Class ____j^B_4i Iconic . X4 CopyiightN^_ W tv COJafRIGRT DEPOSIT. Digitized by tine Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/pagesfromgardennOOking PAGES FROM A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK THE BEAUTY OF THE PERPENDICULAR PAGES FRO A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK BY MRS. FRANCIS KING AUTHOR OF " THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN ' ILLUSTRATED CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK :: :: :: MCMXXI op CoPTBionr, 1921, bt CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published May, 1921 Copyright 1917, 1920, 1921 by Condd Nast & Co., Inc. MAY 28 1921 THE SCRIBNER PREM Q)QlA6i7136 TO THE BRIGHT MEMORY OP F. K. R. AND H. L. R. AND THEIR LITTLE GARDEN From Anton Tchekhov's Note-Book: * A conversation on another planet about the earth a thousand years hence: "Do you remember that white tree '" — "The London Mercury," January, 1921. What, O Man, shall God remember when the world of men is cold ? All the anguish, all the violence, that have wracked it from of old ? Be you not too sure; for haply when the troublers yet to come Like the dreaded Roman legions or the Tartar hordes are dumb, God shall see an ancient hill-top where an unremembered boy Laughed because the earth was lovely and to live and breathe was joy. — "The Scales" by Cliffobd Bax, from "A House of Words." (By permission of Basil Blackwell, publisher.) NOTE To Professor Sargent for permission to repub- lish the article on the Arnold Arboretum; to the editors of "House and Garden," "The House Beautiful," and "The Spur" for their willingness to let me use again various articles written for them; to the kind owner of the "Hidden Garden" and to Messrs. Hicks, of Westbury, Long Island, for the including of that garden's plan, I offer very sincere thanks. To the Garden Club, of New Canaan, and to Mrs. William H. Cary, whose lively warnings follow the chapter "How to Form a Garden Club," I am indebted for leave to print the latter's "Don'ts." Miss Mildred Howells has been so good as to allow the reappearance of her gay and charming stanzas on the seed cata- logue, and Miss Isabella Pendleton has kindly permitted the printing here of her interesting color-chart for flowers on page 103. Without the help of Miss Kate O. Sessions of San Diego, the description of the California planting would have lost much value; and to the many friends — especially, to the Misses Smith of Four Pines, vii NOTE Penllyn, near Philadelphia — whose generosity has enabled me to describe or to refer to their gardens, or whose agricultural knowledge has been placed at my disposal, I make grateful acknowledgment. There is, however, one other matter to commend this book. It will be found at the head of each chapter in those sparkling sentences from the letters of Horace Walpole, fourth Earl of Orford. Played upon by this fountain of wit the least significant notes on gardening, as through re- fracted rays, may perhaps glisten a very little. Louisa Yeomans King. Orchard House, Alma, Michigan, April, 1921. VIU CONTENTS CHAFTEB PAOS I. Pages from a Garden Note-Book ... 1 II. Lilacs and Other Spring Flowers . . 27 III. Tulip Time in the Garden 39 IV. An English Garden in Spring .... 53 V. Summer Thoughts in Winter .... 69 VI. Earlier Flowers 83 VII. Later Flowers 105 VIII. Other Flowers 125 IX. Bright-Berried Growth for the Winter Garden 147 X. The Arnold Arboretum : A National Treas- ure 167 XI. Spanish Gardens and a California Planting 185 XII. A Review OF THE American Seed Catalogue 211 XIII. On Forming a Garden Club 235 XIV. Vocations FOR Women in Agriculture . 257 Index . . ... . •. 283 ILLUSTRATIONS The Beauty of the Perpendicular Frontispiece'' FACrNG PAGE The Little Platform Q- Lilacs, Myosotis and Tulip " Innovation " 36 Tulips in a Pennsylvania Garden 44 '-'''' Fountain in a Pennsylvania Garden 44 ''^ Mathern Palace: The Old Quadrangle BQ" Mathern Palace: Tulips and Myosotis 58 Mathern Palace: The Grass Alley 58 Tree, Arch, and Flower 90 Phlox, Tapis Blanc, and Lilium Regale 110- ' Pink and Lavender Phloxes 114 ^ Artemisia Lactiflora with Lycoris 116^" A Garland of Clematis 142''^ A Myrtle-Bordered Pool 152 Planting List for a Winter Garden -page 162 Planting Plan for Hidden Garden page 163 Lilacs in the Arnold Arboretum, Boston 176 A Sub-Tropical Garden at Coronado 198 New Zealand Flax in a Coronado Garden 202 " Artemisia Lactiflora with Pink Poppy 246 %\ PAGES FROM A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK Drowned as we are, the country never was in such beauty; the herbage and leafage are luxurious. The Thames gives itself Rhone airs, and almost foams; it is none of your home-brewed rivers that Mr. Brown makes with a spade and a watering-pot. — Horace Walpole to the Countess of Upper Ossoby, Strawberry Hill, Aug. 31, 1782. PAGES FROM A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK TO the eye of the gardener snow is no winding- sheet, none of the covering of death; it is the warm wrapping mantle of beauty asleep. Be- neath the whiteness He endless radiances of color, wonders untold in flower, plant, tree. How can those who do not garden, who have no part nor lot in the great fraternity of those who watch the changing year as it affects earth and its growth, how can they keep warm their hearts in winter? They are as those who have no hope. A winter day of the coldest may glow and shine with thoughts of summer, but always provision must have been made for that summer, by burying the bulbs, by covering the rosettes of the Canterbury bell or the cut stalks which mark the delphinium root's portion of the garden. These things prop- erly accomplished, the fancy may happily dwell in winter upon the rosy tulip, the golden daffodil, the campanula's full round bells. And then the first signs of spring, those days A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK in mid-January when daylight lasts an hour longer than in December; that blue of the January sky which hints, intangibly hints, of bluer skies to come, the warmer sun. On such days I venture forth into a snow-covered garden, look carefully over shrubs and trees here and there, scrape the bark of a rose or thorn, hoping to find beneath that faithful strip of green, the proof of life and strength. So walking, I come to a spot which, almost hidden by snow, is a source of warm delight; and it is only the mind that makes it so, the memory and the imagination. On a hot August day of last year I suddenly realized that a pair of Cox's Orange Pippin trees flanking the entrance of the main garden to the grassy slopes of the orchard were really grown. They cast full-grown shadows. At once chairs were brought and a garden tea- table, and the true enjoyment of those trees began. Two garden benches then were set along the edges of the gravel walk, just within the gar- den, and also beneath the Pippin's shade. The popularity of this sitting-place was at once estab- lished. Where the two chairs stood, just outside the garden, they were backed by tall lilacs growing almost under the young apples, by SpircBa Thun- bergii and by a few deutzias, well grown. But now 4 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK the frequent occupation of those chairs began to leave its mark upon the grass, worn spots appeared, and as I considered a remedy for this an experi- ment flashed to mind. Why not, said I, take the note from the small brick sill which marked the ending of gravel walk and the beginning of grass — why not lay a little platform of brick below the chairs ? Then why not give this platform a little design? Two large deutzias were then taken out to make more room, the apple boughs lifted a little and tied into position by means of heavy twine, with lengths of old garden hose around the bough itself, and a fan-shaped space lay below to be paved. The line was carefully marked — the flat side of the open fan next the garden, the curve outside toward the lawn, the brick laid herring-bone in sand; at once the tree shadows found a lovely background for themselves in the warm tones of the brick, and then a little decorative planting suggested itself. Six plants of Evonymus vegetus, lusty and shining, were brought from a border, where they were really wasting themselves, and set around the curves of the platform to be staked and trained as a low evergreen hedge perhaps a foot high. Below this, and close to the edge of 5 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK the brick, also only against the curves, we placed a narrow line of Iris pumila, the deep violet one. Beyond this little platform I shook out bag after bag of bulbs of daffodil, and tulip Orange King, for a spring picture, to be seen stretching away from this little new place. Puschkinia is already nat- uralized there; tulip Kaufmanniana gives an early glow to the earth below the lilacs; and now and again a cluster of species tulips, the remnant of generous plantings of years gone by — Clusiana, Greigii, viridiflora — make their own interest, too. I leave the reader to judge if snow can cool the prospect of the spring when one has managed to plan just one small meeting-place like this. It should be really poetic; but one can hardly plan for poetry — that happens or not. A little focal point for friends to use among flowers — that must result in something happy. This reminds me of one of the most charming invitations of my life, an invitation given in a California city, the words said in the sweetest of American voices, the voice of the South — "Come and see my daphnes." It has haunted me as a line of poetry will do. Who is not familiar with April cold' — that chill in the air which in our Northern States seems more unsuitable because of the marvels of color 6 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK everywhere on the landscape — those mists of car- mine on the swamp dogwoods, that "mealy red- ness" of the elm blossom, the willow's golden clouds, all backed by distances of smoky blue and canopied by a clear blue sky. It is not when we are wrapped around by warmth that such pictures exist. They come into being through that force which only the spring knows. They compensate one for the cold winds and chilly airs of our April, which, as Horace Walpole said of May in England, comes in *'with its usual severity." Well wrapped against the weather, April has its peculiar plea- sures; here snowdrops and the earliest species cro- cuses have been gathered long since, and now we search the borders and not in vain. It is the 8th of May; the first green leaf of the year is everywhere. Do all gardeners rejoice as I do over the look of the garden as it is now.'* Not a flower in it, but grass edges have been trimmed, sod added where those edges have been overwhelmed last year by the spilling over of lavender, nepeta, ageratum, and other things which do their creeping out so softly but so surely. The grass is mowed; the beds of the garden culti- vated, by hand where lilies are supposed to be. Tufts and mounds of all shades of green appear 7 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK above the fine smoothly tilled earth; these are the first growths of all the beauties of early and mid- summer in perennial flowers. All is in low relief, but in perfect order, an order which is enchanting because a living plan is spread out before one, drawn in dazzling green and rich purplish brown, with the surrounding hedges, shrubs, and trees picked out in their own first greens, from Norway maples' wondrous light yellow -green to the silvery leaves of shadbush. On the old apple-trees there are but pin-pricks of that sweetest of all greens, their leaf-buds. Puschkinias and crocuses are faint now, fading, and in unexpected places, under delicately leaved shrubs, daffodils come into their own. In one such spot to-day I found a colony of narcissus Ariadne in full bloom over a group of little mertensias of a much darker blue than virginica. This must be, I think, Mertensia lance- olata, very early; in the shadow, below shrubs, the flower is almost like a sapphire. An interesting flower this, about eight inches high with a deep rose-colored bud, the whole panicle of bloom much richer in color and effect than the commonly used lungwort of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia. But over the garden picture in late afternoon come the long rays of a brilliant spring sun; then 8 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK the pattern stands out as almost too dazzling; then beyond the garden the blue-greens of bush honeysuckles against the black-green of pine and hemlock in the shadow show the beholder one of the glorious moments of this lovely month. 'Oh gallant, flowering May! Which month is painter of the world. As some old clerks do say.' Some years ago were given me a few roots of the old single white fragrant violet. By clearing out space for this darling of the spring we now have several little colonies in open ground below lilacs, and nothing is more valued or more welcome than this small, old-fashioned flower. It seems as though no florists' violet could compare with it in scent, so rarely sweet it is, and the groups of little flowers are like a tiny milky way upon the ground when their time is ripe for bloom. Hyacinths now are to the fore, also; of these I have not many, but Oranjeboven, running in and out of that pale crocus Scipio is very nice, pale coral and pale lav- ender; and while we are on crocuses, Scipio, again threading its way between the very pale lemon green leaves of Hemerocallis Florham is a charming sight. The delicate tones of crocus and lily foliage prove excellently related. Other hyacinths are 9 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK Grand Maltre, in streams of rich, and lusty violet bloom, with daffodils of various names, chiefly Katherine Spurrell, blooming thickly all about. There is here a very simple but very nice com- bination of flowers, one which the smallest of gardens might afford and which the garden's owner would be certain to enjoy. It is some of the older, cheaper sorts of daffo- dils, however, that if I could I should buy by the thousand to set hyacinths streaming through them in color combinations to charm the most indifferent eye. It is Katherine Spurrell, Mme. de Graff, Ariadne, Flora Wilson — and with these the six hyacinths with which we have tried this spring a very successful experiment, a group of colors from deepest violet to *' lavender-blue, touched corn-flower blue." The hyacinths are these: Count Andrassy, Enchantress, General van der Heyden, Grand Maitre, King of the Blues, Schotel. Fifty of each were set in long, loose groups among other loose groups of the daffodils, running down a slope beneath Japanese quince and cedar; this planting is only some sixty to seventy feet from the southeast corner of the house, and lies in and out of an almost invisible wire fence, and very near the sidewalk, for a dis- 10 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK tance of about fifty feet. Many are the passers- by who have enjoyed this picture with us this year. We see them stopping to gaze. Motors go slowly by this spot, too, for this reach of flowers makes a bold and brilliant foreground for the gentle rise and fall of green lawns beyond, and in every light it is an expanse of fine color. The play of morning and late evening light is specially interesting on the rich violet flowers. I came in from the garden on May 16 with my small copper watering-pot — capacity about two quarts — filled with choice labelled daffodils, every one new to me this year. Of these most have graced tables in English shows for some years past, and some American amateurs have had them in their gardens for almost as long; but these of mine were bought lately, and it is an excitement of some intensity to watch the varieties as they open. Tresserve is a glorious clear yellow trum- pet of great size, a most conspicuous daffodil; Fiery Cross has the richest stain of orange rim- ming its yellow cup ; Great Warley, Miss Willmott, among the incomparabilis tribe, are very fine; Sir- dar is a magnificent flower. But the three out- standing ones to me are: Tresserve, Loveliness, and Salmonetta. Loveliness is a slender straw- 11 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK colored trumpet of most beautiful form and color, perianth white, a flower one would notice any- where, and Salmonetta is a little poet of great distinction. As I was carrying my pot of trea- sures down the garden walk in the evening light, my eye fell upon a line of a dozen glorious tulips, the single early "Illuminator." This tulip is of a flaming orange, a superb flower. At once, I thought, I must hold my pot of daffodils near Illuminator and see which becomes it the best. Salmonetta' s wonderful orange cup won this dis- tinction for itself. Use this daffodil with tulip Illuminator, a carpet of single rock cress below and a backing of Spiroea Thunbergii now coming into bloom, and a smiling spring picture is created, a picture which upon a day of cloud and shower will have caught and held a sunlight of its own. No finer spring has ever dawned upon our small place than this of 1919; a cool, wet May until about the 26th, when, with sudden heat, waves and billows of bloom broke over the old bush honeysuckles and lilacs. There is nothing softer than the bloom of these Tartarian honeysuckles, the pink and the white, especially the latter, which, with the deep color of its fading flower, has a generally creamy appearance. The lilacs. A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK clouds of purple, mauve, and white, have drooped under their weight of color and scent, except those like Ludwig Spaeth, which have the stiff habit of trees whose newer stems are woody. Tulips have also shown what they could do, but under a hot sun their day of glory has been but a day. I have liked some fine groups of yellow tulips, raising themselves above the lavender phloxes of spring, Mrs. Moon, Avis Kennicott, Flava, Miss Willmott, Retrofiexa superba, all beauties among spring flow- ers. For a pink tulip there was a time when I thought Inglescombe pink the loveliest of all. I have now fixed this opinion upon the lovely cottage tulip, Mrs. Kerrell. Is there any one unapprecia- tive of the beauty of rose-color as it appears in the soft clusters of buds and flowers of Bechtel's double-flowering crab ? Let me say that this tulip, Mrs. Kerrell, blooming with me this spring below this crab-apple, is one of the sweetest of all May pictures. The relation of color is true; the rela- tion of form is a delightful contrast. The tulip is one of great elegance of form and, partly because I have it in half-shade, of fine lasting qualities. Twelve bulbs are all I own. I could wish this number multiplied by tens and hundreds if I had place for them. 13 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK Under a drooping apple bough I sit at twilight of the last day of May. Before me is a plant grouping of much variety and charm, and the air is filled with the fragrance of lilac and of lily- of-the-valley. The lilacs, now some twelve feet high, are in waves and billows of white, mauve, and purple bloom. Delicate whitish Persian lilacs are interspersed with those of French descent; the effect is a sumptuousness of bloom which can- not be surpassed. In what might be called a bay in these tall lilacs — a space some twelve feet wide and running back into the tall, blooming trees for, say, six feet — this arrangement occurs. Against the tall lilac-trees stands a young specimen of Syringa puhescens heavy with delicate lavender- white bloom. The bush is about five feet in height and stands on an almost solid carpet of forget-me-nots; before the lilacs are masses of bleeding-hearts in full flower, to the right Clara Butt tulips; in the foreground of all this a soft, round mass of ribbon-grass, with Clara Butt rising now again through this; to the left, and also in the foreground, tall forget-me-nots in a long blue drift ; and beyond these, lilies-of-the-valley, bloom- ing whitely to their tips against their stiff green leaves, "each one" — as a delightful EngHsh writer 14 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK puts it — "each one tented in its little pavilion of green." The myosotis and the convallaria have naturalized themselves, run into each other, pink tulips and dicentra overhanging. As I sit on the little platform, of a June after- noon, looking through the tracery of apple-leaves to the bright garden beyond, I am struck by the vast improvement made this year by the introduc- tion of valerian in eight balanced spaces; especially bold and good is this because its silvery flowers rise beside spires equally tall of the purple Cam- panula ladiflora, also in full flower. Geranium grandiflorum' s low rounds of brilliant violet flowers form a lovely foreground from where I look, for these two taller subjects. This year I have the hardy campanula all over my garden. It is only three feet tall at present, due to fall moving, and next year it will probably exceed height limits — but for the present it is giving a most lovely effect. The clear-cut flowers, the fine pointed, upright buds, the uniform bright color of the flowers — these attributes make this perennial campanula valuable. Through a series of mishaps I have this year no Canterbury bells, but they are hardly missed, thanks to this vivid substitute from their own tribe. As Campanula lactiflora grows old, as 15 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK it becomes established in its appointed place, there is a tendency to monotony of height in flower- stem. Then we have a more or less uninteresting barrel-like effect of bloom. The remedy for this is division and moving. It has suddenly burst upon my inner vision that the pale and bright pink climbing ramblers have no place together in my perennial garden, unless used, as they sometimes are most happily, tumbling over walls in great masses, near equally sumptuous masses of pale-blue delphiniums, with few or no other flowers to distract. The thing which brings me to the aforesaid unpleasant con- clusion is the present appearance of one of the gates of our garden. It is a dull-green wooden gate, with an upper arch and a solid door. The frame of the gate is of trellis, and to-day this trellis is completely smothered by, to the left, Excelsa, and, to the right. Lady Gay. Masses of these little round roses are blooming as the gentle cow gave milk in the nursery rhyme "with all their might." Below this arch of roses lies the little formal garden, with many things in bloom — del- phiniums dark and light, lilies, Shasta daisies, violet salvias and