
certain Montenegrin woods, but is making itself happy in
this rock garden, and seeds so freely I hope it will soon
grace many others. Several forms of our native Snake's
Head, in fact as many as I can get, find welcome here
even the curious double form, that looks like a bunch of
fragments of the marbled cover of the exercise books we
used in our schoolroom days. The pure white is my
favourite of all, and I like to see it rising out of Erica
carnea as well as anywhere, and it appears to like such
company too, and seeds freely there. The curious narrow-
belled form known as var. contorta is worth growing. I
only knew of the white until recently, when I saw a good
stock of the mottled type in a Dutch nursery, so now I
grow both, but the white is the more attractive ; the
squared shoulders of the type have disappeared, and the
long, tubular, white flower is very graceful. This cylin-
drical aberration has been noted as occurring among the
normal form at Wulfshagen, and has been observed to be
too narrow to admit the humble bees which are the chief
insect visitors of this species, but further evidence is
168
Helicodiceros crinitus. (See p. 280.)
April Showers
wanted to show whether these flowers are fertile and
whether this is a cleistogamous line of development of
service to the plant, or a useless variation. One of the.
best of the family is F. pallidiflora, and if it has a fault it
lies in the shortness of stem, which seems insufficient for
the large bunch of soft yellow flowers. It grows well
here in semi-shade, and I wish I could say the same of
pudica, recurva, and the latifolia forms, all of which have
left me. v,
Why does one so seldom see good patches of San-
guinaria canadensis ? It seems to ask nothing more than
planting and leaving alone, but I rather expect suffers
from being lifted and stored, as is almost necessary for pur-
poses of sale, and so is difficult to obtain in robust health.
I have found it good-tempered enough if divided
when in full growth, and it is one of the plants I am over
generous with, as I do so enjoy lifting a piece and seeing
the realistic imitation of bleeding given by a broken root.
It does this in the manner of a grazed wound, a gradual
oozing of blood from several pores, and not a gushing out,
which might upset some who watched the process.
A good clump in full flower is one of the joys of
April. The thick white petals have a wonderful brilliancy,
while the anthers are of a soft yellow, rather unusual with
a white flower. It is a very variable plant, and its varieties
have borne many names. That known as grandiflora is
the best, but I see by Das Pflanzenreich that it ought to be
known as var. Dilleniana, a pretty compliment to Dillenius
and his beautiful figure of it in the Hortus Elthamensis.
He also figures the minor form, and one he calls flore
pleno, but which is hardly worthy of the name, having only
169
My Garden in Spring
a slightly increased number of petals and all of them about
half the proper width. I have such a form here, but do
not like it as well as the wide-petalled ones. I also have
a rose-coloured form, but I find that only in certain
seasons is there any trace of the rose, and only then on
newly-opened flowers. I have no wish to see Niagara or
New York sky-scrapers, but I should like to stand in a
wood full of Bloodroot when the flowers are wide open.
The blossoms do not last long, but to catch a clump with
fifty or so widely agape is a treat worth lingering over,
perhaps even a camp stool and a long visit, for it is only
on a really fine warm Spring morning it deigns to open,
and if a few days of bad weather follow you may find
every petal lying on the ground by the end of them.
Magnolia stellata in full flower is not unlike a magnified
Bloodroot growing on a bush. I have only one specimen
in the garden, but it is a large one, about 12 feet high by
13 feet through, and being in the rock garden and too
near a path I am obliged to cut off large boughs at times.
It seems a dreadful thing to do, but if done early in the
season, just after the last flowers have gone, the vigour of
the new growths resulting from air and space and an extra
allowance of sap quite makes up for the removals, and the
increase being in more convenient parts of the tree adds
to the beauty and size of the specimen. In 1912 I
realised for the first time how strongly scented the flowers
are ; a delicious whiff of bean fields reached my nose and
set me sniffing around to locate its origin, and I tracked
it down to the Magnolia. The bruised bark emits quite a
different scent ; you might shut your eyes and think
Homocea was being used to touch some injured spot.
170
April Showers
One day when sawing off a rather large bough to clear
the legs of the bush I was struck by the resemblance of
the scent of the wood to that peppery fragrance peculiar
to wooden Japanese cabinets, and I can believe it possible
that Magnolia wood may be employed in their construction.
It usually happens that once or twice during its flower-
ing season the glorious white flowers are browned by
frost, but after a few days of mild weather and a good
shaking to knock off the browned petals, the show will be
almost as good as before the calamity.
Last year I noticed a number of fruits forming, but
later on, when I looked hoping for seeds, they had dis-
appeared, and I have never seen this species bearing ripe
seed anywhere in England yet. Another bush we are
proud of and that is generally in flower in April is the
hardy Orange Aegle sepiaria, or Citrus trifoliata as we once
called it. When covered with its large, starry white
blossoms on the spiny, leafless, but bright green twigs, it
is a goodly sight. I grew mine from pips taken out of
an orange given me by Canon Ellacombe, that had ripened
in his garden, and two of the resultant youngsters planted
side by side in the rock garden have grown wonderfully
quickly. They are now 10 feet high and 9 feet through,
and I have to cut them in severely or they would be half
across the path, and scratch all who pass by. I am
gradually trimming away the lower boughs, and hope
some day to be able to walk under a crop of Orange
blossom and later in the season of oranges themselves.
The flowers are interesting because most of those that
open first bear stamens only. Later there will generally
be a few that are perfect hermaphrodite flowers, and the
171
My Garden in Spring
latest buds bear only stigmas. Some seasons my plants
bear no female flowers until the pollen-bearing ones have
fallen, and then of course I get no oranges. They fruited
freely in 1911 after the hot summer, and I have raised a
nice row of babes from the pips. I should like to make
a hedge of them some day, as many of the spines are quite
3 inches long, and so stiff and sharp that the interlacing
boughs armed freely with these fierce weapons would be
worse than barbed wire, and not even a boy could get
through a close hedge of Aegle. Little sprays when cut
off are useful to discourage birds and fourfooted beasts.
A faithful old dog, who always thought he helped me to
garden by lying on cushions of plants, ruined a fine speci-
men of the white Erica carnea until I insinuated a chip or
two of Aegle in among its growth. Poor old Taffy ! how
he jumped the next time he tried that bed, and he never
attempted to lie on it again. Aegle has another charm in
its beautiful autumnal colouring ; in suitable seasons it
takes on a brilliant yellow, and the leaves remain on after
many other plants are bare.
Some interesting hybrids were raised in America be-
tween Aegle and some edible Oranges, and three of these
intermediates have been fairly widely distributed. I have
got them here close to the New Wall, and they have
passed quite unhurt through the last three winters, but
though they have grown into good specimens, there has
been no sign of flowers yet, still I hope I may some day
eat marmalade made from these home-grown oranges.
The handsomest of them is called Colman, and has fine
broad leaves that look much like those of an ordinary
sweet Orange. Those on the younger growths are not
172
April Showers
always sufficiently ripened to pass through the winter
without scorched tips, but this kind shows no signs of the
deciduous habit of its hardy parent. Morton is nearest to
Aegle, having long thorns and shedding many of its leaves
during winter and the third, named Savage after a man,
not its thorns, as it well might be is intermediate between
these in general appearance. They have acquired the
pleasant name of Citrange in America, and the fruits are
used for marmalade and what is there called orangeade. I
tried the Bitter Orange which grows so well on the hills
around Florence, and drops ripe oranges on to the snow
in severe winters up there. But although I planted them
in the most sheltered position I could afford, they lost
their less ripened growth every winter, until precious little
was left alive, and I believe the only survivor is at its last
gasp this season, and so I must rest content with Aegle
and its offspring. I believe Aegle is much hardier than
most people think, for I have seen finer plants in places
where the winters are severe than in Cornwall or Ireland,
where it usually looks yellow and sickly, and refuses to
start away upward, but to flower well it needs a hot sun
and thorough ripening of the wood. One Spring it had a
bad shaking here, and that was because it was in full
flower and shooting into leaf-growth, when a severe frost
on a Good Friday simply split the sap-laden shoots and
every bit of even two-year-old growth was killed ; and
every bud, whether of leaf or flower, was destroyed, and
the trees looked very sad for about a month, then adven-
titious buds formed on three-year-old wood, and by the
end of the summer the young growths had grown out
beyond the dead wood.
173
My Garden in Spring
Azara microphylla has done well here until this Spring,
and I had two fine standard specimens, then on one gusty
afternoon that in the rock garden was blown down, and
all its roots snapped beyond cure, and about half of the
other was torn out, yet no other tree in the garden was
injured, and these two were a long distance from each
other. I missed the Vanilla-ice-cream scent of its funny
little blossoms that had always pervaded the rock garden
at flowering time, and called my attention to the bloom
which is so much hidden under the leaves that it needs a
careful scrutiny to notice it. Xanthorhiza apiifolia was not
blown over, nor ever could be, for it is a lowly shrub,
and makes so many suckers that an interlacing mass
soon develops. It grows close to the vacant site of the
defunct Azara, and I like its quaint beauty. In late March
and on through April it bears its tassels of tiny livid
flowers, but so freely that when the sunlight catches it,
especially the low beams of a setting sun, the whole group
appears reddish-purple. It is quite an oddity, for it
belongs to the great Ranunculus family, and yet is a
woody shrublet, and except in Paeonia and Clematis
woody stems are not common in that family. Its leaves
do not appear until the flowering is well advanced, and they
are prettily divided, but the root is astonishingly yellow,
and it is worth pulling up some of the too-widely spread-
ing suckers to see the golden roots which give it its generic
name of Golden root in Greek words, while the specific ap-
pellation is simply Celery-leaved turned into Latin. I seem
to have taken you to the rock garden, for the Magnolia, the
largest Aegles, and Xanthorhiza live there, and the poor
overturned Azara used to, so now you are there you might
174
April Showers
as well look at the large bush of Golden-fruited Ivy, by
the side of the Magnolia. Just now, when its fruits are
turning yellow, and before the birds have given picnics to
all their friends to come and eat them, it is worth looking
at. It has grown so large and looked so heavy that as
you see I have short-coated it, trimmed off its petticoats
up to its knees, like the good lady of nursery rhyme fame,
and this gives a better chance in life to the Crocus Tomasi-
nianus colony of February beauty, and the mass of the
orange-coloured Welsh Poppy which glows beneath it in
May. I am very fond of these fruiting bush Ivies, and
whenever I see Russell's wonderful groups of them at the
shows I long to be able to buy and group the whole lot in
the garden. They are not separate arboreal varieties but
only the fruiting branches of various Ivies cut off and
struck, and if really woody flowering portions are chosen
for this they very seldom send out any creeping shoots,
but grow into wonderfully shapely bushes, good to look at
all the year round. This golden-fruited form Hedera Helix,
var. chrysocarpa, is one of the best, and very pretty when in
fruit. It has also been called Hedera poetarum as it is
plentiful in Italy and Greece, and was the Ivy associated
with the worship of Bacchus, and much more suitable for
garlands with its cheerful golden fruits than our native
variety and its dull black berries.
I have an Ivy that was given to me with the reputation
of bearing scarlet berries. No book mentions it, and had
it been offered me by any ordinary gardener I should not
have believed in its refulgent fruit, even if I accepted the
plant, but my generous friend its donor knows plants as well
as anyone, so I anxiously await the production of berries.
175
My Garden in Spring
Now come and see the other Magnolias. Having no
wall for them, they are grown as standards in the open,
and in some seasons this is an advantage, for exposed to
all the winds that blow they flower later there than speci-
mens on south walls, and their blossoms escape when the
pampered, wall-protected ones are frost-bitten. It is very
hard to get a plant of the true M. conspicua now, and I
was told in Holland that it cannot be layered in the same
way as its varieties are. It should be pure white, but even
that form known as spedosa which comes nearest to it, has
a certain amount of rose colour on the outside petals, and
my tallest tree is of this second best variety. From the
latter half of April and half through May it is generally a
beautiful sight, but I am afraid its head has got up into
the wind, and it will not go much higher. The best
and quickest grower of the conspicua forms is that named
Alexandrina, and it has made a fine shapely tree here, and
flowers well, but is an early form, and so Sometimes gets
cut by frost when at its best. The flowers are rosy-pink
on the outside and nearly white inside, and very large.
The sensible one of the family is M. Lennei, a hybrid
between conspicua and obovata discolor, for it flowers later,
and is seldom damaged. The flowers are like immense
rose-coloured Tulips, and after the main flowering a con-
stant succession of a few blooms at a time is kept up all
through the summer. The habit of growth is rather lax,
one might even say sprawling, so it needs careful pruning
if one wishes to grow it as a compact specimen, but if it
had abundance of room allowed it I expect a naturally-
grown sprawling dwarf would be very beautiful after some
years. Mine has not very much space allowed it, for it
176
Darwin Tulips : Mr. Farncombe Sanders Suzon
April Showers
has many neighbours, and grows in the turf in a piece of
garden that has come to be known as the Lunatic Asylum,
for most of its occupants are cranks or eccentrics, showing
some departure from the normal habits or appearance of
their genus or species. I suppose this sensible Magnolia
is there as a keeper now. It went there at first because I
had an idea of collecting Japanese plants in this corner,
but it and some Cherries and Bamboos had no sooner got
established than the freaks were put under their protection,
and they have increased in number sufficiently to demand
a chapter to themselves.
177 M
CHAPTER XI
The Lunatic Asylum
IN the days of my early youth a vast clump, or so it then
seemed to me, of evergreens occupied the space which now
forms my home for demented plants. It was the sort of
planting one sees at one end of a London square. Portugal
Laurels there were, and the still more objectionable
Common Laurel ; Laurustinus bushes, which in showery
weather exhale an odour of dirty dog-kennel and an even
dirtier dog ; leprously spotted Aucubas and Privet jostled
one another round the feet of two Weymouth Pines and
a dead Yew covered with Ivy, the whole dismal crew being
rendered more awful and uninteresting by having all their
attempts to show any beauty that might be inherent in
their natural manner of growth nipped in the bud by the
garden shears. This agglomeration consequently bore the
semblance of a magnified dish of Spinach with a few trees
emerging from the top, where a giant poached Roc's egg
or two might have lain. A thick wall of such snubbed
greenery of course had a hollow interior of dead branches,
a playground ever desired by the child, and never per-
mitted by the nurses and guardians, who foresaw the black
hands and faces, torn clothes, and missing buttons that
would result from a scramble in that unknown wilderness.
Most of this has now been cleared away, but the Wey-
178
The Lunatic Asylum
mouth Pines were left, and also the tower of Ivy that
smothered the Yew, a very fine specimen of tree Ivy,
rather too much the shape of a gigantic button mushroom
perhaps, but a wonderful sight when in full flower, and
the resort of a crowd of old pauper wasps and bluebottle
and drone flies that, at the end of the honey season, live
on its charity.
Some large blocks of Kentish rag were placed to form
two rocky mounds round the stems of the trees, an irregu-
larly shaped bed or two left, and the rest of the circular
patch where the evergreen clump had stood was first
planted with Crocuses and then turfed over. The beds
were to have held Japanese plants, and the whole might
have developed into a sort of imitation Japanese garden,
but before it had got far that sort of thing became
fashionable, and bronze cranes and stone lanterns met one
in all sorts of unsuitable surroundings, the Temple Show
began to bristle with giant toads, and pagodas, and jingling
glass bird-scarers frightened the last idea of reproducing a
page of Conder right out of my head. Then a home was
needed for some trees and shrubs of abnormal charac-
teristics that I had been collecting, and the Lunatic Asylum
sprang into existence.
The twisted Hazel was the first crazy occupant, and is
perhaps the maddest of all even now. It was first found
in a hedge by Lord Ducie, near Tortworth, who moved
it into the garden, increased it by layering, and so distri-
buted it to a few friends, my plant being a sucker given me
by Canon Ellacombe from his fine specimen. It is a most
remarkable form, for it never produces a bit of straight
wood ; the stem between each leaf is curved as though one
179
My Garden in Spring
side had grown much faster than the other, and alternating
lengths are generally curved in opposite directions ; fre-
quently they are twisted spirally as well, so that the whole
bush is a collection of various curves and spirals, a tangle
of crooks and corkscrews from root to tip. They do not
straighten out with age and thickening, and in winter, when
leafless, the interlacing twigs are beautiful as well as curious,
but when covered with the large crumpled leaves it has a
heavy and somewhat diseased look, for each leaf is twisted
or a little rolled, and they look as though attacked by
leaf-rolling caterpillars. I have not seen catkins or nuts
on it, and wonder whether the former would be curly
lambs' tails, and the latter coiled like rams' horns. A
young plant of a similarly twisted Hawthorn has now come
to be a companion to the nut, but has not had time to
develop its mania very fully. As a contrast there is the
fastigiate form of the common Elder, the wood of which
grows as stiff and straight and upright as a grenadier. A
good specimen is an attractive object, as the leaves come in
congested bunches at intervals on the straight wood, and
though the leaflets are large, they are closely packed owing
to the shortness of the central leafstalk, and look very much
more like those of a Mulberry than an Elder.
Close to its feet grows a pigmy form of Elder that
was a discovery of mine. It appeared one Spring in an
old tree in the garden as a dark, heavy mass, and at first
I watched it to see what strange bird's nest it was, but it
constantly increased in size and altered its shape and I
never saw a bird near it, so I climbed up to investigate
closer, and found it was a Witch's Broom and then about a
foot in diameter. When the leaves fell from the rest of the
180
The Lunatic Asylum
tree they still remained green on this mass until long after
Christmas, and had not all fallen when new growth com-
menced. A year or two after, a violent February gale
blew down many trees, and this Elder among them. I was
loth to lose my quaint Witch's Broom, and so cut it off with
a foot of stem of ordinary Elder wood, and planted it in
the Lunatic Asylum, treating the stem as a root, and it
has never shown any sign of discontent nor shot up any
normally strong Elder shoots from below ground, and the
masses of small congested growths have perfectly retained
their very original character.
Cuttings struck from them make very interesting, round,
bushy plants, and though they increase fairly rapidly in
width do not grow more than 8 to 10 inches high in several
years, and are practically evergreen, as the old leaves last
on until the new ones push them off.
Yet another Elder has been certified insane and admitted
to this select company. Its madness consists in the greater
portion of the lamina of the leaf blades being reduced to a
mere thread, and it looks as though an army of locusts or
caterpillars had halted to dine on it, but for all that has
rather a soft, ferny look from a distance.
Two Laburnums have developed strange habits, and
qualified for admittance : one pretends to be an Oak, and
has, so far as it can, imitated its leaves, and the name of
quercifolium has been added to its own of Laburnum vulgare-
The flowers are of a good rich yellow, but of course turn
to ordinary pods, not acorns. The second is var. involu-
tum, and has every leaflet rolled inward, giving the whole
tree a heavy, congested appearance, and at close quarters
one would think the leaves must be full of green fly to be so
181
My Garden in Spring
much rolled up. I see a self-sown seedling has appeared with
the same curious leaves, so evidently this form of madness
is hereditary insanity. A Buckthorn, RhamnusFrangula,var.
asplemfolia, has leaves consisting of little more than the mid-
rib with just a serrated margin of lamina on either side, with
a few irregular projections that produce a fern-like outline.
One of the strangest is a little Ash that is quite a dwarf,
and has crimped leaves which are nearly black and beauti-
fully polished. It bears the fine name of Fraxinus excelsior,
var. atrovirens nana, which is nearly as long as itself, for
it is a very slow grower, and makes but a few inches of
wood in a season. It looks very strange even in winter, as
the little black buds are set so closely together.
The Viburnum family have sent some inmates. V.Opulus,
the Guelder Rose, has a curiously Japanese-looking dwarf
variety. It makes a beautifully rounded bush, covered
with small leaves, but it is a seriously minded lunatic, suf-
fering from melancholy madness, for it never flowers. I
have a similarly afflicted form of Philadelphus, but it is not
so attractive, and therefore is banished to a private home
for incurables under the farmyard wall. V. lantana foliis
punctatis is a pleasingly silver-spangled form of the Way-
faring Tree, and almost too sane for the company, but its
eccentricity appears when it comes to ripening its seeds,
for then it cannot make up its mind what colour they shall
be, and some turn white while others remain green, and
red and black ones may all appear on the same head. The
variety called foliis auriis variegatis has just arrived, and I
like its soft, downy, sulphur-yellow leaves, and am waiting
to see what coloured fruit it will produce.
Ring-leaved Laurel and Ring-leaved Willow share the
182
The Lunatic Asylum
same mania for leaves curled into rings, but are very dif-
ferent in appearance otherwise. A charming little narrow-
leaved Laurel, Prunus Laurocerasus angustifolius, has
been very sick since its arrival, but is settling down and
growing a new crop of its tiny leaves. Several Ivies might
be moved here, but are quite harmless and look very happy
elsewhere, so Hedera Helix, vars. minima and congesta,
remain in the rock garden, but var. Russelliana has gone
here. It is the most distinct in appearance of all these
curiously, small-leaved Ivies, of which minima is most
commonly seen. They are extremely interesting morpholo-
gically, for they combine the two-ranked arrangement of
leaves of the juvenile, creeping condition with the free
woody habit of the fruiting mature state, in which a
f phyllotaxy is normal.
These stiff, free shoots, with the tiny leaves placed very
closely one above the other, and in two ranks only, have a
very striking appearance.
Russelliana grows taller towers of leafy shoots than
any other of them, and makes a curiously upright, narrow
plant if carefully kept from falling out by its own weight.
As a contrast I have planted the var. obovata close to it.
This makes a round-headed bush, and has remarkably short
and rounded leaves. Where it touched a block of stone
my bush put out a climbing shoot which has now nearly
covered the rock, and it is interesting to have both the
creeping and tree form thus on one little plant.
Two forms of Butcher's Broom make another good
contrast ; one is Ruscus aculeatus, var. lanceolatus, a very
elegant form I get from Continental nurseries, but little
known in England. Its cladodes are very narrow and
183
My Garden in Spring
sharply pointed and greyer in colouring than other forms,
so that it is a light and graceful-looking plant, showing
some family resemblance to its not very distant relations,
the Asparagus family.
R. hypoglossum, on the other hand, has very broad
cladodes and fine, long tongues growing out of them, really
the bracts from between which and the cladode the flowers
ought to spring forth. This plant is not over hardy here,
and so does not flower often, and alas ! has never fruited.
Close to them are some Docks. Rumex flexuosus is as mad
as any plant well can be, for it has long, narrow leaves so
brown in colour that they look more like a seaweed than
a land plant. In early Spring when they first appear
they have a most peculiar effect. The same plant has
sown itself rather freely among the joints in the paved walks
of the Pergola garden, and springing from between the
stones looks wonderfully like some Laminaria on rocks
between tide marks. Later on they throw up a tangle of
slender, straggling flower-stems from which I suppose the
specific name is derived, and then they look rather untidy,
but if cut down a fresh crop of seaweed soon appears.
R. scutatus with grey-green, arrow-shaped leaves, grows
next to the brown species, and a little further along is the
Fiddle Dock, Rumex pulcher, a rare British plant from
Romney Marsh. This looks very much like an ordinary
weed of a Dock, unless the leaves have developed the curious
narrowed tuck-in on each side that suggests their musical
name. Plantains are strongly represented. There is the
Bush Plantain, Plantago cynops, a very strange, narrow-
leaved slender bush that no one would dream was a Plantain
unless they saw its characteristic flower spikes. P. argentea,
184
Hardy Palm in flower. (See p. 282.)
The Lunatic Asylum
a silver-leaved one, is a really pretty thing, and is also
allowed an honoured place in the rock garden, and P.
nivalis, which is whiter still, and looks very miffy, has
been put into the moraine for greater safety, but the grass-
leaved Plantain P. graminifolia, and P. asiatica, a very
lanky sort of Ribwort, are weird enough in appearance for
the Asylum. I have several times found variegated forms,
but they have poor constitutions, and never live long. One
gloriously blotched cream and green P. media I found on
Mt. Cenis was thriving grandly till a bough was blown off
the Weymouth Pine overhead, and the end of it pierced
the heart of my piebald treasure and it rotted away in a
most unromantic fashion. The red-leaved Plantain is a
handsome thing when well grown: a form of P. major, it
grows into a big plant, and has leaves as red as those of a
Beetroot, but with a dull surface to them quite unlike the
glossy Beet leaves. The most remarkable, though, are the
two Rose Plantains, whose flower-spikes are furnished with
leaf-like bracts. The neater of the two is a form of P.
media, and bears pretty green rosettes instead of a flower-
spike, and I think neither flowers nor seeds. It must be
the fifth kind of Gerard's Herbal, of which he writes:
"The fifth kinde of Plaintains hath beene a stranger in
England, and elsewhere, untill the impression hereof.
The cause why I say so is the want of consideration of
the beauty which is in this plant, wherein it excelleth all
the other. Moreover because that it hath not bin written
of or recorded before this present time, though plants of
lesser moment have beene very curiously set forth. This
plant hath leaves like unto them of the former, and more
orderly spread upon the ground like a rose, among which
My Garden in Spring
rise up many small stalks like the other plaintaines, having
at the top of every one a fine double Rose altogether unlike
the former, of an hoary or rusty greene colour."
Johnson in editing the second edition has given the
plate from Clusius' Rariorunt Plantarum Historia, and inter-
polates this remark : " I take this set forth by our Auther
to be the same with that which Clusius received from
James Garret the yonger, from London, and therefore I
give you the figure thereof in this place, together with this
addition to the history out of Clusius : That some of the
heads are like those of the former Rose Plantaine : other
some are spike fashion, and some have a spike growing as
it were out of the midst of the Rose, and some heads are
otherwise shaped, also the whole plant is more hoary than
the common Rose Plantaine," which contradicts Gerard's
statement that his plant has at the top of every stalk a fine
double Rose. The heads that are "otherwise shaped"
are in Clusius' figure either spiked or branching, and my
plant never produces any but the fine double Roses, so I
feel sure it is the plant Gerard praised so highly. It came
to me from Glasnevin, and is a much rarer plant than the
other Rose Plantain, which is a form of P. major and the
same thing as that figured in Gerard and Parkinson. This
last produces both spiked and rose-shaped flower heads,
some of them attractive but others very untidy, shapeless
masses of small leaves, in the axils of which a good number
of flowers appear and bear seed freely, so that young
seedlings are plentiful round the old plants, quite unlike
the other, the P. media form, which is quite barren, at least
here, and must be increased by division. The green and
yellow Snowdrops, both double and single, which I have
186
The Lunatic Asylum
already described, have a place in one of these beds. The
viviparous form of Poa alpina still bears its crop of young
plants instead of flowers just as it did on the banks of the
roadside at Lanslebourg. Several Strawberries are suffi-
ciently crazy to come here. First and foremost the
Plymouth Strawberry, which is one of the strangest of
plants, and has a wonderfully curious history. It is
certainly wrong in the head if ever a plant was, for it is
just an ordinary wild Strawberry in every way until it
blossoms, then every portion of the flower is seen to have
been changed into leafy structures ; the petals are little green
leaves, even the anthers and carpels are replaced by tufts of
tubular leaves, but this does not prevent it from ripening
a kind of fruit which has a central portion of red flesh
studded with the tubular leaves instead of pips, and with
two ranks of leaflets round the base which are the sepals and
petals. In this state it is a pretty green and red object.
