SOME ENGLISH GARDENS

PHLOX

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF Mr. George E. B. Wrey

SOME ENGLISH GARDENS

AFTER DRAWINGS BY
GEORGE S. ELGOOD, R.I.
WITH NOTES BY
GERTRUDE JEKYLL
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1904

PREFACE

The publication of this collection of reproductions of water-colour drawings would have been impossible without the willing co-operation of the owners of the originals. Special acknowledgment is therefore due to them for their kindness and courtesy, both in consenting to such reproduction and in sparing the pictures from their walls. On pages xi. and xii. is given a full list of the pictures, together with the names of the owners to whom we are so greatly indebted.

We have also had the valuable assistance of Mr. Marcus B. Huish, of The Fine Art Society, who has taken the greatest interest in the work from its inception.

G. S. E.
G. J.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

BROCKENHURST

The English gardens in which Mr. Elgood delights to paint are for the most part those that have come to us through the influence of the Italian Renaissance; those that in common speech we call gardens of formal design. The remote forefathers of these gardens of Italy, now so well known to travellers, were the old pleasure-grounds of Rome and the neighbouring districts, built and planted some sixteen hundred years ago.

Though many relics of domestic architecture remain to remind us that Britain was once a Roman colony, and though it is reasonable to suppose that the conquerors brought their ways of gardening with them as well as their ways of building, yet nothing remains in England of any Roman gardening of any importance, and we may well conclude that our gardens of formal design came to us from Italy, inspired by those of the Renaissance, though often modified by French influence.

Very little gardening, such as we now know it, was done in England earlier than the sixteenth century. Before that, the houses of the better class were places of defence; castles, closely encompassed with wall or moat; the little cultivation within their narrow bounds being only for food—none for the pleasure of garden beauty.

But when the country settled down into a peaceful state, and men could dwell in safety, the great houses that arose were no longer fortresses, but beautiful homes both within and without, inclosing large garden spaces, walled with brick or stone only for defence from wild animals, and divided or encompassed with living hedges of yew or holly or hornbeam, to break wild winds and to gather on their sunny sides the life-giving rays that flowers love.

So grew into life and shape some of the great gardens that still remain; in the best of them, the old Italian traditions modified by gradual and insensible evolution into what has become an English style. For it is significant to observe that in some cases, where a classical model has been too rigidly followed, or its principles too closely adhered to, that the result is a thing that remains exotic—that will not assimilate with the natural conditions of our climate and landscape. What is right and fitting in Italy is not necessarily right in England. The general principles may be imported, and may grow into something absolutely right, but they cannot be compelled or coerced into fitness, any more than we can take the myrtles and lentisks of the Mediterranean region and expect them to grow on our middle-England hill-sides. This is so much the case, with what one may call the temperament of a region and climate, that even within the small geographical area of our islands, the comparative suitability of the more distinctly Italian style may be clearly perceived, for on our southern coasts it is much more possible than in the much colder and bleaker midlands.

Thus we find that one of the best of the rather nearly Italian gardens is at Brockenhurst in the New Forest, not far from the warm waters of the Solent. The garden, in its present state, was laid out by the late Mr. John Morant, one of a long line of the same name owning this forest property. He had absorbed the spirit of the pure Italian gardens, and his fine taste knew how to bring it forth again, and place it with a sure hand on English soil.

It is none the less beautiful because it is a garden almost without flowers, so important and satisfying are its permanent forms of living green walls, with their own proper enrichment of ball and spire, bracket and buttress, and so fine is the design of the actual masonry and sculpture.

The large rectangular pool, known as the Canal, bordered with a bold kerb, has at its upper end a double stair-way; the retaining wall at the head of the basin is cunningly wrought into buttress and niche. Every niche has its appropriate sculpture and each buttress-pier its urn-like finial. On the upper level is a circular fountain bordered by the same kerb in lesser proportion, with stone vases on its circumference. The broad walk on both levels is bounded by close walls of living

THE TERRACE, BROCKENHURST

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF Mr. G. N. Stevens

greenery; on the upper level swinging round in a half circle, in which are cut arched niches. In each leafy niche is a bust of a Cæsar in marble on a tall term-shaped pedestal. Orange trees in tubs stand by the sides of the Canal. This is the most ornate portion of the garden, but its whole extent is designed with equal care. There is a wide bowling-green for quiet play; turf walks within walls of living green; everywhere that feeling of repose and ease of mind and satisfaction that comes of good balance and proportion. It shows the classical sentiment thoroughly assimilated, and a judicious interpretation of it brought forth in a form not only possible but eminently successful, as a garden of Italy translated into the soil of one of our Southern Counties.