petunias, phloxes coming, and also gypsophila, and a few pale-pink dwarf ram- 16 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK biers. The expanse of color on the gate-posts is out of place. It gives the look of the cover of a seed catalogue of about 1890. No, this is no place for my ramblers, fine though they are in themselves. I walk to the upper garden from this lower, turn to the left, where at each end of a short walk of brick hedged with clipped Spircea Vanhoutteii there are two of the same well-designed arches such as I have mentioned. These two are wreathed in pink ramblers. Lady Gay and Paradise; beyond this walk is not only smooth turf, but a fine growth of dwarf mountain pine, and it is here that the little rose comes into its own. It is seen only near and against green; or, as one looks at it from another angle, perhaps against the blue sky itself, where ramblers, like fruit-blossoms, are always seen at their loveliest. But the teaching here is that the rambler rose calls for a background of green, and of smooth, dark green, if possible clipped arbor-vitse, clipped spruce, or other rich- hued non -deciduous tree or hedge. In England it is, of course, the yew that encircles the loveliest rose-gardens. It is against that wall of green that the ropes and festoons of gay pink roses swing and smile. *It is delightful,' says Lady Eden, in "A Gar- 17 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK den in Venice," 'to pick one's strawberries and cut one's tea-roses from the same bed.' This dehght is not reserved for Italy, but is our own experience in Michigan. Eighteen fine bushes of rose Los Angeles skirt our four rows of that luscious straw- berry, John H. Cook, than which, incidentally, a finer berry never grew to the proportions of a youthful tomato, or reddened to the color of one. The combination of the gathering and plucking of flowers and fruit from the same spot is irresistible. To look on lilies in the garden's green spaces, and as one looks to hear the sound of falling water, is an ecstacy in midsummer which is new, for these are not ordinary lilies — these are not the lovely candidum, or the gracefully hanging Nankeen lily, though both are in bloom now in my garden, in scattered groups. No, this is that glory of a lily whose noble adjective is regale, and I have it this year in profusion. I do not envy even the charming writer of "A Garden in Venice," as she describes her madonna lilies, often with eight to twenty flowers on one stalk and the stalk five feet high. Those virgin lilies have their own pure, pale beauty, and that beauty none will deny. The Nankeen lily has a quaint charm of form, habit, and color, too; so has L. Henryi, a 18 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK vivid and graceful flower; so has L. elegans, that fiery upstanding bloom; but regale surpasses them all — that glowing trumpet, that slender rosy bud, those rich white pointed petals, and, to crown all, that incomparable fragrance, not heavy like L. auratuTrCs, but as fresh and delicate as that of heliotrope. So soon as the sun drops in the west, before even twilight has come on, this matchless perfume rises on the evening air, in the "dewy light," and all the garden seems of an un- earthly sweetness. I like this lily, planted above low subjects at the opposite ends of narrow beds; while in bloom, the lilies serve as accents, their slightly bending stems and handsome flowers clear- cut then against greensward. The play of light and shade upon such flowers is one of the most lovely minor sights to be seen in July. Occasion- ally four flowers open on the top of one stem — more often two or three. I am so lucky as to have about one hundred L. regale in bloom this year, and never have I seen these squares of green turf so admirably flanked by perfect flowers as at this moment. The elegance and charm of Ghiselaine de Feli- gonde, a new rambler rose, are beyond putting into words. The flame-colored bud opens well in 19 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK water and the variety of tones of color is remark- able in a cluster of six roses, a few half-open buds, and two or three small ones still tight but showing color. Three of the open flowers are pale sulphur-yellow, with outer petals spread well back. The newly opened roses have that enchanting pale copper hue which sets this rose apart, and the half-opened buds show the deep-colored centre where petals are still folded, the outer ones of the light copper again. The foliage is of a medium light green, leaves more slender perhaps than on the average rambler, flowers averaging eight and ten to the cluster. Against low-clipped privet, delphiniums, taller than ever before, raise their blue spires. In places Annchen Mueller or Ellen Poulson dwarf ramblers send forth sprays of glowing pink blooms, these melting into the pale rose-colored masses of Can- terbury bells beside them, the two most excellent beside each other. As for heucheras (the only color blot on my garden this season, but so lovely, flaming delicately about the darkest red sweet- williams that I simply have to leave them in the garden-beds), they have flowered in a manner truly impressive. I must conclude that they too love space and air. There has seemed to be no 20 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK check at all from replanting; in fact, everything we moved has prospered under the process. Even the one precious plant of Delphinium Moerheimi, which we divided in four with some hesitation, is sending up three white-flowered stems. Phlox Arendsii, in its varying soft colors of pinkish lav- ender and of white, is now, July 1, in full bloom, and back of its rounded groups the buds of the Madonna lily, held high on their tall stems, are whitening. Shasta daisies are opening below, budding sea holly, and some of those luscious violet petunias known as Karlsruhe Balcony are blooming in secluded spots, as if to prove their August and September worth. Delphinium blight, which seemed to hover seriously over this garden last year, has been gotten well in hand now, thanks to the lime-and-tobacco treatment recommended by Miss McGregor, of Springfield, Ohio. It is seldom that I find myself with two opinions about a flower, but two I hold concerning the dwarf crimson-rambler rose. That harsh crimson, al- most as difficult to place as the over-bright hue of Azalea amcena in spring, and so painful to contem- plate as its clusters take on the purplish hue which foretells their end — the same crimson, when set near the violet Salvia virgata nemorosa, becomes a 21 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK crowning beauty on the garden's brow. No finer perennial plant for late June in our latitude can there be than this purple salvia. Entirely hardy, its inflorescence a multitude of upright spikes of small violet flowers, it has the effect of violet vel- vet in certain lights. Observing it on sunless days, when its color seems even richer than in brilliant light, I am reminded of the mention of the use of blue flowers in shade in Hubbard and Kimball's "An Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design." In flowering shrubs and particularly in flowering herba- ceous plants the landscape-designer has his greatest oppor- tunity in the use of color. In these materials he finds as wide a color range as the painter has; indeed, in some ways a wider range, for he may use, on the one hand, a pure white lily or a crimson cardinal flower or a flame azalea in sunshine, and on the other the deep-blue larkspur or monkshood in heavy shade. Its glory, nowever, reaches a great height when the dwarf crimson rambler neighbors it. These plants, like happy lovers, seem made for each other. The rose and the salvia coincide in time of bloom. There is an agreeable contrast in the forms of leaf and flower masses, and no sumptuous velvet cloak of a Venetian doge could show a 22 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK prouder splendor of color than is brought forth by this coupling of flower groups above green turf. Salvia sclarea is now beginning to unroll from a fat-scaled bud its spirals of mauve bloom; and this plant, whose seed came by way of a kind English hand from the Vatican gardens, is one of the finest of acquisitions. Its place is among L. can- didum, or below pale-blue delphinium, although I have fancied that Salvia virgata nemorosd's violet flowers would make a happy combination near its mauve relation ; but in that case the crimson ram- bler should be not only out of sight but really out of mind. I have lately visited a charming garden over- hanging the upper waters of the Hudson River. In early July this was a picture of beauty, and it gave me, besides the delight of its situation and effect, an acquaintance with several new varieties of flowers. The garden consists of two wide flower borders set in the side of a precipitous hill; the borders and a long walk of tan-bark separating them lie upon a broad terrace. The terrace is backed by a high retaining wall of gray stone, and approached from either end by a descent of stone steps cleverly arranged for variety of level. The A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK whole garden is reminiscent of that renowned Scottish one, Barncluith, in Lanarkshire. To the color in this garden when I saw it this last July no pen can do justice, only a brush and a gifted one at that: great clouds of blues in delphinium trailed by the rounding bloom of that beautiful pale-yellow Thalictrum glaucum. The mauve and pink yarrow formed lovely foregrounds for these blues — here and there groups of lilies — candidum, regale — and the white gypsophila nes- tling in the angle of the staircase, and well at one end a most lovely array of bergamot of a particularly vivid carmine hue, unknown to me before. All these flowers are set in green. The wall at the back is hung with green leaves; the balustrades by the stone steps are garlanded with green. The flowers grow in rich profusion, but the practised eye recognizes in the greenery be- tween this brightness either the record of flowers past, or the promise of flowers to come. Borders such as these lying so boldly should be enough in themselves to give keen pleasure. Add to that beauty the fact that looking along this garden from either end and raising the eye to the middle distance, one sees apart the beautiful lines and color of a perfect Italian villa set among great 24 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK trees, fronted by greensward properly propor- tioned, cooled, and made musical by pools and their fountains, why, I ask, should one desire more ? An instance of another garden: there is, for example, the new rose-garden of my neighbor. I helped her plan it, helped her in the buying of the plants. Now that it is July she brings me roses, roses, heaped-up baskets of them. She walks in at evening, through the French doors of the dining-room, where we sit at table in the late sunlight, yellow pansies and blue anchusa before us in low bowls among the silver of the table, and not only shows us her midsummer treasures but leaves them with us: Lady Ashtown's curling petals, Druschki's matchless milk-white, the red velvet of Chateau de Clos Vougeot, the magic beauty of Los Angeles — what a harvest we are reaping from what is another's ! I visit the gar- den; low stone walls, a background in one place of noble trees, perfect turf, and such an array of jewels in roses as is not often to be seen. When the small and simple garden is successful, one in which the owner has had to consider the exchequer, there is always about it the added matter to admire of ingenuity in spending. The 25 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK right use of money bears witness to the right quality of mind; and in a garden cherished by its possessor reflections of the mind of that possessor are quickly seen. To apply the idea to the large and notable garden, it is the judicious spending of money here which will or will not be apparent. The memory of every lover of gardening will serve him truly as he recalls on occasion the great, bleak, barren gardens of his visits, gardens on which fortunes have been spent and from which he could only turn sadly away; and with equal certainty will he call to mind some tiny square of delicately managed flowers which are true expressions of the very texture of its owner's thoughts and hopes. A time will come when all America, in Matthew Arnold's lovely phrase, shall be "spreading her gardens to the moonlight," and, as that time ap- proaches, the quiet beauty of simple, good design, of delicate and harmonious color, and, where pos- sible, of good surroundings, must impress itself more and more upon our people. Those who know must practise this, that those who need to know may have a right example. In no art, in no pursuit, is a following more sure than in the art and in the pursuit of gardening. II LILACS AND OTHER SPRING FLOWERS Then it was so cold I had no inclination to stay. Of ny Spring delights, lilacs, apple-trees in bloom and night- ingales, the two last are over and the first going; ... for roses there was not even a white one on the 10th of June though they used to blow as religiously as the Glastonbury thorn. -—Horace Walpole to the Countess of Upper Ossort, Strawberry Hill, June 13th, 1782. II LILACS AND OTHER SPRING -FLOWERS /^FTEN I wonder whether names of places ^^ and of things speak to others as they do to me. Meaningless or poor names seem almost an affront, while beautiful or significant names start trains of thought leading in singularly pleasant directions. The names of Pullman cars are a curious study. Who named them.'^ Why are so many of these names foolish, almost to the point of imbecility? — almost as if letters had been shaken together in a box and drawn at random to constitute a word. But there are exceptions, and one is the name of a car in which I lately travelled in Indiana, with **Middlebush" on its doors. "'Middlebush,'" said I on seeing it. "Here is something to think of" — landscape planting flashed into the mind on sight; the bush which may connect the taller and the lower shrubs in some planting small or large; the bush which might bloom in mid-season. The Middlebush of our Michigan spring is un- 29 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK doubtedly the lilac or syringa. Early shrubs have lost their blossoms; the shadbush, the wild plum, Spircea arguta^ Forsythias are long since green again after their white and gold of earliest spring; and yet the great tribe of the mock oranges, the Phila- delphus, is still to hang its whitening wreaths, still to breathe out upon the airs of evening that un- matched fragrance. Hydrangea arhorescens will follow these; then mid- June, and the procession of most of the familiar flowering shrubs is over. Let us, translating Middlebush into lilac, con- sider one of the most fascinating of all subjects, the lilac in some of its species and varieties. I bring to this a mind over-enthusiastic perhaps, for in a modest way I am collecting. The first blooming of my young trees occurred last spring. The trees themselves were set out two years ago this last autumn, and last spring all but four or five of sixty varieties showed some flowers, while many of the little three-foot things were in them- selves bouquets of loveliest color. There is for me only one way in which ade- quately to set down my impressions of a particu- lar flower or plant; that is, with that flower or plant before me. In May I rarely walk about even our small place without the pencil and the 30 LILACS AND SPRING FLOWERS memorandum block; and the notes which follow were made in the very presence of the lovely things themselves. If these comments seem ex- travagant, the excuse is the overwhelming beauty of the flowers, and that excitement which the gar- dener always feels when confronted for the first time with something as fine as it is new to him. Let me name some few of these lilacs, and add a word or two concerning each. For better de- scriptions I would send you to what Professor Sargent, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Havemeyer, Mr. Dun- bar, and Mr. Barry have written upon these flow- ers. I have not compared my notes with theirs, nor did I consult theirs before making these, as I wished to be quite unprejudiced in my comments. The earliest of all to bloom was Syringa Giraldii; delicate pinkish, a very open cluster, graceful, and free flowering. Marechal Lannes carried immense bluish-mauve flowerets, the thyrsus not very large but most effective for the size and color of its flowerets; exceedingly handsome. Mme. Antoine Buchner is a very distinct flower; buds of a faded pink, flowers of pinkish-white, slightly double. The flower clusters here were rather open and branching; this is a lilac of great slendemess and elegance. 31 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK Pasteur has superb blooms of rich reddish pur- ple. Its thyrses are tall and open, with large sin- gle flowerets. Coerulea superba has small but full clusters, rather bluish in tone. This variety is particularly free-flowering with loose branches, a great beauty. The bloom of Danton is of a very fine, clear, deep red-purple, with a large floweret. President Fallieres is one of the loveli- est, a charming semi-double pinkish bloom. Loose clusters of flowers came in tremendous numbers upon this three-foot specimen the first year after planting. Claude Bernard, with its palest lav- ender-pink flowers, is also very free-blooming. President Poincare has enchanting bluish flowers, double, with reddish-purple buds, buds and flowers an interesting contrast in color. Vestale is marked by many spikes of single white bloom on terminal branchlets. There is a special charm for me in Rene Jarry-Desloges, whose palest bluish-lavender flower, double, has a delicacy all its own. Thun- berg is lovely because of its deep-red buds all the way up the thyrsus of pink-lavender bloom. This gives a remarkable richness to the clustering flowers, which appear in four steeples, as one might say, to each cluster. Syringa Diderot, though moved in autumn, has 32 LILACS AND SPRING FLOWERS borne a cluster of flowers at every terminal point; in its first time of blooming, however, the flowers were not remarkable, reminding one only of the common lilac. Lamartine had a faint blooming — so did Miss Ellen Willmott — enough to show that here is a treasure in white lilacs. Small double flowerets appeared on this lilac last year, greenish or creamy, and very round buds. Mira- beau also gave one breath in flowers and expired; but I was too late in examining this to describe it. Syringa Milton's flowers are of a dull, rich lav- ender; a small floweret, but very fine in color. Marechal Lannes is a very full double, and of a good bluish-lavender. The fine loose and twisting pet- als of each floweret give a beautiful effect to the cluster of bloom, an effect of softness not always present in lilacs. Pasteur's distinguished habit of bloom sets it apart. The tall, upright thyrses of mauve flowers are set in sprays of large dark- green leaves. The play of light and shade upon the mauve and green is one of those special spring delights upon which the possessor of this lilac may almost surely count. Cavour has the most unbelievable number of seven pinnacles of flowers to each thyrsus — large flowerets at that — in each cluster. And for the S3 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK brilliance of this lilac in sun I have no adequate words. As for the species lilacs, S, pubescens, which when grown is like a tree of pale heliotrope, with a delicate fragrance unlike that of any lilac ever known; S. villosa^ with its loose pale-pink flowers (never shall I forget my first sight of this, cut with the pale-pearly Iris florentina or iris Storm King) ; and S. macrostachya, one of the most enchanting of all, very pinkish — one has to see these in order to realize their beauty. Here I mention only three, but there are many others; and the collect- ing and comparing of such subjects is well worth the endeavor of many years of a gardener's life. It happens that my lilacs are placed only four feet apart in the rows where they stand; and I am now in that painful condition of mind of wishing I could in some way keep them back; for such rounds of bloom, such fascinating little flower-covered shrubs, there can hardly be in any other genus. I remember a suggestive sentence of Professor Sargent's: "The person who first arranges a fine border of the newer shrubs with regard to color and succession of bloom, will have done a great thing for horticulture in America." How simple this would be in lilacs, if one only lived near the great Arboretum, or that amazingly fine collection 34 LILACS AND SPRING FLOWERS at Highland Park in Rochester, and could watch their leafy, flowery progress through the months, make notes, have a trial ground of one's own suffi- ciently large, and — most important of all — start the work when young. So strong is habit, especially habit of mind, that, seeing these lilacs of our own, many in bloom at once, set out without regard to anything but the few feet of space allotted to each, it was impossi- ble not to think of them as sometime or some- where properly planted; planted with a view to contrast of color, to contrast of form, to harmony in hues, and especially to see them blooming above other spring flowers, whose beauty should only accentuate their own. The pinkish group in these lilacs, for those who prefer this color, is President Fallieres, Mon- taigne, Frau Antoine Buchner (Buchner in Ridg- way is "pale rose purple"); a group of deepest mauve flowers, Danton, President Poincare, Mare- chal Lannes, Marceau, and Milton. The contrast in size of floret between those of Ccerulea and Emile Gentil is astonishing. For strong contrast in color I suggest using these pairs together: Thunberg, Marechal Lannes; Jarry-Desloges, Dan- ton; Marceau, macrostachya; Diderot, Jarry- 35 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK Desloges; Fallieres, Gen til; Montaigne, Dan ton; Coerulea, Gilbert, and macrostachya. The bluest of my little collection are Ccerulea superba, Gilbert, Emile Gentil, and R. Jarry-Desloges. Most of these lilacs are still costly, anywhere from $2.50 to $5.00 each. These suggestions are made that those who covet this beauty for them- selves can get more interest out of the buying of even two or three specimens. It is easy in choos- ing blindly to secure monotony, and that, of all things, is the pity in securing living subjects. The loss of charm, of education of the selective faculty in gardening, is one of the greatest