It is first mentioned by Parkinson in the Paradisus in
1629, and he gives a very rough but quite recognisable
figure of it. His description of it is so exact it is worth
quoting. He writes : " One Strawberry more I promised
to shew you, which although it be a wilde kinde, and of no
use for meate, yet I would not let this discourse passe
without giving you the knowledge of it. It is in leafe
much like unto the ordinary, but differeth in that the
flower, if it have any, is greene, or rather it beareth a
small head of greene leaves, many set thicke together like
unto a double ruffe, in the midst whereof standeth the fruit,
which when it is ripe, sheweth to be soft and somewhat
reddish, like unto a Strawberry, but with many small
harmlesse prickles on them, which may be eaten and
187
My Garden in Spring
chewed in the mouth without any maner of offence, and
is somewhat pleasant like a Strawberry: it is no great
bearer, but those it doth beare, are set at the toppes of the
stalks close together pleasant to behold, and fit for a
gentlewoman to weare on her arme etc as a raritie instead
of a flower." Johnson adds a paragraph about it in the
1633 edition of Gerard, and tells us its history thus : " Mr
John Tradescant hath told me that he was the first that
tooke notice of this Strawberry, and that in a woman's
garden at Plimouth, whose daughter had gathered and set
the roots in her garden in stead of the common Straw-berry :
but she finding the fruit not to answer her expectation,
intended to throw it away : which labour he spared her,
in taking it and bestowing it among the lovers of such
varieties, in whose gardens it is yet preserved." Then
Marret in his Pinax published in 1667, declares he found
it growing in woods in Hyde Park and Hampstead. Ray
mentions that it was in cultivation in the Cambridge
Garden for many years, and then it disappeared so entirely
that Dr. Hogg, as quoted by Dr. Masters, wrote of it as a
" botanical Dodo," saying that " though a century and a
half have passed since there was any evidence of its exis-
tence, it serves still as an illustration for students in
morphology of one of those strange abnormal structures
with which the vegetable kingdom abounds." In 1766
M. Duchesne informed the world of the generosity of
M. Monti of Bologna, who divided with him a dried
specimen in his herbarium. Some time after the publi-
cation of his Vegetable Teratology, from which I have quoted
these facts, Dr. Masters came across his botanical Dodo
alive and happy in Canon Ellacombe's garden, and carried
188
The Lunatic Asylum
off plants of it to grow in his own. From these came my
original stock, for Dr. Masters gave me some plants and
at the same time told me the account of his re-discovering
them. I had the pleasure of sending some to Cambridge
this year, for they had disappeared there, and I am quite
willing to send others to Plymouth if the descendants of
that good woman's daughter want them.
The double-flowered Strawberry is really pretty ; the
first flowers of the season are like little white Roses, but
later on they come only semi-double, and these turn into
small fruits. The one-leaved Strawberry is not often seen.
It is only a variety of the wild Fargaria vesca, and known
as var. monophylla. Now and then the normal number
of three leaflets are produced on a leaf stalk, but as a rule
only the central and terminal one is developed, so that the
plant hardly looks like a Strawberry until it flowers and
fruits. This variety has appeared in several places ; Linnaeus
found it in his travels in Lapland, it is to be seen in a
picture by Holbein now at Munich, and Duchesne, the
author of the Historic des Fraisiers, raised it from seed of
the wild Strawberry. A handsomely variegated Strawberry
which bears large white fruits is the last of that family in
this plot of ground, for I have lost a white-fruited Alpine
form that ought to be here.
I cannot describe all my maniacs so fully as these, and
will only mention a white-flowered Ajuga reptans, and that
strange form A. metallica crispa a Hen-and-chicken form
of the common Daisy, the Green Primrose, Parsley-leaved
Anemone japonica, the dwarf form of Daphne Laureola
known as Philippiana, and a form of Campanula lactiflora,
that instead of growing 6 feet is content with one, and has
189
My Garden in Spring
narrow lanceolate leaves from its childhood instead of the
ample ovate leaves of its brother seedlings, and constantly
correlated with these peculiarities is a curious dialysis of
the coralla similar to that seen in Campanula rotundifolia,
var. soldanalliflora, in which the bell is divided into five
narrow petals. I can always recognise a C. ladiflora that
inherits these oddities even when its first leaves appear
above the cotyledons, by their singularly narrow outline.
Does my Lunatic Asylum appeal to you or appal you ?
I cannot tear some visitors away from it, and others who
do not care about the demented inmates are pleased with
the effect of the surroundings. When the Cherries and
Magnolias are out, and later when some standard Wistarias,
both sinensis and multijuga, in both lilac and white
varieties, and the white brachybotrys are in flower, I some-
times think it looks rather like a Japanese garden after all.
190
CHAPTER XII
Tom Tiddler's Ground
I HAVE never felt the disgust for variegated foliage evinced
by so many good gardeners, and in many cases I warmly
admire it. For instance Iris pallida, Astrantia major (as
seen at Bitton, for it does little more than just exist here),
Acer Negundo, and A. calif ornica aurea, Hypericum Mose-
rianum tricolor and Polemonium coeruleum in their widely
different lines of variegation are to my idea delightfully
delicate in colour harmonies. The cream and soft yellow
alternating with grey-green in Iris pallida, and forming
endless intermediate shades of colour where one overlays
the other, make a leaf worth examining closely, while a
good clump of it is a strikingly beautiful thing among other
Iris foliage.
Towards the end of summer, and before the autumnal
tints begin to brighten them up, most of our shrubs and
trees become very heavy in their tone of green, and we
miss the contrasting shades of Spring vegetation. Then the
value of a Silver Elm or Acer Negundo, the Ghost Tree, and
of golden-leaved shrubs is apparent, and even in the borders
variegated herbaceous plants seen in fine specimens and
bold groups give relief from the uniformly heavy greens of
late summer and the glaring brilliancy of crowded flowers.
But even if a plant is not improved in beauty by varie-
191
My Garden in Spring
gation, there are the scientific sides of the question, and
how very little we know of the causes of variegation, or
the answers to such questions as, " Why should golden
forms do best in full sunlight and most silver ones in
shade ? Why does variegation sometimes appear on one
half of a stem only, and is it generally true that the varie-
gation in such cases occurs in a self-sown plant towards
the magnetic north as has been solemnly averred ? Is it
a disease, and if so is it communicable ? " Mr. Wollaston
of Chislehurst, of fern-growing fame, believed it was, and
used to associate plants of which he desired to obtain varie-
gated forms with the piebald or skewbald representatives
of others more plastic than they, and showed many results
of what those who deprecate variegation would call cor-
ruption of good greenery by evil company.
I have given a hearty welcome to all forms that have
come my way. Some few are only fit for the Lunatic
Asylum, but I have for the last three years been trying to
group the really beautiful forms of variegated plants in an
irregularly-shaped parcel of ground that was available for
planting after the downfall of sundry Horse-chestnuts and
Portugal Laurels. I thought it might be effective as well
as interesting to group them according to the nature and
colour of their variegation, and so it began with a planting
of purple-leaved things at one end and golden forms at the
other, and a witty friend christened it Sennacherib's corner.
But since then much silver has been added, in grey-leaved
things at one corner and as an edging stretching both
ways from it and reaching on one side to the commence-
ment of the golden plants, and a central planting of white
variegation forms a wedge-shaped group with the narrow
192
Darwin Tulips : Euterpe
Frzins Hals
Tom Tiddler's Ground
end of the wedge running between the purple and gold
groups. As purple-leaved plants are not very numerous,
and many of them lose their depth of colouring somewhat
in late summer, the general effect is rather of gold and
silver, and therefore Tom Tiddler's ground is now a fitter
name. Some of the colour effects persist throughout the
seasons, especially in the grey corner where Centaurea
Clementei, perhaps the most silvery of all white-leaved things,
has come through the last two winters with a brave show.
The leaves of Cineraria maritima, though dulled by damp,
soon dry up and look white an f d fresh in Spring sunshine.
Santolina incana is best cut down annually, but I like to
leave a few of the plants unshorn till the scissor-snubbed
ones have reclothed themselves, to carry on the grey tradi-
tion of their clump. The powdered stems of Rubus tibetanus
and Rosa Willmottiae rise up among the lowlier plants,
and are very effective in Winter and early Spring, but
Rubus biflorus is the most startlingly white-stemmed of all,
and I am frequently asked why I have whitewashed it. It
puts the others so completely out of court that I have it
among the variegated silver plants rather than the greys,
and there, when most of its neighbours are leafless, it stands
out in its coat of paint. Except for Osmanthus ilicifolius
fol. purpureis and some dark-leaved Antirrhinums the
purple end retires from business in Winter. Cornus
Spaethii in the golden end has bright red bark to its young
shoots, but Golden Thyme, and a grass or two, with the
golden Juniperus sinensis, and the old, old golden Fever-
few, keep up the reputation of the golden corner, while
Ajuga reptans fol. var., white-flowered Lamium maculatum,
Barbarea vulgaris, and this last year a fine specimen of Jack-
I 93 N
My Garden in Spring
by-the- Hedge (Sisymbrium Alliaria), half of whose leaves
were white, from a neighbouring hedge, perform the same
good work in the central silver portion. But as the best
Spring effect is to be seen when the Tulips are in flower, it
is then that I shall lead you forth to see Tom Tiddler's
ground. We will approach it over the old bowling green
lawn, and so arrive at the grey corner where Artemisia
Halleri, bicolor, and a good form of Absynthium I found
plentiful at Lanslebourg are all showing up in the front.
A. borealis, a lovely lacy and silvery edition of Old
Man which might well be called Old Lady, backs a
patch of the brilliantly white A. stelleriana, which is
allowed to sprawl on to the gravel walk, ^thiopappus
or Centaurea pulcherrima is newly arisen, and also won-
derfully white. The Centaurea, Cineraria, and Santolina
before mentioned form higher mounds behind, and Cer-
astium tomentosum makes a mat before the entrance,
for, as the ground was too wide to reach over com-
fortably, I ran an irregularly curved line of stepping-
stones across it to give access to the central portions,
and they start from among the Cerastium, and various
dwarf plants are planted between the stones. Ajuga
reptans with silver leaves is very effective used thus.
The tall, silvery-grey leaves of two giant Onions rise up
among the silver plants ; Allium Rosenbachianum has the
more gracefully recurved ones, but those of A. Babingtonii
are taller. Both plants send up large round heads of
mauve flowers ; those of Rosenbach's are very handsome
and come in May, but Babington's not till July, and
they think nothing of reaching a height of six feet, but
quite half the buds are transformed into bulbils, and
194
Tom Tiddler's Ground
unless one wishes for a large crop of this rare British
plant, the heads must be cut off before these bulbs drop
and plant themselves. Among large subjects Atriplex
Halimus has made a big bush of itself in spite of constant
applications of my secateurs, and now is very silvery and
charming, so much so that one wonders why it is so
seldom to be seen except on gardens on sea fronts.
Eucalyptus Gunnii, I believe the true thing and therefore
the hardiest of all, is shooting up above everybody else,
and these with the Rose and Bramble and a young Picea
pungens glauca form the tall centre of the grey corner ;
the lawn front contains other Artemisias, Salvia argentea
with its immense leaves like grey plush, Anthemis Cupa-
nanii, a plant too little known, for besides feathery grey
leaves it has white daisies that are singularly well shaped
and brilliant. Suaeda fruticosa and Artemisia maritima
from the Norfolk coast are here, but Diotis maritima
refuses their company, and will only live in the rock
garden. Onopordon bracteatum comes for a short stay,
and flowers and dies when at its best, in its silly biennial
way. Anemone Pulsatilla does well here, and thrusts up
fluffy, lilac flowers with Chinchilla fur boas round their
necks among the steely blue-grey leaves of Cerinthe alpina.
Seseli gummiferum, a strange, stiff -habited, glaucous, umbel-
liferous biennial, is very effective just before it starts
flowering, but Festuca glauca, the grass with imitation
hoar frost eternally on its leaves, is the best of the
whole lot, and finishes the grey plants by running as a
wedge into the beginning of the golden things. Golden
Thyme is the first plant in the golden edging, and
then comes a fine striped form of Foxtail Grass that
'95
My Garden in Spring
is very brilliant in its young growth, and remains good
till late in summer if the flowering stalks are kept pulled
out. Golden Ling, a Viola cornuta with white flowers
and golden leaves, the Feverfew (Pyrethrum Parthenium),
the beautiful, golden-leaved Veronica Teucrium that origi-
nated in Captain Pinwill's garden, and a corner clump
of Cornus Spaethii are the main features of the front
rank. Laburnum, Lilac, Mountain Ash, Robinia Pseud-
acacia, Ptelia trifoliata, Ribes sanguineum, the Common
and the Cut-leaved Elders, have all provided golden-
leaved forms, and are represented here. Acer californica
aurea is perhaps the most brilliantly yellow of all, though
Sambucus racemosa plumosa aurea, runs it very close,
but ought to be ashamed of its pre-Linnean length of
name. The Ptelea does not come out golden, but the
leaves become spangled and afterwards almost suffused
with gold as they age, and therefore it stands out as
the best when the others are losing their brilliancy. The
Laburnum's gold vanishes as soon as that of a spend-
thrift, while the Ribes is a good colour throughout the
season. I have derived great pleasure from this golden
group, and am trying to extend their effect by planting
more golden forms in a line with it to carry the colour
on until the Bamboos and Yews by the river are reached.
Two Alders have come into this, and Alnus incana aurea
is a very beautiful thing, the colour of the winter bark
is so brilliant, like red coral. Golden Acer campestre
also pleased me much this year. But to come back to
Tom Tiddler's ground and the undergrowth of the golden
grove, there is Creeping Jenny and Meadow Sweet, pure
gold both of them, and another form of the latter with
196
Tom Tiddler's Ground
gold blotches. Thalictrum glaucum tl Illuminator " is very
effective when in young growth, but afterwards turns
glaucous, though if beheaded it soon springs up golden
again. Iris Pseud-acorus, with striped leaves, and forms
of /. versicolor and I. spuria, with the young growth bril-
liantly yellow, grow up among a wonderful grass I first
saw in the Birmingham Botanic Garden, instantly asked
for, and shortly after gratefully received. I have not found
a name for it yet, but it is the lightest, clearest yellow
of any leaf I know, and seeds freely, and comes true
from seed a veritable treasure. I planted a clump of
the Early Tulip, Yellow Prince, with golden variegated
leaves, and they looked so well when in flower that
Daffodils were introduced to help the early golden glow,
and yellow Tulips to carry it on. Of Daffodils, Olympia,
Duke of Bedford, Hamlet, Lord Roberts, Butterfly a
pretty light double Whitewell, and Henry Irving have
all done well, and join on to the planting of cooler-
coloured ones that I have mentioned in an earlier chapter.
But the supreme moment is reached when the late Tulips
are out. Yellow Rose, the fine old double, is at the
corner by the Cornus, and if a few short twiggy branches
are put among the buds as they rise, they get enough
support, and the full-blown flowers hang gracefully from
among them instead of fainting on to the walk. Ellen
Willmott, Solfatare, and Mrs. Moon are good tall yellows,
and are planted in the middle distance. Ixioides, with
its rich black base, is very effective, and a great favourite
of mine. Moonlight is the best pale yellow, a lovely
colour, and in front of the others shows up well. Ingles-
combe Yellow, Jaune d'ceuf, Golden Spire, Primrose Beauty,
197
My Garden in Spring
and other yellow Tulips are there, but those I have
named I consider the best. Starting at the grey corner,
I planted pale lavender-coloured Darwin Tulips, working
into lilac and mauve sorts, and then carried them down
either side of the stepping-stones in small patches of
eight or a dozen, dotted here and there among the
variegated plants, and as they approach the purple-leaved
things at the end the shades of the Tulips grow darker,
until we end with the deepest purple ones we can find.
Erguste, Bleu Aimable, Rev. H. Ewbank are in fairly
large clumps to represent the lilac shades, and then
come Franz Hals, Greuze, The Bishop, Vespuccio, and
Velvet King, which are fine rich purples. Purple Per-
fection, Fra Angelico, Grand Monarque are rather deeper,
and of redder or browner shades, and Faust is the finest
and darkest of all. I have not planted anything nearer
black in this bed, such as Sultan, Zulu, and La Noire,
as they would not be effective against the Prunus ceras-
ifera atropurpurea, Purple Barberry, and Hazel that form
the background. The most beautiful of all purple-leaved
things is certainly the Purple-leaved Peach. It keeps
its colour to the end, and constantly sends out young
crimson growths through the whole summer. Its flowers
are as rosy and large as those of the Almond, and in
1911 it bore a crop of hard, purple Peaches.
We sowed some of their stones and got a purple-leaved
plant from each of them. A good specimen occupies the
post of honour in the foreground here where the shaded
lines of Tulips end, and the newer form of purple Plum (I
cannot write its long but correct Latin name again) which
I bought as Pissardii nigra is certainly very deep in colour.
198
Tom Tiddler's Ground
The purple Sloe looks rather dingy beside these two,
and the purple Euonymus europaeus atropurpureus is best
in its autumn coloration, and so far I have been rather
disappointed with a purple Acer campestre that has been so
only in name. The central gathering of silver variegation
is becoming very interesting to me as the collection grows,
and I can begin to reckon what main lines variegation
follows. It seems that but few plants have leaves naturally
and always marked with white in their typical form. Of
course there are the Lungworts, Lamium maculatum, and
the well-known Milk Thistle, and I have here, too, a smaller
Thistle with white markings which are evidently permanently
specific characters. It was sent to me by a good friend
who found it wild in Italy, and kindly remembered my
collection of such things. It is only an annual, but sows
itself most obligingly, and its autumn rosettes are very
charming. I have been trying to think of other hardy
plants with a regular design of white or grey marks on
their leaves as usual specific characters, and either my
memory is bad or their number is small. I recall Red
Clover, several Buttercups, all Crocuses, except such as
have struck out a line for themselves, and I hope you will
believe me when I say that until I had written that last
sentence I was quite unconscious of its punning sense, but
leave it as it is so absolutely true, for the two species with
semi-cylindrical leaves, Crocus carpetanus and C. nevadensis,
and the four- winged leaf of Scharojanii have dispensed with
the usual conspicuous white line of the rest of the family.
Scolymus hispanicus, Echium and Cerinthe in several
species have small, white spots. Cyclamen leaves, except
those of true Coum, vary from small spots to zones of great
199
My Garden in Spring
beauty, Richardia albo-maculata, which is quite hardy here
in warm corners, but once caused my herbaceous exhibit
to be disqualified at a local show, has along with its near
relations the many white transparencies on the leaves that
provide its specific name. It has been said that no plain
green form is known of Pachysandra terminalis, that strange
Euphorbiaceous plant from Japan. So many of the older
introductions from that country were garden forms, as
witness Anemone japonica, first known as a semi-double
red form, then by the white, and it is only lately that the
var. hupehensis has arrived, which is clearly the wild rose-
coloured form. Again, Rosa rugosa, and from China the
Chrysanthemum, all came to us first in garden forms, so
that I suspect Pachysandra has been treated in the same
way, for I have lately seen the green form in the Cambridge
Botanic Garden, and hope it will soon be in this one too.
And the figure in Somoku-Dzuzetsu, the Sowerby of Japan,
shows no trace of variegation. The variegated form we
now possess is an attractive plant with narrow white
margins to its leaves. In greenhouse and stove natural
marbling is common enough, and I need not make lists of
Begonias, Caladiums, &c.
Variegated leaved shrubs are numerous, and cannot all
be squeezed into Tom's silver mine. Cornus varieties
number three, and the best is C. siUrica elegantissima, a
free grower with large leaves, the major portion of each
being white. C. brachypoda variegata is slow to grow tall ;
most likely it starts life as a layered shoot, and like all such
is loth to shoot up strongly, but a sharp knife and a hard
heart and patience are training my specimen in the path
of uprightness and it begins to show the whorled char-
200
Eremurus Ehvesianus. (See p. 283.)
Tom Tiddler's Ground
acter of branching, a dumb-waiter effect, that this species
is noted for. C. Mas aureus elegans is very soft and pretty,
with a creamy-white variegation. Elegans may pass, but
aureus is an untruthful epithet ; it is weaker in golden
glow than an Australian sovereign, and so has been placed
among the silver plants. Weigela rosea and Philadelphus
coronaria have good silver forms. The variegated Ruta
graveolens, if kept sheared over twice in the season, makes
a wonderfully beautiful, hoary-headed specimen, looking
more like a plant in full flower than mere variegation when
seen from a distance. Euonymus europaeus aucubaefolius
has up to the present only come out in spots towards the
end of summer, but an older specimen may be more effec-
tive earlier. Of herbaceous plants also only a few of the
best forms of variegation have been planted here as yet.
Scrophularia aquatica is one of the most effective, broadly
blotched with cream colour and good at most times
of the year. Mentha rotundifolia, fol. var., requires look-
ing after. It runs and spreads with marvellous rapidity,
and is inclined to go back green, but makes up for
it by giving a large number of wholly white shoots ; so it
is wise to keep on replanting from the most variegated
portions. Acorus Calamus has a very effective variegated
form, with a certain amount of burnt sienna and rich red
about the bases of the leaves. It is best in a bog, but
consents to live in a not too dry border. Artemisia vulgaris
[the Mugwort], Lychnis dioica, a Chrysanthemum, several
Funkias, Crown Imperial, and Sweet Violet all have good
green and white forms, and grasses provide Phalaris
arundinacea or Gardeners' Garters, but in the better form
with the centre of each leaf broadly white. Arrhenatherum
201
My Garden in Spring
bulbosum is a very good variegated grass, but the whitest
and most effective of all dwarf ones is Molinia coerulea,
fol. var.; it grows near the stepping-stones with Funkia
undulata (also fol. var.) for a neighbour, and the two are
about as pretty as any variegated plants I know. In
earliest Spring I get an effect of blue among these silver
things from Hepaticas, Pulmonaria Mawson's variety,
Scilla bifolia, Chionodoxa sardensis, and a few other things
of lowly habits, and later in the season these are replaced
by Violas, especially forms of V. gracilis, and deep purple
bedding Violas, as of course the blue groundwork has to
disappear before the lilac Tulips claim the field. To take
their places later still there are other flowering plants
hiding among them, but that is another story, or rather
a chapter of another volume, for this book must end with
the commencement of Summer.
202
CHAPTER XIII
Anemones
THERE is a charm in the simple form of a single Anemone
that goes straight to my heart. The central boss of
carpels, and the surrounding ring so rich in innumerable
stamens, start the flower on pleasantly concentric curves ;
then the segments of the coloured floral whorl are
generally so ample and delightfully hollowed that their
outlines are always bold and good.
It is botanically correct to deny petals to an Anemone,
but I never feel quite happy about considering all the
coloured segments as sepals, as it often happens in certain
species that the outer ones have a slightly more woolly
texture, especially on the outer side, and the inner are
rather more perfect in shape and coloration, and look
more like petals. On the other hand, I must own that
when doubling occurs by the anthers becoming petaloid
they as a rule take a narrow lanceolate form quite different
from the ample coloured sepals.
It is rather curious that this particular form of double
flower should bear the name of " Anemone-flowered," and
be used for any family in which there are double flowers
with a ring of large regular outside segments, and the
central portion is filled with quilled or narrow rays.
The term " Anemone-flowered " surely ought to bring to
203
My Garden in Spring
one's mind the original simply beautiful design of the single
Wind flowers and not the double freaks of garden origin.
I lately saw some huge China Asters with an outside
fringe of ray florets of extra length and narrowness, and
the disc a mass of large quilled florets. Anything more
unlike an ordinary Anemone could hardly be imagined, yet
everyone who saw them at once dubbed them "Anemone-
flowered," having in mind the race of Chrysanthemums so
called, I suppose.
Analogous instances may be noticed in the way fully
doubled flowers are called Rose-flowered, and thus when
a double Rose is more than usually rich in petals it has to
borrow an epithet from the Cabbage, and the most solid of
Cabbages from a drumhead. Let us hope that the limit
has been reached there.
Certain double-flowered Anemones are by no means
to be despised : that known as Chapeau de Cardinal, a pure
scarlet A. coronaria with the regular centre so well be-
loved by the old Dutch painters, is a very glorious thing.
It and its brethren the other coronarias are never happy
here for long, and their cultivation must be pursued on
the buy-and-die system, which I dislike as wasteful and
unkind to the plants. But their price is so low that
I occasionally invest in a hundred or so to get at least one
season's fun out of them. I will not go into raptures over
their well-known beauty, nor describe the way we struggle
with plants that others can grow with ease, but in spite
of their resemblance to stale fruit of Castanea sativa I must
indulge myself by retelling tales about coronaria that I
myself enjoy. The first is of good Umberto, Bishop of
Pisa, who arriving in the Holy Land just too late to be of
204
Anemones
any use when the Crusaders were returning home de-
feated, determined some good should come of his enter-
prise and so filled his ships with earth from Palestine,
carried it to Italy, and filled the Campo Santo at Pisa with
it that the dead might lie in the holy soil. There within
those lovely cloisters the scarlet A. coronaria was seen for
the first time in Italy, having been imported with the soil
no doubt, but its appearance there was regarded as the result
of a miracle, and to typify anything the fertile fancy of
medieval monks might suggest about the blood of holy
martyrs shed on that soil. It is more pleasing to think of
the certain pleasure thus given to the living than of the
advantages that were imagined for the dead. The other
story has avillain for hero,a Dutch burgomaster who coveted
a magnificent strain of Anemones possessed and jealously
guarded by a burgher. Seed was refused to the great
man, so he plotted, arranged a visit to Mynheer's garden
at Anemone seed-time but before the harvest ; he arrived in
state and clad in his civic robes, and by cunningly allowing
his furred mantle to brush over the seed heads went home
with a plentiful supply of the fluffy seeds caught in the fur.
Now that I have written it out I perceive a second villain
in the tale, and cannot decide which was the worse, the thief
or the miserly gardener who refused to share his plants.
I try to keep a little colony on the rock garden of the
Palestine A. coronaria, known as van syriaca. Like other
Palestine members of the family, Adonis and Ranunculus,
the type form is pure scarlet, and lacks the usual white eye.