Whether or not it is in itself the kind of gardening best suited for England may be open to doubt, but at least it is the work of a man who knew what he wanted and did it as well as it could possibly be done. Throughout it bears evidence of the work of a master. There is no doubt, no ambiguity as to what is intended. The strong will orders, the docile stone and vegetation obey. It is full-dress gardening, stately, princely, full of dignity; gardening that has the courtly sentiment. It seems to demand that the actual working of it should be kept out of sight. Whereas in a homely garden it is pleasant to see people at work, and their tools and implements ready to their hands, here there must be no visible intrusion of wheelbarrow or shirt-sleeved labour.

Possibly the sentiment of a garden for state alone was the more gratifying to its owner because of the near neighbourhood of miles upon miles of wild, free forest; land of the same character being inclosed within the property; the tall trees showing above the outer hedges and playing to the lightest airs of wind in an almost strange contrast to the inflexible green boundaries of the ordered garden.

The danger that awaits such a garden, now just coming to its early prime, is that the careful hand should be relaxed. It is an heritage that carries with it much responsibility; moreover, it would be ruined by the addition of any commonplace gardening. Winter and summer it is nearly complete in itself; only in summer flowers show as brilliant jewels in its marble vases and in its one restricted parterre of box-edged beds.

It is a place whose design must always dominate the personal wishes, should they desire other expression, of the succeeding owners. The borders of hardy and half-hardy plants, that in nine gardens out of ten present the most obvious ways of enjoying the beauty of flowers, are here out of place. In some rare cases it might not be impossible to introduce some beautiful climbing plant or plant of other habit, that would be in right harmony with the design, but it should only be attempted by an artist who has such knowledge of, and sympathy with, refined architecture as will be sure to guide him aright, and such a consummate knowledge of plants as will at once present to his mind the identity of the only possible plants that could so be used. Any mistaken choice or introduction of unsuitable plants would grievously mar the design and would introduce an element of jarring incongruity such as might easily be debased into vulgarity.

There is no reason why such other gardening may not be rightly done even at Brockenhurst, but it should not encroach upon or be mixed up with an Italian design. Its place would be in quite another portion of the grounds.

BROCKENHURST: THE GARDEN GATE

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF Miss Radcliffe

HOLLYHOCKS AT BLYBOROUGH

The climate of North Lincolnshire is by no means one of the most favourable of our islands, but the good gardener accepts the conditions of the place, faces the obstacles, fights the difficulties, and conquers.

Here is a large walled garden, originally all kitchen garden; the length equal to twice the breadth, divided in the middle to form two squares. It is further subdivided in the usual manner with walks parallel to the walls, some ten feet away from them, and other walks across and across each square. The paths are box-edged and bordered on each side with fine groups of hardy flowers, such as the Hollyhocks and other flowers in the picture.

The time is August, and these grand flowers are at their fullest bloom. They are the best type of Hollyhock too, with the wide outer petal, and the middle of the flower not too tightly packed.

Hollyhocks have so long been favourite flowers—and, indeed, what would our late summer and autumn gardens be without them?—that they are among those that have received the special attention of raisers, and have become what are known as florists’ flowers. But the florists’ notions do not always make for the highest kind of beauty. They are apt to favour forms that one cannot but think have for their aim, in many cases, an ideal that is a false and unworthy one. In the case of the Hollyhock, according to the florist’s standard of beauty and correct form, the wide outer petal is not to be allowed; the flower must be very tight and very round. Happily we need not all be florists of this narrow school, and we are at liberty to try for the very highest and truest beauty in our flowers, rather than for set rules and arbitrary points of such extremely doubtful value.

The loosely-folded inner petals of the loveliest Hollyhocks invite a wonderful play and brilliancy of colour. Some of the colour is transmitted through the half-transparency of the petal’s structure, some is reflected from the neighbouring folds; the light striking back and forth with infinitely beautiful trick and playful variation, so that some inner regions of the heart of a rosy flower, obeying the mysterious agencies of sunlight, texture and local colour, may tell upon the eye as pure scarlet; while the wide outer petal, in itself generally rather lighter in colour, with its slightly waved surface and gently frilled edge, plays the game of give and take with light and tint in quite other, but always delightful, ways.

