Common sense gardens

Preface

The history of the ^ world was begun in a garden, and to judge by the temper antl sentiment of the rising generation it is Hkely to end in one.

Every year more and more people seek the country, not only in Summertime when the lanes and byways are aglow with flowers and merry with the songs of birds, but also in Winter when Nature has ''wrapped the draperies of her couch about her and laid down to pleasant dreams." As our forefathers knew, we are beginning to learn that the lasting pleasures of life are not to be found in the teeming cities, but in the fields and woods within sound of the voice of Nature who is forever calling her children home. When an Enghshman accumulates a small fortune he retires to the country to live before his youth is spent and his health broken, for he knows that in the open a man need never grow old; his great ambition in life is to leave the city

Vlll rilEFACK

behind him. What better friends can a man make for his dechning years than the trees and flowers; what fairer heritage can he leave to his children than a garden? But if one persistently snubs Nature at forty, she may return the compliment at three-score-years-and-ten.

When a man buys a place in the country 'the first thing his wife thinks of is a garden, and it is generally the last thing that he makes. If he is chided for his lack of interest in the gentle art of horticulture, he will probably reply that he has become discouraged since strolHng through the grounds of his rich neighbour who has laid out some of his surplus milhons in glass houses, orangeries, vineries, velvet lawns, statues of Pan, fountains, sylvan lakes, nymphean groves and grots (with nymphs) and many other outward and visible signs of modern opulence. And discouragement would no doubt be natural unless he possessed modest tastes and a well-defined idea of the general fitness of things.

The following chapters were designed to point out to the owners of small and unostentatious places a way to plant their grounds and make their gardens with small expense ; to use the best known indigenous trees and the shrubs and plants that have been identified for so long with American gardens that they have become American by

PREFACE IX

adoption; and, to obtain with these, good and lasting effects that will be the means of ever-increasing enjoyment, yet will not entail the cares and worries that inevitably accompany elaborateness and display.

In the course of time the furniture of our forefathers went out of fashion and was superseded by many different styles more or less fantastic, and generally hideous, yet after a hundred years or more we find the chairs of Chippendale and the mirrors and tables of Hepple white just as beautiful as on the day they were made, and just as effective and dignified in a new house as in an old one, because they had merit, because brains and skill and time were given to their making.

So it is with the gardens, and with the shrubs and trees; those that possessed merit once possess it still, and those that were beautiful a hundred years ago are just as beautiful to-day, in fact more beautiful, because with the passing of Time they have become enhaloed by sentiment and tradition,

" A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases, it will never Pass into nothingness."

New styles and new fashions in flowers have been introduced and have had their day, yet the Roses

X PEEFACE

and Lilacs of yesterday still possess their charms of colour and form and perfume, charms that a Burbank with all his magic has been unable to dissipate, and these our grandchildren will enjoy as much as their grandfathers enjoyed them.

If anyone should use the suggestions set forth in Common Sense Gardens and be dissatisfied with the results that are obtained, the defects may be easily remedied: call in a nurseryman or a landscape gardener and give him carte blanche to improve your grounds with pergolas, rustic benches, wire arches, rare trees and plants, and so forth; a great transformation may be worked in a short time. Of two evils the lesser should always be chosen, but in any event your wife and children should have a garden in which to work and play.

The illustrations in Common Sense Gardens are for the most part from photographs that I have taken from time to time in my own and other gardens. The figures of walls, arches, fences, gates and so forth, are reproductions of those found in old gardens, and were designed under my supervision for the book; the plan of planting is of my own garden. Acknowledgment is made to Country Life (English) for pictures of English gardens; and to House and Garden for the picture of an old garden at Camden, South Carolina. I de-

PREFACE XI

sire also to mention the following books of reference and to acknowledge their influence : Old Time Gardens, Mrs. Earle; English Pleasure Gardens, Nichols; The Formal Garden in England, Bloomfield; Some English Gardens, George S. Elgood and Gertrude Jekyl.

Eastover, Rye, New York, March, 1906.