I have had white forms, though, among collected roots. It
is a fine thing for a sunny rock bank, and especially glow-
ing if backed by grey stones and silvery-leaved things as I
205
My Garden in Spring
had it this Spring. A. hortensis has been mentioned in an
early chapter as having typified and announced the Spring
in Greece to me, a wanderer on its hillsides. I wish this
race might have borne some other name, for it is one of the
most magnificently coloured of all wild plants : its varieties,
fulgens of the Pau district and graeca from Greece, have
never been improved upon by garden-raised seedlings.
Sutton's Strain, or the Aldboro' lot, fall far short of those
I saw on a bank edging the Olive gardens on the road to
Kephissia, outside Athens. There grow the true broad-
sepalled graeca form, and not only scarlet forms but of
every shade of cerise, salmon, and some pure white all
over, others with broad, white rings in the centre of the
rosy flowers. I had seen a few of these mixed with the
normal scarlet being sold in tight little bunches in the
market-place, but could not learn whence they came.
Daily excursions from Athens did not reveal the secret
until, chasing a magnificent Lacerta ocellata (the great-
eyed lizard), I crossed this bank, forgot the Saurian and
dug the plants.
The first Anemone of the season here is another Greek
plant, A. blanda. I have seen it in flower before Christ-
mas at Bitton, but never before mid-January here. Our
earliest form is in a broad edging at a corner of the large
herbaceous bed, and resulted from a planting of some
collected tubers. They are mostly of rather a pale blue,
and have well-marked, white eyes, and are not so good,
in spite of their early appearance, as the deep blue
form sometimes known as var. Ingramii. This band
has been lengthened by a patch of that darker variety,
and in the end of February and onwards the two are
206
Anemones
generally out together, and make a fine display in the
sunshine.
The pure white is pretty if a really good form is pro-
cured, but the variety scythinica, at one time misnamed
cypriana, is particularly lovely, as it is rich sapphire blue
outside but pure glistening white within, and a half ex-
panded flower showing the contrasting colouring is a sight
worth looking at. Both in this band, and in the rock
garden, this form not only thrives but seeds freely, and the
greater number of the babes are as handsome as their
parents : a few washy ones have appeared, but I suspect
them of being bastards, and should say if grown isolated
from other blanda forms the seedlings would all come true
scythinica. It comes into flower rather later than the
blue forms here, and lasts on longer than any. There is
a lovely rose-coloured form, but rather scarce, and it is wise
only to buy var. rosea when seen in flower, for some shades
of mauvy pink and pinky mauve are quite unnecessary in
a plant with good blue and pink forms. I complained to
a friend that I could no longer obtain the best pink form
from a certain nursery, and he owned up that he had over-
hauled their stock one Spring and left them none to send
to me. In reparation he most kindly gave me the best
form I have ever seen.
A few years ago Bishop Umberto's miraculous Anemone
was surpassed, for the bed under the south wall of Bitton
garden presented its scholarly chronicler and venerable
master with a tribute of its affection in return for his wise
and kindly rule of over half a century, in the shape of a
set of seedling A. blanda beautifully double and ranging
in colour from pale lavender blue to deep ultramarine.
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My Garden in Spring
A note from the Canon brought me to gaze and wonder
at their beauty. The doubling is interesting and of a two-
fold nature, for not only is there an increased number of
sepals, but the anthers are transformed into short petaloid
bodies set among the whorls of sepals, and are in some
forms deeper in colour than they, reminding one of the
doubling of a Narcissus such as Butter and Eggs, where
the pale perianth segments are repeated mingled with the
smaller and deeper-coloured sections of the corona. It
must by this time be quite apparent to my readers that
half of my choicest treasures are due to visits to Bitton
and the generosity of Canon Ellacombe, and they will not
be surprised to learn that both a pale and dark form of
this glorious miracle are now thriving in a bay of my
rock garden and annually remind me of his kindness. A.
appenina everybody should know it ranges from Italy to
Turkey ; but save a pure white form, one of Dr. Lowe's
many valued gifts to me, I have not seen any other that I
could think of as approaching blanda or an intermediate
between the two species. This white one is earlier than
any other appenina, and rather dwarfer too, and is a true
albino, with no trace of pale Prussian blue on the
backs of its sepals as there is in most white varieties of
appenina, and the leaves are of quite a yellow shade of
green. A rose-coloured form has been offered, but has
very little claim to the title. One clump that I bought as
var. rosea is tinged with pale lilac outside instead of the
Prussian blue of the common white ones. A lilac form
that originated with Messrs. Van Tubergen forms a pleasant
contrast, and is prettily irregular and starry in shape, but
the double form also sent out by them is a poor, thin thing
208
Anemones
compared with the double blanda, but is interesting in
spite of its rather washy colour.
The typical blue form is one of the best plants for
naturalising in semi-wild parts of the garden. I have
planted some among rough grass at the edge of the pond
and running back into the border among deciduous
shrubs, and those among the grass do quite as well as
those in the border soil, and like most flowers rising out
of grass look all the prettier for it. The Anemones that
thrive best here and so give most pleasure and effect are
those of the nemorosa section, with running, stoloniferous
growths that ask to be kept plump and cool or even moist
throughout the season. It puzzles me why they should
do so much better than those with tubers that can stand
any amount of baking and drying off. You can keep A.
coronaria and hortensis dry for weeks or months without
injuring them otherwise than causing them to grow out
of their chosen season, but try the same treatment on any
nemorosa and you will find it as dead as Rameses the
Great, and in this dry garden one would think I could
give a happy home to the sun-lovers on grilling ledges of
the rock garden more easily than I could imitate the cool
woodland home of the nemorosa section. Of course I do
what I can for them by finding western or northern ex-
posures for them, and tucking up their little naked brown
limbs with a new leaf-soil quilt when I see they have worn
a way through the old one, and most of them have spread
into good-sized carpets and are among my greatest joys
of Spring. Two round beds cut in the turf, and full of
dwarf shrubs and herbaceous plants, are almost carpeted
by them in April. Shaded, low-lying parts of the rock
209 O
My Garden in Spring
garden hold some of the rarer varieties, and most beds of
permanently planted, mixed plants are annually receiving
the overflow from the Crowded patches, as I do love to
carpet bare spots under deciduous shrubs and round
tall-growing things with such plants. The ordinary wild
nemorosa is worth collecting from different districts, as it
varies greatly in shape, tint of colour, and time of flower-
ing, and keeps up its old customs in the new home. I
have a very early form and a very late one, and the common
type of the Cotswolds, which has the outside, especially of
the buds, more or less pink, and of a charming creamy-
rosy tint. It is so noticeable in the bud stage, when the
flowers still hang their heads, that one of the most noted
botanists, when first shown them in a Gloucestershire wood,
mistook them for a Cyclamen.
Two varieties are listed as rubra and rubra fl. pi., but
though they are worth growing they open quite white, and
only flush to a red as they age. The red, it must be con-
fessed, is rather too cold, and suggestive of that little devil
whose name is Legion as well as Magenta who too often
possesses and ruins pink flowers. They are both effective
when contrasted with white and blue forms, and seem to
linger on longer than the white ones, loth to shed the
flowers that have gradually deepened to such a fine colour.
The so-called fl. pi. is not much more than semi-double,
having at its fullest no more than a second row of sepals.
There -is a dainty little pure white one called Vestal
which Herr Max Leichtlin sent out into the world, but I
do not know where it originated. The anthers are nearly
as white as the sepals, and make the flowers look like A.
trifolia, but the leaves are those of nemorosa right enough.
210
Anemones
Two very fine forms are listed under the one name of
grandiflora ; one is a tall grower with long and narrow
leaflets, and the flower also is rather starry and slightly
doubled and faintly flushed with pink, and I believe it was
found in Ireland some years ago by Lady Doneraile. I
do not like it so much as the other form, which I have
always called Leeds' variety, as Dr. Lowe gave it to me
under that name, and told me he had it from Leeds him-
self, but I do not know whether he was the finder of it.
There is a good figure of it in the Garden for October
15, 1887, and Burbridge wrote about it later as "a large,
pure-white form, very distinct and beautiful. I first saw
it at Munstead, and I think it was there called Dr. Lowe's
Variety. In general size and stature it resembles the
lovely pale or lavender-blue Robinsoniana which may
possibly be a form of it, varying mainly in colour." I
have always felt the same about it, and have tried to find
out where both of them grow wild, and hope that at last
I am on the right scent, for a year ago I saw in a
Herefordshire garden a form of blue Anemone evidently
Robinsoniana, but with a redder tint on the stalks and young
leaves, and learnt that it came from a wood in Norway.
I am now the happy possessor of some of this stock, and
am watching its behaviour beside the older form. But I
want very much to see what Norwegian white Wood
Anemones are like, as I hope they may prove to be Leeds'
Variety. I have never seen any wild forms from Britain
or Ireland that approach these in the width of segments
and good form. Leeds' is perhaps even more perfectly
shaped and formed like a single Rose than is Robinsoniana,
and its bright green, ample leaves make a fine background
211
My Garden in Spring
for the large flowers, which when doing well are nearly
two inches in diameter.
I do not believe A. Robinsoniana originated in Ireland,
as I have several wild blue forms sent me from Irish woods,
and they have all been of ordinary nemorosa type. Mr.
Robinson has told me that he first saw his blue Anemone
at the foot of a wall in the Oxford Botanic Garden.
Baxter, who was then the curator, told him it had been
sent to him by a lady in Ireland.
I think this started the idea of its Irish origin, but
of course she may have had it from Norway. I am
quite convinced Leeds' Variety is the best of the white
forms, but will not say that Robinsoniana is peerless among
the blues. For I can never forgive it for closing so readily
on dull days and towards evening in a rather sulky, short-
tempered way, and then displaying what I can only call
a cotton back, a poor greyish-tinted outside not much
better than a dirty white. When open its soft, glowing,
rosy-lilac flowers are certainly very lovely and a large
patch of it glistening with April raindrops in its leaves,
but its flowers open to the sunshine, makes one want to
cease worrying about weeds and just enjoy the Spring
scents and flowers. But A. Allenii has eclipsed it in beauty,
being larger in all its parts yet beautifully proportioned, and
of a slightly deeper shade of lilac within and flushed with
rosy purple on the outside, so that a bud and closed flower
are warm, glowing things like snow mountains flushed with
a sunset glow, while a closed Robinsoniana is like the
effect of death pallor that follows when the light leaves
the peaks.
How Mr. Allen must have enjoyed his first sight of
212
Anemones
this, the largest and loveliest of blue Wood Anemones, when
he first saw it among his seedlings.
It is still rather a rare plant, and is one of those that
all who see long for so passionately that it has not spread
into a very large clump here yet, but it seems a good
grower, and so I hope soon to get broader effects from it.
The most effective blue form I have is known as A.
nemorosa, var. purpurea, because the closed flowers are
quite rosy-purple even in the bud stage, but the open
flowers are of a good soft blue. It grows very freely, and I
have been able to make several colonies of it. It will
grow well in sun or shade, but the flowers are taller
and larger and last longer in the shade. It has been
found wild more than once in the neighbourhood of Pau,
and was mainly distributed by Herr Max Leichtlin.
Much like it, but of varying shades, are some beautiful
forms sent to me from Lismore woods by Miss Currey,
who told me that those growing along the banks of the
streams were mostly blue, but in the rest of the woods
only the ordinary white form occurred. Mr. Allen also
raised a beautiful seedling he named Blue Queen and
which is the brightest blue of any, quite a Forget-me-not
blue and a pretty early flowering form, but on the small
side. Celestial is much the same but paler, and I believe
another of his seedlings. Then there is the form known
as var. coerulea, which is plentiful in certain districts
of Wales where the slate crops out. It varies from rosy
tinted forms almost as deep as purpurea, to others only
flushed with blue in very young blossoms, and the pale
forms flower earlier than the deeper ones at least so I
find here.
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My Garden in Spring
A late flowering and distinct form from Co. Wicklow
I owe to The O'Mahony, who found it wild in wet land
close to the river. It has some likeness to the one known
as Blue Bonnet, which was found in Wales and taken to
Daisy Hill, Newry, where Mr. Smith's magic wand makes
everything grow. Blue Bonnet is the latest of all the
nemorosa section to flower, and is very distinct in appear-
ance, being more waxy in texture than the others, and of
such good substance that it lasts on till the middle of May
in shady nooks, and I have never noticed it flag with the
warmer temperature.
There is yet another called Robinsoniana cornubiensis,
but I have never seen it doing really well anywhere or
looking very much like Robinsoniana : it strikes me as a
lanky form of nemorosa purpurea, but if it were really
strong and vigorous it might improve. I think much
might be done by collecting these blue forms and sowing
all the seed they give. Besides the so-called double rose-
coloured one mentioned above, there are two distinct
double white ones commonly grown : the best is a very old
inhabitant of gardens, with six well-formed and regular
sepals, and then the whole centre rilled up with a rosette
of petaloid bodies, beautifully neat and regular, looking
like a small double Daisy. It is well figured in Maund's
Botanic Garden and in Wooster's Alpine Plants, but with-
out any hint in the text of either as to its origin. I like
to think it was the plant that Gerard grew, and of which
he writes : " There is in some choice gardens one of this
kinde with white flowers very double as is that of the
scarlet anemone, and I had one of them given me by a
Worshipfull Merchant of London called Mr. John Fran-
214
Anemones
queville my very good friend." There is no figure of it in
the original 1597 edition, and Johnson has used Clusius'
figure, and in his additional note mentions that, unlike the
single form, it has leaves in two places on its stalk, which,
together with the beautiful old woodcut, show that it is
not the neat double form that he is referring to but the
one we now know as A. nemorosa bracteata, fl.pl., a ragged,
untidy thing that never comes two seasons alike.
Now Clusius tells us the history of this and a double
purple form which seems to have been lost, how that they
had only recently been discovered, and had not been
described elsewhere. He had not seen their flowers until
the April of 1593, though one John Boisot had sent him
the plants two years previously, directing that they should
be kept in pots and somewhat starved, for with excessive
luxury they would degenerate and bear single flowers.
Both had bracteate leaves under the flowers as well as
the usual involucre of three leaves, and had been found by
chance a few years previously in two woods, of which he
gives the names, in Belgium. It is very unlikely, then, that
Gerard knew of them prior to the publication in 1601 of
Clusius' Historia, and I am sure if he had seen one with
the two sets of involucral leaves he would have mentioned
that peculiarity.
I much prefer the neat, double form to that eccentric
Mad Hatter and March Hare in one, the variable bracteata,
which in some seasons may be nearly single, then in
another the green bracts will be mixed among the white
sepals, or they may be striped with green, or at other
times stained with a dull purple. There is a mild excite-
ment to be obtained from growing such an unreliable
215
My Garden in Spring
plant and watching its vagaries, and those people who
enjoy statistics might like to tabulate the periodical re-
appearances of any particular form.
The yellow Wood Anemones are not so effective in the
borders as the white and blue, but are pleasing in contrast
with them. A. ranunculoides in its typical form is rather
small flowered, but makes up for that defect when in good
health and vigour, by producing two blossoms on each
scape, and as the second one does not open until the first
has fallen, the flowering period of a clump is lengthened.
There is a larger flowered form of it which I believe is found
in Italy, and is a good thing, but not plentiful as yet, nor
does it spread so quickly here as the older one, which has
made wide carpets in some borders. Quite lately a semi-
double form has been introduced, and is pretty and well
worth growing, as it is not too double to interfere with the
central fringe of stamens. My favourite form is one
known as var. pallida, with fairly large primrose yellow
flowers, but it increases very slowly, and does not form so
dense a clump as the others. There is a very interesting
hybrid between ranunculoides and nemorosa that is found
growing among its parents in Silesia, Saxony, Baden, and
Alsace-Lorraine, and is named A. intermedia. It is small
in flower, rather thin in texture, and a pale sulphur colour,
but is quite worthy of a place in the rock garden, as it is
always the first of the nemorosa section to flower, and
often breaks through the ground in February, and opens
its blossoms a few days after the arched stems have lifted
them through the soil. The Italian and Austrian A. trifolia
differs from nemorosa chiefly in the curious deep green of
216
Anemones
its leaves, that look as though they should be evergreen,
they are so dark and of such firm texture : the flowers are
of a very cold white, and perhaps rather small for the
important-looking leaves. I have brought home a blue-
flowered form of singular beauty from the Dolomites, but
it has not yet grown strong enough to show its beauty here,
and whether or no in changing its sky it will not change
its sky colour also. The Japanese A. flaccida is good for
a moist position, but gets thirsty and tired and then faints
on warm days in an ordinary border. The leaves are very
attractive, as they vary in colour from youth to age. At
first they are a golden bronze, then turn a bright green
spotted with white, and end by being dark green marbled
with grey, and a good-sized clump will bear many shades
of green at one time. They suggest the leaves of a
Buttercup in shape and general appearance, but are seen
to be too glossy for any common one when looked at
carefully. The flowers are about the size of Wood Ane-
mones, but more creamy in colour. The various forms
and near relatives of A. Pulsatilla are delightful plants for
edgings to borders or grouping among other plants in
good, broad masses. I find the best way to establish them
is to sow seed as soon as ripe, either where you want
them or in a reserve ground, and pricking out the resulting
plants when about a year old. Sown as soon as gathered
they germinate freely in a few weeks, and look wonder-
fully like small Buttercups for their first season, and not
till the following Spring will they produce the finely-cut
leaves they bear ever after. They dislike disturbance and
interference with their long tap-root, so are rather difficult
217
My Garden in Spring
to transplant when elderly. The large, pale-flowered form
is the most effective to plant freely, but there is a good
one often sold as A. H alien, with even finer cut leaves
than the common form and deep purple flowers. It looks
well mixed among the others, but is not Halleri, which may
be easily recognised by its silky pinnatifid leaves. I have
lately got as A. rubra a deep chocolate-red form of Pulsatilla
that is very distinct, but some sad fate has always decreed
the destruction of the white form just as it was settling
down here. The most frequent cause of failure here
among the Pulsatilla family is some evil but undeter-
mined underground animal that eats holes in the collar
of that plant which are followed by decay and a sudden
flagging of leaves, and if the injured part is not at once
removed the whole plant is liable to rot off. A very fine
old clump of the form called A. pratensis montana has
lost more than three-quarters of its many crowns in this
way this season. This is a very tall growing variety with
nodding flowers of very deep purple : unfortunately they
do not open widely enough to be as beautiful as they seem
to promise, but the seed heads are very fine, great balls
of grey-green feathers borne on stems two feet in height.
I struggled for years with A. sylvestris, and got for my
pains thin carpets of rather unattractive leaves, and after
a season or two a bare centre and an ever-widening circle
of the flowerless tufts. Then the var. baicalensis came,
and I thought was better, as though rather stingy in the
way of bloom it generally produced a half dozen or so
that were pretty with their rosy purple exterior. Then
some ten years ago I got the var. grandiflora from a Con-
218
Anemones
tinental nursery, and I could soon see the other forms
might be allowed to die out for want of replanting, for the
newcomer gives abundance of larger and purer white
flowers, does not travel too rapidly, as every one who sees
it wants it and carries off the outliers, and best of all it
does not die out in the centre when it has occupied the
ground for more than two seasons, so the crevice in the
rock garden in which it was first planted is still full of it,
and the large, white flowers come in Spring, then the ripe
seeds like lumps of cotton wool follow, and are very white
and ornamental, and till late in the autumn the plant is
continually throwing up a fresh flower-stem or two. I still
keep the double-flowered form because I like its wonder-
fully full flowers when they appear, and also because it
has taken possession of the slate bank of the rock garden
and would be hard to dislodge.
Some day I hope A. alpina and A. sulphur eaw\\\ be worth
writing about here ; at present they are mostly playing the
role of foliage plants, which any Carrot or Parsley could
do as effectively. Some are only seedlings, and so cannot
be blamed, but others I brought from Mt. Cenis, where
one walks for miles among knee-high tufts, and now and
then is obliged to stop and admire the extra light turquoise
back of one, the soft sulphur tint or pure dazzling white of
another, the semi-double or extra wide sepalled flowers of
more, and wonder which is the most beautiful. Unless
Ranunculus Lyallii covers the Alps of New Zealand with
a wonderfully lavish profusion of flowers I feel sure A.
alpina on Mt. Cenis must afford the most beautiful floral
display of the world. It looks so hardy and easy to
219
My Garden in Spring
manage when seen springing up in the mountain turf that
I am rather disappointed that so far only one of my care-
fully-nursed plants has recovered its spirits enough to
flower ; but the one splendid white flower it gave me this
Spring makes me feel no trouble is too great that will help
them to grow strong.
220
CHAPTER XIV
The Iris Walk in May
THE northern bank of the New River provides us with
a long grass path and one of the most sheltered walks in
the garden. For it is protected from the cold winds by
the row of fine old Yews I have chronicled in an earlier
chapter, and the southern side is bounded by the river,
and so is open to catch all the sunlight, and the first Daisy
of the season always appears close to the water's edge on
the slope of the bank. The long beds that flank this path
were at one time monopolised by a dreary collection of
Laurels, Laurustinus, and the other dull things that former
generations planted so largely and called shrubbery, but
they have all disappeared to make way for my principal
collection of Irises, especially those of the Bearded section.
This group suffers much at the hands of catalogue makers,
and members of it are often dubbed German Irises, though
very few of those included under the heading have any
affinity with /. germanica. I have seen and heard them
called Rhizotomous a travesty of rhizomatous and all
the while the pleasant title of Bearded Flags is good
English and faithfully descriptive.
Three of these borders are very much overhung by
the old Yews, and of course the roots fill and drain them
very effectually, and though they lie so close to the river,
221
My Garden in Spring
not one drop of its water soaks through to them, for to
begin with Sir Hugh Myddelton saw to the proper con-
struction of its clay banks three hundred years ago, and
vigilant officials, first of the New River Company and now
of the Metropolitan Water Board, have ever since been on
the watch for weak spots and ready to apply fresh clay
when needed. So that in spite of the nearness of so much
water, these beds are about as dry and starved as any in
the world, and very few plants will grow in them so
happily as the Flag Irises.
Where the row of Yews ceases, the beds are wider and
more open at the back, and there is one between river and
pond that runs back a good way, and holds two fine old
Scots Pines, and a group or two of flowering trees. The
Chinese Almond, Prunus Davidiana, in both its pink and
white forms opens the season, often flowering in early
February, but sometimes in late January, when the Witch
Hazels race it for first place. Hamamelis arborea is always
the first of these, and its rich orange threads catch the
sunlight on bright days and make a brave show. Then
the newer H. mollis opens its rather larger blossoms, and
is followed by japonica and its variety Zuccariniana, which
have paler yellow flowers and show up well from a dis-
tance. These grow towards the pond side, but at that
period of leaflessness can be seen from the river bank
across the Iris bed and through the central group of
Crabs which later on completely hides them. A Siberian
Crab behind and two Pyrus Malus floribunda in front make
a lovely picture when full of flower, especially while 'the
/loribunda's buds are still round and crimson. Three
purple-leaved Birches rise just behind them and form the
222
Iris florentina in May. (Sec p. 223.)
The Iris Walk in May
background. A Judas tree, Cercis Siliquastrum, leans out
over the Irises, but not a very large specimen, as my forbears
forgot to plant one, and it is one of the trees that a thoughtful
great-grandfather should plant for his descendants. So
this is of my planting, but has grown quickly and flowered
well in some seasons, and seems to be an especially brightly
coloured variety, approaching a crimson, though not of so
deep a shade as the flowers of a glorious row I saw in full
bloom in the chief square of Corfu one Spring. The whole
front of this bed is planted with a band some 8 feet deep
and 20 yards long of Iris florentina, with every now
and then a clump of I. germanica among them. At first
it was all florentina, but a purple germanica got in by
accident, and I saw how greatly its presence improved the
general effect, which was rather too cold before, so I
planted others at regular intervals. When this bed is in
full glory in the middle of May it is as beautiful as
anything in the garden, whether viewed end on to get the
solid mass of blossoms or from the opposite bank to see
the line of grey and purple flowers reflected in the water.
Looking eastward you get the bend of the river as back-
ground, and the terrace with its beds of Darwin Tulips
reflected in it, and the other way looking down westward,
the view is blocked by a fine old Weeping Willow, growing
on the pond bank and hanging right over the grass path,
so that we have to keep an arch cut in it to make a way
through. Next to the Willow is a good specimen of the
Weeping Ash which carries on the series of arches, and
makes when in leaf a very pleasing colour-contrast with
the paler green Willow. The Weeping Willow is a tree
that is full of interesting associations, so we will sit on the
223
My Garden in Spring
seat under this one to review some of them. The use of
the Willow as an emblem of grief is older than the intro-
duction of the weeping variety, for most of our older
English poets have connected the ordinary Willow with
sorrow, and especially that of forsaken lovers. Shakespeare
writes of it in connection with grief at least eight times ;
and Ophelia fell into the stream when endeavouring to
hang her garland on a Willow. Was it then on account
of the wailing sound of the English name, or, as some
think, did the literary association arise from the Bible
translation of the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm :
" By the waters of Babylon we sat down ; yea, we wept
when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon
the Willows in the midst thereof " ? This latter seems
the most likely explanation I have met with. It has
frequently been asserted that the Willow growing along
the banks of the Euphrates is actually this Weeping Willow,
and on that account its scientific name is Salix babylonica.
Linnaeus certainly gave it the name under this impression,
and I must own to a feeling of disappointment in having to
bow to such great authorities as Messrs. Elwes and Henry,
who declare in their great joint work that the trees of that
Psalm are Populus euphratica, and that this Willow does
not occur now in Babylonia, and its original home is
Central and Southern China. But if this fond old belief
has to be abandoned, it is pleasant to have this tree thus
surely connected with the familiar one on the Willow
Pattern plates that has provided the name for that cele-
brated Chinese landscape design, in spite of the fact that
the acrobatic pair of forky-tailed birds and the wonderfully
fertile apple tree that bears such a crop of fruit without
224
The Iris Walk in May
a single leaf, are far more remarkable than the moribund,
sparsely-branched Willow. The date of its introduction
to England is doubtful, but it was before 1730, for it was
included as " S. orientalis, the weeping Willow vulgo "
in a catalogue of trees and shrubs of that date, and from
Dillwyn's Hortus Collinsonianus we learn " Mr Vernon,
Turkey merchant at Aleppo, transplanted the Weeping
Willow from the River Euphrates and brought it with him
to England and planted it at his seat at Twickenham
Park, where I saw it growing anno 1748. This is the
original of all the Willows in our gardens. In July 1765
I measured a Weeping Willow at Mr. Snelling's at
Godalming, Surrey, of about fifteen years' standing ; it
measured six feet in girth, or two feet in diameter, and
the height in proportion," and therefore we must not
credit Pope with its introduction, though we may still
believe the tale that he was visiting Lady Suffolk when
she received a present from Turkey which was bound
round by Willow twigs, and he noticed that some of them
were alive, and took them to plant, saying, " Perhaps these
may produce something which we have not in England."