Then see how well the groups have been placed; the rosy group leading to the fuller red, with a distant sulphur-coloured gathering at the far end; its tall spires of bloom shooting up and telling well against the distant tree masses above the wall. And how pleasantly the colour of the rosy group is repeated in the Phlox in the opposite border. And what a capital group that is, near the Hollyhocks of that fine summer flower, the double Crown Daisy (Chrysanthemum coronarium), with the bright glimpses of some more of it beyond. Then the Pansies and Erigerons give a mellowing of grey-lilac that helps the brighter colours, and is not overdone.

The large fruit-tree has too spreading a shade to allow of much actual bloom immediately beneath it, so that here is a patch of Butcher’s Broom, a shade-loving plant. Beyond, out in the sunlight again, is the fine herbaceous Clematis (C. recta), whose excellent qualities entitle it to a much more frequent use in gardens.

The flower-borders are so full and luxuriant that they completely hide the vegetable quarters within, for the garden is still a kitchen garden as to its main inner spaces. These masses of good flowers are the work of the Misses Freeling; they are ardent gardeners, sparing themselves no labour or trouble; to their care and fine perception of the best use of flowers the beauty and interest of these fine borders are entirely due. Indeed, this garden is a striking instance

BLYBOROUGH: HOLLYHOCKS

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF Mr. C. E. Freeling

of the extreme value of personal effort combined with knowledge and good taste.

These qualities may operate in different gardens in a hundred varying ways, but where they exist there will be, in some form or other, a delightful garden. Endless are the possibilities of beautiful combinations of flowers; just as endless is their power of giving happiness and the very purest of human delight. So also the special interest of different gardens that are personally directed by owners of knowledge and fine taste would seem to be endless too, for each will impress upon it some visible issue of his own perception or discernment of beauty.

About the house and lawns are other beds and borders of herbaceous flowers of good grouping and fine growth; conspicuous among them is that excellent flower Campanula pyramidalis, splendidly grown.

Though Blyborough is in a cold district, it has the advantage of lying well sheltered below a sharply-rising ridge of higher land.

GREAT TANGLEY MANOR

Forty years ago, lying lost up a narrow lane that joined a track across a wide green common, this ancient timber-built manor-house could scarcely have been found but by some one who knew the country and its by-ways well. Even when quite near, it had to be searched for, so much was it hidden away behind ricks and farm-buildings; with the closer overgrowth of old fruit trees, wild thorns and elders, and the tangled wastes of vegetation that had invaded the outskirts of the neglected, or at any rate very roughly-kept, garden of the farm-house, which purpose it then served.

What had been the moat could hardly be traced as a continuous water-course; the banks were broken down and over-grown, water stood in pools here and there; tall grass, tussocks of sedge and the rank weeds that thrive in marshy places had it all to themselves.

But the place was beautiful, for all the neglect and disorder, and to the mind of a young girl that already harboured some appreciative perception of the value of the fine old country buildings, and whose home lay in a valley only three miles away, Tangley was one of the places within an easy ride that could best minister to that vague unreasoning delight, so gladly absorbed and so keenly enjoyed by an eager and still almost childish imagination. For the mysteries of romantic legend and old tale still clung about the place—stories of an even more ancient dwelling than this one of the sixteenth century.

There was always a ready welcome from the kindly farmer’s wife, and complete freedom to roam about; the pony was accommodated in a cowstall, and many happy summer hours were spent in the delightful

THE PERGOLA, GREAT TANGLEY

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF Mr. Wickham Flower

wilderness, with its jewel of a beautifully-wrought timbered dwelling that had already stood for three hundred years.

In later days, when the whole of the Grantley property in the district was sold, Great Tangley came into the market. Happily, it fell into the best of hands, those of Mr. and Mrs. Wickham Flower, and could not have been better dealt with in the way of necessary restoration and judicious addition. The moat is now a clear moat again; and good modern gardening, that joins hands so happily with such a beautiful old building, surrounds it on all sides. There was no flower garden when the old place was taken in hand; the only things worth preserving being some of the old orchard trees within the moat to the west. A space in front of the house, on its southward face, inclosed by loop-holed walls of considerable thickness, was probably the ancient garden, and has now returned to its former use.

The modern garden extends over several acres to the east and south beyond the moat. The moat is fed by a long-shaped pond near its south-eastern angle. The water margin is now a paradise for flower-lovers, with its masses of water Irises and many other beautiful aquatic and sub-aquatic plants; while Water-Lilies, and, surprising to many, great groups rising strongly from the water of the white Calla, commonly called Arum Lily, give the pond a quite unusual interest. To the left is an admirable bog-garden with many a good damp-loving plant, and, best of all in their flowering time, some glorious clumps of the Moccasin Flower (Cypripedium spectabile), largest, brightest, and most beautiful of hardy orchids.