of pities. Turning now to an even more fascinating side of the lilac, its use with other flowers, there is a field which few people have explored. One be- comes desperate here for new adjectives. The old ones cannot express the feeling of freshness of in- terest in the combining of new flowers with old. It is an experience apart. For instance, below a group of the bluer lilacs, Emile Gentil and Ccerulea superba, two tulips stand out beyond others as the ones for the place — Bleu Celeste and Ewbank. These I have held below the lilacs in bloom and know whereof I speak. Late myosotis — Perfec- 36 LILACS, MYOSOTIS, AND TULIP " INNOVATION ' LILACS AND SPRING FLOWERS tion or Royal Blue — with Mertensia virginica is perfection grown below Syringa pubescens. On ground beneath the lovely clusters of Diderot, tulip Bleu Celeste, and again the forget-me-not. President Fallieres, that heavenly lilac, should have as neighbor tulip Fairy Queen ; and for a pic- ture unsurpassed let the gardener place below Jarry-Desloges that early Iris germanica, Storm King, or Florentina perhaps, with loose groups of Tulipa retrqflexa^ if possible the large form of this tulip offered by one or two dealers — a very tall sort of palest yellow. Again, below SyriJiga pubes- cenSy iris Mrs. Alan Gray and a floor of forget- me-nots, is an arrangement the mere contempla- tion of which should cause any winter to pass quickly. Cavour seems to call for pale-lavender Darwin tulips near. These are very fine contem- poraries. Try the small flower experiments, I beg of you; and bear in mind that splendid sen- tence of Miss Jekyll's lately written, *' There is no finality in gardening." When we think of and plan and eventually see some of these spring pictures, which really can be better done in America than elsewhere, then the photographs of Miss Jekyll's Nut Walk, with daffodils and primroses, will not discourage but 37 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK encourage us; the pictures of her spring garden will serve only to show that beauty is not the possession of England alone. For authorities tell us that America is par excellence the climate for the lilac. An experienced Dutchman once said that Europe could show no such spring spectacle as is to be seen in Mr. Havemeyer's Long Island gardens of lilacs in May; and, so far as is known, there are but two enemies of the lilac in this coun- try — wet and the borer. Old trees have been seen to droop and fail and even die in the Middle West in an over- wet spring; but this type of sea- son is the exception with us. Many a time in winter, if the cold seems long, the snows too per- sistent, I walk through my lilac rows, and the sight of those stout green buds, hearty and cheer- ful in the zero weather, is the best promise possi- ble of winter's end and a spring to come. 38 Ill TULIP TIME IN THE GARDEN Grass and leaves we have in such abundance, that our landscapes are even uncommonly luxuriant. Nebuchad- nezzar, who used to eat his dominions, would here be the most opulent prince upon earth. ■ — Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, Strawberry Hill, Sept. 25, 1782. Ill TULIP TIME IN THE GARDEN AS time goes on the lover and observer of - gardening in its many forms cannot but no- tice the great appreciation of interest in spring- flowering bulbs. Among these nothing has sprung more quickly into favor under the public eye than the late tulip. One may consider it as firmly settled in American gardening affections for many years to come. And when ultimately the grower of these beautiful subjects shall have tried all the varieties in our own dealers' lists, all that he may have found in foreign ones — if he then sighs for more tulip worlds to conquer, think of the further joys that shall be his as he realizes that from that point on he is a collector! He finds himself in the happy valley of a general knowledge of the tulip kingdom. He has now and only now quali- fied as one who may climb the pleasant slopes which lead to the knowledge of hybridizing, to that of the rarer varieties of tulip such as the Old English or Florists*. Membership in one or two of the small societies of enthusiasts in special 41 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK tulips should now be open to him, and one of the lower summits of tulip satisfaction is attained. Among the many attributes which endear this bulb to the gardener is its adaptability for use in small plots or gardens. Brilliant effects can be had in spaces almost absurdly small, if spring flowers are used. How these minute squares of color catch and delight the eye in spring ! And this is not only because gay color is welcome then. There is in Pennsylvania not far from its great eastern city, in a countryside of gentle beauty so like the Sussex Downs that one often fancies himself in England, one of these charming smaller gardens on a hillside. A constant and changing beauty in flowers marks it, but in May, with all the freshness of the spring about, it is a flashing jewel with its tulips and abundance of other effec- tive low-growing spring flowers. On a day in mid-May we descend from a brick- paved terrace shadowed by a great pine, to a gentle slope of turf toward this little garden, enclosed by a four-foot hedge of clipped privet. On the right, still below the sloping ground, an old stone spring-house is seen, hung with clouds of lavender wistaria. White lilacs in full beauty flank the garden-gate — a picket gate set in a TULIP TIME IN THE GARDEN white archway which supports a mass of rambler rose foh'age at its freshest and best. Through the green-and-white entrance we pass into a dazzhng garden on two levels, turf-walked, privet-hedged, cedar-accented, framing a most delicate and unstudied effect of spring color in flowers. The gateway is half-way up the slope of the lower or perennial garden, and as we turn to the right we see, below the retaining wall which serves as a boundary for the lower end, benches and table for the al fresco tea set beneath the shade of the great maple-tree. Here are eight beds of tulips beautifully planted by those whose color-sense is sure, a vision of loveliness about the 10th of each May. Tones of clear lavender, rich violet, and paler and darker rose form the scheme. The effects thus created by the use of Darwin, Cottage, and Breeder tulips and larger or smaller groupings of Phlox divaricata are those to cause an artist to rejoice, so perfect are they. Below budding peonies, and as a foreground for iris leaves, is a drift of the delicious phlox we now begin to know so well, its lavender charmingly enhanced by loose groups of the tulip Bleu Celeste, of a medium violet hue, beyond it. To the left 43 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK the soft, cool pink of tulip Flamingo shows itself in perhaps not more than five tall flowers — a suggestion to use a small number of these glorious blooms and thus rid some of us of the mistaken feeling that in numbers of tulips there is strength. Farther on in the sunlit garden stands Flamingo again, with Dream in its pale-lavender dress beyond; then green spaces of young leaves of delphiniums, with tulip Lantern's silvery lilac next and tulip Clara Butt beyond. The mounds of young greens in varying tones among all these tulips of light, clear colors furnish a wonderful setting for the glories of the flowers themselves. Whether from a distance or close at hand the composition is perfect. The play of light and shade on such a garden is in itself memorable. Phlox divaricata in a back- ground of shadow with tulip Bleu Celeste in sun in the foreground form a rich spring picture. Also the semi-careless arrangement of flowers with regard to variety in height and color strikes one at every turn as being remarkably successful. An order of placing uncommonly good is this — tulips Bleu Celeste, Flamingo, Dream, Lantern {syn. Nizza)y Clara Butt, with Phlox divaricata interwoven, and touches of the little gray-leaved TULIPS IN A PENNSYLVANIA GARDEN FOUNTAIN IN A PENNSYLVANIA GARDEN TULIP TIME IN THE GARDEN flax (Linum perenne) accidental in effect. Foliage of perennial phlox and the incised leaves of del- phiniums form the green background for these delightful flowers. A touch of running water adds much to a gar- den picture. It is here in a very simple wall fountain where the stream falls into a shallow basin made by half of an ancient millstone, flanked by a planting of Iris Kaempferi. This fountain is really below and outside of the garden and near the seats under the maple, but fountain, jar, pool, and sun-dial — this last is placed in the rose gar- den — all are upon the same axis. Nora Ware, a very small lavender tulip, is used in the beds here; Dream stands back of it, flanked by the foliage of peony and lupine, with tulip Le Reve, beloved by all who know it, in the fore- ground. Back of this group again, more green, more green, and tulip Bleu Aimable beyond. The color of Bleu Aimable is the same as that of Bleu Celeste, but the former is a single tulip of the Darwin type. Clara Butt stands beyond this grouping, at a distance sufficient to keep its cooler rose-pink from conflict with the strange and lovely color of Le Reve. All through this garden, too, in certain springs 45 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK at the time of tulip bloom, little colonies of Narcissus poeticus are in flower. These, the only white in the garden since the general scheme is lavender and pale to bright rose, give that deli- cate effect which is found when stevia, gypso- phila, and other fine-flowering whites are added to bowls or bouquets of subjects which are de- cidedly strong in form and color. On leaving the garden by its gateway toward the house, it is a marvel to lift one's eyes from all this beauty within formal limits and above a bar of dark hedge to see long garlands of wistaria in full bloom along the old stone wall of the spring- house, the quaint little building without which no Pennsylvania or Maryland farm-woman in the old days was expected to perform the duties of a housewife. The spring-house now serves as a studio. Too much can never be said of the charm of the Pennsylvania farmhouse — the old farm- house, generally of blue limestone most beauti- fully laid. The proportions of some of these, their delicacy of color, and their comfortable, convenient placing and rare environments of fine tree groupings make the old rural architecture of that State a thing to covet and enjoy. Those 46 TULIP TIME IN THE GARDEN old builders understood not only what to build but how and where to set their houses for shelter and for practical purposes; wherefore, a picture of high beauty was, sometimes unconsciously, created. When considering foregrounds such as this charming little formal garden affords, the backgrounds furnished by near-by buildings, or by a landscape soft and finished, can hardly be passed by without a word, so bound up together are all the elements of such a picture. And I am always wondering why Pennsylvania is not the resort of more people who love beauty which be- longs to nature and to man. If I may let this spring garden serve as a text for further tulip preachings, I would tell of an effect on our own grounds in Michigan. From the house in which we live a walk of dark brick, like the house, runs east some sixty feet to the street. To dwell upon the borders flanking the sides of an insignificant walk such as this may sound a bit presumptuous; but let me quickly say that last year these borders were positively kaleidoscopic in effect. And to encourage those who think they can do little in gardening because of restricted space, I will give approximate measure- ments as well as some account of the plantings. 47 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK This walk is some five feet in width and runs from east to west. Some years ago word came to me concerning the interesting manner in which grapes were grown in low festoons along the walks of certain Lenox kitchen-gardens; where- fore, lacking other place for grapes, and thinking that the little decoration of such vines might not be out of place here, I set to the south of this walk and only ten inches from it a number of two-foot iron posts nine feet apart, painted dark green and connected by drooping chains. Every other length between posts now has its grape: Caco — the fine new cross between Catawba and Concord — for a reddish sort, and Niagara for the greenish color. Grape leaves are allowed to grow only scantily on these low vines, as too many leaves would obscure the effect of line and form. To the north of this walk, throughout its length, grows a line of Thunberg's barberry, and some- time I intend to replace these by Wilson's, or some one of the new cotoneasters. These take a space, brick-edged on the sides and ends, away from the walk, of about six by sixty feet, whereas the space of open ground under the grapes across the walk is only two feet wide, with grass at its southernmost boundary. Below both grapes and 48 TULIP TIME IN THE GARDEN barberries the ground is entirely covered, or des- tined to be, with Vinca minor, the common green myrtle, a delight in both summer and winter. Through this covering of rich green arose last April a host of lovely crocuses, planted in the fol- lowing order: Pallas, Tilly Koenen, Julia Culp, Mikado, Pallas again, Ovidius, and one touch of the so-called Largest Golden Yellow, making an effect of lovely lavender violet and white with the yellow to give a strong and sudden contrast. Across from it, and just as crocus colors were fad- ing and their delightful leaves making their pres- ence felt, as if unexpectedly, sprang into flower long, loose groups of narcissus Sir Watkin, tulip White Hawk, tulip Fred Moore, and the beautiful double early tulip Safrano, leading up to some fair-sized groups of mahonia below the walls of the house. Before and among these shining-leaved shrubs rose quantities of the daffodil I now prefer to all others, Narcissus Leedsii, White Lady. Its beauty is nothing short of regal; and to use a common phrase of our English confreres, it is a "good doer." Following the crocus bloom here came a gay, loose-flung line of blowing flowers, in colors rang- 49 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK ing from tawny orange through deep and pale yellow to ivory white — flowers double, flowers single, flowers tall, slender, graceful, flowers round and heavy-headed. Little art is required to gain such effects. The most careless planting of these particular varieties of bulbs must result beauti- fully. A little thought for the progression of color, a little watchfulness as to overcrowding or setting too far apart — that is all. But I am in danger of being led astray by the beauty of individual flowers, and must return to the border planting of the walk long enough to say that when the flowers last named have finished blooming, when their leaves in turn carpet the ground in patterns of blue-greens and yellow- greens, then we begin to see for the first time the spires of buds on the rounded and symmetrical Canterbury bells on either side of the walk. These are three feet apart, and as their buds develop we see that they are white upon the south side of the walk and light purple on the north; and a third even row to the north of the barberries is all of that good pink tone which is to me the very best in these flowers. From crocuses to Canterbury bells is a long way in spring and early summer. Yet one must remember that if there happened 50 TULIP TIME IN THE GARDEN to be a green moment between flowering periods it was in itself a thing to revel in, and so engross- ing that the opening of the next arrangement of flowers took place with an unexpected promptness which gave that surprise which is perhaps the dearest gift his ground can give the gardener. Does any word other than "welcome" better describe one's feelings as to the spring? The flowers of this enchanting time keep the expres- sion almost hourly in mind; and is it an undue use of the imagination to fancy that the reason for the special charm of spring flowers about the house-door is that they speak that precious word "welcome" to those about to enter? How mar- vellous that by the heavenly means of color and fragrance we may send forth the very spirit of our houses even beyond their gates. 51 IV AN ENGLISH GARDEN IN SPRING I have been In town but one single night this age, as I could not bear to throw away this phoenix June. It has rained a good deal this morning, but only made it more delightful. The flowers are all Arabian. — Horace Walpole to the Countess of Ailesbuby, Strawberry Hill, June 25, 1778. IV AN ENGLISH GARDEN IN SPRING FOR those who cannot or who will not travel, and whose gardening interests still leap across seas to other lands, substitutes in the way of photographs prove the alternative, supple- mented, of course, by written description. And, since substitutes some of us must and will have, pictures of the type with which this writing deals are as near perfection as such things may be. Here, to the eye accustomed to finding color, light, and shade in pictures, are these qualities in high degree. Here are shown forth a particularly interesting ancient dwelling in Wales and its gar- dens in the spring, Mathern Palace, for thirteen hundred years an episcopal residence. In 1894 the property came into the hands of Mr. W. Avray Tipping, the distinguished English writer on architecture. Under his able direction the conversion of the old house to meet the needs of modern living was done without losing one whiff of the savor of an antique time. That Mr. 55 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK Tipping is one of the best of amateur gardeners, too, one cannot doubt who sees these pictures and who has read of his later horticultural achieve- ments at a newer place, Mounton House. In his own words he thus tells briefly the story of the gardens of Mathern Palace: "If the house is essentially old, the gardens are absolutely new. The sordid untidiness of a hope- lessly ill-contrived and unrepaired farmstead pre- vailed in 1894. There was a potato patch or two amid the rubbish-heaps, and some evidence still remained of a farmer's wife who had liked her few flowers but had not been able to cope with the difiiculties of the situation. Here, again, care was taken not to lessen the value of the picturesque but plain old building by detailed architectural effect. Terraces were laid out on the southern slope, but they were walled simply and with the local limestone. A good deal of pavement was used, and broad grass-ways, edged with borders and backed by yew hedges, were contrived. The steeper slope to the west was made into a rock garden leading down to old fish-ponds, where a good deal of water gardening was introduced. All this was taken out of a field and orchard, the trees of which were retained, and a matured effect 56 From a pholograpli., Lupunijid touiilri/ Life, London MATHERN PALACE; THE OLD QUADRANGLE AN ENGLISH GARDEN IN SPRING was almost at once produced. The climate and the soil are good, and the whole of the gardens, as the illustrations will show, are rich in jfloral effect. The simple, old-fashioned aspect of the English country home of the past, that had its farmery attached, and that drew no hard-and-fast division between its flower and vegetable gardens, has been sought for and obtained. "The title of the house has descended from the days of the episcopal lords marchers, and it implies a certain grandeur in no way reflected by the place as it is to-day. It aims at being a quiet home where the simple life may be led." We have not, it is true, the rich backgrounds in buildings for such garden pictures as these, but ours is a climate unsurpassed for spring gardening — subjects in untold variety, not only our fine native flora, but plants, shrubs, and trees from the round world itself, and we may, we do have spring pictures unsurpassed. Such delicious dis- posings of tulips and myosotis as are here shown should not discourage but stir us to fresh hope and effort in gardening. Still, how could such flowers as these of Mathern Palace appear any- where to such advantage as when they shine against close-shaven foliage, as in the grass alley^ 57 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK or when each colored cup of tuHp and sky-blue cluster of myosotis are thrown into relief against the smooth turf, as seen in the old quadrangle ? Who can gaze at the illustration of the grass alley without longing to look on the bright scene itself ? — the quiet setting of tree masses, the two gables of the old house on the right, deep in foliage; and, gaily fronting the delicate spring background of blossoming tree and lilac, a dazzling effect of lines of flowers against rich green. Filled with color is this picture; and the coquetry of the topiary work seems to be part of the laughing beauty of the whole. Myosotis carpets the bor- ders on either side of the walk; late tulips trail a garland of rich hues above the blue, and the brilliant color has the perfect foil in the dark clipped yew which backs it all. The grass walk seems to divide two gardens — perhaps a rose garden on the right, to the left a garden of tulips is hinted at. The alley is an ex- ample of what such a walk should be, in width, in height of massive subject for the border — a lesson in beauty of proportion. Happy he whose work, whose lovely creation, is an effect in flowers such as this. Happy they who have strolled in May along this goodly walk, and fortunate we who, 58 From a 'photoqraph. cnpi/r'm ' ' , i , mhin MATHERN PALACE; TULIPS AND MYOSOTIS Fro)n a pholor/raph, copyright f'otintri/ Life. London MATHERN PALACE; THE GRASS ALLEY AN ENGLISH GARDEN IN SPRING with this picture before us on the page, may learn from it once again that simpHcity and breadth of plan are the successful principles of formal gar- dening. In the photograph of the old quadrangle the value of shadow is first of all apparent — the gay brilliance of sunlit flowers against sunlit walls, all rich because of shade. Here too is a paved walk, well placed, not cutting the green into two parts, as so often is the American case; but allowing all possible sweep to the reach of grass, ivy just enough to compose well, a few climbing roses against the ancient house garlanding the beautiful old windows — and one has suggestions which for simplicity and beauty cannot be surpassed. The tulip-bed, too, gives endless hints as to pic- turesque roof -line and mass, the happy use of trees, an unobtrusive tea-house fitted to perfection into its corner of the paved garden, for protection against English rain and mist; and, again, the