The Wild Garden

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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

MARQUAND LIBRARY

PART I. PAftl

EXPLANATORY . I

^ PART II.

an enumeration of hardy exotic plants, suitable for naturalization in our woods, semi-wild ^ Places, shrubberies, &c, with the native ^ country, general character, height, colour, r^ time of flowering, mode of propagating, and ^ the positions most suitable for each . . 30

Part III

SELECTIONS OF HARDY EXOTIC PLANTS FOR NATURALI- ZATION IN VARIOUS POSITIONS 123

Part IV. The Garden Of British Wild Flowers . . • • J 55

•' I went, for the first time in my life, some years ago, to stay at a very grand and beautiful place in the country, where the grounds are said to be laid out with consummate taste. For the first three or four days I was perfectly enchanted; it seemed something so much better than nature that I really began to wish the earth had been laid out according to the latest principles of improvement. ... In three days' time I was tired to death : a thistle, a nettle, a heap of dead bushes — anything that wore the appearance of accident and want of intention — was quite a relief. I used to escape from the made grounds, and walk upon an adjacent goose-common, where the cart-ruts, gravel-pits, bumps, irregularities, coarse ungentlemanlike grass, and all the varieties produced by neglect, were a thousand times more gratifying than the monotony of beauties the result of design, and crowded into narrow confines. ,,

Sydney Smith.

Part I. Explanatory

THE WILD GARDEN.

To understand the aim of this little book, it is desirable to take a broad glance at the past and present state of our flower-gardens. From about twenty years ago, back to the time of Shakespeare, the flowers of an English garden were nearly all hardy ones : they came from northern or temperate regions, in most cases from climates very like our own ; they were as hardy as our weeds ; they bloomed early in the keen spring air, and late in the wet autumn gusts, as well as in the favoured summer's day.

The daughters of the year, One after one, thro* that still garden passed.

Passages from our greatest poets and writers — Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, and others — embody the names of the principal classes of flowers used in this ancient style of gardening, and show us what infinite delight it was capable of affording ; and its B 2

The Wild Garden.

charms we may yet see in little cottage gardens in Kent, Sussex, and many other parts of England, though the scarlet geranium has begun to eradicate all the fair blossoms of many a sweet little garden, once, and often yet, " embowered in fruit trees and forest trees, evergreens and honeysuckles rising many-coloured from amid shaven grass plots, flowers struggling in through the very windows . . . where, especially on long summer nights, a king might have wished to sit and smoke and call it his." From these little Elysiums, where the last glimpses of beautiful old English gardening may yet be seen, we will now turn to the modern system which replaces it.

About a generation ago a taste began to be manifested for placing a number of tender plants in the open air in summer, with a view to the production of showy masses of decided colour. The subjects selected were mostly from sub-tropical climates and of free growth ; placed in the open air of our genial early summer, and in fresh rich earth, every year they grew rapidly and flowered abundantly during the summer and early autumn months, and until cut down by the first frosts. The brilliancy of tone resulting from this system was very attractive, and since its introduction there has

Explanatory.

been a gradual rooting out of all the old favourites in favour of the bedding system. This was carried to such an extent that of late it has not been uncommon, indeed it has been the rule, to find the largest gardens in the country without a single hardy flower, all energy and expense being devoted tp the production of the many thousand exotics required for the summer decoration. It should be distinctly borne in mind that the expense for this system is an annual one ; that no matter what amount of money may be spent in this way, no matter how many years may be devoted to perfecting it, the first sharp frost of November merely prepares a yet further expense and labour.