Those who have had the luck to see this grand plant at Tangley, two feet high and a mass of bloom, can understand the admiration of others who have met with it in its North American home, and their description of how surprisingly beautiful it is when seen rising, with its large rose and white flowers, and fresh green pleated leaves, from the pools of black peaty mud of the forest openings. But it seems scarcely possible that it can be finer in its own home than it is in this good garden.

Beyond the bog-garden, on drier ground, is a garden of heaths, and, returning by the pathway on the other side of the pond, is the kitchen garden, a strip of pleasure-ground being reserved between it and the pond. Here is the subject of the picture. The pergola runs parallel with the pond, which, with the house and inclosed garden, are to the spectator’s right. To the left, before the vegetable quarters begin, is a capital rock-garden of the best and simplest form—just one long dell, whose sides are set with rocks of the local Bargate stone and large sheets of creeping and rock-loving plants. Taller green growths of shrubby character shut it off from other portions of the grounds.

The picture speaks for itself. It tells of the right appreciation of the use of the good autumn flowers, in masses large enough to show what the flowers will do for us at their best, but not so large as to become wearisome or monotonous. Roses, Vines and Ivies cover the pergola, making a grateful shade in summer. Each open space to the right gives a picture of water and water-plants with garden ground beyond, and, looking a little forward, the picture is varied by the background of roof-mass with a glimpse of the timbered gables of the old house.

The new garden is growing mature. The Yews that stand like gate-towers flanking the entrance of the green covered way, have grown to their allotted height, doing their duty also as quiet background to the autumnal flower-masses. In the border to the left are Michaelmas Daisies, French Marigolds, and a lower growth of Stocks; to the right is a dominating mass of the great white Pyrethrum, grouped with pink Japan Anemone, Veronicas and yellow Snapdragon. Japan Anemones, both pink and white, are things of uncertain growth in many gardens of drier soil, but here, in the rich alluvial loam of a valley level, they attain their fullest growth and beauty.

BULWICK: AUTUMN

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF Lord Henry Grosvenor

BULWICK HALL

Bulwick Hall, in Northamptonshire, the home of the Tryon family, but, when the pictures were painted, in the occupation of Lord and Lady Henry Grosvenor, is a roomy, comfortable stone building of the seventeenth century. The long, low, rather plain-looking house of two stories only, is entered in an original manner by a doorway in the middle of a stone passage, at right angles to the building, and connecting it with a garden house. The careful classical design and balustraded parapet of the outer wall of this entrance, and the repetition of the same, only with arched openings, to the garden side, scarcely prepare one for the unadorned house-front; but the whole is full of a quiet, simple dignity that is extremely restful and pleasing. Other surprises of the same character await one in further portions of the garden.

Passing straight through the entrance gate there is a quiet space of grass; a level court with flagged paths, bounded on the north by the house and on the east and west by the arcade and the wall of the kitchen garden. The ground falls slightly southward, and the fourth side leads down to the next level by grass slopes and a flight of curved steps widening below. Trees and shrubs are against the continuing walls to right and left, and beds and herbaceous borders are upon the grassy space. The wide green walk, between long borders of hardy plants, leading forward from the foot of the steps, reaches a flower-bordered terrace wall, and passes through it by a stone landing to steps to right and left on its further side. A few steps descend in twin flights to other landings, from which a fresh flight on each side reaches the lowest garden level, some nine feet below the last. The whole of this progression, with its pleasant variety of surface treatment and means of descent, is in one direct line from a garden door in the middle of the house front.

The lowest flight of steps, the subject of the first picture, has a simple but excellent wrought-iron railing, of that refined character common to the time of its making. It was draped, perhaps rather over-draped when the picture was painted, with a glory of Virginia Creeper in fullest gorgeousness of autumn colouring. This question of the degree to which it is desirable to allow climbing plants to cover architectural forms, is one that should be always carefully considered. Bad architecture abounds throughout the country, and free-growing plants often play an entirely beneficent part in concealing its mean or vulgar or otherwise unsightly character. But where architectural design is good and pure, as it is at Bulwick, care should be taken in order to prevent its being unduly covered. Old brick chimney-stacks of great beauty are often smothered with Ivy, and the same insidious native has obliterated many a beautiful gate-pier and panelled wall. But the worst offender in modern days has been the far-spreading Ampelopsis Veitchii, useful for the covering of mean or featureless buildings, but grievously and mischievously out of place when, for instance, ramping unchecked over the old brickwork of Wolsey’s Palace at Hampton Court. Some may say that it is easily pulled off; but this is not so, for it leaves behind, tightly clinging to the old brick surface, the dried-up sucker and its tentacle, desiccated to a consistency like iron wire. These are impossible to detach without abrasion of surface, while, if left, they show upon the brick as a scurfy eruption, as disfiguring to the wall-face as are the scars of smallpox on a human countenance.