fas- cinating foreground of color in flowers. Gardens such as these speak to one's spirit. The harmony, the fitness of it — "All's fair that's fit" — the originality of a plan which though new seems old — all fills the mind and eye with satis- faction and high pleasure. For myself, it is with 59 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK gardens (and on first sight) as with people. They are simpatica or not. Let me give two impres- sions of American gardens, which in my case happened either to commend or not to commend themselves to this individual eye, an eye not suf- ficiently intelligent to be over-critical. The two gardens in mind now are the antipodes of each other — one a formal garden with much costly stone and marble — flowers grown to per- fection, all kept in order — but a garden which leaves one cold. There is no heart in it, no indi- viduality. It is a mockeiy in gardening — its bor- ders have in it only the pride of the eye. "See, this is mine. I too have a garden; is it not bet- ter than yours or my neighbor's? It is more costly." When gardening takes this form beauty is gone. The garden set over against this in my mind is on a steep and wooded hillside, upon one of the loveliest of American lakes; indeed, one of the lovehest lakes in any land. In the centre of this garden is a glorious pine-tree, tall, spreading, sym- metrical. This has been taken as the pivotal fea- ture, and a charming grouping of flower-spaces, with little box-edged walks, arranged to radiate from it. Also, there is a long arbor at the higher 60 AN ENGLISH GARDEN IN SPRING end of the garden, flagged with stone, and at one end a sitting-place, from which a vision of blue water and purple mountain is a surprise and a de- light. When I had the happiness of seeing this simple but beautiful and personal garden, frost had browned it. There remained only smouldering embers of flowers, embers which but a week before had been tongues of flame. No matter. Here was a garden speaking to the heart as well as to the eye. Charm was in its every line and frag- ment of composition. Above all, the words which leaped to one's mind within its boundaries, words which should be applicable to every garden, were those most precious ones, seclusion, tranquillity, peace. I shall endeavor now to describe three flowery vistas. In these I have but two supports to which to refer. Miss Jekyll's own printed words, and the memorj^ of a certain afternoon at Mun- stead Wood in July some years ago. Then, in company with a dear little girl of ten, whose in- terest lay mainly in Miss Jekyll's pet cats, I had a few hours of that pleasure unique among plea- sures, of seeing the lovely place and walking there with its distinguished and hospitable owner. This was sixteen years ago, but the picture is as fresh as 61 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK though it had been last summer, so deep an impress does the highest beauty in gardening leave upon the mind of its affectionate student and disciple. The three pictures mentioned above show three distinct periods of bloom — the nut walk, early spring; the second a July border; the third the flowers of August. The beginning of this nut walk, whose tree is, of course, the cob or hazel-nut {Corylus), is described in Miss Jekyll's book, "Wood and Garden," with such practical detail that the passage is given entire. This was written in 1900, and the walk is now thirty years old — a beautiful tunnel of small trees, at whose feet prim- roses and hellebores cover the ground on either side of the narrow path. "The nut walk was planted twelve years ago. There are two rows on each side, one row four feet behind the other, and the nuts are ten feet apart in the rows. They are planted zigzag, those in the back rows showing between the front ones. As the two inner rows are thirteen feet apart, measuring across the path, it leaves a shady bor- der on each side, with deeper bays between the nearest trees. Lent hellebores fill one border from end to end; the other is planted with the Corsican and the native kinds, so that throughout February 6£ AN ENGLISH GARDEN IN SPRING and March there is a complete bit of garden of one kind of plant in full beauty of flower and foliage. "The nut-trees have grown into such thick clumps that now there must be vigorous thinning. Each stool has from eight to twelve main stems, the largest of them nearly two inches thick. Some shoot almost upright, but two or three in each stool spread outward, with quite a diflFerent habit of growth, branching about in an angular fashion. These are the oldest and thickest. There are also a number of straight suckers one and two years old. Now when I look at some fine old nut alley, with the tops arching and meeting overhead, as I hope mine will do in a few years, I see that the trees have only a few stems, usually from three to five at the most, and I judge that now is the time to thin mine to about the right number, so that the strength and growing power may be thrown into these and not allowed to dilute and waste itself in growing extra fagoting. The first to be cut away are the old crooked stems. They grow nearly horizontally and are all elbows, and often so tightly locked into the straighter rods that they have to be chopped to pieces before they can be pulled out. When these are gone it is easier to get at the other stems, though they are often so 63 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK close together at the base that it is difficult to chop or saw them out without hurting the bark of the ones to the left. All the young suckers are cut away. They are of straight, clean growth, and we prize them as the best possible sticks for chrysanthemums and potted lilies. "After this bold thinning, instead of dense, thickety bushes we have a few strong, well- branched rods to each stool. At first the nut walk looks wofully naked, and for the time its pictorial value is certainly lessened; but it has to be done, and when summer side-twigs have grown and leafed it will be fairly well-clothed, and meanwhile the hellebores will be the better for the thinner shade." Miss Jekyll then proceeds to describe her visit, long before the above was written, to the cob-nut nursery near Reading, where she pro- cured her foliage. Here she saw "alleys of nuts in all directions," and below them thousands of the pale-yellow daffodil, Narcissus cernuus. It was surely that visit and that picture which finally flowered into the lovely reality of the nut walk of Munstead Wood as it appears in 1918 in the photograph under consideration. Since the descriptive passage above was written, many other spring flowering plants have been intro- AN ENGLISH GARDEN IN SPRING duced into these delightful borders. The helle- bores bloom first, then primroses, the famous Munstead strain, of course, in whites and palest yellows, these showing among Myosotis dissitiflora; tiarella, the foam-flower, is used "in patches," and TJvularia grandiflora, pale yellow, with Dentaria diphylla, white daffodils, dogtooth violets, and again the forget-me-nots, with a plant unknown to me, Triteleia uniflora. Back in the borders are columbines and Solomon's seal. Thus is Miss Jekyll's "tunnel of green shade" furnished forth in April and in May. Why do we not practice more in our country this type of planting ^ It is especially to be commended to the young amateur, who may, in middle age, reap the fruit of his nut- tree planting, and who, after three years of growth, may see a rich carpet of spring flowers awaiting those light lines of shadow from the future over- hanging boughs of his hazels. From the whites, pale yellows, and soft greens of spring, the delicate illumination of that early time, we leap now into the glorious hues of July. To turn to the photograph of the July border, the luxuriant masses of flowers have a setting of great depth and richness in the close foliage of tree and shrub; and a wall of sandstone on the right is the 65 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK perfect background for the strong leaves of the yuccas which raise themselves against it. Here color plays a most important part. The flowers are mainly perennial. The scheme of color is pale blue, pale yellow, white, and gray. Foliage plants at the ends, and here and there in the borders, supply the last. For the blue-flowering plants, or rather plants with some blue in them. Campanula lactiflora is used, and some of the bluish spider- worts, also Agathea ccelestis, and the blue lobelia. These replace the blues of earher delphiniums and anchusas. Among the gray-leaved plants Eryn- gium oliverianum, rue with a pale-yellow bloom, sea-kale, and such lower things as Stachys lanata. Cineraria maritima create delicate effects as foils for color. The yellows are the flowers of snap- dragons, Thalictrum flavum, a golden privet judi- ciously set, tall yellow mulleins, and, delightful to record, as all that this plant needs is a proper use to make it everywhere charming, pale yellow cannas. White is brought into the border by means of snapdragons, the white everlasting pea, trained over old delphinium stalks, double meadow- sweet. Clematis recta, cleverly staked, and the flowers of the yucca, rising majestic from the rest. The middle portions of this July border on either 66 AN ENGLISH GARDEN IN SPRING side of the walk have plants with bloom of orange and scarlet, plentifully scattered with gray and white plant material. These bright effects in turn merge into the pale yellows, grays, whites, and lavenders of the further ends of the walk; crescendo and diminuendo are complete. 67 V SUMMER THOUGHTS IN WINTER I have made a vast plantation. Lord Leicester told me the other day that he heard I would not buy some old china, because I was laying out all my money in trees: "Yes," said I, "my lord, I used to love blue trees, but now I like green ones." — ^Horace Walpole to Sir Hoeace Mann, Strawberry HiU, May 3, 1749. SUMMER THOUGHTS IN WINTER IET him who will declare there is no color in -^ winter landscape — that is, in a landscape whitened by snow. I point this man to the Janu- ary scene in a part of our country not generally considered to have beauty; a gently rolling coun- try with here and there a woodlot and sometimes a cedar swamp. And I ask him to look in early morning sunlight at the pale and delicate blue of the sky above these fields and woods; at the rich browns of oak foliage, at the pale tans of the little ghostly beeches, with their leaves which are a reminiscence; at the grays of trunk and bough, and at the bluish shadows cast by these gray draw- ings upon the soft, deep w^hiteness of the ground. An austerity of beauty lies in the pale, cold winter color seen here; and when by chance the dark mass of a white pine or the pointed tops of cedar groups come into the forefront of the picture, their rich hues are almost too startling for the pallid yet lovely background. 71 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK The subject of the garden in winter is not a new one. Long, long ago Addison put his deHght in his winter garden into words of beauty. To the true gardener the very breath of Hfe is in that essay. To-day Katherine Tynan, in a charming lyric, "The Winter Garden," sings the theme as only an Irish singer can. I look through the win- dow at my own bit of ground and am not only comforted, consoled, but stimulated by all that others have written concerning gardens in winter. I begin to think of the value of winter to the gar- dener as well as to the garden. Now it is that the mind turns back upon itself. Now thoughts of flowers must replace the actual flowers. Those imagined, whether faint or bright, must be one's consolation now. And the very contrast between the real garden of a summer past and the fancied garden of a summer to come is, must be, a spur to better and more perfect following of the dear pursuit. Days there are in April possessed of a blue-and- green splendor not surpassed by those of June. These are the days when the very glass of one's window seems more crystalline for the glories seen through it. Such greens, such delicate shadows of trees upon turf, blurred just a bit by the soft out- 72 SUMMER THOUGHTS IN WINTER lines of bud along bough ! And then, across the glory of this newest, earliest grass, tight bouquets of color, long, loose garlands of color, crocuses flung down upon the brown earth, rimming the green as with enamel ! Who among contemporary writers can paint the spring with so incomparable a brush as Mrs. Humphry Ward? 'They left the garden and wandered through some rocky fields on the side of the fell, till they came to one where Linnseus or any other pious soul might well have gone upon his knees for joy. Some loving hand had planted it with daffodils — the wild Lent lily of the district, though not now very plentiful about the actual lakes. And the daffodils had come back rejoicing to their kingdom and made it their own again. They ran in lines and floods, in troops and skirmishers all through the silky grass and round the trunks of the old knotted oaks that hung as though by one foot from the emerging rocks and screes. Above, the bloom of the wild cherries made a wavering screen of silver between the daffodils and the May sky; amid the blossoms the golden-green of the oaks struck a strong, riotous note; and far below, at their feet, the lake lay blue with all the sky within it, aad the softness of the larch-woods on its banks.' 73 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK The time is the 23d of March. A robin has come, a song-sparrow has been heard; we wan- der to the south boundary of our two acres in search of snowdrops. And here, on a Httle slope where the garland thorn and the red cedar grow to a height of some twelve feet, is a little but delicious spectacle of spring snowdrops, white bells ringing in the spring wind, and down the tiny hillside the delicate lavender, Crocus Tomma- sinianuSf running here and there among the snow- drops. How I have longed to see the flora of the Alpine meadows, to see the crocus fields of the Alpine slopes ! FlemweH's lovely pictures, as well as many pens besides his, have given me this desire. Yet in that absurdly wild imagina- tion which I fear is mine I see a hint of these longed-for sights as I gaze now upon my white and palest violet flowers of March. Did not these snowdrops a week ago raise their buds and green leaves through a sheet of ice ? Is not the effect of little tree and little flower so scaled as to suggest a much larger and more important picture ? The least animate object coming into it disturbs that scale, of course, just as they say a robin perch- ing upon the miniature Matterhorn ruins so tragi- cally the effect of the renowned rock-garden of 74 SUMMER THOUGHTS IN WINTER the late Sir Frank Crisp at Friar Park, his place upon the Thames. And here before spring has fairly opened I begin planning for another year. *0n this earth/ says Margaret Symonds in that rare book of hers, '*Days Spent on a Doge's Farm," 'one season is usually spent in looking for signs of the next.' More planting of the crocus is needed here, to give an even more natural-looking picture, a little cross-current, so to say, of the lavender; and the introduction perhaps of loose groups of 7m reticu- lata for the sake of its green spears alone, as the snowdrops and this species of crocus bloom much earlier than the iris. A few feet away from my Alpine valley the iris leaves are in plenty and a more determined plant I never hope to see. Its green leaves have pierced as with needle-points thick, wet masses of last year's fallen leaves, and, as the irises are here in rounding groups, the effect is of brown pin-cushions studded with green pins. How well Walter Prichard Eaton has said, for us who live the year round in the country, that spring does not, as many people think, begin with apple-blossoms; but when its bagpipes, like those at Lucknow, *were heard far off and faint,' *when the little frogs pipe from each warm pool; 75 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK when the color of trees large and small changes with the uprunning of the sap; when the swamps are encarnadined with dogwood stems.' Now with this renaissance, with this renewal, how can we who garden fail to put forth a welcom- ing hand to what is new in our own province ? New plants, new flowers, new shrubs, new trees. We are as sheep-like in horticulture as we are in dress. No sooner does one town cover itself with Spircea Vanhouttei as with a garment, than another fol- lows suit. In consequence, and even in these enlightened days, the American May and June in many localities have taken on a shroudlike pallor of dead-white bloom. I know the value of this shrub. I can fancy the furore which must have followed its arrival and distribution in this coun- try, but we have too much of it. So, too, with the two barberries, vulgaris and Thunbergii. Our suburbs and larger and smaller towns deserve such names as Spireatown, Barberryville. And the monotony is inexcusable now, for every list con- tains beautiful variants on these shrubs and on others, such as syringa, philadelphus, hydrangea, lonicera, so lovely, so unusual in beauty, and so new that the variety we need to save us is not only here but of the highest possible interest and 76 SUMMER THOUGHTS IN WINTER order. Who that has seen any collection of the newer lilacs (syringa) in flower would be satisfied to have only the common form ? Marie Le Graye, Mme. Emile Lemoine, the single and double whites, Souvenir de Ludwig Spaeth, Toussaint I'Ouver- ture, the wondrous purples. Belle de Nancy (almost a blue), Philemon, with its great clusters of pink- ish mauve — the list is only hinted at here. Lis- ten to this description of Syringa sweginzovni superba : *This superb plant was introduced from Central China through the Paris Museum. Its leaves, of moderate size, are dull green and sharply pointed; its flowers, borne in long clusters cover- ing the whole shrub in June, are of a soft flesh color and deliciously fragrant; it is one of the loveliest shrubs we possess.' Or this bit concern- ing Syringa Emile Gentil : *Good thyrses of large, full, and imbricated flowers, bright cobalt blue, a very rare shade among lilacs.' Who that has once stood entranced before the wonderful flowers of Viburnum Carlesii, that has breathed its sweet and pungent fragrance, could remain content to possess only Viburnum opulus ? Why sit in dull satisfaction beside the ubiqui- tous barberries aforesaid when such a marvel as Wilson's barberry, when the charms of the several 77 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK / cotoneasters, are easily purchasable ? Until these things are seen by one's own eye, however, it is difficult to interest the individual in them. The new philadelphus tribe, the new diervillas — these are like the products of a dream ; the new deutzias, like their originals or types, but so much more beautiful, more distinguished. We have passed in this country through various periods of fashion in gardening and in shrub plant- ing. In driving through towns of various States one notices this. There was, of course, the ob- noxious time when the golden-leaved shrub was the thing; a later period, when the blue spruce predominated as a feature of the planting. In a town on the highroads of New York I could not help thinking that the motto of its inhabitants at one time must have been "A Weeping Elm for Every Home." Similarly in parts of New Eng- land every dooryard in countless numbers of local- ities has its hydrangea, a single specimen always, and sometimes grown to a height and fulness of inflorescence which makes it a strikingly interest- ing spectacle. These things go in waves — waves of interest in the thing seen — my moral from this being: let more of us indulge from time to time in what is new. Let us try arrangements of new 78 SUMMER THOUGHTS IN WINTER and unknown flowers in our borders; new shrubs at the edges of our grassy lawns. We really have no excuse for staying too long by the older things. Such beauties are now oflPered in at least three lists I could mention — lovely things from China, Japan, Korea, beautiful hybrids from France — that it would be absurd to say that these subjects were not to be had here. Is there a woman among gardeners who has not an open eye for lovely trailing things for decorative use with fruit upon her table ^ To such I should like to say that if she has been satisfied hitherto with Ampelopsis Veitchus terminal garlands of finely set and colored leaves, what will be her delight when she sees for the first time Ampelopsis aconitifolia — that perfect beauty from Korea ^ Absolutely hardy, tested now for long in the Arnold Arboretum, it is so lovely in the form and color of its leaf, so graceful in its way of growing, that one cannot too highly commend it. No one should dispraise — to coin a word — the old and ever beautiful Hall's honeysuckle, but there is a richness of color in the flowers of the newer Lonicera Heckrottii which fits it far better than the old favorite for a place against a warm house or garden wall of mellow brick. Why not use these charming op- 79 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK portunities for change and for the enlarging of our knowledge ? Two years ago Lythrum roseum, Perry's variety, was placed in the garden on trial. Eight plants were set, in balanced fashion, with Phlox Mme. Paul Dutrie before them, two of the lythrums or loosestrifes about a foot apart in each group. With what eagerness I watched the development of these new things, and what was my delight in finding them more beautiful, more valuable, than anything thus tested for several years ! If any- thing could be more satisfactory for intense heat, too, than this lythrum I have yet to see it. Under the hottest of suns it flourishes, a pillar of flower by day. In fact, it is almost too flourishing, so vigorous is its growth and so spreading its roots in one season. Five feet is its height in this garden; its brilliant mauve flowers, in slender spikes, come into bloom as delphiniums pass; the pale grayish- mauve buds are as charming as the flowers, and with the delphinium blues near make an original and delicate contrast in color. Another of its virtues is its beauty while fading. Until the last floret is gone from the stem — and that is, I should say, perhaps three weeks from the beginning of bloom — it is entirely lovely in color. If one should wish to reduce the height of the plant for 80 SUMMER THOUGHTS IN WINTER a certain spot, the root can easily be divided in autumn by chopping, exactly as one would with a hardy phlox or aster. In great heat, watering the lythrum is advisable, to prevent its lower leaves changing to scarlet and thus fatally affecting the appearance of this remarkable plant. Turning from a tall plant to a low-growing one, I mention Salvia virgata nemorosa as a most lovely addition to the list of deep-purple flowers. I once thought no salvia could compete for beauty with S. farinaceay but here is another quite as good in its way, and which with its violet flowers should make a very pretty companion for ;S'. farinacea's pale lavender-blue. S. virgata nemorosa has about eighteen inches of height, and flings forth in July countless little spikes of purple bloom, very rich and arresting. Its perfect hardiness in a severe climate and its interesting color add to its value. Purple and mauve in flowers have such beautiful garden possibilities. Better than in any picture I have seen are the uses of mauve shown in the color illustration "Leonardslea in June," from that sumptuous new book, "Rhododendrons," by Mil- lais, recently published in England. It is by studying such arrangements that one gets fresh conceptions of what may be done with flowering shrubs. 