Its highest results need hardly be described ; they are seen in all our great public gardens ; our London and many other city parks show them in the shape of beds filled with vast quantities of flowers, covering the ground frequently in a showy way, and not unfrequently in a repulsively gaudy manner : every private garden is taken possession of by the same simple beauties. Occasionally some variety is introduced. We go to Kew or the Crystal Palace to see what looks best there, or the weekly gardening papers tell us ; and the following season sees tens of thousands of

The Wild Garden.

the same arrangements and patterns scattered all over the country. I will not here enter into the question of the comparative advantages of the two systems ; it is enough to state that even on its votaries the system at present in fashion is beginning to pall. Some are looking back with regret to the old mixed-border gardens ; others are endeavouring to soften the harshness of the bedding system by the introduction of fine-leaved plants, but all are agreed that a great mistake has been made in destroying all our sweet old border flowers, from tall Lilies to dwarf Hepaticas, though very few persons indeed have any idea of the numbers of beautiful subjects in this way which we may gather from every northern and temperate clime.

What is to be done ? Every garden should have a mixed border, but except in the little cottage gardens before alluded to — "umbrageous man's nests," as Mr. Carlyle calls them, gardens dependent on it solely are quite out of the question. It is also clear that, base and frightfully opposed to every law of nature's own arrangement of living things as is the bedding system, it has yet some features which deserve to be retained on a small scale. My object is now to show how we may, without losing the better features of the mixed bedding or any other system, follow one infinitely superior to any now practised, yet supplementing both, and exhibiting more of the varied beauty of hardy flowers than the most ardent admirer of the old style of garden ever dreams of. We may do this by naturalizing or making wild innumerable beautiful natives of many regions of the earth in our woods, wild and semi-wild places, rougher parts of pleasure grounds, etc., and in unoccupied places in almost every kind of garden.

I allude not to the wood and brake flora of any one alp or chain of alps, but to that which finds its home in the immeasurable woodlands that fall in furrowed folds from beneath the hoary heads of all the great mountain chains of the world, whether they rise from hot Indian plains or green European pastures. The Palm and sacred Fig, as well as the Wheat and the Vine, are separated from the stemless plants that cushion under the snow for half the year, by a zone of hardier and not less beautiful life, varied as the breezes that whisper on the mountain sides, and as the little rills that seam them. I allude to the Lilies, and Bluebells, and Foxgloves, and Irises, andWindflowers,and Columbines, and Aconites, and Rock-roses, and Violets* and Cranesbills, and countless Pea-flowers, and mountain Avens, and Brambles,

The Wild Garden.

and Cinquefoils, and Evening Primroses, and Clematises, and Honeysuckles, and Michaelmas Daisies, and Feverfews, and Wood-hyacinths, and Daffodils, and Bindweeds, and Forget-me-nots, and sweet blue Omphalodes, and Primroses, and Day Lilies, and Asphodels, and St Bruno's Lilies, and the almost innumerable plants which form the flora of regions where, though life is yet rife on every inch of ground, and we are enjoying the verdure and the temperature of our lowland meadows, there is a " sense of a great power beginning to be manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the rise of the long low lines of piny hills; the first utterances of those mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yet restrained, and the far-reaching ridges of pastoral mountains succeed each other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quiet waters, from some far-off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces, and the stern expression of the central ranges, are alike withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of the ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures ; no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair

Explanatory.

ranks of her forests ; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear green streams wind along their well - known beds; and under the dark quietness of the undisturbed pines there spring up, year by year, such company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the blessings of the earth. It was spring-time, too ; and all were coming forth in clusters crowded for very love. There was room enough for all, but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes, only to be nearer each other. There was the Wood Anemone, star after star, closing every now and then into nebulae ; and there was the Oxalis, troop by troop, like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie, the dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy snow, and touched with Ivy on the edges — Ivy as light and lovely as the Vine ; and, ever and anon, a blue gush of Violets and Cowslip bells in sunny places ; and in the more open ground, the Vetch, and Comfrey, and Mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the alpine Polygala, and the Wild Strawberry, just a blossom or two, all showered amidst the golden softness of deep, warm, ambercoloured moss."

io The Wild Garden.

This is a picture of but one of innumerable and infinitely varied scenes in the wilder parts of all northern and temperate regions, at many different elevations. The loveliness and ceaselessly varying charms of such scenes are indeed difficult to describe or imagine ; the essential thing to bear in mind is that the plants that go to form them are hardy, and will thrive in our climate as well as native plants.