The iron-railed steps in the picture come down upon a grassy space rather near its end. Behind the spectator it stretches away for quite four times the length seen in the picture. It is bounded on the side opposite the steps by a long rectangular fish-pond. The whole length of this is not seen, for the grass walk narrows and passes between old yew hedges, one on the side of the pond, the other backed by some other trees against the kitchen garden wall, which is a prolongation of the terrace wall in the picture.

The garden is still beautifully kept, but owes much of its wealth of

BULWICK: THE GATEWAY

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF Lord Henry Grosvenor

hardy flowers to the planting of Lady Henry Grosvenor, whose fine taste and great love of flowers made it in her day one of the best gardens of hardy plants, and whose untimely death, in the very prime of life, was almost as much deplored by the best of the horticultural amateurs who only knew her by reputation, but were aware of her good work in gardening, as by her wide circle of personal friends.

She had a special love for the flag-leaved Irises, and used them with very fine effect. The borders that show to right and left of the steps had them in large groups, and were masses of bloom in June; other plants, placed behind and between, succeeding them later. Lady Henry was one of the first amateurs to perceive the value of planting in this large way, and, as she had ample spaces to deal with, the effects she produced were very fine, and must have been helpful in influencing horticultural taste in a right direction.

Another important portion of the garden at Bulwick is a long double flower-border backed by holly hedges, that runs through the whole middle length of the kitchen garden. It is in a straight line with the flagged walk that passes westward across the green court next to the house, and parallel with its garden front. The flagged path stops at the gate-piers in the second picture, a grass path following upon the same line and passing just behind the shaded seat.

The holly hedges that back the borders are old and solid. Their top line, shaped like a flat-pitched roof, is ornamented at intervals with mushroom-shaped finials, each upon its stalk of holly stem. The grass walk and double border pass right across the kitchen garden in the line of its longest axis. At the furthest end there is another pair of the same handsome gate-piers with a beautiful wrought-iron gate, leading into the park. The park is handsomely timbered, and in early summer is especially delightful from the great number of fine old hawthorns.

In Lady Henry’s time several borders in the kitchen garden were made bright with annuals and other flowers. Such borders are very commonly used for reserve purposes, such as the provision of flowers for cutting, with one main double border for ornament alone. But where gardens are being laid out from the beginning, such a plan as this at Bulwick, of a grass path with flower borders and a screening hedge at the back, passing through a kitchen garden, is an excellent one, greatly enlarging the length of view of the pleasure garden, while occupying only a relatively small area. It is also well in planning a garden to provide a reserve space for cutting alone, of beds four feet, and paths two feet wide, and of any length suitable for the supply required. This has the advantage of leaving the kitchen garden unencumbered with any flower-gardening, and therefore more easy to work.

Such a long-shaped garden is also capable of various ways of treatment as to its edge, which need not necessarily be an unbroken line. The length of the border in question is perhaps a little too great. It might be better, while keeping the effect of a quiet line, looking from end to end, to have swung the edge of the border back in a segment of a circle to a little more than half its depth, every few yards, in such a proportion as a plan to scale would show to be right; or to have treated it in some one of the many possible ways of accentuation where the cross paths occur that divide it into three lengths. The thinking out of these details according to the conditions of the site, the combining of them into designs that shall add to its beauty, and the actual working of them, the mind meanwhile picturing the effect in advance—these are some of the most interesting and enlivening of the many kinds of happiness that a garden gives.

Be it large or small there is always scope for inventive ability; either for the bettering of something or for the casting of some detail into a more desirable form. Every year brings some new need; in supplying it fresh experience is gained, and with this an increasing power of adapting simple means to such ends as may be easily devised to the advancement of the garden’s beauty.

BRAMHAM

The gardens at Bramham in Yorkshire, laid out and built near the end of the seventeenth century, are probably the best preserved in England or the grounds that were designed at that time under French influence. Wrest in Bedfordshire, and Melbourne in Derbyshire of which some pictures will follow, are also gardens of purely French character.