81 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK Some one — was it Eden Philpotts ? — has said that it seems to be the general course of amateur gardening to turn in one's middle age to the more permanent forms of vegetation, trees and shrubs. I confess to a feeling of regret that my earlier years were not devoted to study and experiment with these glorious subjects, and would advise young amateurs to begin their decorative garden- ing with shrubs and trees. Thus they build upon a horticultural rock. The foundation is properly laid. A tree or shrub may be grown from seed, as Professor Sargent would always have us do it; the expense in any case is exceedingly slight, the care practically nil compared with that of flowers. If all young people interested in gardening, as happily so many are now, would first look into the principles of design, of planning of gardens, then inform themselves concerning the structural green of their garden, its trees and shrubs, and finally throw down their garlands of flowers, there would be beautiful because logical results. Most of us begin at the wrong end in this wonderful art. I confess this to be my own sorrowful experience, and would warn every one away from such a course of errors as my own. 8S VI EARLIER FLOWERS It froze hard last night; . . . The contents of an English June are hay and ice, orange-flowers and rheuma- tisms. — Horace Walpole to Agnes and Mary Berry, Straw- berry Hill, June 14, 1791. Though my lawn is burnt and my peas and beans and strawberries scorched, I will bear it with patience till the harvest is got in. — Horace Walpole to the Honorable H. S. Conway, Strawberry Hill, July 17, 1793. I am determined never to cut my grass again till Octo- ber, the only month whose honour one can trust; June always ruins one in hay and coals; I crouch every evening over the fire. — Horace Walpole to the Countess of Upper Ossoey, Strawberry Hill, July 1, 1789. VI EARLIER FLOWERS T is May, when summer first is leafy, when the young oaks are opening with slow reticence their rosy leaflets. When one such oak stands alone in the freshly ploughed field of our region its young foliage is almost lost to sight against the earth, so nearly do the rose-colored leaflets and the pinkish soil come together in color. The vivid greens of elm and beech have a freshness which is almost a moisture, comparable to that freshest of all things, an unfolding butterfly. One week earlier there were blooming the shadbush, the wild plum, those wraiths of the spring wood; and now and again were seen in young leaf, colonies of the white birch. It was a fortunate thought of the scene-painter for Massenet's deli- cious opera of Griseledis, that in the prologue the young shepherd should come piping through a grove of these slender and delicate trees. In turning homeward after an absence in May, how one watches the things in bloom, to get a flowery advance bulletin of the condition of one's 85 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK own flowers. A few hours' journey northward from south to central Michigan has from the car window numberless blooming sign-posts; at first petals are falling from the apple-trees; lilacs are at their utmost point of full bloom. Farther north the apple-blossoms are fixed along the boughs, the lilac thyrses are darker at the tips, a sign that buds are yet to open; and in the woods there is a delicate laciness of foliage which gives one hope of still seeing the fullest spring beauty at home. *And in the season of perfect and frailest beauty. Pear blossom broke and the lilacs' waxen cones, And a tranced laburnum trailing its veils of yellow. Tenderly drooped over the ivied stones. 'The lilacs browned, a breath dried the laburnum. The swollen peonies scattered the earth with blood. And the rhododendrons shed their sumptuous mantles. And the marshalled irises unsceptred stood.' A good spring planting noticed in 1918 but not in full flower till early May because of the singu- lar lateness of that season, was of crocus and scilla, all below and among old bushes of Japanese quince in faint leaf. Fortunately for the har- monies of this picture, the quince-buds had suf- fered from winter cold and no flowers had ap- se EARLIER FLOWERS peared. The white crocus, Kathleen Parlow, was here seen running into masses of blue Scilla sihirica, with groups of yellow crocus near by; be- yond all these one saw reaches of purple and white. This gay color covered some twenty-five square feet, and the blues lost themselves in the distance, trailing among young Juniperus sahina. Here and there among these scillas, which have naturalized themselves with remarkable freedom, were groups of narcissi in bud. Yellowish buds of hyacinth Adelaide Ristori, too, were here. The white crocus nestling among the blue flowers and running through them in the manner of a free woodland planting, made a picture to remember; the tall blue bells of scilla were all among the white flowers, actually hung over them in places. This was the order of colors as I set it down hastily at the time: deep purple, a little white among, then purple, yellow, blue, next lavender, yellow again with clusters of purple, then white with a little yellow beyond, the white running off into a field of vivid blue. The purples, lavenders, whites, and yellows were all crocuses, the blues that purest blue of Scilla sibirica. This planting might readily be carried out in annual flowers, to bloom in early summer or midsummer. It furnishes, too, the 87 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK suggestion for a whole small garden, for by the exercise of ingenuity and some hunting through plant lists, flowers may be had to bloom together in the later season as these do in an earlier one. This early spring group just described is love- liness itself; it is again referred to as I now write of a planting at the edge of the grass nearest the street from the house, which has been and is a source of continued trouble and regret to me. This planting is made up of ancient bushes of Japanese quince, which have not done well, of one or two fine young seedling elms, a mulberry- tree and two or three tall old maples shading the street and headed out when young in the ar- boreally ignorant fashion prevailing in our part of Michigan some thirty years ago. A few struggling plants of Juniperus sabina mentioned above complete for me the misery of this plant- ing. All winter it is a horror to me; but the mo- ment the robin's song is heard the dogwood takes on its wondrous carmine from the sap upflowing — it is the European osier dogwood — thou- sands of crocuses in loveliest patterns bloom be- low the still bare stems and twigs; marsh mari- golds show their yellow in a low and moist part of the ground, and the little uncurling fronds of 88 EARLIER FLOWERS Spircea astilbe, which are thickly planted below all these shrubs and trees, lend their own interest to this place. These little lambkins of spring flowers are soon followed by daffodils and hya- cinths, late low scillas blooming through veils of the young green of leaflets on the boughs above them, and I even have at the edge of the border that noblest of all pink Darwin tulips, Mrs. Ker- rell, with Scilla campanulata Excelsior in myriads near by. From then on the border is a good mass of foliage and a fair screen from the street. It is in winter that the place is unbearable. I know what I should do — consult a landscape-gardener of reputation and get a proper planting plan for that bit of ground. But, to lose the lovely spring picture now always to be expected, is too great a test of self-denial. Every one knows that little colonies of spring flowers must be left undisturbed year after year, to show their full beauty. Only thus is an effect of naturalness to be got. The reverse of the medal is the actual opposite of this space across the grass nearest the border described. It is a grouping of shrubs against the house itself, and gives as much pleasure in all seasons as the other gives pain. To live with new shrubs for fifteen years, suddenly to have a flood 89 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK of light thrown upon their use and beauty — this has been an experience to remember and to share with others. The shrubs in question stand in an irregular planting against the eastern wall of the house. At the north end of the wall is the main door of the house, very insignificant, as in houses of the quieter English type. Such doors are used only for incoming and outgoing; why should they be important.? South of the door are the five muUioned lights of a music-room window, then two open arches at the end of a loggia. The length of this wall is perhaps forty-five feet. Here is its planting to be most warmly com- mended to those to whom a succession of white and mauve bloom may be valuable. And, first, against the open arches, as a screen from the near-by street, stands a glorious tree, Philadelphus grandifloruSi an ancient mock orange, brought twelve years ago from a near-by village, a tree some forty years old and twenty feet high. Its twisting stems are beautiful when hung with ice in winter, when snow and ice are its garland; and in June, when other garlands of a whiteness, warmth, and fragrance beyond description crown its branches, it is a marvel of beauty. Below this white tree are other younger Philadelphus bushes, 90 %%-/-r *••• ; >'*' "^■'^rf'"""' TREE, ARCH, AND FLOWER EARLIER FLOWERS and to the left, as we face the wall, a group of syringas or lilac Rothomagensis, the Rouen lilac. Next come some fine flowering currants or ribes, then Spirwa Vanhouttei, next to the right Hydran- gea arhorescens, interspersed by the rich greens of Mahonia, and, finally, flanking the doorway just mentioned, the graceful sprays of the aptly named Philadelphus Avalanche. In the order of their blooming thus they come: first the Rouen lilac; and by the doorway are the groups of that charm- ing Darwin tulip, Agneta, which carries the mauve of the lilac across green leaf-masses to the visitor's standing place; next the white spirea, the white currant, the white mock orange, with the great white tree the latest of these. Avalanche, at the door, now welcomes all who come with graceful showers of white but little fragrance, and when Avalanche's beauty is departed the green mounds of the hydrangea-buds slowly turn to cream, and the dear sequence is complete. I wish I might make you who read see the love- liness of this changing picture. These white flowers melt like snows into each other. What a marvel is that power of nature to turn the eye from what is past its best to a fresh and flowering beauty ! It is such gentle management — the one 91 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK who looks does not feel himself urged or driven; yet is there a compelling force to equal that of beauty ? This shrub-planting can be reproduced in little. One of each of these things, with the possible ex- ception of the hydrangea, where five or seven shall be the least, would in ten years, arranged loosely as I have suggested and given plenty of room (a thing I never give to anything and am always regretting too late!), will produce that ravishing and reviving effect of white bloom that I have endeavored to describe. If I were to re- plant, I should leave out the lilac. It is interest- ing enough, but would be better elsewhere, and the coolness of white and green alone is unsur- passable. The period of bloom in this border covers at least a month, possibly more — from May 20 to June 20 — in an average season and the latitude of Boston. As I look about at the little we have accom- plished in growing plants, shrubs, and trees in sixteen years' work on two acres, some of it looks so unutterably poor to me that I wish to cut down and pull out much and begin again. There are thin, ugly plantings, places where foliage screens should be yet none exist, bad masses of stuff, EARLIER FLOWERS ugly arrangements of shrubs. The need of space is sometimes responsible for such ugliness, where one's ground is small; but more often the reason is that I forget the larger aspect of the place while busy with small plantings. As an example: no more room last autumn for peonies, yet a small collection had been ordered and was due to arrive — a question where to put them. All shrub bor- ders, before which peonies nearly always look well, but where the fine collector would not plant, had been long since packed to suffocation, not only with their own roots but with spring bulbs and perennial plants too, mainly with foxglove, peony, crocus, and daffodil. Looking about for room, I decided upon a stretch of grass in the far southwest corner of the expanse of orchard before the house. Here two or three old apple- trees had died and been removed. The corner was well screened in by masses of willow, elder, dogwood, and other flowering shrubs, and a little plantation of Japanese flowering cherries was started in the open lawn. The grass was hardly grass; chickweed had overflowed the spot. Here, because of the open position, no large tree roots in the way, and not too much shade, we placed such treasures as Kelway's Glorious and others in our 93 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK / list. We had dug and prepared the circular spots for the peonies the spring before, so that no iieat- ing from natural fertilizer could injure the roots, and in the following manner we dug the circles for each plant. An iron band has been bent in a circle two feet in diameter. The band is thin and has one end sharpened. It is not closed and can be spread to include a wider space if wanted. When laid on the grass, its sharp edge down, we place it where we want our plant to stand, and hammer it into the ground. A perfect circle of turf is then lifted, the soil prepared, and, instead of manure to protect the newly planted peony- tubers through winter, the segments of sod from the top of the circular space are replaced, forming an excellent protection. I have now wandered into a detailed planting; the bearing of all this upon the general effect of lawn and orchard is still to be seen. It may be a perpetration of ugliness which I shall regret, but with little-flowering cherries first, and large-flower- ing peonies later, with great philadelphuses bloom- ing near the peonies the moment those handsome flowers are full, we may expect a picture not all incongruous. At all events, there will be less of that little villain the chickweed. 94 EARLIER FLOWERS There are, I fancy, peony enthusiasts who exist from one June to the next but who may be said really to live only in that lovely month. It is easy to feel a sympathy for this group on first seeing that great peony Therese. There is a deli- cious generosity of form in this fine flower which first commends it to the eye. It is built on large, bold lines. Its petals, from the simple, unfrilled guards to the incurving ones of the crown, are all simple and fine in outline. The color is a cooler pink than that of Galle, but as pale, and the cen- tre of the flower has a suggestion of cream-white. Never have I so admired a peony on sight. It has an enchantment of its own and one which is indescribable, this fair, pale flower. Those broad silken petals, that noble contour of the whole bloom, its faint perfume, give it a high place among the members of its fine companions in beauty. The peony, in the illustration opposite page 90, is, I think, M. Jules Elie; but the real reason for publishing this picture is to call attention to the lifting of the eye, from grass to flower, from flower to trellised arch, and thence to the boughs of a tall elm. Here is a little composition in living things, not planned, but with an interest of its own to those who watch its growth. 95 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK Lady Alexandra Duff, before me as I write, is so often described that words upon its whorl of petals seem almost absurd. A whorl it is, and, for its general look of having taken shape under the influence of whirling breezes, it calls to my mind the cut fringed paper pinwheel of my child- hood. Strong is the contrast in this great semi- double flower between the smooth, large guard petals of blush-pink and the frilled, feathered, cut, and crumpled ones of the collar or inner circle. All this is centred by golden-yellow stamens, which bristle from the centre of the peony. The whole effect is so striking that one cannot wonder at the celebrity attained by this flower. These peonies — the four or five I now describe — stand in a jar of rough ware from Capri. The jar is some ten inches high, fluted horizontally, and has a faint suggestion of pink in its pale-gray clay. The outer petals of Lady Alexandra Duff exactly "corresmatch," as a charming older woman of my acquaintance was wont to say, with the tone of the rough ware, and the handsome peony leaves are rich and fresh beyond words, as a foil to both flowers and their container. Here among others in water before me, is Ginette, so fresh and fair, the long, boat-shaped guard-petals framing 96 EARLIER FLOWERS in a cluster of fringed and cut collar and crown- petals of the tenderest flesh pink. There is a cer- tain bright elegance about this flower. Here, too, is Alexandre Dumas, so rich, so striking in its deep-pink guards and its ruff of amber and tuft of tall crown-petals standing away from the ruff. Fresh interest in the peony mounting high as these notes were transcribed, I inquired diligently of Mrs. Edward Harding as to her opinion of the three best of the family. Her answer follows: "Three peonies stand absolutely at the top, un- touched, unequalled : They are Le Cygne, Solange, and Walter Faxon. The next rank so closely in quality and beauty that it is difficult to draw a line. Any three of the following varieties, added to the three which I have just named, will give you the six finest in the world. You have only to close your eyes and choose, or select according to your special predilection for tint, form, or fra- grance. Mme. Emile Lemoine, Mrs. Edward Harding, Festiva maxima. Glorious, Milton Hill, La Fee, Avalanche, Baroness Schroeder, and Therese. Doubtless there will be clamorous criti- cism because Therese is not named in the first three. But large, fresh, free-blooming, and beau- tiful as this variety is, in my opinion it still can- 97 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK not touch Walter Faxon for gorgeousness and purity of coloring, or for useful qualities as a cut flower." There is in my possession a shallow, rather oval dish, an old Italian piece. The paste is gray, the decoration simple and delicate, a dull blue. Never have I liked flowers better in this than when this spring it held that glorious tulip of glorious name, Illuminator, with young peony leaves among the tulips, with lily-of-the-valley-like sprays of double arabis to give brilliant light to the group, and twigs of youngest leaflets of white birch to make the mass less solid in effect. Incomparably rich was this arrangement; more sumptuous color can- not be. The tulip of flaming orange and yellow, the bronzes of peony foliage and of birch, and the scintillating touches of white made a most satis- factory indoor arrangement. Why not a garden of these same things, if peonies will permit the intrusion of the three companions near their roots? Some gardener will cry out against my sacrifice of young peony branches, and, indeed, I confess to a feeling of regret here. I thought of those who will not withhold their hand from baby lamb when such is desired for a lady's cloak; yet I picked my peonies and mean to watch the be- 98 EARLIER FLOWERS havior of those plants which have been thus ruth- lessly thinned for the early beauty of a dinner- table. At the moment the garden is rich with color, and campanulas in three varieties furnish the most of this. By far the most effective of these three is Campanula ladiflora, which rises in purple clouds to a height of four to five feet. Next in color value comes Campanula medium^ the Canterbury bell, never larger or finer than this year, this in four hues — bright purple, lavender of the same type as that of the beautiful August- blooming Lycoris that iridescent lavender, cool pale-pink, and white. The third campanula is 'persicifolia, both lavender and white. The grace and slenderness of this flower make it more precious, if possible, than the other garden cam- panulas. How often have I wished for a pale rose- color in this species ! Let us be thankful, how- ever, for the present lavender and white mercies. The purple of the magnificent Campanula ladi- flora is in itself a thought too violent, but as it is now, dense masses of it in the garden, tempered by enchanting spires of Delphinium belladonna and other tall pale-blues and mauves, it gives a depth of splendid color to the green-hedged parterre that nothing else can supply. Next year — oh, 99 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK that magic phrase ! — I shall let the charming perennial digitalis stand below C. lactiflora, for the pale straw-yellow spikes of foxglove are lovely with the latter's purple bells. Look for one moment toward that lovely bit of color in flowers lightly raised above a group of white Campanula persicifolia; it is a delicate pic- ture of palest blue and cool pink. Three plants from pots, of the fine sweet pea Henry Ohn, were set among these Delphinium belladonnas in late May. Now these sweet peas have really the effect of rose-colored butterflies fluttering about the blue lengths of the delphinium. The wet season did much for this