Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set ForthEarle, Alice Morse
History
Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth
Earle, Alice Morse
Gardens; Landscape gardening
In the garden borders is a commonplace little plant, gray of foliage,
with small, drooping, closed flowers of an indifferently dull tint, you
would almost wonder at its presence among its gay garden fellows. Let us
glance at it in the twilight, for it seems like the twilight, a soft,
shaded gray; but the flowers have already lifted their heads and opened
their petals, and they now seem like the twilight clouds of palest pink
and lilac. It is the Night-scented Stock, and lavishly through the still
night it pours forth its ineffable fragrance. A single plant, thirty
feet from an open window, will waft its perfume into the room. This
white Stock was a favorite flower of Marie Antoinette, under its French
name the Julienne. "Night Violets," is its appropriate German name.
Hesperis! the name shows its habit. Dame's Rocket is our title for this
cheerful old favorite of May, which shines in such snowy beauty at
night, and throws forth such a compelling fragrance. It is rarely found
in our gardens, but I have seen it growing wild by the roadside in
secluded spots; not in ample sheets of growth like Bouncing Bet, which
we at first glance thought it was; it is a shyer stray, blossoming
earlier than comely Betsey.
The old-fashioned single, or slightly double, country Pink, known as
Snow Pink or Star Pink, was often used as an edging for small borders,
and its bluish green, almost gray, foliage was quaint in effect and
beautiful in the moonlight. When seen at night, the reason for the
folk-name is evident. Last summer, on a heavily clouded night in June,
in a cottage garden at West Hampton, borders of this Snow Pink shone out
of the darkness with a phosphorescent light, like hoar-frost, on every
grassy leaf; while the hundreds of pale pink blossoms seemed softly
shining stars. It was a curious effect, almost wintry, even in
midsummer. The scent was wafted down the garden path, and along the
country road, like a concentrated essence, rather than a fleeting breath
of flowers. One of these cottage borders is shown on page 292, and I
have named it from these lines from _The Garden that I Love_:--
"A running ribbon of perfumed snow
Which the sun is melting rapidly."
At sundown the beautiful white Day Lily opens and gives forth all night
an overwhelming sweetness; I have never seen night moths visiting it,
though I know they must, since a few seed capsules always form. In the
border stand--
"Clumps of sunny Phlox
That shine at dusk, and grow more deeply sweet."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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