Children's gardens

Preface

The idea of writing this little book occurred to me because numerous people have frequently asked me, “When did you take up gardening ? ” and seemed surprised at my reply, that I never remembered being without a garden. The fashion of “ taking up ” gardening is now so prevalent, that I thought it might be a help to have some simple book that would form a sound foundation of the rudiments of gardening for children and beginners of all ages. I hope this little volume may be fortunate in directing their ideas to the work required to produce bright gardens, and that by pointing out a few of the endless attractions of the pastime, it may increase in the young the taste for practical gardening, which I myself, in common with thousands at all times of life, have found to be one of the surest sources of happiness. This

IX

X book is only intended as a sketch, and gives the merest mention in unscientific language of some of the most obvious plants and necessary work in each season of the year. More com¬ plete and scientific works should be referred to for following up the threads of knowledge in the lines here indicated.

I have to thank all kind friends who have assisted me by sending photographs or draw¬ ings for illustrations ; and I am specially grate¬ ful to Sir Thomas Hanbury for reading the final proofs of these pages.

ALICIA M. CECIL.

io Eaton Place, London, S.W.

August, 1902.

Contents

l’AGE

I. The Garden . . . . . i

III. Spring Work . . . . .63

II

Galanthus nivalis to be the common snowdrop, even if they did not understand English, and you were unable to tell them it was a Perceneige or Schnee-glockchen , the familiar names in their own languages. I once had a striking instance of this world-wide use of the Latin names. I was travelling in a steamer from Finland to Sweden, and most of the passengers belonged to one of those countries or to Russia, and no one on board could talk English, and many no language at all that I was able to speak. It happened that our ship was put in quarantine because she had come from Russia, where the cholera was very bad, and we were kept at some distance from Stockholm, near a small island on which a temporary hospital was being built. By some special luck the doctor allowed us to land and take a walk on the island, while most of the other poor passengers could not leave the ship. I brought back with me a bunch of wild flowers — heather, milkwort, and many other common things, and gave them to some of our less fortunate fellowtravellers, and I soon found I could have quite a conversation with a Finnish lady, as she knew all the Latin names, and we settled what variety of Erica and Polygala they were, and spoke of them each in turn by name, although I did not know a word of her language.

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It is also sometimes useful also to know the Latin name in order to indentify a particular flower. One very common instance of a pretty English name being confusing or misleading is the word “ bluebell.” Some people would only use it if they meant the “Bluebells of Scotland,” a kind of Campanula , while many people always call the wild blue hyacinth, Scilla nutans , which carpets the woods in May, “ Bluebells.” Suppos¬ ing you wished to buy one or other of these flowers from a nursery-gardener, you would have to explain which you intended. So my advice to all children is to learn the pretty English names, but never laugh at the long Latin ones, and try and remember them too when you can.

But to return to the spring garden and its many flowers. Very like the snowdrop is the snowflake, and one kind {Leucojum vernum ) flowers early in the spring, although there is a summer flowering kind ( L . cestivum) as well. The spring one does well in a bed or border. Blue flowers, which are uncommon at many times of the year, are plentiful in the spring, so it is well to make the most of them. One of the very brightest is the Siberian squill ( Scilla sibirica ), which will grow contentedly either in beds, borders, or in the grass ; it is about five or six inches high, and should be in every

II spring garden. Something like it, but with more star-like flowers and blue and white, not all pure blue, is the “glory of the snow.” Some of these lovely spring bulbs are found in Asia Minor, near the place where the large snow¬ drops came from, and there it grew in quantities and flowered as soon as the snows melted. The most common kind is called Chionodoxa Lucilics, another rather brighter blue is sardensis, while the largest of all, as its name implies, is gigantea. Any of these will grow just as readily as the squills in beds or in the grass. There are some dark blue flowers, too, which, though not so showy, are nice to have, and that is the common grape hyacinth or Muscari. The flowers are like a cluster of grapes round the stem, which is some six or seven inches high ; another taller Muscari , comosum monstruosum, is called the “feather hyacinth,” as it looks so soft and fluffy and like a feather.