One of them grew in the garden of his villa at Twicken-
ham into the Weeping Willow afterwards so celebrated,
and which was cut down in the year 1801, by the then
owner of the villa, because he was so much annoyed by
the numbers of people who came and asked to see it.
Shortly after this the Weeping Willow became associated
with Napoleon. When General Beatson was Governor of
St. Helena, he had some trees sent out from England to
plant in the island, and a Weeping Willow was among
them, and had grown into a fine tree by the time of
225 P
My Garden in Spring
Napoleon's imprisonment on the island. He had a seat
placed under it, and frequently sat there, as it was close
to a spring, the water of which he liked to drink. About
the time of the Emperor's death, a storm shattered the
tree, and Mme. Bertrand planted some cuttings of it round
Napoleon's grave. Before the opening of the Suez Canal,
ships touched at St. Helena on their way home from the
East round the Cape of Good Hope, and the passengers
generally visited Napoleon's tomb and brought away
cuttings of the Willow, which quickly rooted in a bottle of
water, and were ready to be planted by the time they
reached England. Several trees in this neighbourhood
are known to have been brought in this way from St.
Helena, and I believe the tree here was a cutting from one
of them. An Arabian legend tells that the Weeping
Willow sprang from the tears David wept when he re-
pented of the murder of Uriah.
It is a favourite plant throughout the temperate
regions for planting in cemeteries. The pendant branches
I suppose are thought to resemble the hanging head of a
mourner, and so we term such forms of trees weeping
varieties, but it always strikes me as unfair to associate
the Weeping Willow with grief. The grey-leaved Willows
are sombre and sad-looking in summer among green-
leaved trees, but S. babylonica is always the first of decidu-
ous trees to look green in Spring, remains a tender light
green all through the summer, and is often one of the
latest to shed its leaves, and has the appearance of a
flourishing, happy, and gaily-clad tree for a longer period
than most others. It is a curious fact that, unlike the
other weeping trees, Ash, Beech, Elm and so forth, of
226
The Iris Walk in May
which the upright forms are the commoner, the supposed
upright form of 5. babylonica known as var. pekinensis is
exceedingly rare, and has been but lately introduced to
Kew.
Now, then after this rest on the seat under the Willow,
let us cease our musings over dead poets and emperors
and get back to the flowers. Either end of the Iris
ftorentina bed is rounded off by one of the two bays
formed by the pond ; the Willow benefits by rooting into
one of these, and the other helps a clump of Gunnera
chilensis, as we nowadays must call G. manicata, the finest
of its family, for though its leaves are not so much indented
as those of G. scabra, its longer petioles raise them some
foot or two higher. In May these leaves are not fully
developed, but, unless sharp frosts have been worrying
them, should be large enough to be worth looking at and
yet not too large to hide the huge cone-shaped heads of
insignificant little flowers which show up more then
than at any other time. I like to leave one or two of
these heads to show what sort of flower these plants
think fit to produce, each floret about the size of a
housefly's head, while a leaf is five feet across and on a
stalk six feet or more high. But I cut off the remainder
of the dozen or so flower-heads that my clump produces,
as I think their loss encourages it to put its strength into
the leaves.
A round bed in the turf comes between the pond and
river here, and a fastigiate Hawthorn grows in its centre
and makes a good contrast to the Weeping Ash of
the other bay of the pond. Now we will turn to the
left and follow the pond edge until we get a view right
227
My Garden in Spring
across its width to the stone steps. I built them out of
the debris of an old house that was pulled down on an
outlying part of the estate. The old doorsteps, copings,
and window-sills and some black and white hall flooring
have met again here, and look as though they had been
quarried for the purpose, and that some centuries ago,
now that various plants have sprung up in the cracks and
holes. They make a convenient place to stand a collection
of Agaves, Aloes, and other specimen succulent plants
during the summer ; the first arrivals, Agaves and Agapan-
thus in tubs had just been placed there when the photo-
graph facing p. 1 48 was taken. The large Bog Myrtle on the
left bank behind the clump of Scirpus lacustris is a fine
specimen of which I am very proud. Round its feet I
grow a collection of various forms of Caltha palustris, and
one of the best is var. semi-plena, not quite so heavy as the
other doubles. But all of them look well from the windows
of the house as seen growing on the water's edge and
reflected in it. It is astonishing how many forms there
are of this plant. Monstrosa, fl. pi., is the earliest to
flower here, and makes a compact mass of glowing yellow
bloom very wonderful when doubled by reflection in water :
var. purpurascens is a deeply coloured single form with
purple stems, very rich and effective. Tyerman's var.,
a large pale but clear yellow form, has the most perfectly
formed flowers : var. sibirica has small flowers and a
habit of rooting at the ends of the long stalks that bear
them, so that it soon founds a colony, and seems to prefer
to grow in shallow water, and so carries out the golden
effect further from the bank. A minor form I found in
the New Forest keeps its character here, and flowers late.
228
The Iris Walk in May
A somewhat similar one from Ingleborough, that Mr.
Farrer led me up to see and advised me to collect,
is interesting in that it has the appearance of the rare
northern C. radicans, with sagittate leaves, but it does
no radio-ing as do the true species and var. sibirica
and the emperor of the whole family, C. polypetala. I
do so greatly regret that the introducer to Britain of
this last noble plant denies the lovely legend that was
invented about it, and declares that the Vatican gardener
willingly presented portions of it to Miss H anbury, and
of course once it had reached La Mortola everyone knows
how generously it would be distributed. It was such a
good lie that I still try to believe it. I dare not grow
this giant among the others, or it would soon be all giant
and no others, so it has a corner of the pond to itself.
The white species of Caltha, C. biflora, C. leptosepala, and
C. rotundifolia, are in a choice corner of the rock garden
as they are such neat growers, but alas ! very stingy in
giving me any of their Grass of Parnassus-like flowers.
Right about turn and back to the river bank, please,
and on our left we find the Iris borders again. It is too
early for their great show of bloom, but the race of
Intermediate Irises raised and distributed by Mr. Caparne
of Guernsey come out in late May. Those I like best
are Golden Fleece, a large-flowered free form like a soft
yellow florentina ; Edith, a starch blue with darker shadings,
and Ivorine, creamy white. All of these have very showy
orange-coloured beards. The beds are mostly edged with
dwarf Irises, which keep up a succession of flowers from
the beginning of April to the end of May. These dwarf
forms have been known as pumila varieties, but except
229
My Garden in Spring
for the two pale blue forms that open the season for
bearded Irises, there is not a true pumila among them.
Chamaeiris has provided several purple and yellow
forms, and /. Reichenbachii others, all of which have un-
branched flower stems. /. aphylla gives us innumerable
shades with many flowered stems, and under this name are
now included the rich purple, blue-bearded plant we used to
call /. Benacensis, and that strange, dingy-flowered thing
formerly known as /. pumila gracilis. The colour is about as
lovely as the waistcoat of a defunct toad, being a pale buff
bun-bag shade, mottled irregularly with smoky grey, but it
flowers with such freedom that one can hardly see leaves
for flowers, and in the afternoon sunlight a length of it
planted as an edging lights up in such a charming way that
I always enjoy the effect thus produced, especially where
the flower-stems fall out over the grass path. It is also
good for cutting, for even the youngest buds will open in
water, and they are much lighter and more pleasing in
colour when opened in a room. The best of this section
is a garden-raised plant known as Leander, a really good
yellow, and very floriferous ; Bluebeard and Blanche an-
nounce their colours in their names, and are good com-
panions for Leander. The old blue germanica is a
wonderfully useful plant, quite the best tempered and
most generous I ever met for dry, overhung, or starved
positions, therefore it appears in large bands and masses
at the back of these borders round the old Yew trunks, and
is a grand bit of colour when in full flower. The purple
form known as Kharput does almost as well under this
studied neglect, but its flower-stems being taller it is inclined
to drive forward towards the light and then to fall over.
230
The Iris Walk in May
It has the longest fall of any Iris I know. Here and there
among the broad-leaved flag Irises appear the long, narrow
leaves of the Little Widow, La Vedorina of Italian gardens,
no longer allowed to be an Iris, and obliged even to change
her sex and reappear as Hermodactylus tuberosus. What
a pity it is that the question of votes for women cannot be
as easily settled by allowing Mary and Jane to appear on
the register as Tom and Harry. I love this weird little
flower, made up of the best imitation I have ever seen in
vegetable tissues of dull green silk and black velvet in fact
it looks as if it had been plucked from the bonnet of some
elderly lady of quiet tastes in headgear. I am fond of
picking just enough for a vaseful to stand among other
vases holding Daffodils ; both the sombre Little Widow
and the gay bachelor Daffs gain by the contrast.
A portion of one of the Iris beds was taken out to a
depth of three feet and then treated as nearly as we could
arrange it in imitation of the wonderful hollow of shell-
sand among the sand-hills outside Haarlem where the
celebrated Regelio-cyclus Irises have their happy home
under the protection of Mynheer van Tubergen. I have
no shell-sand and no dunes, but my favourite birdcage
variety of sand and the screening Yew trees are used as
substitutes. We, as well as the Dutch, have cows, so we
can provide the same form of nutrition for the Irises here
as that which agrees so well with them in Holland. The
lower portion of this hole we fill with manure collected
directly from the meadows where the cows are browsing,
and then cover it with about six inches of the yellow sand
in which lie the rhizomes of the precious Irises, while
their roots can wander down and feed fatly. Artemis,
231
My Garden in Spring
Hera, Charon, and Isis were very beautiful this May after
two years in the sand, and Gladiolus atroviolaceus, a dainty
Spring-flowering species of lovely amethyst colouring,
shares their bed and seems to enjoy the same treatment.
I think more could be made of this layered mixture of
sand and manure for voracious but easily-rotted plants.
I am now trying a few of the Oncocyclus species here, and
in this, their first year, we rejoiced in fine blooms of
susiana, &c., but I can hardly hope to solve the difficulty
of their cultivation so easily.
Of course Irises are to be found in other parts of the
garden, but these beds are so well suited for those that
love drought and heat, such as the Bearded Flags, that
they contain the main collection, and those that prefer a
cooler root-run find it elsewhere. /. longipetala and its
near relations, for instance, are planted among herbaceous
plants, and are very useful for flowering in late May, and
good for cutting. The Crocus frame has been found to
be the only satisfactory home for /. Sisyrinchium, the
most widely distributed species of the whole family. I
have collected it in Egypt, where it is so abundant on the
lower flats of desert round Cairo that it colours the land-
scape with a purple haze for miles from noon to teatime,
just while the fugacious flowers are open. It has been
said that it is the flower a business man never sees, except
on Sundays and Whit Monday, for when brought to
England it still adheres to its hours of opening and closing
as punctually as a public-house. The little flowers are
very lovely when you do see them, and so many are pro-
duced on one scape that a good succession is kept up. I
found some charming white-flowered ones in the desert,
232
Eucalyptus cordata. (See p. 285.)
The Iris Walk in May
but they have long since disappeared, and only the purple
type with its conspicuous white-spotted falls now appears
in the frame. I have had it sent to me from Spain, Malta,
and Afghanistan, but can see no difference among them.
Iris mellita flowered well this year in the rock garden in
early May. It is very dwarf, with large, well-formed flowers
of a dull rosy plum colour, but very distinct and pleasing,
quite welcome to its sunny ledge, and too small in stature
to be trusted even in the very front of the Iris beds.
I hope in another volume to lead you along these beds
on a June day among the pallidas and other summer
glories, but now we will pass by them, and try not to
tread on the Fantail pigeons that will walk under our feet,
leave the Lunatic Asylum on our left, gaze for a minute
or two at the fine bole of the isolated Yew, the last of the
row in this direction, a pillar of clustered columns that I
am never tired of admiring, and so past the first of the
leaden ostriches that guard the bridge over the river, and
then looking through the ivy-clad arch into the kitchen
garden I hope the stretch of May-flowering Tulips under
the wall will hold your attention long enough to let me
turn over a page and begin a new chapter.
233
CHAPTER XV
Tulips
BEFORE I can permit you to go through the archway and
down by the Tulip beds I want to air some of my views about
Tulips in general, so let us lean on the iron rail of the bridge
for a while. It is a very good resting-place in mid-May,
for just then it commands the two best views of Tulips in
the garden. To our left we can see the long line of choicer
sorts growing in a narrow bed under the fruit wall. We
look all down this long bed, in which several hundreds of
varieties are grown, and seen through the archway the mass
of colour is a fine sight on a sunny day. We try to group
them in their classes and then again by colours, so that
those nearest to us are all Darwins and pink or rose
coloured, next come purple and then crimson Darwins,
and following them, further away still, are Cottage Tulips,
and then the English to finish with. Turning our heads
to look straight along the course of the river, we see a
stretch of old Yew hedge on our immediate left running
parallel with the river bank and starting from the right-
hand side of the arch that leads to the kitchen garden and
the Tulip beds. The river takes a long curve here, and
about half-way along this bend the Yew hedge divides,
turning down at a right angle to the path and river, and
making room for a terraced garden before the correspond-
234
Tulips
ing second portion of Yew hedge, with a similarly down-
turned end, is reached. In my childhood's days the space
between these two hedges was filled by a steep grass slope
very suitable for rolling down when no nurse was on guard.
Then a wall was built at the foot of the slope and filled in
behind with soil and the Terrace formed. It is backed by
a low parapet with a wide stone coping, on which a row
of stone vases stands all the year and a large collection of
succulent plants in pots during the summer months.
Stone steps lead down to the kitchen garden at both ends,
and between them are fifteen box-edged beds and several
stone vases. A stone seat in the centre is made out of
portions of the balustrade of Old London Bridge, and
three of the balusters stand at the heads of the flights of
steps and bear stone vases. I found them hidden away
among the shrubs here, but could only find three, so one
has for its fellow a stone group of The Three Graces with
a stone vase on their lovely heads. These beds are filled
with Tulips for Spring, and when at their best look very
well viewed from the bridge, and reflected in the river.
They are backed by flowering fruit trees below the wall,
and then the trees of the park rise up behind on the side
of the hill. So rest here and gaze while I tell you that in
this garden the word Tulip stands only for true species
and the May-flowering garden varieties, for I have long
ago lost every scrap of affection for the early-flowering
garden varieties that are still the most conspicuous Tulips
in most public parks and many gardens. I cannot afford
them here space is too valuable, and though of low price
they are costly in the end, because very few of them find a
sufficiently congenial home in an English garden to think
235
My Garden in Spring
it worth their while to settle down and produce a good
flowering bulb for a second year. They are dumpy, easily
destroyed by the bad weather they are almost certain to
meet with in April, and need to be renewed or largely
reinforced annually from Dutch-grown stocks to give a
really good effect. I make an exception in favour of a few
of intermediate season of flowering combined with good
constitution that are neither dumpy nor difficult to keep,
and these I should not like to be without. They flower
about the last week of April and the first in May. The
variegated form of Yellow Prince that lives in Tom Tiddler's
ground is one. White Swan is fairly tall, and bears a
beautiful white flower good for borders or cutting. Thomas
Moore is an old favourite and a charming shade of soft
orange, and Couleur Cardinal is a fiery scarlet when fully
open, but in bud and when half expanded has a wonderful
plum-like bloom on its crimson external ground-colour. Mr.
Van Waveren once told me that he bought the stock of this
Tulip when it was first offered. It was one of his earliest
purchases, and he gave rather a high price for it. His
father, who was present at the sale, asked, " What fool has
bought that ? " and was very angry when he learnt that it
was his son. It proved to be a wise investment, however,
and has been for many years the best of all red Early Tulips.
When I can speak of a plant as the Tulipa something-or-
other it is of course more precious to my botanical mind,
and I should like to grow every species of Tulipa, even the
starry green and white early flowering ones such as biflora
and its near relations, one of which tries to make a floral
display in December, but has been so severely snubbed
by the Clerk of the Weather that I fear its courage is
236
Tulips
evaporating and it will end the struggle by dying of a
broken heart. These look more like some Star-of-Bethle-
hem than a Tulip, so I feel the real Tulip season commences
with the appearance of T. Kaufmanniana. Plant it six
inches deep at least, and leave it alone, and every March its
large, water-lily-shaped flowers should herald in the Tulip
days. It varies from white to crimson, and on the way
can be pure rich yellow flushed outside with red. Many
varieties have been selected and named ; aurea and coccinea
the two finest are very dazzling and wonderful when
fully open in the sunshine. I believe in all its forms it
has the deep yellow base that helps to make it look like a
water-lily on land. T. dasystemon has a somewhat similar
appearance on a smaller scale. It is dwarf, and a good
bulb will bear several flowers which are pure glistening
white when open, with a very bright yellow centre, but
when closed they are dull and green and still look like
some small Nymphaea bud.
It is a charming plant for the rock garden, and is easy
to grow. T. linifolia and T. Maximowiczii are so much
alike that it is very hard to distinguish them, but one need
not grumble at whichever comes under either name, for
both are brilliant scarlet with a black base, of beautiful
salver shape when open, and have the neatest possible
habit and narrow leaves with waved margins. They do
not increase much, but keep in health for many years if
occasionally lifted and cleaned by the removal of some of
their old jackets. A very curious tuft of woolly hairs orna-
ments the top of the bulb, and is worth noticing. Batalinii
is very closely related to these two, and differs chiefly in
the colour of its flowers, which are of a lovely soft butter-
237
My Garden in Spring
yellow, but also in increasing well by offsets. Seedlings
vary in colour a good deal : I have had buff, salmon, and
orange-coloured forms, and one almost as scarlet as linifolia,
but the base was a light slate grey, not nearly so deep in
colour as in linifolia. It is quite possible, though, that these
colour varieties may be hybrids. One of them was selected
some years ago and named Sunset, and received an award
at a Temple Show, and I was delighted when I found its
exact counterpart among some of my seedlings. T. Batalinii
is one of the few Tulips that will sow itself in the rock
garden. T. firaestans is a great beauty of pure scarlet, and
when robust bears two or more flowers on a stem. Two
varieties of it are known, and the earliest and best is called
var. Tubergeniana. It makes such an early appearance above-
ground that it is best planted in a sheltered position facing
west or south-west, where it will not be tempted into growth
too soon, and the morning sunshine will not fall on its downy
leaves while they are still frozen. I have a clump in the
rock garden sheltered by some dwarf conifers that in most
seasons flares out in its glowing vermilion before one has
such a Pomegranate-blossom colouring elsewhere in the
open. T. primulina is a refined little many-flowered species,
and very charming when open in sunshine, but is rather
shy about showing off its charms, and too green outside
to make much show when closed. T. stellata is the
Himalayan representative of the well-known T. Clusiana,
the Lady Tulip, and like it runs about too much at the
root making small bulbs, and therefore seldom sends up
enough flowers. When they do appear they are very
lovely, star-shaped and of a soft sulphur shade, with a
deep red base and rosy tints on the outside of the segments,
238
Tulips
T. oculus solis is rare in English gardens, but grows plenti-
fully round Florence, and it was from thence I obtained it.
It appears to be impossible to buy the true plant from
nurserymen, as T. praecox is so largely grown under the
other's name. Praecox is a good thing, but is almost
always damaged in our gardens by the frosts that worry
its large, early flowers. It is taller than oculus solis, and
has lighter red flowers, which are greenish on the outside
of the three outer segments and wider than they are long.
The true oculus solis is deep crimson, and has long, pointed
segments ; the basal eye is composed of a greater pro-
portion of black and less of yellow than that of praecox, and
it is also wise enough to wait for finer weather to open
its flowers in.
I must not attempt to describe all the species of
Tulipa I tuck away in the rock garden and choice corners
of sheltered beds, but cannot leave out two which are
special favourites. T. Fosteriana is one, and so brilliantly
coloured that at times I think it almost too gorgeous.
The vivid scarlet, with the pure yellow or black and
yellow of the eye, is absolutely dazzling in the sunlight,
and the flowers are so very large for their height ; but
a long bed of it in Zwanenburg Nursery at Haarlem
is one of the most marvellous floral displays I have ever
seen. It is none too vigorous here, and has to be care-
fully nursed in the peach-house border, where only rare
or tender treasures are admitted. I will close the list of
species with the latest of all, Tulipa Sprengeri, an elegant
and tall species with crimson-scarlet flowers ; but it is
always rather sad to see the first one open, for it means
the close of the Tulip season, and that a day or two onward
239
My Garden in Spring
the hot sun and old age will tell on the Darwin and
English Tulips that still remain, and it will be time to go
round snapping off the fat green seedpods. It is rather
fascinating to place a forefinger on the stalk, and then,
pressing it towards you, bend over the seed head with your
thumb in the opposite direction, until you feel the sudden
snap with which the juicy stalk breaks, and it is good to
think that you are thereby aiding the ripening of a fat
bulb for next season, but I much prefer gently opening
the segments of a half-expanded new variety to see what
sort of eye it has, and feeling that its full beauty is still to
come. Well, "them's my sentiments" about earlies and
species, and now we had better move on and look at the
May flowerers before snapping-off time comes upon us.
First, then, to the Terrace beds. The shape of the first
one we come to is a semicircle, and it is bounded on the
straight side by a dry wall built up by the side of the
flight of steps and which has a cascade of Rosa Wichuraiana
hanging down over the stones and mingling with Othon-
nopsis cheirifolia, a good, grey-leaved, succulent plant that
thrives in this dry garden in a way that often astonishes
people from warmer but moister climates. It is a large
bed, and takes a good deal of filling, so we use three kinds of
Tulips of orange shades, La Merveille, Billietiana " Sunset,"
and Gesneriana aurantiaca, but, excepting this and the two
central beds, all the others are filled with one variety only.
Thus the next contains Mr. Farncombe Sanders. Tall,
and of dazzling rose-scarlet with immense blooms, I do not
know a better Tulip for distant effect, and can only charge
him with one fault, and that is, he loses his head in sudden
danger, for a heavy shower coming quickly after sunshine
240
Four White, Rayless Violas :
Purity
Mrs H. Pearce
Mad. A. Gray
Snowflake
Tulips
catches the immense flowers half open and weights them
with water till they bend over and snap, and I have seen
a bed decimated in this manner in a few minutes. A bed
of Clara Butt comes next, and her lovely, soft, warm pink
blends well with the scarlet on one side and the deep rich
maroon-crimson of King Harold in the next bed. The
fine old scarlet Gesneriana, with its wonderful blue eye, is
one of the most effective of all Tulips, and so fills two
beds on this terrace, and looks very well between King
Harold and a bed of the still deeper brown-purple of
Philippe de Comines, described in bulb lists as velvety-
black. Next we come to the two circular central beds on
either side of a fine tripodal stone vase, and these are
filled with two yellow varieties in alternating rings. Retro-
flexa flowers first and goes over rather too soon, so
Parisian Beauty, which is a later bloomer, then takes up
its duties and keeps the yellow beds bright to the end. We
have generally had a bed of La Noire for the next, but
although it looks well next to the yellow, it is too dark to
be effective from a distance, and most likely will be re-
placed by something lighter next season. Europe is my
favourite of the glowing orange-salmon shades ; it is one
of the few Darwins with a pure white base, and the bed
devoted to it is a lovely sight when full of its flowers.
The next bed we thought rather a bold venture when we
first planned it, for we were half in doubt whether the
cool lilac tint of Erguste would look well between the two
salmon scarlets, Europe of the last bed and Laurentia of
the next, which are very similar in general outside appear-
ance, but Laurentia differs in possessing a rim of pale blue
round the white of the base. However, we were delighted
2 4 I Q
My Garden in Spring
with the effect both when standing among the beds and
also from a distance. I have long preached that Erguste
is the best of the lilac Darwins, but many people think
otherwise and cry up The Rev. Ewbank. I must confess
that I am rather particular, and I dislike any Darwin that
has a paler edge to the segments, and a dingy grey look
about the central darker portion, and I find both of these
unpleasing features in Ewbank. To my mind they make
it look faded and weary even when young, whereas Erguste
is as nearly self-coloured throughout as one could expect,
and looks as clean and fresh as a newly washed and
starched lilac sunbonnet, until the segments are ready to
drop. All these lilac Darwins seem to inherit one fault
with their colour, they are more open to flattery than
their red brethren, and the west winds of Spring can per-
suade them that they are indispensable and the world is
waiting for them, and that they must hurry up at once, and
they generally push out leaves sooner than they should.
The flowers of purple and lilac Darwins, as a rule,
open before those of other colours, but that could be
forgiven them, and their particular foolishness and un-
forgiveable sin lies in starting into growth too soon.
Last winter was very bad for them in that respect. The
west wind roused them in their beds before Christmas,
and in a lying spirit declared it was half past winter and
time to get up ; their hot water was provided by warm
showers, and they popped their noses out of the curtains
and found it was so pleasant and muggy that they grew
away as fast as they could, and so had large, tender
leaves and exposed buds by the end of March that would
have done them credit a month later ; all those bitter winds
242
Tulips
and cold hail-showers of last April bruised and worried
them, and large patches of decay began to show themselves,
and then the dreadful ravages of the disease that Tulip-
growers call " fire " spread through the bed, and ate into
the flower-stems, and robbed us of the fine effect we had
enjoyed the season before. Another bed of Gesneriana
follows Laurentia, and then one of elegans alba, one of the
most lovely of Spring flowers. I love the pointed shape
of this and its sisters, elegans, fulgens, and retroflexa.
They have been named as though they were wild specific
forms, but I was told by a Dutch grower that he had
spoken to an old man who remembered the first appear-
ance of all four of them in one seed-bed in Holland.
It is supposed that they are crosses between T. acuminata
and some other form of Gesneriana, the pointed reflexing
character of the flowers coming from acuminata, which
from its curious, long, slender segments has gained the
name of the Chinese Tulip I imagine because they suggest
the finger-nails of a mandarin. Elegans alba is much more
like a white form of fulgens than of elegans in its greater
height, later time of flowering, and less recurved segments.