I Gardens of the North and South II A Common Sense Garden

III The Garden Enclosure

IV Laying out the Garden V A Few Good Trees

VI Evergreens and Old Box VII Choosing Shrubs and Small Trees VIII Good Shrubs for the Yard IX Walls of Stone and Brick X Fences and Hedges XI Old and New Roses XII Ever-blooming and Climbing Roses AND Vines .....

XIII Filling in With Colour

XIV The Best Perennials for the Gar^

XV Naturalizing . . . .

XVI A Small Water Garden

287 325 369

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Garden Enclosure ; Mt.

Vernon . Frontispiece

PAGE

English Labourer's Cottage ... 5 Roses and Lilies in an English Dooryard 9 A Corner of the Garden; Mt. Vernon . 13 Old Garden; Camden, South Carolina . 17 Looking down into the Garden . . 23 A NEW Garden; Spring . . , . .27 Flowering Almond in the Garden . .31 Box Hedges at Mt. Vernon . . .35 Old Walled English Garden . . .41 An Enclosed English Garden . . . 45

A Garden Fence 49

The Pergola at Arlington . . .53 Privet Hedge around the Garden; Pin

Oaks in Background . . . .59 Box Edging at Mt. Vernon . . .63

XVI

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Old Box Hedge 65

Old Box .67

Lilacs behind an Old Wall . . .69 A Well-Framed Garden . . . .75 White Oak and Spruce . . . .79 White Oak in Winter . . . .84 White Oaks in Winter holding their

Leaves 89

Avenue of Maples 91

Pin Oak in Winter 92

Transplanted Pin Oaks . . . .94 Nursery-grown White Pine Trees . . 101 Spruce, Pine and Cedar .... 105

Group of Cedars 107

Cedar Growing on top of Rock . . 109 Red Cedars on the Lawn . . . .113 Box and Yew in an English Garden . 117

Old Box 121

Arbor Vit^ Pyramidalis .... 124 Trees and Shrubs in the Garden; Mt.

Vernon 129

Old Stone Gateway 133

]\Iagnolias on the Terrace; Virginia . 139 Old Box Archway ; Flushing, Long Island 143

Old Syringa in a Cottage Yard

Wild Rhododendrons in front of an Old

Wall

Rhododendron on the edge of a Wood

155 159

ILLUSTRATIONS XVll

PAGE

Brick Wall in an English Garden . 167

Old Stone Wall 171

Picket Fence on a low Brick Wall . 174 Another Wall with Picket Fence . . 176 Old Southern Wall with Moulded Brick

Cap 177

Old Brick Wall with Moulded Cap . 178 Brick Retaining Wall . . . .179

Old English Gate 180

Entrance to Forecourt; Mt. Vernon . 181 Box Walk; Mt. Vernon .... 187

Arched Gateways 189

Picket Fence 190

Arches and Hedges 191

Posts for Fences or Hedges . . . 193

Hemlock Hedge 195

Nasturtiums climbing over Privet Hedge 199 Old Box Hedge near Baltimore . . 202 Old Box Hedge . . . . . 205

Garden Path; Wraxhall Manor . .211 Old English Dove Cote .... 215 Old Thatched Chalk Wall . . . 219 Stone Steps and Gateway . . . 223

Rose Beds 232

Rose Beds Enlarged into Rose Garden 235

Roses on a Brick Wall .... 241 Dawson Rose on a Pear Tree . . 249

XVm ILLUSTRATIONS

I'AGE

White Rambler on an Apple Tree . . 255

Rose Garden 261

In the Garden; Mt. Vernon . . . 271 Yew Buttresses; Arley .... 275

Yew Alcoves 279

The Yew Garden; Arley .... 283 Garden Path with Sundial . . . 289 Phlox of all Colours in the Garden ; July 293 German Iris in the Garden . . . 297

White Japan Iris 301

Phlox and Funkia 307

White Phlox in the Garden . . .313 Campanula Pyramidalis . . . .319 Narcissi in the Field .... 324