Among the early - flowering iris there are many shades of blues, from pale gray to deep purple. The Iris tribe is a very large one, and from January till far on into the summer some of the many varieties should be in flower in every garden. There are two classes of iris, those with creeping roots and those with bulbs. The Spanish belong to the bulbous class, the German to the other ; both have endless con-

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kW^A.- «li

IRIS IN A WILD GARDEN

II trasts in size and colour — blue, purple, yellow, brown, and white — and they flower from May onwards ; but there are other forms as well. The great big Japanese ones which have lately become well known, called Iris Kaempferi , come out in the summer, and can only be grown in a bog garden, but there are many kinds which do well in ordinary good garden soil ; foremost among these comes Iris reticulata , which is small and deep blue, with fine grass¬ like leaves. This blooms very early in the spring, and is therefore most useful. Even earlier still appears the pale blue Iris stylosa In a wild garden it will form large plants with ribbon-like foliage, and its lovely flowers in the south of England are often out as early as Christmas. Another bulbous plant, the “ spring star-flower ” ( Triteleia uniflora ), is white, with a sort of bluish tinge, and has a mauve stripe down each point of the star. It shows early, and lasts till April, and grows well in any nice sunny spot.

Foremost among blue flowers stands the gentian. Among the cold snows of the Alps the gentian comes out “ timidly peeping ” with the first breath of spring which is able to thaw the ice-bound earth, and in the calm, majestic stillness among those snowy peaks, she ii

. . . gazes on high,

Till she grew heavenly,

Blue as the sky.

Mrs. Hemans.

And yet this lover of Alpine solitudes will live and bloom for us in our gardens, even on Hat beds, in parts of England scarcely above the sea-level. It is not difficult to arrange to give it the soil that suits it, as it will do well in any good garden soil that is not too heavy (in which case mix some sand with it). On the surface of the soil or just below it let there be a few small stones, preferably limestone, or even bits of lime rubbish from some old build¬ ing. It likes plenty of sun, but not to be too dry, so if it is in a very hot border it must have some water in summer. The easiest to grow and the best -known kind is Gentiana acaulis, the gentianella, but another smaller and vivid blue gentian is verna , which carpets the Alpine pastures in spring. This is more difficult to establish, but on a rock garden or a special corner of a border, where its wants in the way of soil, sun, and moisture are carefully attended to, it will thrive and bloom well.

A blue flower which likes the shade and appears in spring is Omphalodes verna , called the “creeping forget-me-not.” Its flowers are larger

II than those of the meadow forget-me-not, and it is of a more intensely bright blue. The roots creep along the ground, and if planted in a partially shady place in a wood it will soon form large patches and seem quite at home. It will also grow well in beds or borders. The real forget-me-not, or Myosotis, which belongs to the same (borage) family, must, as its name tells us, not be forgotten among the blue flowers for the spring garden. There are several kinds which grow wild in Britain ; the wood one and the meadow one, which grows beside streams, are both familiar, and there is also an early kind, Myosotis dissifiora, which is largely used for spring bedding. In nurserymen’s catalogues varieties which are nice to grow from seed are often advertised. I remember getting one called “Little Jewel” many years ago, and planting a border of it round the largest bed in my garden with very successful results.

Another blue spring flower which must find a place is the windflower of the Apennines, Anemone apennina. This will grow either in beds or rock-gardens, but is most charming when planted in woods or in waste places where the wild English windflower would be at home. Anemone blanda is very like it, but with rather larger blue stars. It is not quite so easily grown, but in bright sunny spots flowers very ii early in the spring. The hepaticas, also familiar favourites, are a kind of anemone. The common hepatica does well in simple garden soil, in bed or border or edge of a wood. It does not like being disturbed, but will grow year after year in the same place, the flowers appearing among glossy dark leaves. The single blue or double pink varieties are the best known, but there are also single pink and white. The single blue are very often seen on the Riviera or in woods in the Tyrol and other parts of Europe. Another plant very like it is Anemone angulosa. This kind also comes into bloom about March, but the blue stars, which are larger than the ordinary hepatica, appear with hardly any of the leaves, It should be planted in beds or borders that are not too dry and sunny.

Purple rock -cress (Aubrietia purpurea) is useful for bedding or edging, or for planting among rocks, and is of a mauve, and sometimes of a purple shade. It is closely allied to the Arabis or white rock-cress. There are some very good new varieties of Aubrietia, with larger flowers than the old one, to be obtained now, such as Hendersoni , with deep reddishpurple blooms. This is already getting a long list of blue and purple spring flowering plants, and yet there is an all-important one not men-

II tioned which it would be indeed sad to go without— the violet.

Violets ! Deep blue violets !

April’s loveliest coronets !

There are no flowers grow in the vale,

Kiss’d by the dew, woo’d by the gale,

None by the dew of the twilight wet,

So sweet as the deep blue violet.