These are pure white, beautifully edged with the finest
imaginable wire-edge line of crimson. It is very effective
in this bed, but equally good for planting in borders among
herbaceous plants. The last of the Terrace beds has for
many years been filled with the white-eyed Gesneriana that
has two names, Gesneriana albo oculata and Rosalind. It
is rather later than the others on the Terrace, and I must
confess of too blue a rose colour to go anywhere but at
the end, and I expect you can guess that the white bed
is placed next to it on purpose to cut it off from the
243
My Garden in Spring
scarlet and salmon shades. Everybody admires it when
thus isolated, especially with the evening sunlight shining
through it, but in all lights the purity of its white base,
with a wee touch of ivory in its very eye, is wonderfully
satisfying against the vivid rose segments. It appears to
have one of the best constitutions of all, and once pur-
chased should never fail to fill its allotted space and pro-
vide offsets for growing on as well. All these beds have
to be lifted annually to make way for summer bedding
plants, and it is therefore necessary to get the Tulips ripened
off as early as possible. So as soon as the segments fall
I snap off the seed-heads, and it is wonderful how soon
one can lift after the loss of their seedpods has removed
all inducement to keep their roots actively at work. We
apply the old test of Tulip-growers of bygone days, and as
soon as we can curl a flower-stem round a finger without
its snapping feel it safe to lift the bulbs and lay them in a
dry bed of light soil to ripen off. With this treatment we
can generally rely on sound, large bulbs for another season,
but we keep a certain number of offsets planted up in the
kitchen garden to draw upon should one of our Terrace
varieties fail in size or number. So let us turn down the
steps at this end of the Terrace and go past these beds of
offsets. Many varieties we shall see are flowering freely
from the small bulbs, but though as a matter of course the
blossoms are not so fine as those from full-sized ones, they
are very useful for cutting. Turning to the left, we pass
the Strawberry beds, and then the range of vineries and
the Crocus frames we visited in February, and so reach
the wall and the long bed of Tulips. I have generally
planted it in alternate rows of Tulips and Carnations for
244
Tulips
economy's sake, on the same principle as the excuse of the
child rebuked for extravagance in eating butter and jam
on one piece of bread, that it was economical to make the
same slice do for both. But this year we tried separating
the quondam partners, a::d were rather pleased at being
able to harvest the Tulips earlier than Carnation-layering
time, and to manure and crop the vacant ground to get it
ready for next season's bulbs. By this route we come first
to the English varieties, the very lite of the Tulip world,
for after the Dutch, Flemish, and French florists had de-
veloped the Tulip to a certain standard, the English florists
took it in hand, and became much more exacting in their
requirements, and succeeded in producing a strain of more
symmetrical, cup-shaped flowers with purer bases and
ground colours than had been known before.
The love of the English Tulip may be an acquired
taste, but I am sure it is really good taste, and just as an
art connoisseur will turn away from showy, meretricious
objects to a really fine piece of work even though it may
need looking into and handling to appreciate its best points,
so will anyone who compares many Tulips, and has access
to really well-grown English florists' varieties, grow to love
the beautiful proportions and delicate featherings or rich
contrasts of the best of them more than any gorgeous
display of Darwins. Not that I wish in any way to dis-
parage Darwin Tulips for garden display, or even for
cutting for large vases in halls and large rooms. But one
could not hang the walls of a picture gallery with Limoges
enamels instead of pictures, nor banish the Apollo Belvedere
from his pedestal in the Vatican to make room for a Japanese
netsuke, and so there are no English Tulips on the Terrace,
245
My Garden in Spring
but here they are at the end of the Tulip beds to linger
over and enjoy, and to cut for some small, good old
glass vases for the dinner-table, or the writing-table in
my own sanctum, and for these purposes nothing lilia-
ceous can vie with them. I am sorry to say they are
not easy to grow in their best form here ; the Breeders
break too easily, and some of the finer Roses or
Bybloemen become flushed or coarse, but a few good
flowers appear each year among them and make us hope
to do better next time. Let us examine one or two care-
fully, that in case you need conversion to a true love for
them I may have a chance of effecting it. I wonder how
deeply you are steeped in Tulip lore ? If you prefer a
Rose fr. to a Rose fld. please skip the next page, but if
you do not understand those mystic words pray read on.
Now I will pick this exquisitely soft-rose coloured one. It
is labelled Annie McGregor, Breeder. Notice first the
proportions : in outline it is a sphere with the upper one-
third removed : see how smoothly rounded the edges of the
segments are, how clean and white the base is, and how
distinctly it ends and the rose colour commences. This
is the form in which this beautiful Tulip first appeared
when it flowered in the seed-bed many years ago, and it
and one called Mabel are still the best Rose Breeders
known. You think Breeder is an ugly name for such a
lovely flower ? Perhaps it is, but it has a meaning, and
tells us how that at one time these self-coloured Tulips
were not valued at all for their pure self-colour, but only
because they were the possible parents of striped forms.
For all seedling florists' Tulips are self-coloured as seedlings,
and remain so for a number of years, seldom less than six
246
Tulips
but sometimes many more, then a few bulbs of the stock
are liable to suddenly change (" break " is the technical
term for it), and the old ground-colour then appears as
stripes on whichever colour, white or yellow, was most
prevalent in the eye or base of the self-coloured Breeder.
Now look at the next row ; it is labelled Annie McGregor
Rose fld., and you will see that though exactly similar in
shape and size, and with the*same white eye, this form is
practically a white Tulip with finely-pencilled, rose-coloured
featherings round the edges of the segments, and up the
centre of each there is a broad band, called a flame, of the
same rose shade. This is the broken form of the same
Tulip, Annie McGregor, and would be shown in the class
for Flamed Roses : now you know what fld. means. The
next row is labelled similarly, but has " fr. " instead of " fld."
at the end, and you can see at a glance that the flowers are
much the same as the last, but the segments are pure white
except for the featherings of rose-colour round their edges,
and so are Feathered Roses this time, and I may tell you
that you are very lucky if you do find this last one as
I describe it, for it is precious seldom I can manage to
grow a perfect feather in this garden. Higher up the bed
you will find Byb. fld. on labels, and will notice that here
again we may have the same variety as a lilac self with a
white base or as a white flower feathered, or feathered and
flamed, with some shade of lilac or purple instead of rose,
and these bear the old Dutch name of Bybloemen. Further
on we have some selfs, purple, chocolate, or rich red and
almost scarlet, but in all of these the bases are bright
yellow instead of white, and when they break the ground-
colour becomes yellow with marvellous, rich tones of copper,
247
My Garden in Spring
bronze, black, brown, or crimson, mixing or lying alongside,
to form the feathers and flames. This group bears the
name Bizarre, and they also can be Breeders or fr. or fld.
Sir Joseph Paxton is one of the best, and a good instance
of a flower that can appear in all three forms of a Bizarre.
The flamed Sir Joseph is one of my greatest favourites, and
the colouring is like some grand old piece of buhl, and I
keep on turning such a flower round and round to try and
settle which of its segments is the most perfectly coloured
and the best to place towards me as I dine or write. I
believe the love for the English Tulip will some day revive
and perhaps grow into a rage, and that the noble little band
who keep up its cultivation and the Royal National Tulip
Society are doing a great work for future gardeners. How
many conversions has this sermon produced ? The outward
and visible sign of one is the posting of a letter to the
Secretary of the Society (W. Peters, Farcet House, Cam-
bridge) asking for full particulars and election as a member,
and help in the shape of a few bulbs to start your collection.
After the rows of English end we come to Cottage Tulips,
a very elastic term, for it includes all the late kinds that
are not true species, Darwins or florists' forms. I have
too large a collection to be fully described here.
The beautiful illustration (facing p. 176) shows two of
my favourites, but it is hard to pick out any and leave out
others in such a wonderful range of colours and forms.
Walter T. Ware is certainly the best deep yellow, Louis XIV
is a wonderful combination of rich plum-purple and golden
bronze, and looks as though shot with the two colours. Don
Pedro is a rich brown, John Ruskin long and egg-shaped
and apricot-orange shaded with rose and lilac, and as if that
248
Tulips
were not enough has an edge of yellow just the- shade of
a beaten-up egg. Sir Harry is a lovely mauve-pink, and
breaks into a still more wonderful thing known as Striped
Beauty, in which the original rosy-lilac shade has crimson
and cerise stripes added to it. There are many kinds of
various shades of yellow, reckoned as cottage varieties, and
some of them have been already mentioned as forming part
of the golden store of Tom Tiddler's ground, but a reserve
fund of some of the best is kept here. Pure whites are scarce;
Albion and L'Innocence are the best, but Picotee with a
rose-coloured edge, and Carnation with more and deeper
rose colour, are exquisite pale flowers, and this class includes
the two varieties of the Green Tulip, T. mriciiflora praecox
and tardiva ; the former and earlier one is the best with a
larger flower, and of a better and softer green ; the other
has a wide yellow edge to its segments and is not so pleas-
ing. The early one is very pretty when cut and grouped
with rose-coloured Tulips. Then we reach the Darwins,
and the first few rows here are like the horrid child's sweet
and were pink once, but have broken and so become what
the Dutch nurserymen have christened Rembrandt Tulips.
Some of them are very beautiful with bold splashes of
crimson and scarlet on a white ground, but when they
break they always lose a few inches of their stature, and I
am afraid some of their grand sturdy constitution goes too,
for they never seem as healthy as their breeder forms, the
Darwiris. Among the red Darwins Isis stands out as the
very brightest and best. La Noire is the nearest to black
I grow, and quite as near as one wants a flower to be.
Margaret is the palest pink I care about. Nigrette is a
curious and beautiful brown red, the Bishop the best bright
249
My Garden in Spring
purple and Faust the best dark purple. In among these
various kinds, and always in what we consider the choicest,
cosiest place, irrespective of what are its neighbours, we
plant my best beloved of all Tulips, a wonderful old Dutch
variety called Zomerschoon. It has a groundwork of old
ivory or softest primrose heavily striped and flamed with a
glorious,glowing salmon-red; the base is sulphur yellow,and
in the sunlight casts a primrose glow over the whole interior
of the flower, especially in a newly-opened blossom. It is
seen at its best in the morning sunlight, and when the first
blossoms open I find it hard to tear myself away from them,
so intensely do I enjoy the glow of the blend of salmon
and primrose tints in their cups. As the flowers age the
sulphur fades to ivory white and the red markings deepen
a good deal : they are still beautiful, but not so marvellously
glowing and subtle as in the day-old blossoms. It is a
very old Tulip, and I have a rather poor figure of it in a
Dutch book dated 1794, but it has always been scarce, as
it does not increase so fast as others, and so has always
been rather high in price, but the last two years have seen a
change, and now eighteen pence will buy a good bulb of it.
The tallest of all Tulips is T.fulgens, one of the pointed-
petalled set I have already mentioned. Three feet of stem
I should say would be its average height. It is a glowing
pure crimson, and its beautiful, soft-yellow base is too pale
to be open to an accusation of gaudiness even when seen
by the side of so bright a crimson. Some years ago I
planted a clump among some patches of Iris ochroleuca, and
the effect of the great, sword-shaped leaves of the Iris
among the tall Tulips was very good, but the group had to
be removed to make way for a new Yew hedge, and I have
250
Tulips
always meant to make another similar planting, but time
and space have not allowed it as yet. This grand Tulip is
good almost anywhere, and very suitable in a bed of tall
herbaceous plants, as it produces a grand mass of colour in
May, and is well out of the way before Delphiniums and
other tall plants are clamouring for head-room.
Like other Tulips planted in groups in the permanent
borders, it requires lifting and thinning every second or
third year, or the bulbs scrouge each other, and grow
smaller and weaker until nothing but leaves appear, and
Tulips are not worth space as foliage plants.
25*
CHAPTER XVI
My Rock Garden
MY rock garden is a home-made affair, that is to say I
planned, built, and planted it, and have had the chief hand
in caring for it for twenty years. When I say built I mean
I chose out the stone for each position, helped to move it
and generally gave it the final lift or shove, or jumped up
and down on the top of it, to fix it in place just as I
wanted it, but, of course, several heads and hands helped
me, especially with the large blocks and the excavating
and shovelling up of soil. It was formed a bit at a time,
and always under the belief that the present piece of work
was to be the very utmost extent that was likely to be
undertaken, and so of necessity it possesses many faults.
I can see that had it been planned as a whole I could have
greatly improved it, and as the oldest portion, which dates
from 1893, was my first piece of work of the kind, I have
learnt something since then. It is a rock garden but by
no means an alpine garden, for though alpine plants have
a first choice of places I have always been ready to plant
any bush or even tree in it, that I think will grow better
for the advantages of drainage and protection the chosen
site will afford it. I often say that I must reserve a new
wing for choice alpines only or clear out an older range
for them, then I come along with a choice young Euca-
lyptus in a pot, or one of the giants of the Eryngium
family such as E. serra or E. Lasseauxii, or some other
252
My Rock Garden
son of Anak ; a suitable cosy nook is given to the poor
homeless waif, and so long as plants flourish I cannot
bring myself to destroy their happiness. So do not ex-
pect the orthodox grouping of dwarf alpines, or even care-
fully-stratified stones, for I have never hesitated to stand
a large, flat block up on end tp form a miniature south
wall for tender sun-lovers, but I have always had the sense
to fill in the back of such an one with soil and continue
the rise above the stone, and so treated the bank looks
natural enough. I have used Kentish rag throughout,
and until my ship comes home with a cargo of more
guineas than I know what to do with I shall not change
it for mountain limestone. The rag weathers well here,
grows as much moss as I care about, and tones to a good
soft grey colour ; it has enough sandstone facing on some
blocks to make a little crumbling surface for some of the
plants to root into, and yet is solid enough to resist the
weather. It may flake a little its first winter, but not
sufficiently to do any harm.
Much of the rock garden is built on a steep clay bank
that Sir Hugh Myddelton constructed three hundred years
ago to support this loop of the New River and so carry it
round the valley instead of, as now, across it in pipes :
that means the upper edge of my rock garden must be a
straight line bounded by the walk along the riverside. A
second straight walk had been made along the foot of the
bank, and this also has had to be respected, but a triangular
portion of the meadow was cut off, in two bites and with
several years between each mouthful, and forms the main
expanse of rock garden and saves it from the stiff outline that
253
My Garden in Spring
would have been the result of only using the bank. We
reach the newest portion first, a good long stretch of bank
between the river above and the meadow below. In the
centre of this is the fish-hatchery moraine bed I have de-
scribed in a former chapter, and as the whole bank faces
due south such a sheltered home for new plants has filled
up with marvellous rapidity. I was obliged to plant a
screen of Hollies and other evergreens at the top by the
river-walk, as otherwise there would be no intervening pro-
tection between the rock garden and the North Pole. This
bank has had a year to get covered, and this May morn-
ing is full of flowers.
From a long way off one sees a glowing orange patch
that at close quarters turns out to be Meconopsis hetero-
phylla, the only member of the family that comes from
America. It is hard to beat when well grown, but an
annual, and unless self-sown is difficult to induce to grow
into a strong tuft. The plants we are looking at appeared
last autumn, and though they looked very sad during cold
and wet spells of winter weather, they battled through,
keeping a few of their many-patterned leaves green in spite
of frosts and slugs, and starting off into rapid growth in
Spring. Now they bear a thick crop of orange coloured
flowers of a particularly beautiful shade that is greatly
improved by the deep chocolate-red eye. Above them
Linum arboreum is a solid sheet of the clearest Daffodil
yellow, very effective wedged between two large blocks of
grey stone. Helianthemum umbellatum is full of its dainty
white flowers, and one of the most refined and beautiful
members of this sun-loving family, and very different in
254
My Rock Garden
its very neat, narrow leaves and upright growth from the
sprawling, coarser-growing kinds. Its near relation, H.
libanoticum, which is practically a yellow-flowered counter-
part of it, and the still more dwarf lunulatum, are equally
neat growers.
At the foot of the steps that lead up to the moraines
Aquilegia viridi 'flora is in full bloom. It is a very unusual-
looking flower, for its petals are dark purplish-brown, and
its sepals a curious dull green that harmonises beautifully
with the dark circular petticoat. The spurs are long and
without hooks at their ends, and the anthers protrude and
add to the grace of the flower. There is a charming
figure of it in Jacquin's I cones Plantarum Rariorum. It
is not an easy plant to please, but in this spot it is as
happy as I ever saw it.
One seldom sees Lotus Tetragonolobus in England, but
it is well worth a place at the foot of the rock garden,
where it makes a cheerful green carpet for many months,
and now and then gives out a scent so much like cow's
breath that the first time I got a whiff of it I turned round
to look for the cow, and finding none traced the milky
odour to the plant. I do not understand the conditions
under which this scent is produced, for I often try to
smell it myself or present it to the noses of others and fail,
and then occasionally it is quite strong on the air even
without touching the plant. The large, solitary, pea-shaped
flowers are of a delightfully soft yellow, and in a garden
specimen are much more freely produced than those one
sees scattered here and there in the Alpine pasture. The
seeds are four-sided and bear prominent wings on each
2 55
My Garden in Spring
angle, and so have provided it with the majestically sono-
rous word once its generic but now reduced to its specific
name. When it was followed by siliquosus it was mightily
filling for a label, but sounded as though it might be an
efficacious spell against witches if pronounced impressively.
Viola bosniaca is a mass of bloom up among the higher
rocks, and has sown itself so freely that a dozen or so large
plants are staring at us with their friendly rosy faces. I
wish I could say the same of V. calcarata, which was
planted close by it and has grown into a yard-wide bed of
leaves of a Watercress appearance, and is bearing three
blooms and no promise of more. Yet these very plants
were solid bunches of flowers when I dug them up on Mt.
Cenis two years ago. Helichrysum bellidioides has lived
here through three winters, but was so badly cut that it
had all it could do to try and look green again during
summer, and found no time to waste on flowers until I
planted a bit at the foot of a stone facing due south and
gave it a lean-to of glass. The mild winter has favoured
it, and it is now thickly covered with pure white Daisies and
well repays the little extra trouble. A fine specimen of
Muehlehbeckia varians stands as the boundary post between
this newly-built rock bank and the older portion, mainly
devoted to succulent plants. I find it hardier than M.
complexa, and though it looks a bit shabby by the end of
the winter, after I have cut its hair and the warm rains
come and shampoo its head it is soon covered with its
characteristic fiddle-shaped leaves, and later in the season
produces heart-shaped ones as well, and bunches of minute
greenish flowers, but I have not yet had berries on it. It
256 ^
Four Yellow Violas : Redbraes Yellow Maggie Chinas
Klondyke General Baden-Powell
My Rock Garden
is trained up poles and is now about nine feet high. Here I
grow a good many of the giant Eryngiums, such as serra
with rosettes of green, two-edged saws, agavifolium with
sword-fish snouts for leaves, Sanguisorba with glaucous
grassy leaves and flower heads, anyone might be forgiven
for believing to be a true Sanguisorba ; Lasseauxii, the
giant of the family, with narrow leaves six feet long,
looking like some great Pandanus, and a set of queer
hybrids that defy classification and have taken up posi-
tions where I could permit them to remain and deve-
lop. A few good Yuccas share the bank with these,
and lead one's mind gently on to the Prickly Pears and
other Cacti, Bromeliads, Dasylirions, Agaves, and other suc-
culents for which the rest of this bank is reserved. We
must stop to admire two Oxalis species that grow among
the Eryngiums. Oxalis purpurea is full of flowers which are
large and crimson by courtesy, but rather close to magenta
I fear in fact, a colour I can forgive in an Oxalis though
not in a zonal Pelargonium. Just above it 0. brasiliensis
is only commencing to flower, and is a better shade of
crimson. These two have lived amicably in this nook for
many years, and are very brilliant in Spring, and look well
among the subtropical foliage around them, though neither
would be pleasing near scarlet flowers. Cereus paucispinus
is full of fat flower-buds promising a gorgeous patch of scar-
let for next month, and several of the Echinopsis section
of Cereus show grey tufts of wool where their large white
or pink flowers are to come. The young growths of the
Opuntias have not yet taken on the round outline that means
flowers or flattened out to show they are only fresh branches.
257 R
My Garden in Spring
It is too early in the year to fully enjoy this bank of
prickly things, so turn and look at the opposite side of the
path, for here one of the corners of the triangular main por-
tion of this rock garden has its commencement. A northern
slope is crowned with tall growing plants to give more shade
lower down. A fine specimen of silver-leaved Rue is now
very effective, the young leaves as white as ivory. A fine
purple effect is given by Clematis Pallasii fol. purpureis.
It has the habit and flowers, later on of course, of C. recta,
but is as rich in colour as a Copper Beech while its leaves
are young. The large spherical heads of Allium Rosen-
bachianum rise up beside it, and their mauve colouring is
charming against its purple leaves. The double Welsh
Poppy Meconopsis cambrica fl. pi. is rather inclined to play
the weed on the lower slope, and tries to smother Saxifraga
sarmentosa, which is as happy here round the feet of the
stones as it is in cottage windows, where it is known as
" Mother of Thousands." Ranunculus nyssanus runs about
freely, and its large varnished Buttercup flowers are good
with the deeper orange of the Poppy. Orchis sambucina
from Mt. Cenis is giving me half a dozen lovely sulphur
spikes charming in contrast with a colony of a good blue-
lilac form of Phlox divaricata, var. canadensis. Of course
my usual space-grudging views have led me to pack a hun-
dred and one other plants among these, so that the ground
is full of bulbs, Dianthus species, Primula marginata, P.
Auricula and several others, Saxifrages, Potentillas, and too
long a list to remember, let alone to write out, but at this
moment the effect is produced by those I have named as
being in flower. Such totally different styles of shrubs as
258
My Rock Garden
two Caraganas, a fine specimen of the mop-headed Bladder
Senna, Colutea arborescens, var. bullata, Viburnum bullatum,
Hedera conglomerate and a spreading tree of the pink double
Cherry J. H. Veitch, form the forest of the slopes and
ridge, and in their shade Ramondias have made some fine
rosettes. Anemone nemorosa forms are happy in a level
bay, and other woodland things like Trillium grandiflomm
and Snowdrops as well as a clump of Lilium Marhan find a
home.
We are now opposite an old ivy-covered summer-house,
that was here long before the rock garden was begun, and
tucked away under a fine old Thorn it is not too incon-
gruous to be left and utilised as a tool-shed and a refuge in
sudden storms. Opposite its door the main path turns down
the slope to the south, runs through the centre of the
triangle of rock garden and leads at the lower end to a
wooden bridge over a pool, and then through a meadow and
into the park, and as it forms the short cut between us and
my brother's house on the other side of the park it is a
rather wider path than is necessary in a rock garden.
Branch paths run right and left from it, and lead down into
two excavated hollows with high mounds to flank each of
them on all their sides, which mounds form the four some-
what parallel ranges of mountains that are the main portion
of the rock garden. We will take the left-hand path, and so
find a bank facing due south and a level bay at its feet full
of treasures, but we must only stop to notice a few of those
which are in flower now in May. Viola gracilis was first
revealed to me here. I got it from Sprenger of Naples several
years before it was generally discovered by English nursery-
259
My Garden in Spring
men, and it soon wedded with V. Munbyana and produced
several seedlings of hybrid origin. One of these caught
the critical eye of Mr. George Paul, and I gave it into his
hands, and he has sent it forth as strong young plants, and
named it Mrs. Bowles in memory of my mother. I still
keep a little colony of it here, as it flowers for just as won-
derfully long a period as Munbyana, and is a good purple
blue. The variety known as V. gracilis Purple Robe is much
like it, but neither so blue a shade nor quite so good a shape,
I think.
Erodiums are much to the fore among the rocks here.
E. amanum has begun its long flowering season, and looks
very pretty now with its silvery grey leaves and white
blossoms. It is a dioecious species, and the pistil-bearing
form is pure white, while the pollen-bearing male has pink
anthers and a few rosy lines in the throat and so is the
prettier flower, but one needs both to get seed and the
self-sown seedlings that I like to see it produce. Next to
it is a planting of young plants of E. chrysanthum, one of
the rarest and loveliest of this family. It closely resembles
the last species, but its leaves are more silky and more
finely cut, and its flowers are a most beautiful sulphur that
looks rather unusual on such silver foliage. In chrysan-
thum the sexes are as rigidly divided as in some Lutheran
churches, and here again the male or pollen plant has pink
anthers which greatly add to his beauty. I believe that the
hybrid between these two, E. lindavicum Sundermann, is
not uncommon in gardens where chrysanthum and amanum
are grown near one another, but it is not to be desired, being
intermediate in colour of flower, a dull yellowish-white, and
260
One of the slopes in the Rock Garden. (See p. 270.)
My Rock Garden
representing the spoiling of two good plants. Above these
Storks' Bills and in a crevice is one of the best of all
Houseleeks, Sempervivum rubicundum, which reverses the
general order of family colouring and has rich red leaves
with green tips. It is just now at its best for Spring colouring
and wonderfully bright, but is one of the plants that suffers
from too many friends, for all who come fall in love with it
and carry off a rosette, so that it spreads slowly in the crevice
but rapidly into distant gardens. On the level below are
some huge rosettes of S. Comollei, another really good one.
It makes rosettes as large as those of any Houseleek when
generously treated, five inches or more across and of won-
derfully beautiful colouring, glaucous green shot with blue
and purple, more like an Echeveria than a mere Houseleek.
Canon Ellacombe noticed this fine thing in the Jardin des
Plantes in Paris, received a rosette from there, and after
a few seasons was able to distribute it, and so it came
back with me after one of my visits to Bitton.
A curious plant grows at the corner here, Allium Dios-
coridis, often called Nectaroscordum siculum, a tall, strange-
looking thing to be one of the Garlicks. It possesses the
most pungent and evil smell of any plant I know, and
I enjoy breaking a leaf in half and getting my friends
to help in deciding whether it most resembles an escape
of gas or a new mackintosh. It is already throwing up
its curious heads of flowers ; at present they are enclosed in
a leafy bag looking like the bud of some very tall Narcissus.
Later on they emerge, and the buds hang down and open
a few at a time, but after flowering stand upright. The
flowers are a shrimp pink marked with green and dull red,
261
My Garden in Spring
and are very interesting because it regularly happens that
the first to open has eight perianth segments and anthers
to match, the next few have the normal six of a liliaceous
plant, but towards the end of the flowering it can only
afford the last few flowers four each. The true Linaria
hepaticaefolia is pretty running all about the level bed ; its
tiny leaves are those of Cyclamen ibericum in miniature, and
are similarly banded with white zones ; the little white
flowers are scattered among them very close to the ground.