Such beauty may be realized in every wood and copse and wild shrubbery that screens our " trim gardens." Naturally our woods and wilds have no small loveliness in spring ; we have here and there the Lily-of-the-valley and the Snowdrop wild, and everywhere the exquisite Primrose and Cowslip ; the Bluebell and the Foxglove sometimes take nearly complete possession of whole woods, and turn them into paradises of vernal beauty ; but, with all our treasures in this way, we have no attractions in semi-wild places compared to what it is within our power to create. A certain number of beautiful plants occur amongst the weeds in our woods, and there we stop. But there are many countries with winters as cold as, or colder than, our own, possessing a rich flora ; and by taking the best hardy exotics and establishing them with the best of our own wild flowers in wild or half-wild spots near our houses and gardens, we may produce the most charming results ever seen in such places. To most people a pretty plant in the wild state is more attractive than any garden denizen. It is free, and taking care of itself, it has had to contend with and has overcome weeds which, left to their own sweet will in a garden, would soon leave very small trace of the plants therein ; and, moreover, it is usually surrounded by some degree of graceful wild spray — the green above, and the moss and brambles and grass around. Many will say with Tennyson, in " Amphion," —

Better to me the meanest weed That blows upon its mountain,

The vilest herb that runs to seed Beside its native fountain —

but by the means presently to be explained, numbers of plants, neither " mean " nor " vile," but of the highest order of beauty and fragrance, and clothed with the sweetest associations, may be seen to greater perfection, wild as weeds, in the spaces now devoted to rank grass and weeds in our shrubberies, ornamental plantations, and by wood walks, than ever they were in our gardens.

My reasons for advocating this system, as I do, are as follows : first, because hundreds of the finest hardy flowers will thrive much better in the places I recommend for them than ever they did in the old-fashioned border. Even comparatively small ones, like the ivy-leaved Cyclamen, a beautiful plant that we rarely find in perfection in gardens, I have seen perfectly naturalized and spread all over the mossy surface of a thin wood. Secondly, because they will look infinitely better than ever they did in gardens, in consequence of fine-leaved plant, fern, and flower, and climber, ornaifiental grass and dwarf trailing shrub, mutually relieving each other in ways innumerable as delightful. Any one of a thousand combinations, which this book will suggest to the intelligent reader, will prove as far superior to any aspect of the old mixed border, or the ordinary type of modern flower-garden, as is a lovely mountain valley to a country in which the eye can see but canals and hedges. Thirdly, because, arranged as I propose, no disagreeable effects result from decay. The raggedness of the old mixed border after the first flush of spring and early summer bloom had passed was intolerable, bundles of decayed stems tied to sticks making the place look like the parade-ground of a number of crossingsweepers with their " arms piled." When Lilies are sparsely dotted through masses of Rhododendrons as I recommend, their flowers are admired more than if they were in isolated showy masses ; when they pass out of bloom they are unnoticed amidst the vegetation, and not eyesores, as when in rigid unrelieved tufts in borders, &c.

In a wild or semi-wild state, the beauty of individual species will proclaim itself when at its height ; and when passed out of bloom, they will be succeeded by other kinds, or lost among the numerous objects around. Fourthly, because it will enable us to grow hundreds of plants that have never yet obtained a place in our " trim gardens/' nor ever will be admitted therein. I allude to the multitudes of plants which, not being so showy as those usually considered worthy of a place in gardens, are never seen there. The flowers of many of these are of the highest order of beauty, especially when seen in numbers. An isolated tuft of one of these, seen in a formal border, may not be considered worthy of a place at any time — in some wild glade, in a wood, associated with other subjects, its effect may be exquisite. We do not usually cultivate Gorse or Buttercups, yet Mr. Wallace, the distinguished naturalist and traveller, says — "During twelve years spent amidst the grandest tropical vegetation, I have seen nothing comparable to the effect produced on our landscapes by Gorse, Broom, Heather, Wild -Hyacinths, Hawthorn, and Buttercups;" and these are but a few conspicuous members of our indigenous flora, which is by no means as rich as those of many other cold countries! In every county in the British Isles there are numbers of country seats in which one hundred types of vegetation, novel, yet as beautiful as, or more beautiful than, those admired by Mr. Wallace, may be established ; for there are in the colder parts of Europe, Asia, and other countries, Heaths handsomer than those usually grown, many " wild Hyacinths " besides the common English one, many finer " Buttercups " than those commonly seen, and numbers of Hawthorns besides our common May ; not to speak of many other families and plants equally beautiful.