It is extremely interesting to compare these gardens with those of a more distinctly Italian feeling. Many features they have in common; architectural structure and ornament, close-clipped evergreen hedges inclosing groves of free-growing trees; parterres, pools and fountains. Yet the treatment was distinctly different, and, though not easy to define in words, is at once recognised by the eye.

For one thing the French school, shown in its extremest form by the gardens of Versailles, dealt with much larger and more level spaces. The gardens of Italian villas, whether of the Roman Empire or of the Renaissance, were for the most part in hilly places; pleasant for summer coolness. This naturally led to much building of balustraded terraces and flights of steps, and of parterres whose width was limited to that of the level that could conveniently be obtained. Whereas in France, and in England especially, where the country house is the home for all the year, the greater number of large places have land about them that is more or less level and that can be taken in to any extent.

At Bramham the changes of level are not considerable, but enough to furnish the designer with motives for the details of his plan. The house, of about the same date as the garden, was internally destroyed by fire in the last century. The well-built stone walls still stand, but the building has never been restored. The stables and kennels are still in use, but the owner, Captain Lane-Fox, lives in another house on the outskirts of the park. The design of the gardens has often been attributed to Le Nôtre, and is undoubtedly the work of his school, but there is nothing to prove that the great French master was ever in England.

The way to the house is through a large, well-timbered park. Handsome gate-piers with stone-wrought armorial ornament lead into a forecourt stretching wide to right and left. A double curved stairway ascends to the main door. To the left of the house is an entrance to the garden through a colonnade. Next to the garden front of the house, which faces south-west, is a broad gravelled terrace. The ground rises away from the house by a gently sloping lawn, but in the midmost space is a feature that is frequent in the French gardening of the time, though unusual in England: a long theatre-shaped extent of grass. There is a stone sundial standing on two wide steps near the house, and a gradually heightened retaining wall following the rise of the ground. Not more than two feet high where it begins below, and there accentuated on either side by a noble stone plinth and massive urn, the retaining wall, itself a handsome object of bold masonry, follows a straight line for some distance, and then swings round in a segmental curve to meet the equal wall on the further side; thus inclosing a space of level sward. Midway in the curve, where the wall is some twelve feet high, there appear to have been niches in the masonry, possibly for fountains.

The wide gravel walk next the house-front falls a little as it passes to the left, divides in two and continues by an upward slope on either side of a wall-fountain in a small inclosure formed by the retaining walls of the rising paths. The path then passes all round the large rectangular pool, one end of which forms the subject of the picture. This shows well the graceful ease and, one may say, the courteous suavity, that is the foremost character of this beautiful kind of French designing. The high level of the water in the pool, so necessary for good effect, is a detail that is often overlooked in English gardens. Nothing looks worse than a height of bare wall in a pool or fountain basin, and nothing is more commonly seen in our gardens. The low stone kerb bordering the pool is broken at intervals with only slightly rising pedestals for

THE POOL, BRAMHAM

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Sir James Whitehead, Bart.

flower vases. Tubs of Agapanthus stand on the projections by the side of the piers that flank the small fountain basin, whose overflow falls into the pool.

All this portion of the garden has a background of yew hedges inclosing large trees. From this pool the ground rises to another; also of rectangular form, but with an arm to the right, in the line of the cross axis, forming a T-shape. Between the two, on a path always rising by occasional flights of steps, is a summer-house. The path swings round it in a circle. To right and left are flower-beds and roses; outside these, also on a curved line, are ranged a series of gracefully sculptured amorini, bearing aloft vases of flowers.

The path soon reaches the upper pool, again passing all round it. At the point furthest to the right, at the end of the projecting arm, and looking along the cross axis to where, beyond the pool, the ground again rises, is a handsome wall fountain, with steps to right and left, inclosed by panelled walls. All this garden of pool and fountain, easy way of step and gravel, and ornament of flower and sculpture, is bounded by the massive walls of yew, and all beyond is sheltering quietude of ancient trees. From several points around the highest pool, as well as from the rising lawns to right and left of the theatre, straight grass-edged paths, bordered by clipped hornbeam, lead through the heavily wooded ground. From distant points the main walks converge; and here, in a circular green-walled court, stands a tall pedestal bearing a handsome stone vase. The prospects down the alleys are variously ended; some by pillared temples set in green niches, some by the open park-landscape; some by further depths of woodland. It is all easy and gracious, but full of dignity—courtly—palatial; bringing to mind the stately bearing and refined courtesy of manner of our ancestors of two centuries ago. It is good to know that some of these gardens and disciplined woodlands still exist in our own land and in France; these quiet bosquets de verdure of those far-away days. Though the scale on which they were planned is only suitable for the largest houses and for wealthy owners who can command lavish employment of labour, yet we cannot but admire the genius of those garden artists of France who designed so boldly and yet so gracefully, and who have left us such admirable records of their abounding ability.