Narcissi Naturalized along a Stream . 327 Narcissi in the Grass . . . .331 Crocus in the Grass .... 335

Foxgloves along a Woodland Path . 339

Trumpet Narcissus 342

Poet's Narcissus 346

Perennials bordering an Old Path . 351

A Good Opportunity for Naturalizing . 355 Iris on the edge of the Lawn . . 359

Lavender 361

Plan of Planting the Floaver Garden 363-366 Old English Water Garden . . . 368

Garden Seats 371, 375

Plan of Planting Water Garden . 379-382 early New England days the residences of the government officials, and later the more pretentious mansions of the rich merchants were provided with gardens copied on a small and less elaborate scale from the gardens of England, for the homes of the better classes were generally situated in the heart of the town. The New England merchant when he retired from business was careful to remain in touch with civilization as he had always known it, and rarely isolated himself on a large and lonely estate in the depths of the country, which in those clays, to be sure, was for the most part an un tracked wilderness abounding in wild beasts and savages. His pleasure seems to have been derived principally from watching the struggles of his successors with the problems that he had met and conquered, rather than from an unlimited contemplation of nature, for which he had a certain amount of respect and perhaps regard, but rarely any intimate friendship.

The early gardens of New England were made when grandeur and magnificence were not much practised by the descendants of the most stern Puritans, when their resources were somewhat limited. They were maintained more as a hnk between the old and the new, between the past of bitter memory and the future fulsome with the hope that springs eternal in the human breast. Seeds of the old, well-loved flowers that had been gathered in sorrow and often wet with silent tears were carefully saved and transported with the household gods to the land of promise. There they were sown under the quickening rays of the dazzhng sun, which like the pil ar of fire of the children of Israel had led them out of the wilderness into the flowery meads of freedom.

The fittest of these flowers survived and have come down to the garden makers of to-day, often hybridized and enlarged and not always improved, but still exhaling the perfumes of old that comforted the wanderers in a strange land, and brought welcome heartsease in time of sorrow. With them are linked memories of the days of our forefathers, around which such a halo of romance and mystery has always hung.

With the exception of a few rich merchants of Plymouth, Portsmouth and Salem, and a small number of prosperous planters in Rhode Island, the inhabitants of the New England colonies were not as well blessed with this world's goods as were their fellow countrymen in the South who lived in a land that literally flowed with milk and honey. And at no period of his career did the New Englander of yore embrace the fashion of princely living as it is called to-day, for it was a fashion that was opposed to his teachings and against the precepts that had been bred in his bone for generations. Even though unwonted prosperity came eventually to dull his Puritan conscience he was quite content to lay out a modest garden adjoining his house, which was generally in town. This back yard, which in reality is what it was, he enclosed with a high fence or wall and used as the old Roman gardens or the gardens of the Renaissance were used, as a secluded room of his house in which to transact important business with privacy; as a sanctuary from the thousand and one worries of everyday life; as a retreat to which to repair in the heat of the day, or in which to recline beneath his own vine and fig tree when the sun was sinking below the tree-tops. There wine and cake were served to the guest upon arrival, or to the casual visitor even if he came within an hour of mealtime, as tea and toast are served to-day. There the members of his family foregathered from their various occupations when the shadows were lengthening and the hedgesparrows nesting in the thicket.

After a time the yard became an adjunct of the house so that one was rarely planned without the other. The front-yard garden has been inseparable from the English cottage since before the time of Elizabeth, and it is from the cottage of England that the cottage of New England inherited its bed of simples and its garlands of bloom. It is found in some form in every class of dwelling, from the stately homestead of broad acres to the small, unpainted cottage of the farm labourer, and generally owes its particular charms to the ministrations of the women who, in days gone by, were associated in a more or less vague way in the mind of man with flowers, and credited with many of their attractive qualities.

