The English Flower Garden: with illustrative notesBright, Henry Arthur
History
The English Flower Garden: with illustrative notes
Bright, Henry Arthur
Flower gardening -- England; Gardens -- England
And now, instead of ordinary bedding-out, let me suggest some
garden-beds which are far more effective. One is a bed of _Lilium
auratum_, with heliotrope to fill up the spaces. Another is _Agapanthus
umbellatus_, surrounded by _Lobelia cardinalis_. Then there should
be beds of cannas, of gladiolus, of _Clematis Jackmanni_ trained
over withies, of zinnias, of the new hybrid begonias, and of asters.
Somewhere room should be found for a border of everlastings, and
somewhere for a row of the large red linum. One border may be given
up to annuals, and it is no bad plan to mix the seeds of some twenty
varieties, and let them grow up together as they will. The blue
cornflower should have a piece of ground to itself, and so of course
should the carnations. The white pinks will already have perfumed the
herbaceous border with their aromatic scent, and the sweet-william
and antirrhinum will also have claimed a place. The convolvulus
major should have a chance of climbing upon a trellis, and the
large nasturtium of trailing over a bank; and where the _Tropæolum
speciosum_, which is one of the great ornaments of the gardens at Minto
and elsewhere in Scotland, can be made to flourish in our English
garden, it will be found as beautiful as either.
Above all, no garden should be without its hedge of sweet peas. If
the pods are diligently pulled off, new flowers will be as constantly
thrown out, and the “purfled scarf” of blossoms will remain in beauty
till the first killing frost. It is easy to get a dozen different
shades of colour, and nothing can look gayer, or give a more
delicious scent. Keats—than whom no poet ever described flowers more
accurately—speaks of the sweet pea’s “wings of gentle flush o’er
delicate white,” and of its “taper fingers catching at all things.”
Clumps of hollyhock, crusted over with bloom, should be planted near a
sundial, or (as says the author of the well-known essay on “The Poetry
of Gardening”), “in a long avenue, the double and the single, not too
straitly tied, backed by a dark thick hedge of old-fashioned yew.”
Sunflowers, also in clumps, should stand out here and there, and though
the modern sceptics may tell us that this American plant cannot be the
Clytie of Grecian story, it amply vindicates its name by its large
discs, surrounded by golden rays. Tritomas should hold up their scarlet
maces to the sun, among tufts of the _Arundo conspicua_, or (better
still, if possible) of Pampas grass. Lastly, we must not forget to
plant, for the sake of their delicious scent, as the summer evening
falls, the curious Schizopetalon, and the better known Mathiola, or
night-scented stock.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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