L. E. LandOn.

Let every garden have its violets, for spring would not be perfect without them. But although nature scatters them in profusion in many of our woods and along the banks and ditches at the roadsides, they want some careful handling to get them as fair and fresh in a garden. To grow violets satisfactorily, whether it is the ordinary sweet-scented one or the grander Czar, or one of its still larger longstalked relations (such as “Princess of Wales ”), they require good soil, and must not be too dry and scorched by the sun; and yet they should not be planted in such a shady place that the sun never reaches them, or they will not flower. If you are given even one plant, you could soon have a show of violets, for they make many “ runners ” or offshoots, and if these are picked off the parent plant, and are carefully planted in good soil and partial shade in the spring, they

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5° n will be nice plants, ready to move in the autumn and to flower in mild seasons through the winter as well as during the spring.

The love of blue flowers must not lead to the exclusion of others. Reds and pinks are not so easy to get, nor is there as great a variety to select from. Among bulbs there are the lovely pink hyacinths. They make a fine show in beds or borders, but would not do to plant in wild or woodland places like the “bluebell.” To get good pink or red flowers in the wild garden, in woods, or on banks, there is nothing better than the coloured varieties of the common primrose and polyanthus. There is every shade from pinkish - white to deep crimson, and everywhere primroses are wel¬ come. Plants will do extremely well in beds or borders, but if they are to remain there, and not to give way to summer flowers, a partially shady place must be found, so that they do not get too dry and scorched by the hot sun. There are very pretty double primroses too, pale yellow or soft mauve or deep red, which make gay posies in the spring, and also a quaint old-fashioned kind, called “hose-in-hose,” which look like two flowers, stuck one inside the other. These queer little “hose-in-hose” always had a great fascination for me, in association with the delightful story

II in it, and began by putting the “ hose-in-hose ” among the cowslips ; but I will not tell you more of the story, as I hope some day you may read the book.

The best way to get a lot of primroses is to raise them from seed — the small seedlings soon bear an abundance of bloom ; but if any plant by Mrs. Ewing called Marys Meadoiv. The little children in that tale learnt all about the old book on gardens, Parkinson’s Earthly Paradise (. Paradisus in Sole , by John Parkinson, 1629), and tried to make a meadow near their home into a “ Paradise ” by planting garden flowers

A MASS OF PRIMROSES AND POLYANTHUS ii has a specially good-coloured flower it is best to increase by division, to be quite certain of having more of the same. Take up the plant when it has done flowering and pull it into as many little plants as you can, putting them carefully into the ground in a cool and shady place. To be certain of keeping a stock of a particular kind of this, or many other flowers, the seeds alone must not be trusted to. The bees carry the pollen so easily from one flower to another that reds, mauves, and yellows get mixed, and the result of growing from seed is to produce plants of almost every shade. It is by careful selection from these that new shades of colour deserving of special names have been obtained. Wilson’s blue is one of these newer kinds, with very distinctly bluish petals.

Out of the wood and shade, in the sunny beds or borders, there can be a blaze of brilliant red, with one of the showiest of spring flowers, the tulip. When tulips were first introduced from the East into Europe, over three hundred years ago, they created such a sensation that people got more excited over growing them than they have over any flower before or since. The greatest centre of this “rage” was Holland, and “ tulip fever,” as it is called, reached its height there, and it is still in that country that the greatest number of bulbs are raised, and

II thousands come to England every year from Holland. When the first settlers at the Cape went out to South Africa from Holland, the most familiar flower to them was the tulip, and being only ignorant “ Boers ” or peasants, they could not see that there were no real, tulips growing wild in South Africa at all, but they called all the spring flowers “tulips,” and it is curious to this day to hear hundreds of people calling various plants, especially a very common small “ morea,” or kind of iris, a tulip. But there is no such confusion in the minds of English children, and they know the bright cuplike flowers of the tulip well.

I wonder if you know the fairy-tale which tells how if a tulip is kissed when open in the sunshine a tiny fairy will come out of it ? I used often to try the experiment, but perhaps it was want of good enough sight that pre¬ vented me finding the fairy. There are dwarf tulips and tall tulips, and both early and late flowering ones, little ones that stand erect like small soldiers, and the tall “ parrot ” tulips, which open their more untidy, but more artis¬ tic, drooping heads in May. There is a great variety to choose from, as the bewildering lists of names in the bulb catalogues testify, but all of them require care, good soil, and an open sunny exposure ; should they also be sheltered n from the wind, their petals will last much longer in perfection.