MELBOURNE

The gardens of Melbourne Hall in Derbyshire, the property of Earl Cowper, but occupied for the last five-and-twenty years by Mr. W. D. Fane, though perhaps less well preserved than those of Bramham, still show the design of Henry Wise in the early years of the eighteenth century. There had formerly been an older garden. Wise’s plan shows how completely the French ideas had been adopted in England, for here again are the handsome pools and fountains, the garden thick-hedged with yew, and the bosquet with its straight paths, green-walled, leading to a large fountain-centred circle in the thickest of the grove.

The whole space occupied by the house and grounds is not of great extent; it is irregular and even awkward in shape, and has roads on two sides.

The treatment is extremely ingenious; indeed, it is doubtful whether any other plan that could have been devised would have made so much of the space or could have so cleverly concealed the limits.

The garden lies out forward of the house in a long parallelogram. Next to the house-front is the usual wide gravel terrace, from which paths, inclosing spaces of lawn, lead down to a lower level. The whole lawn, with its accompanying paths, slopes downward; where a steeper slope occurs above and below, the path becomes a flight of steps.

The lower level is intersected by paths. As they converge, they swing round the pedestal of the Flying Mercury that stands upon a circular grass-plot. The main path soon reaches the edge of the handsome pool known as the Great Water. It is four-sided, with a

MELBOURNE

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. W. V. R. Fane

further semi-circular bay. A wide grass verge and turf slope form the edging. Broad walks pass all round, with pleasant views at various points into the cool and shaded woodland alleys. Near the further angles of the pool’s green court, the great yew hedge, which bounds the whole garden, swings back into shallow segmental niches to take curved stone seats. Just beyond, on the return angle, the view from the path, here passing the right side of the pool, is ended by the lead figure of Perseus, of heroic size, also standing in a niche cut in the yews. The companion statue of Andromeda occupies the corresponding niche on the other side.

After passing the Mercury, the view across the pool is met by a curious piece of wrought-iron work in the form of a high, dome-topped summer-house; a masterpiece of Jean Tijou. It is entered by steps, and leads, through the trees, to higher ground beyond.

Right and left of the middle and upper portions of the garden the great yew hedges are double; planted in parallel lines, with an open space between. Scotch Firs, now very old and towering high aloft, give great character to this part of the garden. In one place there are three parallel hedges of yew, the two outermost forming the “Dark Arbour,” a tunnel of yew a hundred yards in length, only broken near its lower end, where a small fountain marks the crossing of a broad path.

All the lower portion of the garden is surrounded by a dense grove of trees, in which other tall Scotch Firs stand out conspicuously. Its most extensive area is on the right side of the Great Water, where several grassy paths, bounded by clipped hedges of yew and lime, radiate from a large circular space where there is a wide, round basin and fountain-jet. Looking along one of the pleasant green ways, other jets are seen springing from further fountains where more paths cross. The ends of some of the walks are finished with alcoves or arbours. One of them, that runs diagonally from the right-hand side of the large pool, crosses the great wood fountain, and passing on some distance further ends at a magnificent lead urn on a massive pedestal. This is also the terminal point of view of another of the longest of the green paths.

The water that supplies the pools and fountains comes from a wild pond, the home of many wild-fowl, that is on a higher level, outside the grounds and beyond one of the roads that bounds them. A stream from the pond meanders through the wooded ground, and is conducted by a culvert to the large pool; the overflow passing out on the opposite side in the same way.

Important in the garden’s decoration are the unusual number of lead statues and other accessories, of excellent design. The upper lawn has two kneeling figures of negro or Indian type, bearing on their heads, partly supported by their hands, circular tables with moulded edges that carry an urn-finial. The central ornament of the next level is the Flying Mercury, after John of Bologna. Referring to this example, Messrs. Blomfield and Inigo Thomas tell us in “The Formal Garden in England” that “lead statues very easily lose their centre of gravity.” This is exemplified by the Mercury at Melbourne, which has already come over to a degree which makes its evident want of balance distressing to the eye of the beholder, and forebodes its eventual downfall.