This characteristic of the New England home is plainly in evidence as soon as the boundaries of that area are approached, in many instances its influences have overflowed beneficently into the adjoining counties of New York. When the homestead was built near the road, as it generally was for convenience sake, three or four trees whose genus varied with the section of country, but which were generally either White Pines, Maples or Elms, were planted for their shade in a row just outside or just inside the front fence. There on the turf that grew fine and velvety beneath their rustling leaves the inevitable rocking-chair was placed, and the women of the family rocked and read and sewed whenever their manifold duties would permit. These trees were the only formal notes of horticulture to be seen in the otherwise natural landscape; and their formality grew into stateliness year after year, generation after generation, until to-day they stand glorious monuments to the long dead hands that nursed them through their uncertain infancy, and placed them as pleasant punctuation points on the dusty highway.

Perhaps it was thus that the parlour fell into disrepute, for in Winter it was too cold to be inhabited; the door was kept tightly closed and locked. It was left to the dust and damp that in our minds are always associated with it, never disturbed except on those three momentous occasions that even in the most carefully regulated New England family are comparatively few and far between, the occasions of births, marriages, and deaths. A record of these was faithfully kept in the massive Bible that reposed upon the table which stood in the exact centre of this sombre room of rooms.

Before the Revolutionary War there were few elaborate formal gardens in America. Undoubtedly the best example of one existing to-day Avith its original shapes and edgings and many of its minor details is that at Mt. Vernon, the home of Washington, near Alexandria, Virginia. In the year 1764 it was probably the most elaborate pleasure garden in the Old Dominion, for prior to that period the planters had not been given to spending either much time or money upon useless luxuries. After the war, however, and in the early part of the nineteenth century all the large estates in the South were provided with pleasure grounds, which varied in size and elaborateness according to the inclinations and pocket-books of their proprietors, and the natural features of the land. All, however, were upon a more ambitious scale and aspired to more grandeur and dignity than the gardens of New England. In the South vegetation thrived luxuriantly and new and exquisite forms of plant life were frequently discovered to delight the heart of the horticulturist, forms that would not thrive in the bitter cold of the Northland. Slave labour was plentiful and cheap and was at the command of the planters to carry out extravagant feats of gardening; thousands of hands could be spared for the supercultivation of the myriads of flowers and shrubs, without which an impressive formal garden is impossible.

There, too, the tradition of entail was followed by many of the prominent families, so that an estate remained with a name for an indefinite period, generally passing to the eldest son as in England. This was merely a substantial expression of the Englishman's deep-rooted respect, one might say superstition, for custom which became a considerable factor in many Southern gardens. They were made not only for the enjoyment of the generation then in existence, but planned and planted a hundred years into the future.

The ability to construct and plant for to-morrow as well as to-day is one of the most important attributes for a gardener to possess. Sentiment and respect for the perfection that time alone can give is absolutely necessary to the art of gardendesigning; and refinement of touch and instinct for colouring are as important to the gardener as to the painter.

Effects of wood and stone and brick, the shapes and colours of hedges and screens, of boskets and groves, of trees and parterres of flowers in the beauty of maturity cannot be set forth on paper, but should appear correctly and vividly to the mind's eye of the designer, just as if they existed and lay spread out shimmering before him. Projects of designing and planting should be approached with the question, ''How will they appear next Winter? ten years hence, when the tones have been softened and the shapes rounded out by time?" which the gardener should be able to answer offhand.

Many people plant in the Springtime with only the following Summer in view, as they drill vegetable seeds into the kitchen garden. Or they ap-

16 COMMON SENSK GARDENS

peai to nurserymen to accomplish in a few weeks effects that Nature would consume a dozen years in producing gradually. It is painful to have to acknowledge nowadays that the old sentiments of garden-making are utterly disregarded and looked down upon with curiosity and contempt by the ruling disciples of Pluto, whose delight it is to complete things in a single night by the waving of a golden wand ; miserable moderns who live and die in a hurry.