If your garden is in a warm part of Eng¬ land, it would be an interesting experiment to try some of the Cape bulbs in the open, but they must have a very warm, sunny spot, where they get almost baked with the summer sun, or they will not flower well. If you can assure them of this, it is well worth while to plant some of these pretty plants. Sparaxis and Ixia are the best known, and there are many shades of colour among them ; and a more uncommon bulb which can now be bought at a moderate price in England is the Homeria , which has starlike flowers of a rich salmon colour, and would be unlike anything else in your garden. It would be on the safe side to give these a little shelter in a hard frost; just a handful of litter or bracken might save them from being hurt by the cold.

One more bulb I would name amonQf the reds, although its colour is not brilliant and showy, and that is the fritillary, with quaint purplish chequered, bell-snaped flowers. Fritillai'ia , the Latin name, is from a word meaning a chess-board, and so describes the funny pattern on many of the varieties. F. Meleagris is a native of Britain, and grows plentifully in some

II parts (as in the meadows near Oxford), but it deserves to be planted in gardens as well, and the white one, or “great snow-bell,” is very charming too. They flower in May. The handsome tall Crown Imperial lilies are also really fritillaries. Their golden crown is

CROWN IMPERIALS formed of bells hanging round the stem, which are just the same shape as the chequered bell of the meadows. They are grand flowers, and if you have a big enough bed nothing looks finer than these kingly lilies, orange (. F . imperialist or yellow (F. imperialis Jlava ), but they must be treated royally and given good soil. You are ii sure to notice in planting them the curious “ foxy ” smell from the bulbs.

Foremost among the pink or red flowers which are not bulbous rooted, but which you can easily raise from seed, are the little crimson buttons, the double daisies (. Beilis perennis). It is impossible to write of all the plants that flower in the spring months, but there are three more pink ones you must hear about before we go to the yellow ones — Erica carnea , Daphne cneorum , and Saxifraga crassifolia. The first is a kind of heath which comes out very early in the year. It likes best to be planted in peaty soil, but will thrive almost anywhere. The next is called the “ garland flower ” from the pretty trailing way it grows, with small evergreen leaves and clusters of deliciously scented pink blossoms. The third bears fine pale pink flowers late in spring, and has handsome thick leaves (see page 7 1 ). They would not be so easy for you to raise from seed, so you would have to get plants of all of these to be sure of success, and plant them in a sunny border.

Children will easily guess what flower I am going to put first among the yellow glories of spring. It could be none other than the daffodil. Whether your garden is a bit of wilderness, or whether it is a collection of neat little beds or a trim border, try and have “a host of golden

II daffodils.” The bulbs are to be bought at a fairly cheap price now, and you will find no way more satisfactory of spending a half-crown of pocketmoney than by the purchase of some for your spring garden. Nothing is more charming than the ordinary wild daffodil, which appears like a golden carpet spread in many an English meadow in April. To learn the names and appreciate the beauties of the hundreds of varieties now in cultivation is quite beyond the capacity of even the wisest child, but still a little could be learnt, and gradually a small collection of some of the finest and more distinct might be got together in your garden. It is quite bewildering to any one not knowing much about daffodils to make out a daffodil catalogue. Without some knowledge or explanation it is indeed a puzzle, and, having experienced the difficulty myself, I will try clearly to define what a few of the many names signify.

Daffodils belong to a family of plants (part of the natural order of Amaryllidce ) called Narcissus, after a character in Greek mythology, a youth who was supposed to be changed into this flower. It is a very large family, embracing a vast number of species or distinct varieties ; so, to make it less complicated, these are grouped together according to the shape of the flower — those with long trumpets, those with cups or

II trumpets equal to the length of the petals, and those with short shallow cups. The wild daffo¬ dil or Lent lily belongs to the long trumpet group, called Pseudo-narcissus (or Ajax), and in the same class there are the large {major), the small {minor), the two-coloured {bicolor), the

LENT LILIES double ( Telamonius plenus), andso on. These are all found wild, if not in England, in other parts of Europe, but, besides these, there are numerous garden varieties raised from crossing and select¬ ing seeds, and every year new ones are added to the list. Some of the most beautiful among them are Emperor, Empress, Horsfeldii, and F.