happy achievement, I am con- vinced. The sweet pea, with its love for coolness and for water, has vigorously responded to this type of summer weather, and the result is lovely beyond words. In the autumn of 1920 this gar- den was entirely refilled with fresh soil from an old meadow-bottom, and all the plants reset. Perennials were divided; peonies, delphiniums, phloxes, mercilessly separated or chopped apart; small bits replaced in ordered groups; there seemed to be endless vacant spaces. When we were reset- ting the pieces of perennial roots, spacing them for the most part a foot to eighteen inches apart, 100 EARLIER FLOWERS I thought with pleasure of the room I should have for annuals this year; more than ever before, for I said: "These roughly treated things will not do well next summer; I hardly expect any of them to bloom. If they live and show green I shall be grateful." Never was there a more complete sur- prise, or series of surprises; for, owing to a season of unprecedented rains and to the influence of the fresh earth, the subjects in the garden have out- done themselves. All winter, as I have said, I dreamed of the pleasure it would be to give an- nuals pride of place. Many Canterbury bells were distributed in balanced color groups in Sep- tember, and the beautiful heliotrope Elizabeth Dennison, the prize-winner of the San Francisco Exposition, was liberally planted this spring. A rearrangement of color was planned, the intention for midsummer and late season, a time of mauve, violet, and white flowers — for earliest blooming the salmon-pinks and lavenders of a color plan not new to me or to most gardens; Oriental pop- pies, 7m pallida dalmatica, and lupines of bluish lavender; this shifting to an early July effect to be secured by the lavish use of Canterbury bells in the three pure hues of violet, cool pink, and white, with the tall Campanula lactiflora to give 101 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK variety in purple height. Now pyrethums over- lap upon this bloom and very good they are there- with. The white polemonium and the gray- leaved stachys both perform their part, with tall flowering stems and foliage of the beauty peculiar to such plants. White and purple stocks thickly blooming, because set out in May from pots, make lovely bushy foregrounds for the campanulas be- fore which they stand. Stocks in violet, lavender, and white only were used, the buff foxglove, quan- tities of deep-purple and clear-white petunias, purple and rose-colored verbenas, with here and there a dash of mignonette and white zinnia seed thrown in. Already in June, under the soft in- fluence of constant rains, the garden is full to overflowing with color, and never, I fondly think, have transplanted flowers done so well for any one. Heucheras especially flourish as not before in years, all moved and divided in the autumn. These, with their bright coral flowers, I admit are bad with the harsh purples of the Canterbury bells, but there are among the heucheras some varied groups of sweet-william. Miss Jekyll's be- loved darkest red and a few of the gay Newport pink. The picture is irresistible, and, though it truly does offend in relation to one other part of 102 EARLIER FLOWERS CHIEF SUBJECT SEASON OP BLOOM COLOR COMBINE WITH : Buddleia variabilis superba Daphne Cneorum July-Sept. Lavender pink Japanese Iris May Rose pink Mertensia virgi- nica Iberis sempervi- rens Narcissus Barrii conspicuus Gladiolus Primulinus Hybrids Six weeks after planting Yellow Pink Old rose Gypsophila panicu- lata Ageratum Zinnias, copper and yellow Helianthemum Salmon Queen June Salmon pink Portulaca (pink and yellow shade) Lobelia (annual deep blue) Iris Chester Hunt Juniata Albert Victor Pallida dalmatica Isolene Mt. Penn Lent A. Williamson Mildred Presby Anna Farr Minnehaha Wyomissing June Dark and pale blue Clear blue Blue and lavender Clear pale blue Orchid pink Pink and deep pink Lavender pink Plum and pale plum White, veined blue White, shaded yel- low White, suffused pink Columbine, Pteo- nia, Heuchera, Linum perrene Lithospermum prostratum Heavenly Blue May- June Turquoise blue Cerastium Stachys lanata Aubrietia Lycoris squamigera August Fink shaded blue Amsonia salicifolia Pseonia La Perle Lady Du£F La Fayette Jules Dessert Gigantea Adonise Superba Festiva Maxima Mons. Martin Cahusac May- June Lavender pink Flesh pink Lavender pink Pale rose Rose pink Cerise White Red Mauve Iris Lupine Foxglove Columbine Phlox Elizabeth Campbell Mme. Paul Dutrie Peachblow America Rynstroom Miss Lingard Jeanne D'Arc Tapis Blanc Antoine Buchner Mrs. Jenkins Crepuscule Le Mahdi Iris Pharon July-August Salmon pink Blue pink Mauve pink Pink with Tyrian eye Rose pink White (early) White (mid-seaaon) White dwarf White (mid-season) White (late) Silver mauve Dark bluish violet Bluish violet Mauve with white eye Gypsophila pani- culata Eryngium Echinops Blue Salvias Salvia farinacea June-Sept. Mauve Antirrhinum Zinnia Ageratum Thalictrum glaucum May-June Yellow Delphinium Viola Apricot May Apricot yellow Primrose Aubrietia Anchusa myoso- tidiflora 103 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK the garden, it is in itself so lovely, so suggestive, that it must remain as a useful idea, though a bit too red a spot for ocular comfort at present. More than other flowers the heuchera needs space. Moving does not seem to trouble it, but room and good soil, as well as full sun, are essential. No more delightfully suggestive table in color arrangement have I seen than that by Miss Isa- bella Pendleton, which I am allowed to use. (See precedmg page.) 104 VII LATER FLOWERS You had better return to town like me, and put an erratum at the end of your almanac, for June read Janu- ary. Summer was made to be felt and enjoyed, not to be taken for better or worse like a spouse, in whom one has no pleasure any longer. — Horace Walpole to the Countess of Upper Ossort, London, June 13, 1782. VII LATER FLOWERS 'The winds that dash these August dahlias down, And chase the streams of hght across the grass. This solemn watery air, like clouded glass. This perfume on the terrace bare and brown, *Are like the soundless flush of full renown That gathers with the gathering years that pass. And weaves for happy, glorious life, alas ! Of sorrow and of solitude a crown.' Edmund Gosse, "Melancholy in the Garden." HAVE elsewhere told of a joyful recurrence on our place in Michigan of spring colors in au- tumn, of groups and thronging crowds of Darwin tulips in hues of purple to lavender, merging into green summer foliage, to be recalled to memory in September by clouds of hardy asters in the self- same colors. There is a delicious melancholy in this reminder. Yet there is also a hope. The asters are a link between spring and spring — notes of a music on the autumn air, a music not only of a spring gone by, but of one to come. No- where have I had a more poignant, more startling 107 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK reminder of May in October than yesterday, when, travelling past a great plantation of larch, I saw the forest floor completely carpeted with young maples, two to four feet, whose leaves were glow- ing, dazzling flame. Instantly my thoughts flew to the Arnold Arboretum in azalea time. These colors of the little maples repeated actually those of the Ghent azaleas and of Azalea Kcempferi on the slopes of the Arboretum at the end of May. The larch-trees of my Michigan picture were thin of foliage. One might easily have mistaken them for the budding trees of spring. The illusion was complete, a spectacle to strike a chord of joy in the heart of any watcher of the earth. In my garden last autumn was a beautiful Jap- anese anemone, with adjectives too many by three for its name (Anemone japonica rosea swperha ele- gans). It was a most lovely flower, three and a half inches in diameter, of marvellous size, and with a perfect circle of yellow stamens held tight to the rosy-mauve centre of the flower by a light- green button. A most perfect thing this is for cutting with buddleias or for growing below them for an effect in bluish mauve and cool pink. The colors of the anemone are Ridgway, Persian lilac to pale Persian lilac; the French chart gives them 108 LATER FLOWERS as 178-1 and 187-1. Allied to this color Is that of the cosmos. By mistake seeds of tall mauve- pink cosmos crept or fell into the garden this year. In consequence, here are four tall plants of it, with wide blooms, more every day. It happens that the color which prevails in the library of our house is dull blue — blue linen loose-covers and so on. Nothing in flowers has ever suited this room better than this day's adornment of a great vase filled with mauve cosmos, above which spikes of Aconitum Wilsonii lift their noble purple heads. It is a miracle when one considers the date. But what a glory lamps give to this cosmos; by day its color is not clear — it has a more or less muddy look; at night the warmest, brightest pink glows in its petals. Turning back a little to the flowers of late sum- mer, I find this date: July 21, phloxes, the earli- est of the decussatas are now in full beauty. The great splashes of color in the garden given by this stalwart group of flowers are of interest in July and August, and give an objective of no common importance when one is rearranging the garden in autumn. The scent of them, too, is so fresh, clean, and sweet. As for color, I might name again a few favorites — Eugene Danzanvilliers, the 109 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK handsome lavender, never seen to better advan- tage than when blue delphiniums' lingering blooms lift their heads back of it. Below this pair is a very slender small hemerocallis, of a specially pale yellow, and lower again a pale calendula. This is an uncommonly good group, and phlox is its backbone. In considering the forms of phlox groups, I am tempted to use terms commonly applied to the contour of hills. For example, from where I sit three fine varieties form a good picture in flowers. Tapis Blanc is the foremost; to the left and higher is a rounding peak of the large-flowered lavender Antonin Mercie, and be- tween these and slightly to the left, a fine flower- ing plant of Widar, rich mauve. This forms a shoulder in my hills of flowers, and as these soft colors rise above each other in noble profusion, nothing in plants can give more pleasure. Eliza- beth Campbell's perfect pink now shows itself in pointed panicles near Lilium regale. Below Tapis Blanc, — which, by the way, is most telling this year in texture and size of its pure flowers, — below this, white phlox in four places, a beauti- ful lavender-blue ever-blooming campanula, var. alliarioBfolia, from Miss Willmott's seed, is fair to look upon from now till frost. The wondrous Re- no LATER FLOWERS gal lily lifts its handsome trumpet among the spikes of yet another campanula, latifoKa, and in front of these two are the clear, cool, pink flow- ers of an annual new to me this year — Sutton's Silene, Rose Queen. Balsams, the camellia- flowered ones of a very pale flesh-pink, white petunias, and another most valuable perennial which I owe to seed from the gardens of Warley Place, adenophora, make fine foreground plant- ings for the campanulas and lilies, and I expect much from my first trials of Mignon dahlias, white and yellow, strong plants but not yet in bud. July 20. — Fourteen days of a tropical sun in Michigan, a test through which the fine rambler rose Excelsa comes forth triumphant. Clusters of its deep-pink flowers hang loosely against the heated wood of a high green garden -gate, as fresh after passing through July's burning fiery furnace as though they had opened the day before. Ghiselaine de Feligonde, a rambler lately brought into the garden, is minutely described elsewhere on these pages. But may I repeat a little ? This rose is about an inch and a quarter in diameter, flat in form, with a thick mat of bright yellow sta- mens and a centre of pale yellow; certainly I know 111 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK of no rambler like this, of none to approach it in distinction of color and form. Aviateur Bleriot has a similar bud, rich copper color; but its flower is less interesting. Again, Ghiselaine de Feligonde lacks the delicious fragrance of Aviateur Bleriot. Three to four blooms of Ghiselaine are open at once, held out on finely stiff stems. What with its surprising beauty of flower, its rare color and form and its interesting name, a name which Maurice Hewlett may have known and used in tales of the moyen age, this rose is a distinct addi- tion to any garden or collection. Aviateur Bleriot is a little bomb-shaped rose, reminding one of a quilled dahlia of cream-white, but without the upturned quillings of each petal. Here the square and tiny petals are spread and slightly reflexed. Last week the charm of the garden lay principally in the silvery valerian and the violet Campanula lactiflora. To-day it is interesting to see some of this color persist, but through other media. The mantle of the campanula has fallen upon Salvia virgata neTRorosa, whose upright violet spikes now rise back of Stachys lanata. Beyond the salvia's purple stand finely developed plants of the lightest of all the Arendsii phloxes, almost white. From the ground up the colors run thus — silvery gray, 112 LATER FLOWERS violet, pearl-white. Here is a capital group. The valerians are fast forming seed; Clematis recta still pours its cascades of cream-white flowers and buds down before opening delphiniums, and in stated places low-spreading clusters of pink ramblers brighten the garden, Ellen Poulson, Louise Welter, and the dwarf crimson ramblers, which shall in August be replaced by white flower- ing ones, Yvonne Rabier perhaps. Cimicifuga simplex, established now after three years in its place, blooms freely. Its tall, slim, creamy spikes give welcome variety of line in time of phloxes. I sometimes fancy that snake-flower, not snake-root, would be the better name for these flowers if they behave elsewhere as here. In nearly every raceme there is a rectangular bend toward the top. This i^ actually a slight defect. Can it be due to dry weather, which we have had in full measure this year.^ Or is it, so to say, congenital? However, Cimicifuga simplex is graceful, distinguished, lovely. A color arrange- ment of flowers of quiet beauty is the tall spiral mignonette, violet petunia beside it, with the hyacinth-flowered lavender candytuft in bloom below the two. There is near me a little garden whose dimen- 113 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK sions cannot be more than eighty by thirty feet. This garden lies in the inner corner of a corner lot. Around two of its sides, the long one to the north and the short one to the east, is a screen of closely planted Lombardy poplars, these backed by the more definite boundary of a green-painted wooden fence. The side to the south is outlined by an excellently designed trellis, painted also a dull green, in the centre of whose length is also a ■ gateway. The narrow end to the west is open, except for the high shrubs on either side of a pas- sage of turf. Lady Gay rambler roses are hung lightly along the treillage, and at the moment at which I write, the second week in September, a charming array of flowers is in bloom. Here is a group of zinnias of a remarkable tone of rich buff, Isabellina by name; around these cluster violet petunias, while in front are stocks, heuch- era foliage and that of stachys, as well as lilac alyssum; the pretty annual delphiniums are in their second bloom, pink phloxes and the laven- der salviq. farinacea, as well as ageratum, give added beauty, and against the tall poplar screen Artemisia ladiflora spreads its lovely self like a fountain in full play. To the left of the artemisias are Buddleias, with their violet flowers, while the 114 LATER FLOWERS pale-blue Salvia azurea flourishes to the right of the artemisia bloom. Below these three tall plants pale-pink zinnias create a delicate fore- ground for the taller group. Where the artemisias stand they are at their best; poplars back of them, before them groups of lower flowers or foliage. They have such space as allows them to spread till the plant is of a loose fan-shape. No pearls of orient would I take for the pearls of the arte- misia, strung in creamy beauty along their delicate spraying stems. They have a grace un- matched by any other flowers of early September. I have long had this artemisia in the garden, but always too near other plants. Not till I saw this in my neighbor's charming beds did I realize its ultimate loveliness, the added beauty given it by perfect freedom. Its picture is shown op- posite page 116 and again opposite page 246, where it appears beyond the double rose-pink poppy, whose seed I always save in quantity. Unfortu- nately, its graceful top is cut off in the first picture, but the pretty habit of growth and bloom is there. The sunflower open below it is of the very palest yellow; it is Sutton's Primrose Queen, an annual; and the cluster of lily-like bloom to the left is Lycoris Squamigera, in tones of lavender and of 115 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK pink. To the right stalks and leaves of balsams, the camellia-flowered type, are seen, while to the extreme left is a lovely though failing spike of Salvia sclarea. The grouping of the three main flowers in the picture is distinctly good, and might be carried out in arrangements of three to five each, in almost any situation and against any rather flat background, with excellent effect. Returning once more to a plant whose good qualities cannot be too often extolled, what other tall plant for our gardens has half the grace of habit of Artemisia ladiflora? Four of these are blooming now in our beds, transplanted to their present spots a year and a half ago. Two are at the east end of the garden, shaded from early sun by the bulk of the house. The others are at the western end, in full sun. The shaded ones are perhaps three feet tall, the others twice as high, all in full bloom. I had not counted on this great height for these last under any conditions. They are out of place where they stand towering too abruptly above phloxes; but the charm with which these great plants raise themselves into the air above their stockier neighbors is a thing to notice and record. The flower sprays are as delicate against a background of smooth privet and dark 116 LATER FLOWERS lilac leaves as the tracery of frost upon the win- dow-pane in January. The color of the flowers, a greenish white, is lovely in itself. And for cut- ting, an association much to my liking is that of this artemisia with Gladiolus primulinus hybrids, or with one of these, new here this season, well named Tawny. A lovely sequence of taller and lower plants is physostegia, phlox Mme. P. Dutrie, phlox Eliza- beth Campbell, with flesh-pink balsams below and a sky-blue lobelia from Sutton's seed to finish the group. Somewhere to the left of these, Lycoris squamigera, which blooms, it is true, when the phloxes are a bit past their best, gives lovely neighboring color, with a great contrast in form of flower. The second bloom of my phloxes has been this year phenomenal — Antonin Mercie has such enormous florets and so many; Elizabeth Campbell has done as well; Tapis Blanc is again a mound of purest white. A September group is of pale-yellow calendulas' strata of bloom, with a dwarf flame-colored zinnia gaily holding forth be- fore it, white phlox Mrs. Jenkins above, and nestling at the roots of the phlox a low second bloom of the fine lavender Campanula latifolia. Speaking of zinnias it may be noticed that Squa- 117 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK drilli of Naples lists as many as sixty-one zinnias in this year's catalogue, this, of course, including not only varieties but colors. In connection with a certain double variety, the English language in this list is thus dealt with: "Perfect in respect of doubleness and colors; possesses not any more the stiffness blamed of the single-flowering varieties." The time draws near when we must move to cover our treasures of geraniums. This is a flower, a plant, to which I am devotedly attached. Ours are now great plants with two to three foot stems. Four are sufficient to furnish one of the large Galloway terra-cotta pots familiar to most people to-day; the plants are six years old. The bold, angular outlines of their stems bear an amusing resemblance to an apple-tree; it may be partly that which gives me the pleasure I have in seeing them all summer on the wall of an open terrace which faces the orcliard. There is the suggestion of correspondence or of repetition of line which gives such satisfaction to the eye. The method by which we keep the large geraniums from year to year may be worth remembering, for spreading geraniums such as these are to be had from no florist or plantsman. These are Mrs. E. G. Hill, the fine salmon-pink single. In late 118 LATER FLOWERS October we lift them from the large jars and pots separately; then into the west end of the dining- room a low window of seven lights they come, where they stand on shallow zinc trays with tiny drain-pipes at either end. Every visible leaf is stripped from each plant, and for the summer's beauty we live with these skeletons for six or seven weeks in their stark condition. The worst is that we breakfast, lunch, and dine beside them thus ! Never were green leaves more of a solace than those in this window when December brings them. From that time on all is well, for the soft green foliage is agreeable all the winter through. Why do we not keep them in a cellar.^ Why do we not send them to a florist.