Among the subjects that are usually considered unfit for garden cultivation may be included a goodly number that, grown in gardens, are little addition to them ; I mean subjects like the American Asters, Golden Rods, and like plants, which merely tend to hide the beauty of the choicer and more beautiful border-flowers when planted amongst them. These coarse subjects would be quite at home in copses and woody places, where their blossoms might be seen or gathered in due season, and their vigorous vegetation form a covert welcome to the game preserver. To these two groups might be added subjects like the winter Heliotropes, the handsome British Epilobium angustifolium, and many other plants which, while attractive in the garden, are apt to spread about so rapidly as to become a nuisance there. Clearly these should only be planted in wild and semi-wild places. Fifthly, because we may in this way settle also the question of spring flowers, and the spring garden, as well as that of hardy flowers generally. In the way I suggest, many parts of every country garden, and many suburban ones, may be made alive with spring flowers. The blue stars of the Apennine Anemone will be seen to greater advantage " wild," in shady or half-shady bare places, under trees, than in any conceivable formal arrangement, and it is but one of hundreds of sweet spring flowers that will succeed perfectly in the way I propose. Sixthly, because there can be few more agreeable phases of communion with nature than naturalizing the natives of countries in which we are infinitely more interested than in those of greenhouse or stove plants. From the walls of the Coliseum, the prairies *>f the New World, the woods and meadows of all the great mountains of Europe ; from Greece and Italy and Spain, from the sunny hills of Asia Minor ; from the arctic regions of the great continents — in a word, from almost every region interesting to the traveller he may bring seeds or plants and establish round his home the pleasantest souvenirs of the various scenes he has visited.

Moreover, the great merit of permanence belongs to this delightful phase of gardening. Select a wild rough slope, and embellish it with the handsomest and hardiest climbing plants, — say the noble mountain Clematis from Nepal, the sweet C. Flammula from Southern Europe, and the magnificent new hybrid Clematises, (if the earth be rich and there are rocks and banks on which they can be so arranged that they will not be overrun by coarser kinds, and that their masses of shoots may spread and bask in the sun till they glow into sheets of purple of various shades) " Virginian creepers " in variety, Rubus biflorus, with its whitewashed stems, and other kinds ; various species of hardy vines, Aristolochias, Jasmines, Honeysuckles — British and European, wild Roses, etc. Arranged with some judgment at first, such a colony might be left to take care of itself; time would but add to its attractions, and the owner might go away for tea

Explanatory. ij years, and find it more beautiful than ever on his return. As much may be said of all the other combinations which I suggest.

I will now endeavour to illustrate my meaning by showing what may be done with a few diverse types of northern vegetation. We will take the Forget-me-not order to begin with, and as that is one far from being as rich as others in subjects suited for naturalization, the reader may be able to form some idea of what we may do, in this way, by selecting from the numerous families of plants that grow in the meadows and mountain-woods of Europe, Asia, and America.