In the South in the early part of the nineteenth century garden-making became a fad, a great craze in which every man vied with his neighbour to produce the largest and handsomest effects. Architects were brought over from France to make plans and superintend the construction. Some of the schemes were so ambitious that they toppled over before they left the drawing-board. At Charleston, South Carolina, one can still trace the paths and avenues, the general outline and scheme of planting of a garden that was planned to rival the garden at Versailles, that magnificent folly of Louis XIV. Many gardens were laid out or partly planted, but as the fad faded or the impracticability of the undertaking was realized they were left to the passionate embraces of the jungle, which quickly swallowed them up.

The men and women who conceived these many beautiful closes, arranged their walks and furnishings and planted their hedges and borders, craved the best examples of Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite, and imported them from England to adorn the interiors of their homes. Both within and without those stately mansions the inherent breath of refinement softly throbbed.

Many of those old gardens are in existence to-day very much as they were originally laid out, especially several notable gardens in Camden, South Carolina, and vicinity, that were made about the years 1830-35, some even as late as 1850; others exhibit but shreds and patches of their pristine glory and are kept up only in part owing to the circumstances of their proprietors, or to the indifference with which they are regarded by the families into whose possession they have come through the fortunes of war.

Chapter II

HE most appropriate garden for a small house, or for a moderately large house on small grounds, no matter in what style of architecture it may be built, is one that can best be described as a cross between the formal garden of the South and the old New England yard, as it contains features of both judiciously blended. The formality consists of the hedge or fence enclosing it, the quite formal approach and the general plan of the paths; and to this is added in the way of planting the half-wild, unkempt freedom of the New England cottage-garden;

and in a garden of this size the planting of the flowers, the filhng in with colours is a very important part. Such a plan carefully carried out, even in the smallest details that seem unimportant to the casual eye, and under the supervision of the owner, will produce results that will more nearly approach in general sentiment the English garden of to-day, yesterday, a hundred years since.

In a short time such a garden will become a thing of beauty and will prove a joy forever to the worker therein, for it is to the intimate friend of the flowers that the joys of gardening are revealed, to whom the confidences of the Lily and the Rose are made. Its loveliness will increase from season to season as Time mellows it with his unapproachable touch, adding colour and fulness to it here and there, a touch which the hand of man cannot counterfeit. Flowers are so much more beautiful when growing amid congenial surroundings, so artificial and snobbish when cut and put in vases, or potted and placed in the corners of rooms or on tables for decoration. Tennyson would never pluck a flower and could not bear to see one

Looking down into the Garden.

plucked; such desecration produced a painful impression on his mind and upset him for days afterwards. He sought flowers in their own retreats, and perhaps better than any one who has written did he understand their language.

Such a garden as I have endeavoured to describe looks neither new nor garish from the very beginning, neither does it ever appear ridiculous or top-heavy with cheap dignity that it never really possessed except on paper, or in someone's imagination. It will be neither a French garden nor a German, nor Dutch nor Italian nor even English, although it will show many influences of the latter. It will possess the best characteristics of American gardens, and if you will only keep the gardener out of it it will remain a garden for ever and a day.

Why do not people give more thought to their gardens? They build houses and go extensively into architecture, especially into that particular style, or combination of styles, in which their own house is designed, yet they seem to think that a garden is just merely a garden, a miscellaneous collection of flowers and colours meant principally to pick and to wear, or to put in vases. A woman gives a great deal of thought to the decoration and furnishing of the rooms of lier house, why not to the garden, which is also a room, although she can never be made to believe it? It should have, and generally does have, more importance in connection with the general effect of the house both outside and inside — for the impression one receives of the exterior is carried within and affects the imagination to a great extent — than any other room.

The garden is generally left until the house is nearly if not quite completed; or perhaps planned in a vague way. By that time the owner's patience is exhausted and his finances at a lower ebb than is compatible with good temper and peace of mind. The garden and the planting of it are left to the gardener, who on small estates is necessarily many other things besides, and although he may be very successful with Cauliflowers and Mangels he has little education or taste, and is no more capable of making the garden than furnishing the hah.