^ For the very good reason that because they are precious one cannot take a risk. No bud but is pinched out as spring approaches; in May the plants are placed in their large pots and set out-of-doors on the wall; and by the middle of June they are like the gera- niums of which one reads as in California, on the Riviera, or in Portugal, wonderfully gay with flowers at every point. In warmer climates the geranium is often trained to grow upright. I can- not but suggest allowing it from year to year its own full, rugged form. I believe we lose the 119 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK best beauty of this fine thing by buying it as we do afresh each spring, a plant from a cutting, low, tiresome, fit only for the process of bedding-out. The broadly branching habit of the geranium when left to itself makes a little careful staking necessary in the windy positions in which we keep ours. But this can be done without stiffness or apparent use of the wood. It is in early September, 1919, and in a dry sea- son, that the garden looks actually frayed. Seed- pods on all sides, the tall phloxes have a specially unravelled look, but cosmos, pale calendulas, and other annuals need daily experiences with the shears if even a semblance of freshness is to be preserved. A few fine things are still to bloom. Salvia azurea is opening its perfect blue flowers. Here these stand above the late white phlox, Mrs. Jenkins, with nice effect. Aconites are in bud. The pure white althea Wm. R. Smith has opened its first bloom, and in the trial garden to-day I found leaning against Campanula lemoinei, var. Campanile, my own brilliant namesake in gladioli, the most interesting companions for each other. September 26, 1920, and yet no frost; this year the garden is magnificent in color. The tall sprays of Wm. E. Smith hold out their moonlike 120 LATER FLOWERS blooms of white and those fat podlike buds. Very few flowers have a whiteness such as this. The texture of the flower is richer, too, than that of the whitest of white peonies. The loveliness of the dwarf dahlia (yellow) fronting violet petunias is quite indescribable too. • There is something soothing in the idea of flowering plants at rest. To-day I had a certain pleasure in watching the long, slender shadows of the flung-out canes of ramblers wreathing the dull wooden gates of the garden. Those vines still have a function to perform toward beauty, thought I. Still they lend interest and charm, though small green haws replace the rosy flowers of June. A light shower has fallen to-day, and the clean scent of phloxes, the delicate fragrance of petunias and of sweet alyssum rise upon the still autumnal air. The long shadows of half past four o'clock create delightful garden studies. Then is felt that dreaming stillness of a garden, which affects one as a thing ineffable. October the 20th, and no frost still; and yet my garden blooms and yields to shears and basket. True, there are many browned or browning plants — dried poppies, loosestrifes, statices; but dwarf rambler roses are as fresh as in June; zinnias keep 121: A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK steadily on and fill the garden with bright gleams; calendula, I can see from the little platform to- day, has many level strata of gold ; violet petunias continue to throw forth long, arching branches of buds and flowers; ageratum and all the gray- leaved things give of their quiet beauty to the garden still; and late-sown candytufts, both mauve and white, are excellent in the beds. Grape leaves on the trellises are yellowing to their fall, elms are nearly bare; but lilacs are still leafy, all but some transplanted ones. These, whose leaves were stripped before transplanting and which were well watered afterward, are, to my con- sternation, not only making leaf and flower, but unfolding them. What shall be their end ? A season unheard of, this of 1920 — a season of summerlike weather almost to November. The smell of mignonette is in the air, the smell of apples as men pick all day the glorious fruit which is our apple harvest this year from the two acres around the house. And, as I sit in my garden, thinking, reading, writing, but, more than all, gazing, I feel that melancholy so perfectly tuned to words in stanzas at the head of this bit of writ- ing. For weeks past we have thought each lovely day would be the last of its kind; now we know 122 LATER FLOWERS that this or this must be; yet, like Lear to the beloved daughter, we cry, *'Stay a little." In associations of flowers with dear and pleasant people, in the memories that fall like lights or shadows across the garden's spaces, memories of those who were within it and are not, lies the garden's sweetest quality. It is a touching thing planned by the people of a village in Surrey, Eng- land, that Garden of Remembrance, as a war memorial to be made in the churchyard. "There is to be a yew hedge enclosing a plot of ground bordered with rosemary. Within there will be a memorial stone set in a rock garden in which brightly colored flowers will be kept." A little wind rises; the rustle of drifting leaves is heard in the garden ; the shadows lengthen over grass as green as April's. I look at these treasures of color and scent, at the green leaves, the charm- ing mounds of plant and shrub, and feel that poignancy of regret, the attribute of the passing of all that is fair. 123 VIII OTHER FLOWERS The harvest is half over already all around us; and so pure that not a poppy or cornflower is to be seen. ... If Ceres, who is at least as old as many of oiu* fashionable ladies, loves tricking herself out in flowers as they do, she must be mortified; and with more reason, for she looks well always with topknots of ultramarine and vermilion, which modern goddesses do not for half so long as they think they do. — ^Horace Walpole to the Earl of Strafford, Straw- berry Hill, August 1, 1783. VIII OTHER FLOWERS ^ARTS of this country are now, in August, like Holland in May, the time of tulips. Gay patchworks of color from the gladiolus fields are a not uncommon sight, and many hybrids are com- ing from interested amateurs, as well as from com- mercial growers. I sometimes think, in looking at our industrial cities and their people, of that old figure of the warp and woof of life; and if these people, many of them so weary, so cheap-looking, make up the warp of town life of our country, it is the sculptors, the poets, architects, and design- ers who brighten the fabric with threads of silver and of gold; it is the painters, the musicians, the planners of gardens, the growers and hybridizers of flowers who draw through that warp their threads of form and color. As I returned from the exhibition last summer of the American Gladio- lus Society, I thought of what those growers and hybridizers are doing for the joy of their country. The lovely wares they deal in — "I often wonder what the Vintners buy, One half so precious as the stuff they sell" 127 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK — the experiments with which they are constantly busy — are there any others besides painters, com- posers, poets, sculptors, who can give to Americans what these are giving ? We need flowers. Every man, woman, and child of us is hungry for flowers. No man can grow or even sell flowers successfully unless he values them at more than money. But it is the hybridizer, the man or woman of gentle- ness and patience, of intelligence, perception, and deep love of the art that brings into this tapestry of life a lovely curious pattern through their own threads of color, a freshness of design only to be wrought by the creative mind. As each midsummer comes and opportunity presents itself for sights of fields or shows or single specimens of the gladiolus, I wonder how interest can wander to any other flower than this. There is a magic in a subject which has such variants; there is fresh pleasure in each change of form, of color, of marking; and in these last years, as all the world of horticulture knows, the beauty of the gladiolus has increased tenfold through its hybrid- izers. I have elsewhere written of my penchant for the smoky or dusky hues in this flower, in Prince of India, for example; but not long since a great basket of gladiolus spikes was sent me for 128 OTHER FLOWERS inspection, and of these I will now discourse for a little. A group of these gladioli in dusky tones reminds me, as I say, of Prince of India in color and texture; like old Genoese velvets in tones of faded rose, they are almost a mulberry, and have a bloom like the plum's. Among the most beau- tiful of these, sent me by Mr. Wing, of Mechanics- burg, Ohio, are the following, all Lemoine's: Nuee d'Orage, whose inner color is, according to the French chart. No. 105; Corinthian red, in Ridgway; outer color of edges — French chart, 189-4; Ridgway, bishop's violet. This flower is finely named. Bleriot has somewhat the same coloring, but there is some sulphur-yellow in the lower petals. This gladiolus is a beauty, and has an uncommonly large flower. Colosse, as its name would imply, is the largest of this dusky rose group. Here we find long petals in a widely opened flower, very handsome and distinct. Closely related to this in color is Admiral Cervera, very dull in tone, ashes of roses really, as in a fab- ric, with one cream-white lower petal tipped with dull rose. Desdemona, Carmelite, show veinings of soft violet on the dull rose of their petals; Marocain, heavily suffused with violet on deep rose, and Deuil de St. Pierre, a beautiful faded- 129 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK rose flower, smoked as one might say with dull lavender, complete a group of flowers, the work of the great artist of Lorraine. Diane is a delicious flower, white, very elegant of form, with a sulphur- yellow throat; Marquis de Canif has the markings of a white carnation, with carmine flakes at the edge of the fine white petals, and a suffusion of sulphur-yellow in the throat. This flower is of remarkable beauty, and one of its attractions lies in its broadly frilled edges. Platon is one of the bright, rosy mauves, an immense and lovely flower, pale sulphur-yellow again in the throat here. In Charles Berthier is a lighter tone of the same hue, a pure magenta. Here we find a frilled and flaked edge, the flakes of the same color, but darker. Great elegance of form is a characteristic of all these flowers. They sit their stems as lightly as a bird the bough. Two very pale, cool pinks, superbly marked, are Lutetia and LTnnocence. Why the last should be so named is a mystery, except for the deep blush accompanying the quality in old romances. The flower is of a cool blush-pink with dazzling flakes of Tyrian rose, French chart 155, at the edge of all flowers. This is a much-marked gladiolus, and extremely striking. Lutetia has an immense indi- X3Q OTHER FLOWERS vidual flower, much paler than L'Innocence, with an exceedingly delicate suffusion of sulphur-yellow in the interior of each bloom. Antoinette is almost like a lovely ice upon one's plate; it really looks as though it might have the flavor of a peach. Creamy white within, its petals turn at the ends to salmon carmine, French chart 125-1; a most delicious gladiolus this is. To neighbor Antoinette in the garden, for a total con- trast, here is Beaute de Juillet, a small flower of wonderful proportions, whose colors are inde- scribably lovely. In the French chart the princi- pal hue is 125-1, with stripes and flakes of a dark color, which looks almost violet against its vivid background; the whole, one thinks, must be made of velvet — it cannot be a living flower. Others are General Kuropatkin, a very fine dark-red flower, French chart 161, all tones; very fine in combination or for contrast with this flower is Sans Pareil, a wondrous flower of flame-pink, or rich light-coral pink, French chart 125, all tones. This has a cream-white throat and white anthers with pink stigma. Belle Alliance is rarely beau- tiful — its flowers are not large; the upper petals are pinkish white, suffused toward the tips with light carmine overlaid with pale violet; the three 131 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK lower petals are distinguished by unusual color in very distinct markings. The tips of these petals are of violet petunia, No. 2 in the French chart. Colibri is a flower of many lovely tones of mauve and violet; on the three inner petals are central markings of yellowish cream-color. This gladio- lus is not large, but unique in color. The darkest part of the petals — that is, toward the edge — is of the hue named in the French chart as violet pourpre No. 1, lighter toward the centre. The whole flower, however, is so veined and touched with mauve and violet as to be diflScult to charac- terize or describe. Baronne dTvoly is a lovely white, touched with sulphur with as many as nine flowers open along a twisting stalk. This gladio- lus is very charming, both in form and substance. A planting of the dusky rose gladioli named a few paragraphs back would be well accompanied in the border by these others in the order now given : Emile Antoine, Souboutai, Triton, Aristophane. This brings us, by way of those last named, through a series of magnificent and ever-brighten- ing rose-colors to all the tones called by Ridg- way, bright rosy scarlet, French chart 124. What a surprise awaits the gardener who will thus scheme for the pleasure of the eye ! Harking 132 OTHER FLOWERS back to Antoinette, I find a note recording her excellent appearance in combination with phlox Elizabeth Campbell; and ageratum is also charm- ing with this gladiolus. With Assuerus, too, one of the loveliest of all these French varieties, ageratum is particularly good; a planting of phlox Braga, with ageratum of a tall kind before it and gladiolus Assuerus intermingled with both flowers or grouped to right or to left, is an ar- rangement I am not at all afraid to suggest. And another beauty in these gladioli is Roi Alexandre, very interesting with spiral mignonette. Another group sent from Ohio by Mrs. Austin, of Wayland, gave me great pleasure, too. Evelyn Kirtland, well known, I believe, is a flower of great beauty — French chart, all tones of 126, but mainly the first one on that page. Herada is of the hue set down in the same chart as violet eve- que, but brighter — No. 189. With Evelyn Kirt- land, the comparatively new sweet pea Old Rose is delightful, out of doors or in; and with Herada, violet petunias, and the mauve physostegia, one might form a picture truly entrancing. Three gladioli together too, unusually good with each other from the point of view of color, are Evelyn Kirtland, Herada, and Bertrex. 133 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK At the time these beauties came from Ohio, others made their welcome appearance from Vaughan's gladiolus jBelds, which are not far from us in Michigan. And first let me mention three or four seedlings: No. 129 is one of the largest, purest white gladioli one could imagine; in fact, the finest white I have ever seen; No. 17, a lily like bloom of pale blush-pink — Ridgway, hermosa pink; French chart, 153-1, or paler. This is a large flower, very upright in habit, with markings of purple so far down the throat that they are not visible. Seedling 64, French chart, 169 all tones, Ridgway, Tyrian pink, is exceedingly imposing, a clear, rosy magenta flower, very large and fine. One central lower petal has a cream-white inner blotch; No. 23 is a rose-pink flower of great size and startling beauty — a very large flower, white ground with splashes of violet rose, in Ridgway; French chart, 154-1. Owosso is a deeper yellow than Schwaben, with some frillings at its edges — a lovely variety, practically a clear tone with no markings. When I saw gladiolus Mrs. O. B. Campbell for the first time I thought it precisely like a magnificent zonal pelargonium. This flower is not large, but of velvety texture, bright rosy scarlet, I should call it; Ridgway has it scarlet-red 134 OTHER FLOWERS and rose doree, and the French chart 124-4. The round markings on the lower petals of these gor- geous flowers are of a purple almost black. Here is a marvel for our gardens, so vivid that all it needs is to be allowed to bloom below Artemisia ladiflora, or among early cream-white chrysanthe- mums, to create a true horticultural sensation. Other varieties that were particularly fine, these all named, were Myrtle, a flower of a lovely color, all the tones of 153 in the French chart, and in Ridgway, hermosa and La France pink; Chicago Salmon, superb in form and color, Ridgway, be- gonia rose, and French chart 124, all tones, also 125; Schwaben, very well known and deservedly so, a fine pale-yellow gladiolus, a large, well-opened flower, violet blotches in the throat, though very far back. This gladiolus is very fine grown or cut in combination with mauves, or with primu- linus hybrids. Attraction is of the color called by Ridgway spectrum red and begonia rose; in the French chart 121, all tones. Attraction has a wonderful open throat of waxy white. It pos- sesses very fine, even dazzling flowers, growing far apart on the stalk, the latter very strong and tall. Out of three fine primulinus hybrids in the rich flame, copper, and yellow of that tribe, I should 135 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK say that seedling 502 is the finest. The others are AHce Tiplady and Regulus. No. 502 has a depth of color which reminds one of certain Brazilian butterflies. Apricot-yellow, rose, scarlet, all these shades are caught in this flower and blended in one fiery glow. To conclude this group, Vaughan's seedling No. 6 is a flower of tremendous interest to me; Ridgway calls this flower peach -red; the French chart shows it in plate 88, all tones; the blotch on its throat is Ridgway, oxblood red, French chart 95-4. This is, I believe, the most striking gladiolus I have ever seen, six flowers open at one time. Its color is of Oriental magnificence, its rich hues and velvet texture remarkable. Also the flower is well opened, my only criticism being that the flowers may be set too close to each other along the stem. The name of this glory in gladioli is Martha Washington. It reminds one of Le- moine's Beaute de Juillet, but this is more scarlet and brown, while that is vivid rose-pink, with vel- vety carmine blotches. From yet another source, from fields at Mount Clemens, Michigan, arrived a generous basket of cut blooms of gladioli. Among these I found a group of most excellent whites — Wisconsin, L'lm- maculee, Utah, and Maine, a wonderful purity in 136 OTHER FLOWERS this last. Roem Von Kemmerland was a great beauty, French chart 157, all shades. This gladio- lus reminded me of an old favorite, Rosella. Its color was delicious, its flower very large and effec- tive. La Grandesse was one of the loveliest of all, a clear, warm pink. The flowers were large and boldly frilled. This is a splendid flower. Its color in the French chart is mauve rose, 153, the palest tones. A trio of gladioli which, according to my notes made on seeing them for the first time, would take any prize anywhere, used together, either cut or planted, is made up of Chris, Loveli- ness, and Liss. Liss, French chart 142, is of a fine, lively pink, something like a darker edition of Tracy's Dawn, which I have always liked. Love- liness has for its color a very pale pink, palest buff within its flowers; it is a large, well-opened flower of unusual charm. Chris is a rich flower of vel- vety texture, not large but effective. Goliath is a glorious dark flower, French chart 170-4, very wide-open and deep in color. Goliath, Radium, and Illinois look well with each other. Of Ra- dium I must say one word. It is a lovely flower. When freshly opened it is white, suffused with pale pink, pale yellow in the throat, with a car- mine blotch below. As it ages the upper petals 137 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK and outside turn to a delicious pink, exactly re- produced by the French chart in 120-1. Illumina- tor, seen at the Detroit Gladiolus Show, is a flower of great splendor — splendor of color first, a glow- ing crimson scarlet, and, as I remember it, it is, when held against the light, like some ruby-tinted wine. Many others there were in this wondrous basket of flowers which should receive mention here, but time and space forbid. I should like, however, to name a group of fine scarlets, so good that one could hardly single one out from the others: Clear Eye, Electra, Mrs. Vos, Pride of Hillegom, General Joffre, Johannesfeuer, Mrs. Neldhuys, Fair King, and Evening Red. A glowing flower was Majestic, rouge grenadine in the French chart. Wilbrink is very unusual and fine in its effect; a good lavender was Mr. Mark; other lavenders are Catherine, Ewbank, and the familiar Blue Jay. I hear, also, that Louise is a fine acquisition to those of this color. I have grown for several years now some of the beauties from Decorah, Iowa, the work in hy- bridizing of two devoted men who started as amateurs. Although I occasionally share the fate of most gardeners in losing track of sources as of 138 OTHER FLOWERS labels, I think it was from Decorah that there came a gladiolus of surpassing beauty, Salvator Rosa. In color here were three distinct tones of pink, given in Ridgway as begonia-rose, eosine- rose, and hermosa-pink; in the French chart gen- eral tone 124-1, also 123-1, with deeper tones on lower petals, 120-3, 4, and 119-3, 4. The three colors as mentioned by Ridgway were shown in this flower as straight above each other, with a throat of carmine. Certainly, this marvellous old- rose gladiolus (and possibly its name is Old Rose — I am not certain of anything except the fact of its superb beauty) is one of the finest blooms I have ever seen. Its color is remarkably rich and un- usual, and it carries its very large flowers on a stalk of singular uprightness and substance. Mon- tezuma, French chart 156-4, for its general tone cannot be denied mention. Its color in Ridg- way is pomegranate purple, a color-name pretty enough to commend it anywhere; it is a superb flower, practically self-colored, very tall, and with large blooms. I noticed that the new sweet pea, Hawlmark Pink, was charming with this gladiolus. We speak of the clematis; and immediately we think of climbing things — of C. paniculata, 139 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK C. montana, perhaps of C, tangutica the new beauty from China with its small, clear yellow flowers; or we recall some of the large-flowered clematises that we know, such as the purple C. Jachmanni, the charming pinkish-lavender C. Jackmanni Mme. Edouard Andre, the two shown garlanding the arch in the illustration facing page 90. But how seldom do we think of the Davidiana type — the bush or low-growing shrubby clematises which may have become fairly numerous and so beauti- ful in the hands of M. Lemoine. One I must describe here, given me some years ago by Mr. W. C. Egan, to whom I owe so many fine things for the garden. This is Clematis Lemoinei cam- panile. The beauty of this flower is well-nigh indescribable. Three years of it in this garden have now brought it to full beauty, and a cluster of it is before me now in a crystal vase with, most appropriately, a few sprays of phlox W. C. Egan. Impossible it is to conceive of a lovelier effect in flower decoration than this. The clematis so aptly, beautifully named is some three feet high, the flowers produced typically from the axils of the leaves except for a long, loose terminal raceme which actually towers above the topmost leaves. These flowers, like the florets of a