Climbing about on the shady side of a rocky slope close
by is L. aequitriloba, which in many lists bears the name of
the other. It has purple flowers, and leaves, as the name
implies, of three distinct equal divisions like those of the
Ivy-leaved Toad-flax L. Cymbalaria, which it closely re-
sembles but on a much smaller scale. Now on our right
we get a brilliant mass of mixed Aubrietias, the result of
self-sown seedlings. Originally I planted Dr. Mules and
Bridesmaid here, and they both exist, but as grandparents
now among their descendants ; any objectionably violent in
colour were pulled up, and the rest left to fight it out or
agree amicably as they chose. Behind them Erysimum
Allionii sows itself freely among various dwarf Cytisus
bushes on the ridge, and its vivid orange is very good here
among several dark-leaved plants and against a flowering
mass of the pale lilac Veronica circaeoides. Near these
are the wonderful leaves of Allium karataviense, var. Ellisii;
their wonder consists in the extraordinary metallic colour-
ing they show when young, purple-violet on the under
side and steel-blue above with a deep red edge. They are
especially lovely when a few raindrops are caught in their
262
My Rock Garden
pleated folds, but the head of flowers is not worthy of this
early promise, and a very dingy affair, much too large for
its short stem. The other side of the walk calls for a glance ;
a group of the two heaths, Erica carnea and hybrida, crowns
the mound, and white Fritillarias have been making a pretty
contrast with its red flowers : both are passing over by now,
but some very good Camassia seedlings are taking their
place. The first I planted here were some named seedlings
of C. Leichtlinii, a pure white, and a very deep purple called
Purple Robe ; now seedlings have appeared in all directions,
and some are of very good deep blue and purple shades.
There are several large clumps of C. Leichtlinii in the
rock garden, both the typical cream-coloured one and the
lilac-blue variety, and if one sees them on an afternoon
when they have freshly opened a series of flowers they are
a fine sight, but sometimes I wish to impress a visitor with
their beauty and find never a bloom open ; yesterday's have
all faded and they make the plant look untidy, and the
next four or five buds on each stem will not open until the
late afternoon. A good-sized bush of Berberis Fremontii
astonishes many people who think it needs a wall to do
well. It grows in a very exposed position here, and is ex-
quisite when the crimson of the young growth contrasts
with the steely blue of its prickly little leaves. Corylopsis
pauciflora grows in a sheltered nook with Olearia num-
mulanaefolia, a Bush Ivy and a prostrate Juniper to keep it
company. The Corylopsis gives bunches of flowers like
Cowslips on fine twigs in early Spring, and then for the
next four months bears imitation Hornbeam leaves of
delightful shades of pink and red and tawny brown, more
263
My Garden in Spring
like Autumn than Spring tints, but in late Summer they
turn green and cease to be remarkable. Lower down is a
remarkably fine Dead Nettle not often seen, Lamium Orvala,
with handsome, deep-green leaves and flesh-pink flowers.
On the other side of the path is a plant of Orvala lamioides,
by some authorities considered the same as the Lamium,
but it has a very different habit and appearance, and leaves
that are tinged with red and much like those of a Coleus
and that colour finely in Autumn. Hereabouts grow
many Violas ; there are three forms of V. cucullata, a deep
blue, a white, and a pied, besides F. sorora, another American
species with light-blue flowers of great size, F. pubescens, the
largest flowered of the yellow Violets, and sagittata, a pretty
blue one. These are all tuberous rooted and die down each
Winter, after the manner of F. biflora, the wee yellow Violet
of the Alps, and its American representative, F. scabriuscala,
which scarcely differs from it except in having markedly
pointed instead of round leaves. I have one little tuft of
F. biflora with pale sulphur flowers that I brought from
the St. Gothard district, the only variant I have ever found
among the thousands of normal ones I have met with.
Much of the right-hand slope is carpeted with two forms
of F. canina, both given me by Mr. Wolley-Dod, one a
pure white and of very neat habit, which though it seeds
all over the place comes quite true from seed, the other
a pretty blue and white pied form, but which spreads much
less than the white. Another and larger white Violet I
believe to be of American origin, and either white
Riviniana or very near it. Dr. Lowe gave it to me many
years ago, and bade me remember that it was not the white
264
Sundial in the Pergola Garden. (See p. 288.)
My Rock Garden
Dog Violet, whatever people might say to the contrary. I
have also a starch-blue one from Wisley that is either a form
of it or some closely allied one. These banks are packed
with plants, but it would take a whole volume to mention
half of them, so we must move on and by turning to the
right can avoid walking into the pool, and rejoin the main
path.
We pass a collection of naturally dwarf trees and shrubs,
such as the pygmy forms of the Scots Pine and Spruce,
several Euonymous japonicus, and a Box or two of dwarf
habits. Ligustrum japonicum, var. coriaceum, and its sub-
variety involutum have grown into fine specimens, and
look wonderfully like dwarf Camellias. But the gems of
this corner are a dwarf Cedar of Lebanon, a variety
known as Comte de Dijon, and two of the small form of
Irish Juniper that I have seen in a catalogue as /. communis
hibernica compressa nana. The dwarf Willows, Salix re-
ticulata, S. herbacea, and the larger S. lanata are also here,
and each has a decided character of its own. The two first
are the lowliest of British shrubs, for although reticulata's
leaves are large and round, and with their footstalks stand
up two inches or more from the ground and the curious
brownish catkins, which closely resemble the Plantain-
heads that children play the game of Soldiers with, over-
top the leaves, yet the woody trunk of this minute tree
lies flat upon the ground, however aged and thick it may
be. Herbacea has very small leaves and thin twigs that
never rise up for more than an inch or two, while the
stem prefers to bury itself in the ground after the manner
of a root. Lanata should make a handsome bush of
265
My Garden in Spring
several feet in height, but seldom finds life in a garden
sufficiently worth living to stay there long enough to
exceed one foot. Its large, round, woolly leaves are
very striking, as they are of an unusual shade of grey-
green, but the male catkins are its chief glory, from the
moment they burst their bud-scales and appear as white
as snow till they have successively imitated blue Persian
kittens and yellow hairy caterpillars and, their pollen shed,
they fall to the ground. Several almost microscopic
plants, such as Arenaria balearica, Epilobium nummula-
rifolium, Mentha Requienii smelling so strongly of Pepper-
mint, Erodium Reichardii, and Veronica repens make carpets
under the small trees. At the corner of this bank Saxi-
frages behave better than in most parts of this dry garden,
and S. Burseriana, Salomonii, Elizabethae, oppositifolia,
and sancta are here, also taygetea looking like Soldanella
in leaf, and tenella, which I was told by its donor I should
not be able to keep long, but has been happy in this,
the original site I allotted it, for at least twelve years,
an instance of the inevitable happening of the unexpected.
I wish S. oppositifolia would do a little better here; it
occasionally flowers well and encourages me to plant
more, and then for a season or two may look brown and
bedraggled, in fact "a positive failure" as a lady once
called it. I sat down on a carpet of it to eat my sandwich
luncheon up in the Cottian Alps, last June, and looked at
the rosy cushions and longed to see a slope of the rock
garden similarly furnished, but though S. retusa has settled
down most amicably in the piped sand bed, and flowered
well this Spring, oppositifolia by its side is slowly dying.
266
My Rock Garden
Look at Allium paradoxum on your left : the little
transparent yellowish bulbils struck here and there among
the flowers look like Mistletoe berries. Spirea Thunbergii
at the opposite corner has been flowering ever since
Christmas, and is still full of blossom. It has grown into
a fine specimen, I believe chiefly due to the fact that I
give it a good clearing out of old wood each season just
after flowering. Did you catch a whiff of an unpleasant
smell like fish frying ? I often wondered how it was
possible to smell kitchen operations down here so far
from any house until I discovered it was the scent of
Cotoneaster multiflora, the umbrella-shaped specimen
growing on the top of the high mound. It is something
like the scent of Hawthorn, but much more unpleasant.
The tree is graceful, though, and of course the scent passes
away with the flowers, and they atone for their wickedness
by turning to good red berries in autumn. Among these
large cordate leaves you can find the weird blossoms of
Asarum Bealei, livid red with three tails, each one of
which is nearly three inches long, and close beside it
grows A. grandiflorum with very similar flowers, both of
them so uncanny and evil-looking that they would make
a suitable button-hole for the Devil. Claytonia siberica,
both pink and white, seeds about freely in this semi-shady
corner, and is comely and welcome now, but later on it
becomes aggressive, sprawls out in a chickweedy way that
proclaims its rather plebeian lineage, and reminds us of its
poor relation C. perfoliata, whose only beauty is the green
carpet it provides in hopelessly shady places during the
winter months.
267
My Garden in Spring
Hyacinthus amethystinus, both blue and white, lives and
seeds about on the sunny side of the main path, and
reminds me of a glorious day on Aero-Corinth when I saw
it peeping out among fallen blocks of marble.
Now the path passes between two sheets of water, or
so they might appear if carefully brought into the fore-
ground of a photograph. One is in an old circular lead tank
sunk in the ground and about six feet in diameter, another
heritage from the dismantled house. It grows the major
form of Ranunculus Lingua very well, three of Marliac's
Water-lilies, and Riccia fluitans, a curious water Liverwort
that floats about in tufts looking like green isinglass. It
also supports a family of rudd that a fish-loving friend
caught for me in Norfolk, and the largest of our water
snails, Limnaea stagnalis, which devours confervae and
respects phanerogamic plants, and so can be admitted
where our more plentiful L, auriculata must be excluded.
A huge French Edible Frog, one of several brought home
from foreign rambles, has settled down here, and generally
sits on the edge of the tank sunning himself, and can be
watched if cautiously approached, and his metallic eyes
and green striped back are good to see, but at any sudden
movement he takes a header into the pool in a moment.
We hoped great things of the other pool, and cemented
rocks together to form its sides, but it suffers from unac-
countable low tides occasionally, and is now full of Cyperus
longus and other grassy things. It is fed by a drip that
is the overflow from three other small pools further up
in the rock garden, and where this splashes down off an
overhanging stone I have planted a few moisture-loving
treasures. A maidenhair fern, Adiantum Capillus-Veneris,
268
My Rock Garden
from the Cornish cliffs is one, and has thriven amazingly
for some fifteen years, though often encrusted with icicles
in winter. The mountains rise high at the back of this
pool of disappointment, for here again I planned won-
derful things, and spent money and muscle on some very
large blocks and built up a right noble cliff. In spite of
its cost it is one of the least interesting bits of the garden
too much stone and too little room for plants, in fact.
I was foolish enough to plant Lactuca (Mulgedium) alpina
on it, and have spent years trying to get rid of it, and but
for the concrete I believe it would have filled the whole
garden and pushed up through the floors of the house and
into the road to stop the traffic, for Atalanta and Charley's
Aunt are tortoises compared with such a runner.
Euphorbia Wulfenii makes a handsome bush and a fine
dark mass when out of flower, but now with the great
yellow green heads rising up out of the almost indigo blue
foliage it is a very fine object. The stems turn over at the
tips in autumn if they mean to flower next year, and then
the heart leaves of these shoots take on red stripes, and the
display gradually unfolds all through the winter until it
ends in the immense heads of bloom. This is a Euphorbia
corner, and E. pilosa major, which I cannot distinguish
from E. polychroma growing next it, almost vies with the
Daffodils in yellowness, but certainly beats them in having
a second season, for in some autumns it turns a dazzling
scarlet. E. corollata is only springing up at this season,
and will not get its curious, corolla-like, white bracts before
June. E. Cyparissias and even Lathyris the Caper-spurge
are here, and several poorer relations less worthy of notice,
269
My Garden in Spring
but E. Characias has always grown on the older range, and
so is not represented again here. I like its curious dull
green heads of flowers with their conspicuous black spots,
and like to call it by a name I learnt from Mr. Burbidge. He
overheard a garden-boy at Trinity College, Dublin, showing
some people round and answering their questions, and
when asked the name of this Spurge he said, " Sure an' I
do not rightly know what it is designated, but we boys call
it the Frog Spawn bush." E. melifera crowns the next
mound, but is often severely punished in winter here, so
has never reached to eight feet in height as I have seen it
at Fota, where I gathered the seed that produced my
plant.
Now we turn up a little path of steps to the left and
cross a flat stone that serves as a bridge over the overflow
channel from the pools. The photograph facing page 164
will show you better than my pen can describe the view
from the bridge in the last week of May when Columbines
and Thalictrums and pink Geranium sylvaticum run riot
on the left-hand bank. Only an edge is shown, though,
of the Trollius and Sedges that fringe the pools on the
opposite side of the path. The big Golden-fruited Ivy
stands out well at the end, and the outermost boughs of
the large Magnolia stellata can be seen at the extreme right,
but the flowers of the orange-coloured Welsh Poppies that
cover all the bank between them are almost invisible even
with a lens, though their seed heads are discernible just
under the Ivy, and Rosa altaica and R. hispida show up well
behind. If we go up the path shown we can turn to the
right at the head of the largest pool, and after passing the
270
My Rock Garden
Magnolia, we must stop and wonder at the rose-like
beauty of a large bush of Rubus deliciosus, that arches
out every which way as Huck Finn would say, and bears
its snow-white flowers all down the arching branches. It
is prettier thus than as one generally sees it crucified flat
on a wall, and as it is quite happy in a very draughty spot
here must be hardier than people think. One thing is
essential to success, and that is to cut out all old wood
after flowering, in order to give plenty of room for the
yellow-skinned new shoots to spring out into air and
light. Mandrakes and Crocuses share the next bank with
Oenothera speciosa, now just appearing with its red shoots,
and a queer little black Viola tricolor that starting from
this point has gone about the world a good deal lately
under the name of Bowies' Black. It is an old garden
form of V. tricolor, authorities say, and I got it from Dr.
Lowe, who told me it always bred true, and so it does if
kept to itself, and I rather think its own seedlings decline
to be influenced by foreign pollen, though I have made
no decisive tests, but I know that it readily influences
other Violas, and its dusky charms appear in Mulattoes,
Quadroons, and Octaroons all over the place. I am not
responsible for its new name, though I know of no old
one. (I see. that Kew calls it V. tricolor nigra now, but
it does not appear in the 1902 Hand-List.) Canon
Ellacombe saw it here, and having lost it at Bitton, carried
it back again, where it was seen, admired and coveted by
the stream of visitors that ever flows to view the perennial
display of good plants in that garden. They were told
that Bowles was throwing it away, and many a begging
27!
My Garden in Spring
letter came here asking for my black Pansy, and most of
those to whom I sent it labelled it Bowies' Black, and
soon after sent it on to other gardens under that hideous
name. Not so bad, though, as one I saw at the last
Chelsea Show, for there it was labelled Viola Black
Bowles ! I am not so black as I was painted on that
label, so I altered it. It is a very charming little weed,
sowing itself freely, and when in full bloom it has a
wonderfully friendly and cheerful look in the yellow
Cyclopian eye in the middle of its almost black face.
Where we rejoin the main path just opposite the Er odium
chrysanthum and amanum corner we stopped at on our
downward way, the path is overspread by Acaena Bucha-
nanii, a light, glaucous-green species that behaved so badly
and greedily in the border that I turned it out, as I have
also done with inermis and argentea, to spread as much as
they like on the path, where they are quite a success, and
do not mind being walked on. The only trouble is that
all stray seeds anchor in them and germinate and pro-
vide perpetual labour for the garden-boy. A forest that
looks as if it were primaeval spreads over the left-hand
corner, and it is entirely composed of Prunus Amygdalus
nanus, and when one rosy glow of blossom and bud is
really lovely.
Mr. Farrer always lingers lovingly over this corner, and
declares it to be his idea of good gardening, and I suppose
it really is good, and I may say so, for it is not mine but
Nature's work, the Almond having walked all over the
ground in its own wild way, and the Crocuses and Muscaris,
Camassias and Narcissi, Snowdrops and Campanulas that
272
Old Cross from Enfield Market-place. (See p. 291.)
My Rock Garden
live among its stems have not been disturbed for certainly
sixteen years, and have done much seeding and rearrange-
ment on their own account in that period. So all the
credit I can claim is for having wit enough to leave it
alone. To the left of the old summer-house lies the oldest
bank of the rock garden. It is hard to deal with now, for
though many portions are rather exhausted and need re-
modelling, it contains many good old specimen plants on
it that it would be sacrilege to interfere with ; a large
Cytisus cinereus is one, and now is one mass of the most
dazzlingly clear yellow that the garden yields in the whole
season. A large bush of Rosa indica, the real crimson
form, known as Miss Lowe's from her beautiful drawing
of it, given me by Dr. Lowe, is opening its first flowers, and
will, all being well, continue to do so until close on Christ-
mas. It is the parent of the Monthly Roses ; its flowers
are single and purest crimson. Olearia virgata, var. lineata,
above it is a wonderfully light bush with its wand-
like growth and tiny, linear leaves, very unlike any other
Olearia in habit. It bears dull little flowers like those of
Groundsel, only white instead of yellow, but its graceful
habit makes it good to look at all the year round. Large
bushes of Rosa rubrifolia and sericea crown the top, and
going up the main steps we come to a flat hollow filled
with peat that I sometimes flatter by calling a bog.
Sanguinaria and Podophyllum, Caltha radicans, Andromeda
polifolia, Trilliums and other peat-loving things live here,
and the fern Hypolepis millefolium runs about all through
it. I started Saxifraga peltata in one corner, and it wanted
to walk over everybody with its enormous caterpillars of
273 S
My Garden in Spring
rhizomes, but this could not be allowed, and so it got cut
back, and then took to climbing up the dry wall that holds
up the river bank at the back. It has now reached the
top, and looks so happy clinging to the stones that I have
cleared it out altogether from the peat bed. Just now,
before its huge, Lotus-shaped leaves have grown up, the fat
marbled rhizomes and tall naked scapes bearing the flat
heads of pretty pink flowers look very strange clinging to
and springing from the wall.
They may be seen in the right-hand corner of the
illustration of the fine old Tamarix tetrandra that now,
in late May, is the glory of the whole garden. It is
one soft cloud of Strawberry-ice pink, as fluffy and
light as Marabou feathers, not a green leaf as yet visible ;
and against the background of oaks it stands out like
a bush in a pantomime scene of the Fairy Princess'
Garden, and one almost expects to see it suddenly lit
up with electric lights, and then divided asunder to
reveal the Princess reclining on a gilded couch, &c., &c.
It does look most astonishingly unreal' out here in the
open air, and what surprises me is that it is so seldom
seen in gardens. It is perfectly hardy, easy to strike
from cuttings, grows rapidly, is graceful in outline, truly
marvellous when in flower in May, and beautifully feathery
when in leaf from June to November. Yet you rarely
see it, while Dorothy Perkins scratches your nose and
claws your hat off in every garden you go into. Coto-
neaster horizontalis tries its best to block the path up here,
and would manage to do so were it not for me and my
secateurs. Hedera conglomerata has monopolised the top
274
My Rock Garden
corner by the river, but is very beautiful, and I have
sown Orobanche hederae among it, and every season in-
creasing numbers of its quaint brown flower-spikes push
through the tangle of Ivy stems. Here steps lead us
down again, and under the shade of the Oaks which
hang out from the meadow not much will grow, but
the Alexandrian Laurel, Danae Laurus (Ruscus racemosus
as we used to call it) and Epimediums manage to be
cheerful in spite of the canopy of oak boughs. The
former has never fruited here yet, though it has grown
well, and plenty of victors might be crowned with its
wreaths of neat, glistening laurels. " Happy Medium !
what a funny name ! " said an American lady, and I am
sure you will not blame me from refraining from cor-
recting her, and so allowing her to collect the imagined
name as her latest-found curio. They are happy, too, on
this slope, and very beautiful when in flower and young
leaf, and as I have collected them rather assiduously and
seldom bought the same plant twice under the same name,
and never found leisure to work them out, you must
not take my names too seriously. E. pinnatum is so
large and distinct and brilliant in its tone of yellow, that
it is beyond dispute the finest of them. I can never
make up my mind which is the better plan to follow,
whether to cut down the leathery green leaves in winter,
and so see the shepherd's crooks of flower-spikes from
their first appearance and enjoy the yellow bouquet
until a sharp frost burns the tallest of them, or to leave
the handsome foliage on, and part it with one's hand
to see the flowers below, that thus protected are safe
275
My Garden in Spring
from cold snaps. E. rubrum, with crimson and yellow
flowers and beautifully mottled red and raw-sienna leaves,
is my next favourite, and a pale yellow- flowered form
with somewhat similar colouring in the young leaves is
better than the pale and small form of pinnatum whose
flowers are a pretty sulphur yellow, but takes no pains
with the painting of its leaves. E. macranthum has lilac
flowers with four long horns like those of a snail in
shape, and is supposed to be closely related to the
lilac and snow-white forms that are known by many
catalogue names, but are all lovely and not quite so
easy to grow as the yellow and red-flowered species.
Our British E. alpinum has the dullest flowers, but I
consider the most effective leaves of all, especially for
forming a carpet among shrubs. An occasional treat in
the way of a mulch of leaf mould will keep these Barren-
worts happy for years in many an overhung corner that
would be hard to furnish pleasantly with other plants.
We have almost completed our Spring tour of the rock
garden; the only portions that remain to be explored are the
path between the oldest bank and the top of the triangle,
and the moraines. This path we have now reached by
descending the steps and passing the Epimediums. It is
wide, and many things sow themselves in it that I like to
see there, so please do not tread on Er odium romanum's
rosettes of ferny leaves and slender stems of dainty rosy
flowers just now commencing to open, for if you do not
crush them they will continue blooming all through the
season. It grows wild on the walls of the Coliseum at
Rome, and my plants are descendants of some brought
276
My Rock Garden
from thence, and the hard gravel path may remind them
of their former home, for they grow much better in it than
in the border, keeping a neater habit and resisting winter
wet better. Geranium atlanticum is making a brave show
of blue flowers shot with red ; it does not grow in the
Atlantic Ocean as an ingenious friend imagined its name
implied, but on Mount Atlas. It is not sufficiently well-
known, as the beautiful, finely-cut leaves appear with the
autumn rains and make a charming carpet to otherwise
bare spots, and Crocuses, especially autumnal species, seem
quite happy growing among the leaves. The moraines
were described in a former chapter, but I must show you
how charming Dianthus microlepis and Freynei are in the
edge of the Farrer moraine. Microlepis is a flat tuft of grey
set all over with stemless flowers of a rosy-salmon colour,
reminding one of Silene acaulis in the Alps, whose green
pincushions are here among the granite chips but refuse
to wear any pinheads of flower buds in this lowland
garden. D. Freynei is a white-flowered counterpart of
microlepis as I know it, but I have some doubts as to their
distinction, and should never be surprised to find that both
my plants were but colour forms of one and the same.
Linaria alpina sows itself amiably among its betters, and
most of the plants are the self-coloured lilac form called
v. concolor, descendants of some collected on Mt. Cenis,
and they vary a good deal in the shade of lilac and the white
or grey of the spots that decorate their rabbit-shaped noses
instead of the glowing orange ones of the type. Lewisia
parviflom is flowering in a dry overhung corner, and but
for belonging to so renowned a family would not be
277
My Garden in Spring
thought much of. But look at Ranunculus amplexicaulis
major in the piped bed opposite bearing on several tall,
branching stems the largest white Buttercups I have
ever seen. Here indeed it is a glorious thing. Another
plant in ordinary border soil is not so fine, so I feel my
lead pipe and sandy mixtures are worth fussing over to
produce such a thing as this. There are sixteen of the
glistening white flowers open and a few are over, but many
buds are preparing to carrying on the display: even
R. pyrenaeus, which is very beautiful in other parts of the
garden, .takes second place to this. Under it the ground
is carpeted with the Blue Daisy, Bellis rotundifolia coeru-
lescens, a crop of self-sown seedlings, which found this bed
just what they wanted, and the grey-lilac flowers are very
pretty in a good mass like this, but blue is only a courtesy
title I fear. Androsace Henryi likes its home too, and has
sent up a score of its round heads of small, white flowers
above the crenate and cordate leaves that look so unlike
those of ordinary members of the family. A. earned in
several forms, all from Mt. Cenis, whether white or rosy,
are pretty among the Gentiana verna. Primula integrifolia,
who lives in a marsh in her native Pyrenees, grows and
flowers under the shade of a stone just behind the colony
of P. pedemontana. Senecio incanus makes tufts of lovely
silver fern leaves, but refuses to flower when starved in the
granite chips or to live at all if planted in fatter soil.
These are a few of the plants that catch my eye on
this May day, but a week hence others will have taken
their places and the face of the rock garden be changed,
but this chapter must not go on for another week.
278
CHAPTER XVII
The Culmination of Spring
IF a fairy godmother or a talking fish offered me three
wishes I think one would be to have the clock stopped
for six months on a fine morning towards the end of May.
Then, perhaps, I might have time to enjoy the supreme
moment of the garden. And I am not at all sure the
second wish would not be used to extend the period. It
must be after those plaguey Ice Saints have finished play-
ing the fool with the weather, and when there comes a
spell that is neither too hot nor too cold, but just the
climate one would expect to meet with in Heaven, and in
England sometimes comes to us in late May and Sep-
tember. The tall Tulips would be at their best, Iris
florentina and its early companions in full glory, Lilacs
and Apple-blossom, Hawthorn and Laburnum, all masses
of flower. Trees full of tender green, yet not too densely
clad to prevent our seeing the architecture of the boughs.