A woman will be dissolved in tears and indigna-

A New Garden; Spring.

tion if the architect neglects to confer with, her about the trim of the library or the colour of the border of the bathroom tiling, yet she will order her gardener offhand to plant the garden with Lilies and Roses and whatnots, and expect the result to be satisfactory without giving it further thought. The setting of the garden and the garden itself are as necessary to the house as a front porch, and a great deal more necessary than a porte-cochere. A garden is meant to be lived in; it can be made to reflect the character of the owner as much as a living room or boudoir. The refinement that Washington exhibited in laying out the numerous paths and parterres of Mt, Vernon and in planting the hedges and edgings, the love and care that he zealously bestowed upon his flowers and shrubs and the setting out of his trees, would seem to be the best inspiration that an amateur of to-day, who is anxious to make a garden, and to preserve the best traditions of American gardening, could seek or desire.

The garden of AVashington, however, is set in a frame that cannot be reproduced, no matter how many fortunes the designer may have at his

30 COMMOX SENSE GARDENS

command, — ^the house, the forecourt with its quaint gateway the numerous outbuildings unusual and picturesque in themselves, the connecting peristyles that match perfectly with pathetic simplicity the architecture of the main building, the location on a thickly wooded bank overhanging the noble river whose every wavelet lisps of the history of the neighbouring shores, the stately trees that have reached perfection of character and symmetry of form through the rounding out of many years, the shrubs that have become patriarchs of their families, and above all the serenity and repose that are natural to the wild-wood and foreign to thickly populated districts.

This park and the neighbouring park of Arlington, which is larger than that of Mt. ^''ernon and was planted on a much more liberal scale, are examples that every student of gardening should study unceasingly. At Arlington the planting of evergreen trees especially was most successfully accomplished and one may there learn the best uses to which such trees can be put. Nothing could be more beautiful than the grouping and the disposal of the groups. It is as if they had

Flowering Almond in the Garden.

been literally painted in the wooded slopes and dells, so softly do their graceful forms and changing colours blend with the various shapes and shades of the deciduous trees among which they are set.

At Mt. Vernon the paths are enclosed with Box hedges and the parterres are edged with the same bitter-sweet shrub. After a century and more of growth and care these hedges and edgings have reached a perfection that is the envy and despair of every would-be gardener who views them for the first time.

The dominant note of the whole enclosure is Box. Its pungent odour, so disagreeable to some people, to others sweeter than all the perfumes of Araby, hangs ever on the air, permeates the farthermost nooks and corners with its memoryawakening spell. These hedges have an exasperating smoothness and softness of colouring that have been gradually absorbed from the suns and snows of many seasons which it would be useless to hope to reproduce in a few years.

As at Mt. Vernon, so the yards and gardens of New England were dominated by this matchless evergreen, as the gardens of England are dominated by the Yew. Planted under the front windows or along the most used paths it gave a welcome warmth of colour to the bleak landscape of a northern Winter, and in time crept into the honoured place of friend, unchanging, well-loved by every member of the family. Box is a familiar sight in the neighbourhood of New York where it was extensively used by the Dutch; and in Philadelphia by the English. It has been so prominent in gardens the world over that it should be cherished by garden-makers wherever it will grow, and no one should be deterred from planting it by the thought that it is slow of growth and uncertain, for it is uncertain in some climates and exposed positions. In every garden an altar of Box should be erected where the votaries of Flora may worship and lay their offerings of Rosemary and Bay.

Clipped and ornamental Box is as old as the Roman hills. During the first century it was used to enclose gardens, to edge walks and to cover alleys, for in the East and in the south of Europe it grew to the height of thirty feet. Pliny, writing to Apollinaris about his Tusculan villa, describes the terrace as bounded by a Box hedge, from whence there was an easy slope adorned with Box trees cut to represent various animals; and beyond, a circus ornamented in the middle with a Box tree, the whole framed in by a walk covered with Box rising by different stages to the top. The circus survives in our gardens to-day in the roimd bed placed at the intersection of two paths. Out of respect to Pliny let us ornament it in the middle with a Box tree!