II

W. Burbidge, and these are now easily bought. There are still newer beauties, too rare for any child to aspire to. Next come the varieties with a shorter, more cup-like trumpet. The incomp arabilis belong to this section, and classed in it is the well-known “ butter and eggs.” Among the fine garden varieties belonging to this group are Sir Watkin and C. J. Backhouse, and Barii conspicua and Leedsii. Then there are the jonquils, a kind found wild in Spain and deliciously sweet-scented. Next come the Tazetta or polyanthus group, with several flowers on one stem. There are various wild types of this group and many garden ones, such as “Grand Monarque,” “ Soleil dor,” “ Scilly white ” and “ Paper white ” ; and, last, we come to the group with still shorter cups and large petals, the Poeticus varieties. The wild “pheasant’s eye” belongs to this type, and other garden varieties, such as Poeticus ornatus, and they too are very sweet-scented. Bulbs of all these kinds must be planted early in the autumn, and they will flower well from March to May. Put them in good soil, and they will increase, and be all the better for being taken up and divided every two or three years.

We have thought of pink primroses already, but the real “yellow primrose” of our woods must not be left out, nor another flower, the ii cowslip, associated in all children’s minds with a sweetish, sickly-tasting tea, whose flavour was greatly improved by being drunk out of dolls’ cups, and with round golden balls of sadly fleeting beauty, manufactured by hanging all the little heads on strings and knotting tight together. When “yellow cowslips gild the level green ” in the parks and fields, they ought to be brightening the grassy miniature lawns of every wild garden.

I will only tell you of two more yellow flowers which bloom well all through the spring. One is daisy - shaped, and called leopard’s bane, or Doronicum. There is a wild kind, which is pretty, but apt to become a trouble in a small garden, as it spreads quickly ; a tall garden variety called Harpur Crewe, which lasts on into the summer ; and, best of all, a dwarf one called austriacum, which sometimes begins to send up buds so early in January that they get nipped by frost. The other plant is called Alyssum saxatile, only a few inches high, with shining gold heads of small cross-shaped flowers. It is very easy to grow, and on a warm spring day it is a pleasure to watch the bees busily “improving the shining hour” at its countless little honey-cells.

You must not expect at first to have all or even a quarter of these many flowers in your

II spring gardens, but if you ever did succeed in getting all I have told you about, you could find quite as many more the names of which I have not given you, so endless are the flowers that can be grown. Year by year with patience you must add to your store, and as that enlarges you will find you are able to give away and to exchange plants, so that your collection will increase the faster, and each year there will be more bright and cheerful blossoms to herald the spring.

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I see with half-attentive eyes

The buds and flowers that mark the spring,

And nature’s myriad prophecies

Of what the summer suns will bring.

Tom Hood.

PREPARING FOR SUMMER

SPRING WORK

Gardens do not become beautiful of their own accord. It is only by real hard work that they can be made so, and the spring is one of the busiest times of the year, as, if hard work did not begin then, there would be no show of summer flowers. In gardening, busy prepara¬ tion for the future must be constantly made. Lost time and opportunity can never be re¬ covered. If the garden is neglected for even a short time it will soon show the signs of that neglect ; and if the future is not looked forward

F in to, when it becomes the present the carelessness will bring its own punishment. But children must not be depressed by these thoughts, for they will find it is the very fact of this hard work, patience, and foresight which gives the greatest pleasure in gardening. You have been hearing a great deal about spring flowers, which to grow and where to plant them, but the work required to produce a bright spring garden with all these things in bloom has to be done months before — sometimes a whole year before. For instance, if you want to have a good show of wallflowers, you must sow the seeds one spring, then “ prick out ” the little plants, with room to grow big, and in the autumn move them to the bed or border where they are to flower the following spring. Then the bulbs of all spring flowering plants must be planted in the autumn. But to learn more of this preparation for the spring, you must read about the work to be performed in the autumn, and follow out all the directions you are given, thinking what spring beauties you want, and planning and working to achieve what you desire.

In spring there are two ways of employing the time — enjoying the freshness and beauty of new life, and preparing for summer. Oh, the pleasure of the first warm day of spring, when it

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SPRING WORK seems as if by magic the grass becomes “ pied with daisies,” so swiftly does the sunshine awake them and make them open their eyes after the long winter’s sleep. The buds on the trees look plump and fat, and soon they begin to burst, and the fresh green to peep out and unfold. The distant landscape appears the softest blue, the grass an almost emerald green ; the trees have a brownish -purple tinge, with pale green on their stately stems. The birds begin to look busy and restless, and carol all day with sweet tunes and cheerful notes that had been silent for long months.