The Mulberry would be in leaf and showing that frosts
have ceased, for it is the wisest of all trees, and always
waits till it is quite safe before it opens its buds. I like
to get all my gardening friends to visit me in May ; they
respect me and my gardening then, whereas later on they
are apt to be critical, seeing how some plants begin to
burn up, and noting the poverty of our soil, as shown by
279
My Garden in Spring
stunted herbaceous plants and gaps where early flowering
things have retired below, and we dare not attempt annuals,
as might be done in better soils. I grudge no plotting and
planning, no preparation and waiting, that will bear full
fruit at this period. I was born in the middle of May, and
perhaps some mystic influence crept into me from those
first weeks of my life. Most of the scents of this time are
delicious. Wistaria one can never sniff up too much of ;
Azaleas are pleasant if kept out-of-doors, and even Haw-
thorn is good blown from a distance, while Irises, Lilacs,
Double Gorse, Pansies, Lily of the Valley, and Cowslips
are all things to bring close to one's nose. Later in the
year come heavy stuffing scents, as the sixteenth-century
writers called them Elder, Syringa, Lime, and such far-
reaching, Hay-fever producers ; but now it is good to open
one's nostrils wide. There is one exception, and that is
the most fiendish plant I know of, the sort of thing Beelze-
bub might pluck to make a bouquet for his mother-in-law
the Hairy Arum, Helicodiceros crinitus, which looks as if it
had been made out of a sow's ear for spathe, and the tail
of a rat that died of Elephantiasis for the spadix. The
whole thing is a mingling of unwholesome greens, livid
purples, and pallid pinks, the livery of putrescence in fact,
and it possesses an odour to match the colouring. I once
entrapped the vicar of a poor parish into smelling it, and
when he had recovered his breath he said it reminded him
of a pauper funeral. It only exhales this stench for a few
hours after opening, and during that time it is better to
stand afar off and look at it through a telescope. It attracts
all the Green Bottle-flies of the district, who think there
280
The Culmination of Spring
must be some extra gamey carrion down in its bristly
throat, and hurry in to the feast, passing easily over the
stiff bristles that point inwards in the narrowed portion of
the passage. But once in they find these fleshy hairs
prevent their getting out again, and on a sunny day the
large chamber soon gets filled with flies, chiefly the bur-
nished, green-tailed Lucilia Caesar. The females lay quan-
tities of eggs on the walls, and in a few days the interior
is a putrid mass of dead flies and crawling maggots, and
the desired ends of both fly and flower are defeated. For
the maggots soon starve for want of more food than is
supplied by the bodies of their defunct parents, and the
ovaries of the flower are rotted by the damp mass. I
suppose in its native Corsican home things happen dif-
ferently. Probably it is visited by some more strongly
built insect perhaps even carrion-feeding beetles, whose
strength helps them to struggle out more easily when the
pollen is shed and the stiff bristles begin to grow flaccid ; or
again a larger number of plants in flower at one time would
mean more accommodation for carrion-loving visitors, and
the suffocating crowding of the inner chamber would be
avoided. In English gardens there are seldom more than
two of the flowers open on the same day, and there is no
lack of flies at their period of flowering. I like astonishing
people who have not seen this flower before by cutting
away a portion of the wall of the lower chamber and
allowing the entrapped flies to escape. After a fine morn-
ing there will generally be enough of them inside to make
a good swarm and to take a minute or two to buzz out of
an opening an inch square. I have never seen it set any
281
My Garden in Spring
seed, even after I have liberated the flies. The commoner
black Arum, Dracunculus vulgaris, never gets choked up
in the same way, and occasionally bears a few red berries in
September, showing that some visitors have effected its
fertilisation. The leaves of Helicodiceros are very curious,
and worth examining carefully. They are of the general
arrow-head plan so frequent among aroids, but are divided
into several lobes, and the barbs of the arrow-heads are
twisted until they stand upright and form two horns, which
peculiarity has furnished the generic name Helicodiceros
that is, the spirally twisted two-horned.
It was on a glorious day in late May that many of the
photographs that illustrate this book were taken, and I
want to lead you round in the track of the photographer
to describe some of the results.
The Chusan Fan Palm outside the morning-room
window was within a few days of opening its large bunches
of flowers. At this early stage they look somewhat like
yellow cauliflower, but when open are more spread out
and lighter in effect. They are particularly interesting,
as this specimen appears to be a peculiar one, and though
in most seasons its flowers are wholly male, bearing
only pollen, now and then a few of the last flowers to
open on the spikes are furnished with ovaries, and twice
I have known it to set fruits which swelled to a fair size
before severe winter frosts destroyed them. I have shown
specimens of the two kinds of flowers and also immature
fruit at the Scientific Committee of the Royal Horticultural
Society, and have not as yet heard of another instance
of a monoecious specimen of Trachycarpus excelsus. This
282
The Culmination of Spring
one has stood here about fifteen years, and was when I
first planted it quite a small plant, and I used to water
it overhead its first summer from an ordinary waterpot;
now its stem is about seven feet high. It has a very good
position, sheltered from the north-east by the end of the
house and from the north-west by the conservatory, so that
our worst winds never touch it, though it has to stand the
rough and tumble of a sou'-wester now and then which
tears its leaves. Wind is the worst enemy of this hardy
palm. It smiles at snow, for as the leaves get weighted
with it, they slope gently down until an avalanche slides
off and up they go again to collect another load. I cut
off, the lowest ring of leaves twice in each season, as I like
to see the clean outline of the stem. The photograph
was taken before I had operated on it this Spring, and it
looks rather clumsy on account of the hanging lower
leaves. I have several other specimens of the same palm
in the garden, but this is the largest and oldest. We call
one border the Eremurus bed, because it contains groups
of those stately plants from its commencement under the
old Cedar down to the portion that is shaded by a vener-
able Portugal Laurel shaped like a large umbrella, under
which they would refuse to grow. E. Elwesianus, a group
of which is shown facing page 200, is the handsomest of the
family, and that means a great deal, and its white form
grows quite as tall as the pink one. They have not been
very happy this season, as the unusually mild January
tempted them through, and they were soon as forward as
they should have been in mid-March, only to learn that
the air was not ready for them, so that the spikes got
283
My Garden in Spring
checked and did not reach their usual height. We find
they like to have their crowns only just beneath the sur-
face, and a little raised, so that the long, fleshy roots, radiat-
ing from the crown like spokes from the hub of a wheel,
or the legs of a Brittle Starfish from its circular body,
may slope downwards into the soil. When planting we
lay them out in the hole dug for them, pour a potful of
sand over the crown, and then gently raise it two or three
inches so that the sand runs beneath it and supports it.
They are greedy feeders, and enjoy a mulch of good
manure ; Wellson's, which is practically dried sheep manure,
seems to agree with them. So we spread a layer of it on
the soil as soon as the great crown has pushed through,
and in a very short time the yellow, feeding rootlets will
have found it and pushed up thickly to gather the
nutriment. E. himalaicus likes a cooler position than
others, but its hybrid him-rob, like robustus, is happiest
in full sun and on well-drained soil. It is one of the most
vigorous, and falls little short of Elwesianus in size, but is
at its best rather later in the season. The yellow and
tawny ones mostly belong to next month, and so to another
volume.
E. Tubergenii, however, a hybrid between himalaicus
and Bungei, flowers with its white parent, and Bungei
praecox should be opening the lowest blossoms of its spike
before May has gone. We do not believe in covering the
young growths unless something especially arctic in the
weather line catches them when the young flower-spikes
are visible in the open cups formed by the leaves. If the
crowns are covered when first through they are hurried
284
The Culmination of Spring
along too fast, and the leaves are sure to be nipped and
disfigured. I like to plant autumn-flowering Crocuses
among them and deeper than the Eremuri, so that they
may come spearing through between their spokes and make
a show in the necessarily large space occupied by the giants,
and which would be bare and uninteresting after their rest-
ing season commences. I also plant Gypsophila paniculata
behind the Eremurus clumps, and keep it staked till they
die down and then remove the ties and let it fall over the
space. The next long border is backed by a Holly hedge
that gives protection to some rather delicate shrubs, and
among them are some of my beloved Eucalypts, and one
of them is in flower, as the illustration facing p. 232 shows.
The buds were formed last autumn, and have been opening
a few at a time ever since last November. I am rather
proud of this specimen, because it was raised from seed I
gathered on a large one that lived many years in the rock
garden and was quite a timber tree. The fluffy yellow
flowers are very pretty among the wonderfully blue leaves.
It is E. cordata, a Tasmanian species, and one of the hardiest,
but very difficult to get true to name. It is very similar
in appearance to E. pulverulenta from Victoria, which is
even more brilliant in its colouring, as the young leaves
are shot with pink and the whole plant is very mealy and
blue, but is not so hardy as cordata, and has more than
once been killed outright by a winter that spared the Tas-
manian species.
Crossing the old bowling-green lawn we get a charm-
ing picture of beautiful foliage and soft colouring which
is shown facing p. 248. It is at the back of Tom Tiddler's
285
My Garden in Spring
ground behind the purple-leaved plants, some of which
form the background to this picture. The bed is edged
with a broad band of Hellebores. The Christmas Rose,
H. niger, nearest to us, and various named forms of Lenten
Roses at the further end, are planted in a bold group and
running right up to the stem of the Yew tree seen at the
back. The foreground is part of a band of various species
of Geranium which runs for some distance along the lawn
front of this bed and contains many treasures, results of
my own foreign wanderings and gleanings from other
gardens, for I always keep an open eye for a Geranium I
have not got. The leaves and buds shown here are of a fine
blue-purple form of G. ibericum ; then, as all can see, there
is a grouping of Dicentra spectabilis, chiefly of the old pink
form, as it is still the best. One plant is the white, or speak-
ing more truthfully, flesh-coloured variety, and the dumpy
one, the second counting from the right-hand side, is the
newer form erecta, interesting to grow with the others
but without the graceful beauty of the old form. The
rounded bush rising out of this is Conium maculatum, the
Hemlock, one of the most poisonous of plants, and generally
considered to have furnished the bowl of poison by which
Socrates was put to death. Gerard denounces it root and
branch, saying : " The greate Hemlock doubtlesse is not
possessed with any one good facultie, as appeareth by his
lothsome smell, and other apparant signes and therefore
not to be used in physicke." But both leaves and seeds
are still used to yield the alkaloid Conine, which has a
peculiar sedative action on the motor nerves, and therefore
is occasionally prescribed.
286
The Culmination of Spring
An old man used to supply a great firm of druggists
with the dried plant at a much lower rate than they could
obtain it from any other source. When through age he
announced that he must give up the business he was asked
how he had always managed to undersell others, and he
told a delightful tale of a cunning practice. He used to
wander about in the Eastern Counties sowing Hemlock
seeds in any waste corner near cultivated lands, then when
the plant was fully grown he called upon the farmer and
told him that a dreadfully poisonous plant grew on his
land, and would kill beasts if eaten by them, and that for
a small sum he would clear it away. He was generally
paid for collecting his harvest, grown rent free on other
folks' land, and therefore could afford to sell it so cheaply.
Besides its medicinal value it is a very beautiful garden
plant, so in spite of Gerard I grow it. It is unfortunately
biennial or at any rate monocarpic, but makes the most of
its short life by keeping brilliantly green through the winter.
The leaves are as exquisitely cut as any I know of, and
wonderfully glossy. All through last winter these large
leaves and the already developing central shoot were as
beautiful as anything in the garden, and then from early
Spring till the seeds were ripe in July the fine specimen
shown in the photograph was always a thing of beauty,
although it was growing under the shade of an old Scots Pine,
and not the least of the Hemlock's virtues is this amiable
habit of growing and looking happy in any waste shady
corner. Beyond the Pine stem a good group of Thalictrum
aquilegiaefolium was delightfully effective against the purple
of Prunus Pissardii and Barbery. It is composed of some .
287
My Garden in Spring
picked forms with extra rich purple and red colouring in
the filaments, some from Mt. Cenis meadows, other seed-
lings I have raised here from good forms, but the last one
towards the Yew is the pure white form that occurs in
sub-alpine woods and came home with me one year from
Airolo. These are very ordinary plants, but growing in
this grouping they gave me great pleasure. The path
shown leads straight away to the river bank, and when
viewed from its centre shows as a finish, one of the beds
of the Terrace. At this moment it was aglow with Clara
Butt Tulip, and through the summer months we keep it
flaming away with Salvia splendens, Pride of Zurich.
The Pergola Garden and its warm, well-sheltered
borders are full of interest just now. Erysimum pumilum
from Mt. Cenis is happier here than anywhere in the rock
garden, and one of the most brilliant, clear-yellow flowers
imaginable. I was astounded at its beauty the first time I
saw it growing on the rough, rocky shore of the lake among
Gentiana angulosa and sheets of Globularia and Dryas,
almost dazzling in its brilliancy. It looked so good-
tempered and even aged there, that I marvelled why I had
never seen it in English gardens. It flowers here as well
as there, one solid mass only three inches high of Wall-
flower blossoms of purest yellow, but I must own that it
has a way of dying off after flowering here, that its woody
stock and antique appearance on the Cenis show to be due
to something lacking in this lowland situation, and so we
have to look out carefully for seeds or self-sown seedlings.
Ribes speciosus is a sprawling octopus whose tentacles are
covered with brown spines and crimson Fuchsia blossoms.
288
Symphytum aspernmum. (See p. 294.)
The Culmination of Spring
Olearia myrsinites, a good evergreen for the dull months, is
now smothered in its white flowers, that make up in their
quantity for their rather small size. Round its feet are
some clumps of Wild Hyacinths, Dutch-raised seedlings
of wonderful charm. I first saw them at the great Jubilee
Haarlem Show. The most distinct appears in lists as
Scilla nutans delicata, and is of the true nutans type with
its pendant bells and long bracts, very nearly white but
with a delightful pale blue edge to each segment. Robin
Hood is flesh colour and not quite a pure nutans, having
just a touch of the open bells of hispanica, as it appears we
must now call the Scilla companulata of lists and one's
early days. The correct scientific name for the common
Bluebell is changed so often, and the highest authorities
disagree so endlessly, that I never know what to use for it.
The Kew Index and Kew Hand-List and the 1895 edition of
the London Catalogue all agree that it is Scilla festalis of
Salisbury ; but the 1908 edition of the London Catalogue
makes it Scilla nonscripta Hoffmgg and Link ; while the
British Museum favours Endymion non-scriptum Garcke
Fl. Deutschl. and the Abb< Coste, the latest French
authority, prefers Endymion nutans Dumont, and it seems
high time that a sort of Esperanto name compounded of
the lot was made for it. Whatever its name may be it does
well here, and I have it in many colours : the mauve pink
forms are very pretty in clumps among a bold massing of
the white, and look better there than when planted among
the blue form. S. hispanica has many good forms, too
red, blue, and white. The best of all is maxima, and when
it has become established and likes its home, and takes a
289 T
My Garden in Spring
pride in its great spikes of cups of palest blue with deeper
streaks on them, it is the noblest of all Scillas. There is
a white form of maxima that is not so robust as the blue,
but is a good thing for semi-shade. I have planted it
among some good forms of British ferns in the shade of
an Evergreen Oak and the effect is very good. The beds
in the garden in front of the wall are edged with stone-
paved walks, and I like to plant something along the edges
that will grow out over the flags, so one bed has several
forms of Cheiranthus alpinus and Alyssum saxatile used
thus. The lemon-yellow form var. citrinum is very effective
next to the double one of this latter plant, and contrasts well
with the many shades of brown, crimson, and purple of
what is often wrongly called Cheiranthus mutabilis, the name
of a half-hardy, shrubby plant from Madeira. I know that
is wrong, but am not sure it is right to call it C. alpinus
versicolor as I do. Anyway it is a good thing, and much
better than a paler form known as C. Dillenii. The darker
and better plant has of late years hybridised spontaneously
with C. Allionii in several gardens, and has produced some
fine plants with deep orange flowers changing with age to
blood red: that known as Miss King's or Newark Park
Variety is the best coloured of them, but here it has a
lanky habit and flowers itself to death, and we prefer
one that appeared spontaneously in the rock garden and
has a dwarfer habit and makes more growth. It is a fine
mass of rich orange and red brown in May, and especially
pleasing here on the grey stones.
Between this paved garden and the river there is a
formal Rose Garden, in the centre of which stands the old
290
The Culmination of Spring
Enfield Market Cross dismissed from the market-place
to make way for a King Edward VII Coronation Memorial.
After a year or two of unhonoured repose in a builder's
yard it came here for a quiet time among the roses, and
makes a splendid support and background for that lovely
single-flowered climber Rosa laemgata Anemone. The
protection suits its habits and the grey of the old stones its
complexion, and in the end of May and onwards it is a
fine sight flinging its long growths through and over the
arches of the old cross, and bearing hundreds of the glori-
ous pink flowers as large as teacup saucers. It has now
pushed its growths through to the north side, and as the
last winter was so mild they bore as many and as fine
blooms as those on the south side. A pergola of wooden
poles and cross-pieces runs down at right angles to the
wall, and divides this Rose Garden from another parallelo-
gram of garden with stone-flagged paths, and an octagonal
piece of black and white pavement round a sundial some-
where about its centre. A second and smaller pergola,
devoted to Vines, divides its upper half at right angles to
and leading out of the great pergola, and a flagged path
leads on from the sundial across this Vine pergola up to a
seat and an old stone pedestal and vase. You must come
close to this, please, to admire the shower of lilac blossoms
of a Solanum crispum that sprawls all over the Privet
bushes that cut off the north wind, and hangs down over
the pedestal. It is the deeper-coloured one known as the
Glasnevin variety, and though it was cut to the ground
here one winter has now made a trunk worthy of some
tree, and I hope may never suffer so badly again, for every
291
My Garden in Spring
Spring since that resurrection it has been more beautiful
than in the last, and it contrasts well with a neighbouring
bush of golden-leaved Bramble trained over poles, which
is one of the most brilliant of yellow things in its dress of
young leaves. The double-flowered Apple, Pyrus coro-
naria fl. pi., grows on the right hand of the Solanum and
is now in flower. Its soft, shell-pink flowers are the
largest of the Apple family, and charming next the lilac
of the Tree Potato. Arenaria montana is climbing into
Vitis armata on one of the pergola poles, and has got up
for over a foot, and is a wonderful sight, packed so full of
its large, white flowers that no leaves are visible. Various
Violets and Epimediums line this shady Vine Pergola and
appear in the cracks between the stones and make it look
a century old instead of its actual five years. A pretty
corner of the sundial opening has a carpet of the grey,
finely-cut leaves of a good form of Geranium tuberosum,
and over this a cloud of its soft, lilac-pink blossoms on tall
and slender stems. Some clumps of mauve and pink
Darwin Tulips are next it and among it, and behind a
bush of Ribes cruenta is covered with its curious half-and-
half dark crimson, and pure white flowers. Euphorbia
dulcis fol. var. rises out of an edging of pink and lavender
dwarf Phloxes, and is a perfect-shaped round bush of
green and white leaves crowned with the mass of cream
and ivory bracts of its flower-heads. A very beautiful
plant, and far too seldom seen, though it needs a little
looking after; the plain green shoots that appear among
the variegated ones must be removed, and cuttings should
be struck every two or three years for renewal, as old
292
The Culmination of Spring
plants are liable to be killed in severe winters more easily
than youngsters.
Another unusual plant growing close by is Bunium
rotundifolium, very much like Thaspium aureum but peren-
nial instead of biennial like the latter. Both have charm-
ingly glossy leaves of the Parsnip persuasion but not so
coarse as the real members of that sect, and when old
enough to flower they send up foot-high stems with brilliant
yellow bracts surrounding the umbels of greenish-yellow
flowers, and are wonderfully bright and suggestive of some
very good Euphorbia. Both will grow happily in shady,
poor ground, and furnish it in the best taste, as advertise-
ments put it.
Parallel with the Vine Pergola and nearer the River
the next paved walk has a row of Eucalypts on either side.
I have tried for years to get a short avenue of them here,
but some grow lanky and blow over, some are too tender
for the winters, and others grow into rounded bushes, so
that at present they are all heights from four to fifteen
feet. E. cocci/era, E. urnigera, and E. obliqua promise to
make the best job of it at present. Tufted Pansies, such as
Archie Grant and Maggie Mott, line the edges of this path,
and the bed alongside the corresponding walk in the Rose
Garden opposite is planted under the Roses with white and
yellow Pansies gradually shading through pale yellow
sorts edged with lilac, such as Skylark and Duchess of
Fife, to the lavender Kitty Bell and then to deeper violet
varieties. The white and yellow ones have a charming effect
planted in blocks of varying sizes. Royal Sovereign, Maggie
Clunas, Bullion, and Primrose Dame are good yellows, and
2 93
My Garden in Spring
Snowflake, White Swan, and Purity hard to beat for white.
We have a good creamy white one with deep blue face-
marks on it called Beauty of Hedsor, that is very useful
for cutting, as like Snowflake it always has a good long
stalk. I like to pick plenty of them in May, as they are
so delightful in the house in their first freshness, and so
doing relieves the young plants and helps them to make
a better display later on. Jackanapes with red-brown
upper petals and bright yellow lower ones is one of my
great favourites, and we have a band of him at the back of
one of the Iris beds and on the opposite side of the path
to the yellow and white varieties of the Rose bed. But
come back again along the Eucalyptus Avenue (how grand
it sounds and how short and poor it is !). I want to show
you a very beautiful Comfrey that grows at the side of the
steps that form the end of this paved walk. It is the
Symphytum asperrimum, that such great things were ex-
pected of as a perpetual forage crop many years ago, but
though now turned out of the farm is worth a choice
position in the garden for the sake of its exquisite turquoise
blue flowers and rosy buds. It came to me from the
Cambridge Botanic Gardens, where I first fell in love with
it. It lasts in beauty for a very long period, and if cut
down is soon up again and full of fresh flowers. The
dark blue S. causasicum grows close behind it at this
corner, and beside a large patch of the blue grass, Elymus
glaucus, makes a very pretty picture. But then every way
one looks on such a fine afternoon in May makes a picture.
Even the square Georgian house as seen from a few steps
further on across the pond looks comfortable and homey
294
The Culmination of Spring
in the golden sunlight ; the very Daisies on the lawn speak
of Spring, and either blossom, or promise of it, and of
fruit, is on most of the trees and shrubs ; the ground is still
moist enough for planting or transplanting, weeds are
young, and one feels even if left for another day or two
will not do great harm, so very different from the im-
pression one gets from the seed-laden sow-thistles and
groundsels of summer days. Yes, when May is in good
humour and smiling I always feel it is the moment to
enjoy the garden, but once it is past and summer takes its
place there is still plenty to do and more to enjoy than
one has time for, and so each season brings its joys as
well as its regrets, and the wise gardener will give himself
over to making the most of the former and find no time
for the latter. If you have enjoyed strolling round the
Spring garden with me and listening to my prattle, per-
sonal and egotistical as much of it has been, and if you
have any sympathy with my point of view of using the
garden for the plants' welfare and not just for making the
plants furnish your garden with art shades, dividing hedges,
or shade to sit in, I hope later on you will accompany me
on a second journey to review the summer aspect of the
place and plants. For that is one of the greatest charms
of a mixed collection of plants it gives you a new garden
at least once a month, and in another ten days it will be
no longer " My Garden in Spring," but " My Garden in
Summer."
295
INDEX
Acaena aygentea, 272
Buchananii, 272
inermis, 272
Acclimatisation of plants, 4
Acer californica aurea, 191, 196
campestre, 196, 199
Negundo, 19 1
Aconite, Winter, 44, 115
Acorus Calamus, 201
Adiantum Capillus-Veneris, 268
Adlumia cirrhosa, 158
Adonis amurensis, 157
,4/, 171, 174
hybrids, 172, 173
sepiaria, 171
Aethiopappus, 194
Jgwe, 44, 228, 257
Paryyi, 164
utahensis, 164
Ajuga metallica crispa, 189
reptans, 189, 193, 194
Alders, 196
Allen, Mr., 52, 54, 55, 56, 97, 212,
213
Allium Babingtonii, 195
Chamaemoly, in
Dioscoridis, 261
karataviense, 262
paradoxum, 267
Rosenbachianwm, 194, 258
Almond trees, 160, 222, 272
Alnus incana aurea, 196
Aloes, 228
Alpine plants, acclimatisation of, 4
beds for, 104
Primulas, 135
Alstroemerias, 19, 63
Alyssunt maritimum, 7
saxatile, 290
Amaryllis Belladonna, 5
Anacyclus formosus, 102
Andromeda polifolia, 273
Androsace carnea, 278
hedraeantha, 106
Henryi, 278
Anemone, acclimatisation of, 5, 203
alpina, 219
appenina, 208
blanda, and varieties, 95, 206,
207
Blue Bonnet, 214
Blue Queen, 213
Chapeau de Cardinal, 204
coronaria, 204, 205, 209
double, 204, 214
flaccida, 217
H alien, 218
hortensis, 206, 209
intermedia, 216
japonica, 189, 200
Leeds' Variety, 211, 212
legends of, 204, 205
naturalisation of, 209
nemorosa, 209, 210, 213, 214,
215, 216, 259
pratensis montana, 218
Pulsatilla, 195, 217, 218
ranunculoides, 216
Robinsoniana, 211, 212, 214
rubra, 218
sulphurea, 219
sylvestris, 218
trifolia, 210, 216
- Vestal, 210
-- wood, 44, 211, 213
yellow, 216
Anthemis Cupananii, 195
Antirrhinums, 193
Apple blossom, 222, 279
double flowered, 292
April showers, 161
Aquilegia viridiflora, 255
Arenaria balearica, 266
montana, 292
297
My Garden in Spring
Arkwright, Mr. Edwyn, 22
Arnott, Mr., 46
Arrhenatherum bulbosum, 201
Artemisia, 195
Absynthium, 194
Halleri, 194
vulgaris, 201
Arum, the Hairy, 280-2
Arundo conspicua, 61
Asarum Bealei, 267
grandiflorum, 267
Ash, dwarf, 182
weeping, 223, 226, 227
Asphodel, the name, 119
Asters, China, 204
Astrantia minor, 107
Atkins, Mr., 48
Atriplex Halimus, 195
Aubrietia, 262
Aucubas, 178
Azaleas, 280
Azara microphylla, 174
BACON, quoted, 3, 40
Bamboos, 149, 177, 196
Barberry, Purple, 198. See
Berberis
Barrenwort, 275, 276
Beetles as pests, 24
Begonias, 7, 18
Bellis rotundifolia coerulescens,
Berberis Fremontii, 263
purple, 198
vulgaris, 193
Bilbergia nutans, 164
Birches, purple-leaved, 222
Blackthorn, winter, 161
Bladder senna, 259
Blood root, 169, 170
Bluebells, 289
Bog Myrtle, 228
Bongardia Rauwolfii, 44
Box, dwarf, 265
Boyd, Mr. W. B., 53, 55
Bramble, golden-leaved, 292
Bromeliads, 164, 257
Buckthorn, 182
Buddleia globosa, 7
Bulbocodium vernum, 104, no,
Bunium rotundifolium, 293
Burbidge, Mr., 46, 270
Butcher's Broom, 183
also
278
CACTI, 106, 163, 257
Caltha biflora, 229
leptosepela, 229
monstrosa, 228
palustris, 228
polypetala, 152, 229
radicans, 229, 273
Camassia, 272
Leichtlinii, 263
Campanula, 272
caespitosa Miranda, 109
Cenisia, 108
lactiflora, 189
rotundifolia, var. soldanalli-
flora, 190
Caparne, Mr., 229
Caper Spurge, 269
Caragana, 259
Cardamine hirsuta, 158
Carlina acaulis, 152
Caspary, Prof., 54
Catalpa tree, 14
Cedars, 283
dwarf, 265
Celandine, Lesser, 154
Centaur ea Clementei, 193
pulcherrima, 194
Cerastium alpinum, 106
tomentosum, 194
Cercis Siliquasirum, 223
Cereus, 163
paucispinus, 257
Cerinthe, 199
alpina, 195
Chamaeiris, 230
Cheiranthus Allionii, 290
alpinus, 290
Dillenii, 290
Cherry trees, 177
pink double, 259
Chionodoxa gigantea, 97
Luciliae, 96, 97
sardensis, 95, 96, 97, 202
Tmoli, 97
Chionoscillas, 96, 97
Choisya, 149
Christmas roses, 286
Chusan Fan Palm, 283
Cineraria, 193, 194
Cistus bushes, 149
Citrange, 173
Citrus trifoliata, 171
298
Index
Cladium mariscus, 61
Clarkias, 18
Clay Ionia perfoliata, 267
siberica, 267
Clematis pallasii, fol. purpureis, 258
recta, 258
Clover, Red, markings on, 199
Clusius, Rariorum Plantarum His-
toria, 1 86, 215
Creeping Jenny, 196
Codonopsis, 166
Colchicum, 68, 69
crociflorum, 104
hydrophilum, 103
libanoticum, 103
luteum, 104
Collecting spirit, the, 17, 1 8
Colour schemes, 18, 192
Columbines, 270
Columnae, 143
Colutea arborescens, 259
Comfrey, 294
Conifers, 12
Conium maculatum, 286, 287
Convolvulus tenuissimus, 99
Cornus brachypoda variegata, 200
Mas aureus elegans, 201
sibirica elegantissima, 200
Spaethii, 193, 196
Cornwall in April, 161
Cortusa Matthioli, 145
Corydalis Allenii, 157
angustifolia, 157
bulbosa, 157, 158
cava, 158
nobilis, 158
Semenowii, 158
Corylopsis pauciflora, 263
Cotoneaster horizontalis, 274
tnultiflora, 267
Cowslips, 142
Crocuses, 62-94, 2 7 2
a'erius, 72, 89
atticus, 92
ocyrtfsi's, 72, 78, 82
aureus, 72, 74, 75, 76, 82
autumnal, 6, 7, 44, 70, 94
Balansae, 72, 73, 79
biflorus, and varieties, 86, 87
byzantinus, 94
Cambessedesii, 70
carpetanus, 94, 199
Crocuses, caspius, 70
chrysanthus, 71, 78, 80, 83, 84,
86, 87, 89
colourings and markings of, 72,
Crewei, 86
derivation of name, 68, 69
etruscus, 24
fertilisation of, 66
Fleischer i, 94
gargaricus, 72, 73, 79, 87
graveolens, 70, 72, 79
growing shoots of, 44
habits of, 62 ct seq.