hyacinth, are 140 OTHER FLOWERS of the tones in Ridgway's plate No. XXIV from pallid grayish violet-blue to deep chicory-blue with tips of deep dull bluish violet. The pointed buds are of a medium tone of lavender-blue and the length of one branch of flowers is at least a foot. Anything more delicately lovely than this new herbaceous plant cannot be imagined. Its fra- grance too commends it, again like a hyacinth in this. For a space where white or pale color may be desired for May and late August, may I sug- gest an interplanting of this beauty from Nancy with that delicious shrub. Viburnum carlesii, both hardy with me through the severest test of all cold weather, the winter of 1917-18? Clematis Campanile needs careful staking; its flower clus- ters are heavy and quickly bear down the delicate branches to the ground. Mr. Arnold Forster, writing on these less familiar clematises in "The Garden," mentions clematis Cypris as a remark- ably fine member of the group. "It is surprising how seldom one sees Lemoine's beautiful hybrids of C. Davidiana. Some of them are most valuable in the border or in association with shrubs, having at once rare and subtle color and delightful scent. The newest sorts, Campanile and Giseau Bleu, which are derived from C. starts, do not seem to 141 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK me to be as good as some of the older sorts, such as Cypris; during the three or four seasons in which I have grown them they have never made anything hke such a fine effect as one had expected from an illustration in Lemoine's catalogue. Per- haps the plants want a rather different treatment from what I have given them; they are evidently semi-scandent in habit. Cyprisj on the other hand, is sufficiently erect to need little or no staking. The flowers are much more beautiful in shape and have a smell something like that of cowslips. The silvered blue of the flower clusters is too subtle a color for association with violent yellow, such as that of the helianthuses, but with the pale, clean yellow of a good hybrid of Gladi- olus primulinus it is veiy happy." Let us leave this fascinating subject after men- tion of a new clematis recommended by Mr. Egan, but which I do not know. It is clematis Ina Dwyer, originating in the gardens of and for sale by E. F. Dwyer & Sons, of Lynn, Mass- achusetts. A two-inch flower, of white "shaded to blue on the edges and tips of petals" (but more probably a lavender or purple than a blue — I have learned to be wary where mention of blue is concerned), with an immense number of 142 A GARLAND OF CLEMATIS OTHER FLOWERS flowers to each stem, a strong grower, and bloom- ing in August, this clematis should be given a trial. All of these clematises should be tried in our gardens. New varieties, old varieties, all will lend a beauty either delicate or bold, as we ourselves intend and arrange, to other plant-groupings. Mr. Rothe says that all the herbaceous clematises may be raised from spring-sown seed, or, as I know from my experience, by division in spring and autumn. Sun they must have, and, to quote Mr. Rothe, "all thrive best in rather light high ground." Clematis on a wall beyond lupines, clematis among gladioli — there are countless suggestions for the use of this beautiful subject. Here one can only touch upon it; but its perfect beauty is such that one turns easily to the thought of general finish and perfection in a garden, and that permits the introducing here of what should sum up any discussion of fine individual plant- subjects, their effective use in a good garden. I write now of the immediate surroundings and of the small garden of a villinp that I have lately seen for the first time. To my surprise, it was from a rocky point that the house lifted itself against the sky. I had not heard that it stood upon a cliff. Up a flight of stone steps I went; 143 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK then, turning to the right sharply, my eye was held by a delicious wrought-iron gate, lightness itself, with birds, flowers, and an initial letter gracefully outlined; along a terrace walk then, passing on the left another stone stairway to a third level. The notable thing about these steps was the use in pots, set on every step, of Phlox Drummondi Chamois Rose, slender plants in full bloom, lightly staked to keep them upright. A magical effect of decorative color this was, a thing to commend where surroundings make it suitable. A little revelation of beauty lay in wait for me at the end of a stroll among barberry bushes on a rocky knoll not far from the house; we came upon a narrow shady walk, locusts closely planted on either side. At the farther end of this, without other warning than the formal lines of small trees just mentioned, one of the loveliest imaginable of little walled gardens burst upon my delighted eye. Here was the element of surprise beloved of the good landscape architect, that element which plays alike upon the mind of the statesman and the school-girl, and gives pleasure to both. A garden of low plants, a garden of perfect edges and greensward — to sum up, the garden of an artist. The centre of this garden is a round of 144 OTHER FLOWERS smooth turf. This is flanked by two narrow semi- circular beds, in which, on August 7, dehcate serried masses (if one may combine those two words) of annual larkspur were in bloom. Only violet and lavender were used. Four other beds at corners held perfect rose-plants, pink Druschki, I think. These were not closely planted; one could see the drawing of the rose-bush and its lovely bloom against the well-tilled soil. And at one corner of each rose-bed was the original and fascinating addition, used as accents, of a fine rounded specimen of lemon verbena. Of course, the first idea here must have been the con- venience of its position, but it looked well too, and I said to myself, and have so often thought since — if all gardeners would only do more as they want to do ! The owners of this garden wish to gather lemon verbena as they pluck their roses — what more natural than to grow one beside the other .^ But the actual inability to do any- thing wrong in gardening via architecture, is given to but few. The possessors of this garden are blessed above women in having a sixth sense of absolute fitness, and instinctively they used the plant they wanted in such a fashion as to make its presence right. 145 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK In my interest in this detail, however, so simple, venturesome, and successful, I have forgotten to complete the description of the garden itself. Remember that the centre of this garden has violet, lavender, and white as its only colors: that fine dark-leaved roses spread away from those. Now around all the garden are tall rows of Aconitum Wilsonii, in full stately bloom of purple, of that blue-purple found in old enamels. What went before all these violets and lavenders in this garden I do not know. I am ignorant as to what is to come after. But the picture of quiet beauty left with me on that August day will remain; a sober loveliness, a quiet use of some of the best flowers, a grave harmony of color only to be achieved by those who have loved and studied and sought beauty always. 146 IX BRIGHT-BERRIED GROWTH FOR THE WINTER GARDEN In truth our climate is so bad that instead of filling our gardens with buildings, we ought rather to fill our build- ings with gardens as the only way of enjoying the latter. — ^Horace Walpole to the Reverend Wm. Mason, Strawberry Hill, May 9, 1772. IX BRIGHT-BERRIED GROWTH FOR THE WINTER GARDEN /'"XN an October day, black wind-clouds in the ^^-^ distance, a ray of sunlight suddenly breaks upon a mass of almost leafless sweetbrier, sweet honeysuckle entwined among its thorns. The boughs of the brier are hung with scarlet haws which glow against the dark-gray background of the sky and cheer the gardener with the thought that though green may have departed other color remains. The barberries of various varieties pro- duce, with their single or clustering berries of scarlet, a like effect; and a tiny shrub, new this year to me and in its infancy, being now but ten inches high, is beautiful beyond description in its berried state. This is Cotoneaster buUata, far less formidable and more charming than its name would imply. And now the glorious bronze foliage of Rosa lucida is a treasure. Its use with dull-pink hardy chrysanthemums, or, if frost shall have spared them, with the scarlet dahlia, is a thing to re- 149 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK member, to count upon as the season of fewer flowers advances and autumn comes on. Who of us that gardens does not think regretfully of the fact that while we live in a world of scarlet and gold the glory around us must soon give way to the depredations of "leaf -picking winds" and autumn rains and that shortly little but bare boughs shall be our portion? It is then that we look about for some consoling hint of color in our borders. It is then that we say sadly to our- selves: "Why have I not set a bit of red-fruiting shrubbery there or here ! " Long after Christmas in our severest northern climate we may enjoy the garden or the shrubberies from the stand- point of color, but not without a forehanded knowledge of what to plant to secure winter effect as well as how to distribute our subjects when setting them in place. The wind-swept desolate look in winter of many of the smaller younger cities and towns of our country makes entirely suitable a short discussion of our needs in this direction. In spring and sum- mer the enthusiast in out-of-door work is in a trance of pleasure in the beauty all about him; in autumn the rich possessions which are his on every side in hues of scarlet, green, and purple 150 BRIGHT-BERRIED GROWTH quite occupy Ms eye and mind. It occurs to none of us to do more than enjoy the seasons as they come. All at once — November, the leafless tree, a few snowflakes in the air ! We rouse our- selves to actualities. We look out of window at our lot, small or large as it may be, we gaze down the road, street, or avenue, and in a flash we know that like Adam and Eve in Eden we are naked. Our neighbors' houses, garages, stables, become our intimate and outstanding objects of vision. There is room, much room, in our coun- try for a better understanding of the matter of structural green; and by structural green I mean the enclosings, the walls of foliage, the screens of leafy things which we must erect before any- thing really lovely and finished can take place within. I sometimes think that most of us be- gin at the wrong end of gardening. We start with flowers. Like children the brightness is our desire. But as time passes, we shall surely come to realize that backgrounds, enclosings, in short, that plans, are the starting-points of all good gardens. After some sort of green or evergreen back- ground shall have been attained comes naturally the decorative idea, the planting against ever- 151 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK greens, against a summery expanse of rich green for contrast of form and color. For summer from what myriads of subjects we may choose ! But for winter? Another story? Yes and no; for, while we have many already, the list of shrubs and smaller trees, and of creepers too, with ever- green or nearly evergreen foliage, of trees and shrubs with vari-colored bark, with fruits of bright hues, is, thanks to the Arnold Arboretum and to Mr. E. H. Wilson, its distinguished collector, rapidly increasing. The matter of the better-known shrubs with decorative fruits it is not necessary here to con- sider at any great length. Viburnums, the sym- phoricarpos, the older barberries, vulgaris and Thunhergiiy are so familiar that attention hardly needs to be drawn to them. I may even dare to say that the over-use in certain communities of these fine things, the stupid copying by one after another of the same shrubs arranged in the same fashion has become too common. This was all very well when shrub-planting first became general in America, say twenty years ago; it is well still in smaller communities; it is decidedly not well in suburbs and in the lesser cities where money is not so much of a consideration and where variety 152 BRIGHT-BERRIED GROWTH is so much to be desired. Is it not a fact that in certain suburbs of Chicago, for example, the over- use of the barberry is noticeable? The same holds true in certain suburbs of Boston. A fine thing done to death is a pity — and this condition usually obtains because of a lack of observation on the part of property-owners. To some of my more sedate or settled readers it may seem odd that I should so often dwell upon the newer varieties of flower and shrub, and par- ticularly of shrub. "How," they may cry, "and why should people of middle age concern them- selves with the planting of that which they can scarcely hope to see in its full maturity.'*" And this question indeed has been discussed lately in the columns of certain journals devoted to gar- dening and the larger forms of horticulture. "In my own experience," says one writer — "and I meet a good many keen gardeners — I find that the longer a man has been interested in gardening, the more his attention centres around trees and shrubs." On speaking of this to one of the best- informed horticultural men I have ever met, he said that this was undoubtedly the case. For, as one grows older and keenness diminishes for other forms of active exercise, so does one's inter- 153 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK est in permanent features of the garden increase. To plant is a pleasure of the activity of youth; to watch the development is a joy of the inactivity of age. Says another: "While money and energy will advance most worldly concerns, these are minor considerations in the matter of a shrub. Money and energy may start a fine piece under perfect conditions, but they will not hasten its growth. Shrubs, in fact, are simply no good to an old man in a hurry. If you are over sixty years of age, stick to the herbaceous border, or- chids, and fruit; indeed, forty-five is none too early to begin growing shrubs. But you will find the pursuit worth while, for, though shrubs offer no intellectual excitement, they furnish quite an intelligent pastime and may serve to gladden the leisure of a busy man, or even to keep an idle one out of mischief — provided the worthless individ- ual can be grafted with proper ardor for frutes- cent things." A garden, be it of flowers or shrubs, is the prov- ince of hope. To the true lover of gardening there is no winter of discontent — only a winter of three or four short months, full to the brim with expectancy, and with thankfulness for time to study, to plan, to think on summer. Indeed, 154 BRIGHT-BERRIED GROWTH as I have always thrust from me the idea of even a tiny glass-house as being too much of a tempta- tion and distraction in winter, so am I almost but not quite inclined not to urge the use of the delightful newer shrubs for winter effect upon the gardener who seeks the peace which only comes after the first frost, the gardener "whose ungar- nered sheaves are past the help of burlap." A trial garden for shrubs — here is the needed thing. "The trial garden," writes Mr. Jacob in "The Garden," "deliberately planned, is a rare thing to find. Yet if one wishes to insure a harmonious blending of the occupants of his beds and borders, no suggestion can be more practical. There under our own eye we may see samples of everything that seeks for admission, and we can note its shade or tone of color and its appearance were this or that its bedfellow." Nothing could now prove more valuable for the American ama- teur horticulturist than the establishment, where there is inclination plus the necessary space, of a trial garden for the little-known shrubs from western China now available for American winter effect. Some years since a highly interesting list of shrubs and shrublike trees was published in one 155 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK of our horticultural periodicals, a list of groups according to the color of fruit. The list, which I am kindly permitted to quote, runs thus: SHRUBS WITH SCARLET FRUITS Pyracantha coccinea. Berberis Thunbergii, sibirica, and vulgaris. Benzoin sestivale. Celastrus articulatus, scandens. Ilex verticillata, opaca, and laevigata. Lonicera bella, var. albida and var. Candida. Lonicera Ruprechtiana. Rosa rugosa, multiflora and setigera. Rhus typhina. Symphoricarpos orbiculatus. SHRUBS WITH YELLOW FRUITS Cydonia japonica and Maulei. Hippophse rhamnoides. Ilex verticillata, var. fructu-lutea. Melia Azedarach. Viburnum Opulus xanthocarpum. SHRUBS WITH GRAY FRUITS Clethra alnifolia. Cornus candidissima. Eleagnus angustifolia. Myrica cerifera. SHRUBS WITH WHITE FRUITS Symphoricarpos racemosa and occideutalis. 156 BRIGHT-BERRIED GROWTH SHRUBS WITH ORANGE FRUITS Citrus trifoliata. Cydonia japonica. Crataegus orientalis. Ilex aquifolium, var. fructo-aurantiaca. Lonicera Morrowi. Pyracantha coccinea, var. Lebaudi. Rosa pendulina, arkansana, acicularls and blanda. Sapindus marginatus. BLUE AND BLUISH FRUITS Callicarpa purpurea, americana, and japonica. Cornus sanguinea. Juniperus virginiana. Berberis japonica and aquifolium. Viburnum nudum and dentatum. BLACK FRUITS Crataegus Douglasi and nigra. Ligustrum vulgare, ibota, and Regelianum. Sambucus Canadensis. Viburnum rufidulum and lentago. Rhamnus cathartica and dahurica. CREEPERS WITH WINTER FRUIT Cocculus carolinus, bright red berries all winter. Celastrus scandens and paniculatus (yellow and red). Euonymus radicans (yellow and red). Gaultheria procumbens (scarlet). Lycium halimifolium and chinense (red). Mitchella repens (red). Rhus toxicodendron (gray). 157 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK The profusion of bright color here set forth is surely enough to cause even a hurried amateur to look closely into it. Besides these fruiting things whose color is persistent, there are among the viburnums berries which change their color, according to a short note upon the subject lately read. The follow- ing sorts change from green to black only: Vibur- num acerifolium^ dentatum, prunifolium, pubescens, and lentago. Those changing from green to red, then to black or blue-black are cassinoides, Ian- tana, lantanoideSy nudum, Sieboldii, and tomento- sum. Then there are some that simply turn from green to red such as dilatatum, opulus, and Wrigh- tii. All that change from red to black are very ornamental, because all the berries on a cluster do not change at the same time; hence there is a pretty combination of the red and black berries appearing on the same cluster. Cassinoides is notable for this. Viburnum dilatatum, V. Opulus, and V. Wrightii hold their fruits all winter. Viburnum lentago grows into a very tall shrub. Its fruits are oval, bluish black, with a certain bloom upon them. They hang upon the trees till spring. Has ever shrub been found to exceed the bar- 158 BRIGHT-BERRIED GROWTH berry tribe in the abundance of fruit produced? None except perhaps the Loniceras or bush honey- suckles; and while their berries are wonderful for bright profuseness and those of Lonicera Maachii, var. podocarpa, that finest of all bush honeysuckles, garnish the branches far into the time of cold, surely the barberries and cotoneasters are the two which best defy the winter storms. As for the new Chinese barberries, they will be, I predict, if anything more used than the Japanese. ""Berheris Wilsonoe^*' writes one who grows and knows it, "has been most welcome to the land- scape-gardener. It can be used in several posi- tions with advantage, and it produces effect the first season after planting." But besides the snowberries, viburnums, and barberries the better-known fruiting shrubs for winter beauty are the privets and the roses. Throughout December and even later may be found the beautiful blue-black clusters of small fruits upon Kegel's privet {Ligustrum Regelianum) as well as upon the common privet {Ligustrum mdgare) . And among the roses may be mentioned the large black haws of Rosa spinosissima, the vivid scarlet ones of Rosa lucida, and the charm- ing clustered berries of Rosa setigera, the Michigan 159 A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK Rose, which, with me, gleam against arbor-vitse all through the time of snow. These clusters hang from drooping stems of lovely purple-brown, the fruit is of a very bright orange-scarlet, and the whole effect of bough and berry too most brilliant and gay. Rosa setigera is never better placed than against some dark evergreen such as arbor-vitse or red cedar. Rose and cedar, cedar and thorn — these are invariably interesting com- panionships. That remarkable red-berried evonymus, the variety called vegetus, is certainly destined to a great future in this country. Doctor Wilhelm Miller wrote of it with his wonted enthusiasm some four years ago as the coming ivy for America, the evergreen creeper to use as ivy is used in Eng- land. My own specimens of this valuable thing are young as yet; but all the beauty ascribed to them I already easily imagine. A fine round leaf of a lighter green color than that of Evonymus radicans, an alertly branching habit which gives promise of quick and graceful growth, and a scarlet fruit (or probably orange-scarlet, as it is said to resemble that of the common bittersweet) which in the severest winter will not desert the parent stem — what could an enthusiast ask 160 BRIGHT-BERRIED GROWTH further as a lovely garnishment for his walls or piers for winter? Those glorious fruits of the black swamp-alder, bright scarlet beads along brown stems, which occasionally light up the snowy December landscape in Michigan, set one's thought at once to a cheerful Christmas tune. The fruits of this fine evergreen vine for America will, when they are known, do the same for the individual householder. "Evergreen it is," says Doctor Miller, easy to grow (perfectly hardy in the latitude of Boston), wonderful in its winter fruit, and "it promises to develop a strong Ameri- can character." The graceful sprays of the snowberry, however, bring to my mind the fact that these same fruits used in early September for cutting with lavender and rich purple annual asters are surprisingly good. In this connection it occurs to me, too, that between these snowberry bushes a plenteous use of hardy asters in taller and more dwarf varie- ties should produce a satisfying late September and early October effect. A lovely picture lately noticed, of a beautiful white-berried shrub, is of Pernettya mucronata. 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