RECENT BOOKS ON GARDENING.*
Tax history of gardening carries us back to far-off days, when Nausicaa led 'Ulysses to "where the garden yields a waste of flowers." From Chaucer and Shakespeare we learn what flowers grew in days when true gardening was in fashion, and gardens formed a large part of the happiness of those who knew where to find real happiness. Nowhere is solitude more refreshing than in a garden. The sameness, and yet the changefulness, of flowers help to balance the thoughts, and calm without deadening the mind. But to all it is not given to enjoy Nature's richest gifts, and perhaps it is well that it is so, for in this jostling, anxious, care-worn nineteenth century the hearts are few which could use such gifts to advantage. Of what use is a garden to a man who cannot for one moment forget that some one is before him in the race for place or wealth ? Of what use is a garden to women who gauge life by what it brings them of consideration and riches over and above their neighbours ? To be happy in a garden, you must forget yourself, and then, and not till then, will its beauties unfold ,themselves day by day. Such is the royal gift in flowers, that it is hardly possible, whilst tending them, that any hard, sad thoughts can have full sway. The country, of course, in itself has no prerogative to prevent such thoughts arising, but if they are keenly present, then the flowers will go untended, for any care that we shall give them. The buds will open and fade unseen by us, and bloom will succeed bloom unnoticed and unloved.
Two pleasant little books have just come out which will com- mend themselves to lovers of gardening. One is a reprint of a Quarterly-Review article which appeared last year, by an author who has made himself known and appreciated by his diary of A Year's Gardening in Lancashire. To those who know Mr. Bright's earlier book, The English Flower Garden will add but little, that is new. He gives a few suggestions for garden-beds to take the place of the ordinary bedding-out with geraniums and calceolarias, but those who have discarded the fashionable ribbon borders will probably have tried their own experiments in herbaceous borders, and succeeded or failed according to their circumstances or their skill in planting. It is the fashion of the day among a certain section of the gardening world to go in strongly-for herbaceous borders, and in the main we heartily agree with them, and wish them all success in their raid against the mere display of so many hundreds of bedding-out plants. But on the other hand, a herbaceous border, to be successful, re- quires very different treatment to a border filled with plants
• The English Flower Garden. By EL A. Bright. London : Macmillan and Co. 1881.
On the Art of Gardening. By Mrs. J. F. Foster. London : W. Satchell and Co. 1881.
warranted to bloom till cold winds and frosts have driven their owners to their more genial London homes. Let no young aspirant to gardening honours think that a border planted with herbaceous plants will give him no more trouble than one filled with bedded-out geraniums. Nothing so quickly resents the least neglect as a herbaceous border ; nothing is more unsightly, unless it is tended almost daily by some one who not only cares about its beauty, but who also more or less knows the habits of the individual plants. This present year brings this home more clearly. From absence of rain, combined with continuous hot weather coming early in the summer, the blooms on the herbaceous plants have no sooner opened than they are over.
Bright petals cover the ground, instead of blooming on the plants. Thunderstorms and winds finish the confusion for
which drought and heat had prepared the way. The plants are prostrate, and in raising them with unskilled fingers they break away from the parent roots. Over a ribbon border of low- growing flowers, the storms may sweep with little bad effect. The petals will fall, but the plants themselves will remain as they were placed. Not so a herbaceous bed. To tie skil- fully without disfiguring the beauty of individual plants, requires almost an artist's fingers. To cut down, to thin out, to divide, need study and close attention. The work must go on unceasingly, if a herbaceous border is to be kept in artistic beauty. Who can and will give such care and atten- tion P Not those, certainly, who are fighting hard to place themselves in the foremost ranks of their profession, nor those whose minds are full of fretting emulation of their neighbours. While the difficulties of "getting on" are every year on the increase, the choice will often lie between brilliant, if uninterest- ing beds of bright colour, that require little looking-after, or herbaceous borders, discouraging in the amount of care they call for to keep them from being downright ugly.
The second book we speak of is Mrs. Francis Foster's Art of Gardening. The book is not much more than a pamphlet, and like The English Flower Garden, is modest in its aim. The charm of it consists in its author's evident love for her subject. Like a true lover, too, she has gone far and wide in her search for old plants and old plant-lore. She brings her individual taste to bear on her subject, and although with many of her ideas we sympathise, she insists too strongly upon square walls and straight paths. Without falling into the error of com- peting with Nature in producing landscapes where no real landscape can be, there are many natural curves that we may borrow from Nature. A square lawn, unless it is old and velvety, is apt to be suggestive of suburban-villa gardening, or at least of lawn tennis, the neighbourhood of which produces such ruin among flower-beds that border its domain. No doubt, an old English garden, girt in by old brick walls, from whose crevices have sprung numberless little saxifrages and wall flowers, until the whole is a perfect harmony of colour, is a most ideal garden wherein to grow all manner of old English flowers. But it is very different when the turf is newly sown or laid down, and the walls newly built, and sternly inhospitable to the admission of stranger seeds. Mrs. Foster seems to appreciate too little sloping lawns, with groups of forest trees casting long shadows as evening comes on, while winding paths between tall shrubberies suggest mystery and
• space. To be perfect, a garden enclosed by a square wall must be small, with its walls forming one of the most prominent features ; but there is also beauty in the irregularity which leaves us room for fancy and surprise. So far, however, we agree with Mrs. Foster as to think that the most perfect herbaceous border is one that has an old wall behind it. Blue lark- spurs and white lilies, roses, phloxes, and evening primroses never look so well as when they are seen against a background of wall, mellowed with real age and clothed with its beautiful garment of wall-growing seedlings. But again, we do not agree with her, when she says that in an herbaceous border there is need for "little care as to how the blossoms stand with regard to colours, for all are tinted so softly that they needs must harmonise." This is a rash permission, to any one not gifted with something of an artist's eye for colour. Since our horticulturists have succeeded in producing flowers of every shade and colour, including some more fashionable than lovely, great care is needed that their various hues should not clash, and produce an effect the reverse of harmonious. Certain magenta flowers might be dispensed with altogether, but anyhow, the rich orange. red of the tiger - lily is not seen at its best against a companion phlox of a red that has crimson-lake in its composition. With blues and purples the same care is needed to avoid their too close neighbourhood ; while, if the highest artistic result is aimed at, thought and attention should be bestowed, not only to avoid discord, but to produce the most striking effect, by com- binations of colours which mutually show each other to most advantage. Purple, orange, blue, and various shades of yellow, white, and scarlet, if skilfully placed in juxtaposition, will give points of effect to a border, and lead the eye over the minor harmonies of the less striking colours, which may then be allowed to mingle with each other more freely, producing a whole that is harmonious throughout.
Mrs. Foster's little book, too, is most useful in its lists of flowers that bloomed in the days of Chaucer and Shakespeare, as well as of plants that are in fashion now. Here the young, inexperienced gardener, and the more ambitious horticulturist may both alike find hints, while among the lists given Mrs. Foster inserts some useful directions to those who still are only beginners in herbaceous gardening. She also devotes one chapter entirely to quotations from the old poets on gardens, and all the delights that spring from them. If it helps her readers to know for them- selves those authors who found among the flowers of the garden apt similes of all that is truest in human nature, she will have added a very substantial addition to the pleasures already enjoyed by those who love gardens, but yet are unfamiliar with the pages of the poets who knew well how to speak their praises.
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