hymenalis, var. Foxii, 87
Imperati, 7, 24, 71, 90
Korolkowii, 78, 82
lacteus, 75
lactiflorus, 102
laevigatus, 7, 10
longiflorus, 6, 7
mice as enemies of, 78
tnoesiacus, 75
Neapolitan, 90
nevadensis, 199
Olivieri, 72, 73, 79
planting and arrangement of,
76, 77
purpureus grandiflorus, 77
saffron or sativus, 69, 74
Scharojanii, 72, 199
seedling raising, 64
Sieberi, 78, 81, 92
speciosus, 89
spring, 62, 70
sulphureus, 76
swst'anws, 72, 78
Suterianus, 72, 73
tauri, 86, 89
nianus,24, 77,81,93,175
72, 75, 77, 93, 94 '
versicolor, 72, 91, 94
yellow varieties, 72
Crown Imperials. See Fritillaries
Crucianella, 155
Currey, Miss, 213
Cyananthus lobatus, 147
Cyclamen cilicicum, 102
coum, 101, 102, 199
europaeum, 103
ibericum, 48, 101, 102, 262
libanoticum, 103
299
My Garden in Spring
Cyclamen, markings of, 199
repandum, 102
Cyperus longus, 268
Cypresses, 15
Cytisus, 262
cinereus, 273
DAFFODILS, 117-133. For species
see Narcissus
application and derivation of
name, 119
Albatross, 127, 132
Almira, 127
Argent, 127
Ariadne, 127
Branston, 133
Butterfly, 197
Cassandra, 127
Dawn, 122, 127
Doctor, 124
Dorothy Kingsmill, 125
Duke of Bedford, 123, 197
Dutch, 127
Golden Bell, 125
Great Warley, 128
H. C. Bowles, 128
Hall Caine, 130, 132
Hamlet, 197
Henry Irving, 197
Incognita, 128
Lavender, 131
Lemon Queen, 128
Lord Kitchener, 128
Lord Muncaster, 123
Lord Roberts, 197
Lovelace, 127
Mme. Plemp, 125
May Moon, 128
Monarch, 127
Moonbeam, 127
Mr. Camm, 132
Mrs. Camm, 132
Olympia, 197
Outpost, 128
Peter Barr, 130
Plenipo, 128
Poet, 127, 132
Queen Bess, 132
Rhymester, 127
Seagull, 127, 132
Sir Watkin, 132
Solfatare, 128
Daffodils, Weardale Perfection, 122,
123
White Lady, 127
White Minor, 125, 126
White Queen, 128
Whitewell, 129, 130, 197
Dahlias, 18
Daisy, Blue, 278
Hen and Chicken, 189
Danae Laurus, 275
Daphne laureola, 189
Darwin Tulips. See Tulips
Dasylirions, 257
Dead Nettle, 264
Dianthus, 5, 258
Freynei, 277
microlepis, 277
Dicentra spectabilis, 286
Digby, Mr. Charles, 125
Dillenius' Hortus Elthamensis, 169
Dillwyn's Hortus Collinsonianus,
225
Diotis maritima, 195
Docks, 184
Dondia, 157
Douglasia vitaliana, 109
Dryas, 288
Dracuncultts vulgaris, 282
Duchesne, M., 188, 189
Ducie, Lord, 179
Dykes, Mr., 31, 34, 35
Dyckias, 164
Echinopsis, 257
Echium, 199
Edraianthus, 106
Elder trees, 180, 181, 196
Ellacombe, Canon, 48, 58, 148,
171, 178, 179, 188, 207, 208,
261, 271
Elm, silver, 191
Elwes, Mr., 224
Elymus glaucus, 294
Endymion, 289
Epilobium nummularifolium, 266
Epimedium, 44, 275
alpinutn, 276
macranthum, 276
pinnatum, 275
rubrum, 276
Erauthis cilicica, 116
hiemalis, 115
300
Index
Eremurus Bungei praecox, 284
Elwesianus, 43, 283
himalaicus, 284
Tubergenii, 284
Erica arborea, 50
carnea, 172, 263
hybrida, 263
scoparia, 50
Erodium amanum, 266, 272
chrysanthum, 260, 272
lindavicum, 260
Reichardii, 266
romanum, 276
Eryngium agavifolium, 257
Lasseauxii, 252, 257
Sanguisorba, 257
setra, 252, 257
Erysimum Allionii, 262
pumilum, 288
Eucalyptus, 12, 252, 285, 293
cocci/era, 293
cordata, 285
Gunnii, 195
obliqua, 293
pulverulenta, 285
urnigera, 293
Euonymus europaeus atropurpureus,
199
aucubaefolius, 201
japonicus, 265
Euphorbia, 181, 200
Characias, 270
corollata, 269
Cyparissias, 269
dulcis, 292
Lathyris, 269
melifera, 270
pilosa major, 269
polychroma, 269
Wulfenii, 269
FARRER, Mr., 52, 59, 105, 106,
no, 135, 136, 140, 143, 229,
272
Festuca glauca, 195
Feverfew, 193, 196
Flag Irises, 222, 231
Forbes Watson, 43
Foxtail grass, 195
Fragaria vesca, 189
Fraser, Mr. Neill, 50, 51
Fraxinus excelsior nana, 182
Fritillaria, 165, 168, 263
gracilis, 168
imperialis, 165, 166, 201
pallidiflora, 169
persica, 167
pyrenaica, 167, 168
Slagswaard, 167
Frog, the Edible, 268
Funkias, 201, 202
GAILLARDIAS, 18
Galanthus Allenii, 47, 57. Se o/so
Snowdrops.
6y^ahns, 47
caucasicus, 50, 54
cilicicus, 48
corcyrtfnsis, 45
Elwesii, 47, 48, 50, 52, 56, 58,
59
flavescens, 53
green, 54, 186
hybrid varieties, 57, 58
Ikariae, 58, 60
Imperati, 51, 58
var. Atkinsii, 48, 49
latifolius, 57
lutescens, 53
m'wa/ts, 48, 50, 51, 54, 57, 59
octobrcnsis, 47
Olgae, 7, 45
plicatus, 47, 50, 56
Rachelae, 45, 46
Scharlokii, 54, 55
Straffan, 49, 50, 51
virescens, 54
Warei, 55
yellow, 53, 186
Garden, the author's, 9, 14, 17,
18
Gardener's Garters, 201
Garlicks, 261
Garnault, Ann, 15
Gentiana angulosa, 288
brachyphylla, 108
verna, 108, 278
Geranium atlanticum, 277
ibericum, 286
sylvaticum, 270
tuberosum, 292
Gerard's Herbal, 115, 116, 117, 118,
121, 185, 188, 214, 215, 286
Gerbera Jamesonii, 164
3 OI
My Garden in Spring
Ghost tree, 191
Gladiolus atroviolaceus, 232
Globular ia, 288
Golden Ling, 196
Golden Thyme, 193, 195
Gorse, double, 280
Grape Hyacinths, 100, 101. See
also Muscari
Grasses, variegated, 195, 197, 202
Gravel subsoil, 10, 11
Grouping of plants, 19
Grove, Mr., 105
Guelder Rose, 182
Gunnera chilensis or manicata,
227
scabra, 227
Gypsophila paniculata, 285
Hacquetia Epipactis, 157
Hamamelis, 222
Hanbury, Sir Thomas, 21, 163
Haplocarpa scaposa, 164
Hawthorns, 180, 279, 280
Hazels, 179, 222
Heaths, 50. See also Erica
Hedera conglomerates, 259, 274
Helix, 175, 183
poetarum, 175
Helianthemum libanoticum, 255
lunulatum, 255
umbellatum, 254
Helichrysum bellidioides, 256
Helicodiceros crinitus, 280-2
Heliotrope, winter, 158
Helleborus, 9, 286
Hemlock, 286, 287
Hepatica, 202
Herbaceous plants, variegated, 201
Herbert, Dean, 87
Hermodactylus tuberosus, 231
Hesiod, quoted, 2
Hinde, Mr. Archer, 69
Hollies, 254
Hoog, Messrs., 83, 85
Horse Chestnuts, 16, 17
House Leeks, 10, 261
Hyacinths, wild, 289
Hyacinthus amethystinus, 268
azureus, 100
Hypericum moserianum tricolor,
191
Hypolepis millefolium, 273
Hypoxis Rooperi, 164
Iris, 21-39, 221, et seq,
alata, 33
aphylla, 230
Artemis, 232
bearded, 221, 232
Benacensis, 230
Blanche, 230
Bluebeard, 230
bucharica, 39
Chamaeiris, 230
Charon, 232
dwarf, 229
early, 21
Edith, 229
flag, 222, 231
florentina, 223, 279
germanica, 221, 223, 230
Golden Fleece, 229
Hera, 232
histrio, 33
hislrioides, 31-33
intermediate, 229
Isis, 232
Ivorine, 229
Juno, 38
Kaempferi, 7
Kharput, 230
lazica, 28
Leander, 230
- Little Widow, 231
longipetala, 232
mellita, 233
method of picking, 25
orchioides, 38
ochroleuca, 250
Oncocyclus, 232
pallida, 191
persica stenopkylla, or Hel-
dreichii, 38
pseud-acorus, 197
pumila, 229, 230
Regelio-cyclus, 231
Reichenbachii, 230
reticulata and varieties, 30, 31,
32, 34. 35, 37
scent of, 280
sindjarensis, 38
Sisyrinchium, 232
spuria, 177
treatment of, 231
302
Index
Iris unguicularis and varieties, 6,
7, 8, 21, 25, 27, 28, 160
Vartanii, 33
versicolor, 197
Ivy, 183, 274. See also Hedera
bush, 175
golden fruited, 175, 270
JACK-BY-THE-HEDGE, 194
Jacob, Mr. Joseph, 129
Jacquin's I cones Plantarum Rario-
rum, 255
Japanese Garden, the, 179, 190
plants, 200
Johnson, editor of Gerard's Herbal,
186, 188, 215
Judas tree, 223
Juniper, 263
Irish, 265
Juniperus sinensis, 193
LABURNUM, 181, 196, 279
Lactuca (Mulgedium) alpina, 269
Lamium maculatum, 193, 199
orvala, 264
Larch, 16
Lathraea clandestina, 111-113
Squamaria, 114
Lathyrus, 269
magellanicus, 102
Laurels, 178, 183, 221
Alexandrian, 275
ring-leaved, 182
Leichtlin, Herr Max, 54, 92, 210, 213
Lent-lily, 119
Lenten Roses, 286
Leontopodium, 5
Leucocrinunt montanum, 19
Leucoium aestivum, 60
Hernandezii, or pulchellum, 60
vernum Vagneri, or carpathi-
cum, 60
Lewisia parviflora, 277
Hpwellii, 109
Libertia formosa, 26
Ligustrum japonicum, 265
Lilacs, 196, 279, 280
Lilium Marhan, 259
pardalinwn, 19
Lily of the Valley, 280
Linaria aequitriloba, 262
alpina, 109, 277
Linaria Cymbalaria, 262
hepaticaefolia, 262
Linum arboreum, 254
Liverwort, 268
Lotus Tetragonolobus, 255
Lowe, Dr., 98, 100, 168, 208, 211,
264, 271, 273
Lunatic Asylum, the, 177, 178, et
seq.
Lungworts, 154, 199, 202. See also
Pulmonaria
Lychnis dioica, 201
Lyte, 120, 154
Lynch, Mr., 104, 112, 163
MAGNOLIA, 174, 176, 190
conspicua, 176
Lennei, 176
stellata, 170, 270
Mahaffy, Prof., 46
Malby, Mr., 106, 108
Mammillaria, 163
Mandr agora autumnalis, 150, 151,
152
officinarum, 150, 271
Mandrake. See Mandragora
March winds, 149, et seq.
Markings, variegated, 199
Marret's Pinax, 188
Masters, Dr., 188, 189
Maund's Botanic Garden, 214
Maw, Mr. George, 83, 85, 93
Meadow saffron, 68, 69
Meadowsweet, 196
Meconopsis cambrica, 258
heterophylla, 254
Melville, Mr., 51, 59
Mentha Requienii, 266
rotundifolia, 201
Merendera Bulbocodium, no
caucasica, no
sobolifera, no
Mesembryanthemum linguaeforme,
164
uncinatum, 164
Mice, as pests, 78
Milk Thistle, 199
Miller, on Crocuses, 87
Miscanthus, 149
Molinia coerulea, 202
" Moraine " beds, 46, 104-110, 254,
277
303
My Garden in Spring
Moths as pests, 46, 60
Mountain Ash, 196
Moy, Mr. Polman, 129
Muehlenbeckia, 256
Mugwort, 20 1
Mulberry, 279
Muscari, 272. See also Grape
Hyacinth
botry aides, 100, 101
NARCISSUS, application of name,
117. For varieties see under
Daffodils
Barrii conspicuus, 132
citrinus, 126
cyclamineus, 126
dubius, 127
juncifolius, 126
Leedsii, 127, 128
minicycla, 126
minimus, 126
muticus, 125
poeticus, 121
triandrus, 126, 127
Tazetta, 7
Nectar oscordum siculum, 261
New River, 12, 13, 221, 253
New Zealand plants, acclimatisa-
tion of, 5
Oenothera speciosa, 271
Old Man, 194
Olearia myrsinites, 289
nummularifolia, 263
vergata, var. lineatae, 273
Onions, Giant, 194
Onopordon bracteatum, 195
Opuntias, 162, 162, 165, 257
Orange, hardy, 171
hybrids, 172
Orchis sambucina, 258
Ornithogalum Haussknechtii, 100
libanoticum, 100, 101
Orobanchae, 112
hederae, 275
Orvala lamioides, 264
Osmanthus ilicifolius, 193
Othonnopsis cheirifolia, 240
Oxalis brasiliensis, 5, 257
floribunda, 5
/ofcate, 5
purpurata, or Bowiei, 5
Oxalis purpurea, 257
vespertillionis, 5
Pachysandra terminates, 200
Palms, 282
Pansies, tufted, 280, 293
Papaver rhoeticum, 108
Parkinson's Paradisus, 117, 118,
119, 121, 186, 187
Parnassia palustris, 109
Paul, Mr. George, 260
Pax and Knuth, 109, 140, 142, 143,
144
Peach, purple-leaved, 198
Pergola garden, 128, 288, 291
Petasites japonica, 159
nivea, 158
palmata, 159
Phalaris arundinacea, 201
Philadelphus, 182
coronaria, 201
Phlox, 19, 292
divaricata, var. canadensis, 258
Phuopsis stylosa, 166
Picea pungens glauca, 195
Pines, dwarf, 265
Scots, 222
Weymouth, 178, 179
Pinwill, Capt., 156, 196
Plantago argentea, 184
asiatica, 185
cynops, 184
graminifolia, 185
major, 185, 186
media, 185, 186
nivalis, 185
rose, 185, 1 86
Plantains. See Plantago
Plum, purple, 160, 198
Poa alpina, 187
Podophyllum, 273
Po5, Mr. Bennet, 126
Poiret's Voyage en Barbarie, 28
Polemonium coeruleum, 191
Poppies, Welsh, 175, 258, 270
Potentillas, 258
Primulas, 4, 134-148
acaulis, 143, 144
anisiaca, 143
Auricula, 4, 136, 137, 138,
258
Bowlesii, 107, 140
304
Index
Primula, Cashmiriana, 134
Cockburniana, 147
cortusoides, 144
Dumoulinii, 136
elatior, 143
Facchinii, 136
frondosa, 109, 140, 141
glutinosa, 135, 137, 139
hybrids, 136, 139, 143, 148
integrifolia, 278
japonica, 146
Juliae, 141
Juribella, 137
Knuthiana, 141
longiflora, 136, 137, 138, 139
marginata, 134, 258
megaseaefolia, 134
minima, 4, 136, 139
Mrs. Berkeley, 147
Mrs. Hall Walker, 135
oenensis, 136, 138
officinalis, 143
pedemontana, 4, 107, 139, 278
pulverulenta, 146
rosea, 134
SibthoYpei Pax, 144
Sieboldii, 145
spectabilis, 135, 138, 139
treatment of, 137
tyrolensis, 136, 137, 139
Unique Improved, 148
Veitchii, 145
viscosa, 107
Prickly Pears, 164, 257
Primroses, double, 142
green, 189
purple and lilac, 144
Privet, 178
Prunus Amygdalus nanus, 272
cerasifera atropurpurea, 160,
198
laurocerasus angustifolius, 183
Pissardii, 160, 287
var. moseri, 160
Ptelia trifoliata, 196
Pulmonaria, 154, 202
arvernensis, 156, 157
azurea or angustifolia, 155
grandiflora, 156
Mawson's Blue, 156
rubra, 155
saccharata, 155
Pulmonaria, white, 156
Purple-leaved plants and trees, 198,
222
Plum, 198
Puschkinia scilloides, 101
Pyrus coronaria, fl. pi., 192
M alus floribunda, 222
Pyrethrum Parthenium, 196
Rafflesia Arnoldii, 123
Ranunculus, 5
amplexicaulis major, 278
ficaria, 154
Lingua, 268
Lyalli, 219
nyssanus, 258
pyrenaeus, 278
Rhamnus Frangula, 182
Rhodostachys, 164
7?j'fces cruenta, 292
sanguineum, 196
speciosus, 288
Ribwort, 185
Riccia fluitans, 268
Richardia albo-maculata, 200
Ring-leaved laurel, 182
willow, 182
Robb, Mrs., 142, 144
Robinia Pseudacacia, 196
Rock garden, the, 108, 252 e* 5j.
/?05a altaica, 270
hispida, 270
indica, 273
laevigata Anemone, 129
vubrifolia, 273
rugosa, 200
sericea, 273
Wt'c/zwraiawa, 240
Willmottiae, 193
Rose garden, the, 290
plantains, 185, 186
Royal National Tulip Society, 248
Rubus bifloYUs, 193
deliciosus, 271
tibetanus, 193
Rue, silver-leaved, 258
Rumex flexuosus, 184
pulcher, 184
scutatus, 184
Ruscus aculeatus, 183
hypoglossum, 184
jRwta graveolens, 201
305
My Garden in Spring
SAFFRON, 68, 69, 74
Salix babylonica, 224, 226
herbacea, 265
lanata, 265
reticulata, 265
Salvia argentea, 195
splendens, 288
Sow&wctts racemosa plumosa aurea,
196
Sanders, Mr., 53
Sanguinaria, 273
canadensiSy 169
Santolina incana, 193, 194
Saponaria lutea, 106
Saxifraga, 104, 258, 266
Burseriana, 266
Elizabethae, 266
oppositifolia, 266
peltata, 273
retusa, 266
rotundifolia, 146
Salomonii, 266
sancta, 266
sarmentosa, 258
Taygetea, 266
tenella, 266
Scents of spring flowers, 6, 7, 280
Scilla autumnalis, 6
bifolia, 95, 96, 98, 202
festalis, 289
hispanica, 289
nutans delicata, 289
sibirica, 99, 100
striped, 101
twna, 6
Scolymus hispanicus, 199
Scirpus lacustris, 228
Scrophularia aquatica, 201
Sedge, Fen, 61
Sedum pilosum, 18
spathulatum, 18
Seed envelopes, 16
Sempervivum Comollei, 261
rubicundwn, 261
Senecio incanus, 278
tropaeolioides, 164
Seseli gummiferum, 195
Shrubs, 178
dwarf, 265
variegated, 191, 200
Silene acaulis, 277
Sisymbrium Alliaria, 194
Sloe, purple, 199
Slugs, as pests, 103, 157
Smith, Mr., of Newry, 13, 74, 214
Snake's Head, 168. See Fritillaria
Snails, water, 268
Snowdrops, 7, 40, 272. See Ga/-
306
autumn, 44
bulb of, 41
green, 54, 186
hybridisation of, 56
Straffan, 49, 50, 56
treatment of, 41
yellow, 53, 186
Solanum crispum, 291
Soldanella, 4, 109
montana, 146
South African plants, 5, 164
American plants, 5
Sparrows, 24, 25, 160
Spiraea Thunbergii, 267
Sprenger, Herr, 28, 259
Spring, date of commencement, i
Spring Snowflake, 60
Spruce firs, 265
Spurges, 269, 270
Squill, 101. See Scilla.
Stork's Bill, 261
Strawberries, double flowered, 189
one-leaved, 189
Plymouth, 187
Suaeda fruticosa, 195
Succulent plants, 162, 257
Sundermann, Herr, 141
Sycamores, 16
Symphytum asperrimum, 293
causasicum, 294
Tamarix tetandra, 274
Taxodium distichum, 15
Thalictrum, 270
aquilegifolium, 287
glaucum, 197
" Illuminator," 287
Thaspium aurewn, 293
Thistles, variegated, 199
Thyme, Golden, 195
Toadflax, 262. See Linaria
Tom Tiddler's ground, 191 et seq.
Tools, author's gardening, 66,
97
Toothwort, 111-113
Index
Tracliycarpus excelsus, 282
Tree Potato, 292
Trees, dwarf, 265
Trillium, 19, 273
grandiflorum, 259
Tulipa acuminata, 243
Albion, 249
Annie Macgregor, 246, 247
Batalinii, 237, 238
Bittietiana " Sunset," 240
Bishop, 198, 249
Bizarre, 248
Bleu aimable, 198
Breeders, 246
Bybloemen, 246, 247
Carnation, 249
Chinese, 243
Clara Butt, 241, 288
Clusiana, 238
Cottage, 234, 248
Chapeau de Cardinal, 236
Darwin, 198, 223, 234, 240,
241, 245, 248, 249, 292
dasystemon, 237
Don Pedro, 248
Ellen Willmott, 197
English, 234, 245, 248
Erguste, 198, 241, 242
Europe, 198, 250
Faust, 198, 250
Fosteriana, 239
Fra Angelico, 198
Franz Hals, 198
fulgens, 250
Gesneriana, 240, 241, 243
Golden Spire, 197
Grand Monarque, 198
green, 249
Greuze, 198
Inglescombe Yellow, 197
Isis, 249
Ixioides, 197
Jaune d'oeuf, 197
John Ruskin, 248
Kaufmanniana, 237
King Harold, 241
Lady, 238
La Merveille, 240
La Noire, 198, 241, 249
Laurentia, 241, 243
linifolia, 237, 238
L' Innocence, 249
Tulipa, Louis XIV, 248
- Mabel, 246
Margaret, 249
May-flowering, 234
Maximowiczii, 237
Mrs. Farcombe Sanders, 240
Mrs. Moon, 197
Nigrette, 249
oculus solis, 239
Parisian Beauty, 241
Philippe de Comines, 241
Picotee, 249
praecox, 239
praestans, 238
Primrose Beauty, 197
primulina, 238
purple and lavender, 198
Purple Perfection, 198
Rembrandt, 249
vetroflexa, 241
Rosalind, 243
rose, 246
Sir Harry, 249
Sir Joseph Paxton, 248
Solfatare, 197
Sprengeri, 239
stellata, 238
Striped Beauty, 249
Sultan, 198
Velvet King, 198
Vespuccio, 198
viridiflora, 249
Walter T. Ware, 248
White Swan, 236
yellow, 197
Yellow Prince, 197, 236
Yellow Rose, 197
Zomerschoon, 250
Zulu, 198
Turner, quoted, 118, 120, 154
Tussilago Far far a, 159
UMBERTO, Bishop, story of, 204
Underground watering, 105
VARIEGATED plants and shrubs,
191, 199
Van Tubergen, Mr., 83, 208
Van Waveren, Mr., 236
Veronica circaeoides, 262
repens, 266
teucrium, 196
307
My Garden in Spring
Viburnum, 182
bullatum, 259
lantana foliis punctatis, 182
Opulus, 182
Vine pergola, 291
Violas, 118
biflora, 264
bosniaca, 19, 108, 256
Bowies' Black, 271
calcarata, 256
canina, 264
cornuta, 196
cucullata, 264
gracilis, 202, 259, 260
Munbyana, 260
on rock garden, 264
pubescens, 264
sagittata, 264
sorora, 264
sweet, 20 1
tricolor, 271
Vitis armata, 292
Wahlenbergia gvacilis, 19
Water lilies, 268
Watering of garden, 12
underground, 107
Wayfaring tree, 182
Weigela rosea, 201
Weymouth pines, 178
Welsh Poppy, 175, 258, 270
Wilks, Mr., 47
Willow, dwarf, 265
ring-leaved, 182
weeping, 223-6
Wistaria, 280
standard, 190
Witch Hazel, 222
Witch's Broom, 180, 181
Wollaston, Mr., 192
Wolley-Dod, Mr., 104, 143, 264
Wood Anemones, 18, 216
Wooster's Alpine Plants, 214
Xanthorhixa apiifolia, 174
YEWS, 14, 196, 221, 233, 234
Yuccas, 257
ZINNIAS, 18
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