The Forget-me-not or Borage family is a wellmarked and well-known one, containing a great number of coarse and ugly weeds, but which, if it included only the common Forget-me-not among its beauties, would have some claims to our attention. Many persons are not acquainted with more than a couple of the Forget-me-nots ; but what lovely exotic plants there are in this order that would afford delight if met with creeping about along our wood and shrubbery walks ! Nature, say some, is sparing of her deep true blues, and generally spreads them forth on the high Alps, where the Gentians bloom near to the sky ; but there are

C obscure plants in this order that possess the truest, deepest, and most delicate of blues, and which will thrive as well in the positions I allude to as common weeds. The Gentians and high alpine plants require some care in our sluggish lowlands, but not so these. The creeping Omphalodes verna even surpasses the Forget-me-not in the depth and beauty of its blue and its general good qualities, and runs about quite freely in any shady or half-shady shrubbery, wood, or rough rockwork. Its proper home is the wood or semi-wild spot, where it takes care of itself. Put it in a garden, and probably, unless the soil and region be moist, it soon perishes. Besides, in the border, it would be a not very agreeable object when once the sweet spring bloom had passed ; whereas in the positions spoken of, in consequence of the predominance of trees, shrubs, and tall herbs, the low plants are not noticed when out of flower, but crawl about unobserved till returning spring reminds those fortunate enough to see them how chaste and superior is the inexpensive and natural kind of gardening here advocated.

Another plant of the order is so suitable and useful for this purpose, that if a root or two of it be planted in any shrubbery, it will soon run about, exterminate the weeds, and prove quite a lesson

Explanatory. ig in wild and natural gardening. I allude to the beautiful Caucasian Comfrey (Symphytum caucasicum), which grows about twenty inches high, and bears quantities of the loveliest blue pendulous* flowers. It, like many others, does much better in a wood, grove, or any kind of shrubbery, than in any other position, just filling in the naked spaces between the trees and shrubs, and has a quick-growing and spreading tendency, but never becomes weedy or objectionable. As if to contrast with it, there is the deep crimson Bohemian Comfrey (S. bohemicum), which is sometimes startling from the depth of its vivid colouring, and the white Comfrey (S. orientale), quite a vigorous-growing kind, blooming early in April and May, with the blue Caucasian C. I purposely omit the British Forget-me-nots, wishing now chiefly to show what we may do with exotics quite as hardy as our own wildings ; and we have another Forget-me-not, not British, which surpasses them all — the early Myosotis dissitiflora. This is like a patch of the bluest sky settled down among the moist stones of a rockwork or any similar spot before our own Forget-me-not has opened its blue eyes, and is admirable for glades or banks in wood or shrubbery, especially in moist districts.

C 2 v 3o The Wild Garden.

For rocky bare places and sunny sandy banks we have the spreading Gromwell (Lithospermum prostratum), which, when in flower, looks just as if some exquisite alpine Gentian had assumed the form of a matted hispid bush, to enable it to hold its own among creeping things and stouter herbs than accompany it on the Alps. Also the dwarf spring-blooming Lungworts (Pulmonarias), the handsome profuse-flowering Italian Bugloss (Anchusa),and the Apennine Hounds-tongue (Cynoglossum), and that strong old plant the Cretan Borage (generally known as Nordmannia cordifolia), which opens its lavender-blue and conspicuous flowers in early spring, and is tall and strong enough to maintain its position even among Docks or Nettles. It would be found to delight in any old lane or bypath with the winter Heliotrope or the like, while there would be no fear of its becoming a weed, like that sweet-scented wilding.

We will next turn from the Forget-me-not order to a very different type of vegetation — hardy bulbs. Howmany of us really enjoy the beauty which a judicious use of a profusion of good and cheap Spring Bulbs is certain to throw around a country seat or villa garden ? How many get beyond the miserable conventionalities of modern gardening, with its edgings and patchings, and taking upj and drying, and mere playing with our beautiful Spring Bulbs? How many enjoy the exquisite beauty afforded by Spring flowers of this type, established naturally, and cropping up full of beauty, without troubling us for attention at any time ? None. The subject of decorating with Spring Bulbs is merely in its infancy ; at present we merely place a few of the showiest of them in geometrical lines. The little we do leads to such a very poor end, that numbers of people, alive to the real charms of a garden too, scarcely notice Spring Bulbs at all, regarding them as things which require endless trouble, as interfering with the " bedding-out," and in fact, as not worth the pains they occasion. This is likely to be the case so long as the most effective and satisfactory of all modes of arranging them is quite unused by the body of the gardening public ; that way is the placing of them in wild and semi-wild parts of country seats and gardens, and in the rougher parts of a garden, no matter where it may be situated or how it may be arranged. It is a way never practised now, but which I venture to say will yield more real interest and exquisite beauty than any other.

Look, for instance, at the wide and bare belts of grass that wind in and around the shrubberies in

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nearly every country place ; generally, they never display a particle of plant-beauty, and are merely places to be roughly mown now and then. But if planted here and there with the Snowdrop, the blue Anemone, the Crocus, Squills, and Winter Aconite, they would in spring surpass in attractiveness to the tasteful eye the primmest and gayest of spring gardens. Cushioned among the grass, these would have a more congenial medium in which to unfold than is offered by the beaten sticky earth of a border : in the budding emerald grass of spring, their natural bed, they would look far better than ever they do when arranged on the brown earth of a garden. Once carefully planted, they — while an annual source of the greatest interest — occasion no trouble whatever. Their leaves die down so early in spring that they would scarcely interfere with the mowing of the grass, if that were desired, but I should not attempt to mow the grass in such places till the season of vernal beauty had quite passed by.

Surely it is enough to have the lawn as smooth as a carpet at all times, without sending the mower to shave the "long and pleasant grass" of the remoter parts of the grounds. It would indeed be well worth while to leave many parts of the grass unmown for the sake of growing Spring Bulbs. Observe how the poet's eye is caught by the buttercups that " shine like gold" there ; and we, who are continually talking of our " horticultural skill and progress," never so much as get near the effect produced by this very glinting field of buttercups, or attain to anything which at all equals it in beauty, although our opportunities to do so are unrivalled ! Now suppose a poet, with an eye for natural beauty, or an artist, or any person of taste, to come upon some spot where a wide fringe of grass spreads out in the bay of a shrubbery or plantation, and upon this carpet of rising and unshaven verdure there were dotted, in addition to the few pretty natural flowers that happened to take possession of it, the blue Apennine Anemone, the Snowdrop, Crocuses, " both the yellow and the gray/' as Lord Bacon has it, Scillas in variety, Grape Hyacinths, Wood Anemone, and any other pretty Spring flowers that you found suitable to your soil and position — say, for instance, a sprinkling of the Sweet Violet — what would you have done for him here? Why, more than the gardener has ever yet accomplished, because you would have given him a glimpse of the choicest vernal beauty of temperate and northern climes, every flower relieved by grass blades and green leaves, the whole devoid of any trace of man and his muddlings in the earth, or his exceeding weakness for tracing wall-paper patterns, where everything should be varied, indefinite, and changeful, as the flowers that bloom and die ; and he would acknowledge that you had indeed caught the true meaning of nature in her disposition of vegetation, without sacrificing one jot of anything in your garden, but, on the other hand, adding the highest beauty to spots hitherto devoid of the slightest interest.

It is not only to places in which shrubberies, and plantations, and belts of grass in the rougher parts of the pleasure-ground, and shady moss-bordered wood-walks occur that these remarks apply. The suburban gardener, with his single fringe of planting, may do likewise, to some extent, with the best taste. He may have the Solomon's Seal arching forth from a shady recess behind a tuft of the sweet-scented Narcissus, while in every case he can make preparations for wild fringes of strong and hardy spring flowers. In front of a shrubbery with a sunny aspect is the best of all places for a cheerful display in early spring, as the shelter and warmth combined make them open forth in all their glory under a spring sun, and they cannot be cut off by harsh winds as when exposed in the open garden. What has already been stated is, I hope, sufficient to hint to everybody the kind of place that may be used for their culture. Wild and semi-wild places, rough banks in or near the pleasure-ground or flower-garden, such spots as perhaps at present contain nothing but weeds, or any naturally rough or unused spot about a garden — such are the places I recommend. It is true there are thousands of places without these, and where every inch of the lawn must be mown ; but even on such the Snowdrop may be enjoyed in early spring, for its leaves die down, or at all events ripen sufficiently before there is any occasion to mow the grass.