Lead as a material for such use in gardens is much more suitable to the English climate than marble. It acquires a beautiful silvery colouring with age, whereas marble becomes disfigured with blackish weather-streaks. During the eighteenth century the art of lead casting came to great perfection in England. Some good models came from Italy; the original of the kneeling slave at Melbourne is considered to have come from there. Others were brought from France. The inspiration, if not the actual designs or moulds, of the many charming figures of amorini in these gardens must have been purely French. The pictures show how they were used. They stand on pedestals at several of the points of departure of the green glades. In fountain basins they form jets; the little figure appearing to blow the water through a conch-shell. They are also shown, sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs, disputing, wrestling or carrying a cornucopia of flowers. One little fellow, alone on his pedestal, is whittling his bow with a tool like a wheelwright’s draw-knife. All are charming and graceful. They are probably more beautiful now than of old, when they were painted and sanded to look like stone.

MELBOURNE: AMORINI

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. J. W. Ford

There were several lead foundries in London early in the eighteenth century for the making of these garden ornaments. The foremost was that of John Van Nost. Mr. Lethaby in his book on Leadwork tells us that this Dutch sculptor came to England with King William III.; that his business was taken in 1739 by Mr. John Cheere, who served his time with his brother, Sir H. Cheere, who made several of the Abbey monuments. The kneeling slave, bearing either a vase, as at Melbourne, or a sundial as in the Temple Gardens in London, and in other pleasure grounds in different parts of the country, was apparently a favourite subject. The figure, not always from the same mould in the various examples, but always showing good design, was evidently of Italian origin. Towards the end of the century, designs for lead figures became much debased, and such subjects as people sitting round a table, painted like life, could not possibly have served any decorative purpose. The natural colour of lead is so good that no painting can improve it. In Tudor days it was often gilt, a much more permissible treatment.

In the old days there was probably a parterre at Melbourne, now no longer existing. The figures of kneeling slaves were possibly the centre ornaments of its two divisions, on what is now the upper lawn. This portion of the garden is rather liberally, and perhaps somewhat injudiciously, planted with a mixture of conifers, put in probably thirty to forty years ago, when the remains of good old garden designs were not so reverently treated, nor their value so well understood, as now. Some of this planting has even strayed to the banks of the Great Water. The pleasure ground of Melbourne is a precious relic of the past, and, even though the ill effects of the modern planting of various conifers may be less generally conspicuous there than it is in many places, yet it is distinctly an intrusion. The tall trees inclosed by massive yew hedges, the pools and fountains, the statues and other sculptured ornaments, all recall, with their special character of garden treatment, the times and incidents that Watteau loved to paint. Such a picture as his Bosquet de Bacchus, so well known by the engraving, with its gaily-dressed groups of young men and maidens seated in the grassy shade and making the music of their lutes and voices accompany that of the fountains’ waters, might have been painted at Melbourne. For here are the same wide, green-walled alleys, the pools, the fountains and the ornamental details of the great gardens of courtly France of two hundred years ago acclimatised on English soil; not in the dreary vastness of Versailles, but tamed to our climate’s needs and on a scale attuned to the more moderate dimensions of a reasonable human dwelling.

BERKELEY CASTLE

This venerable pile, one of the oldest continuously-inhabited houses in England, stands upon a knoll of rising ground at the southern end of the tract of rich alluvial land known as the Vale of Berkeley, that stretches away for ten miles or more north-eastward in the direction of Gloucester. Within two miles to the west is the Severn, already a mile across and rapidly widening to its estuary. On the side of the higher ground the town creeps up to the shelter of the Castle and the grand old church, on the lower is a level stretch of water-meadow.

Seen from the meadows some half-mile away it looks like some great fortress roughly hewn out of natural rock. Nature would seem to have taken back to herself the masses of stone reared by man seven and a half centuries ago.

The giant walls and mighty buttresses look as if they had been carved by wind and weather out of some solid rock-mass, rather than as if wrought by human handiwork. But when, in the middle of the twelfth century, in the earliest days of the reign of Henry Plantagenet, the castle was built by Robert, son of Harding, he built it with outer walls ten to fifteen feet thick, without definite plan as it would seem, but, as the work went on, suiting the building to the shape of the hillock and to the existing demands of defensive warfare.

When the day is coming to its close, and the light becomes a little dim, and thin mist-films rise level from the meadows, it might be an enchanted castle; for in some tricks of evening light it cheats the eye into the semblance of something ethereal—sublimate—without substance—as if it were some passing mirage, built up for the moment of towering masses of pearly vapour.

So does an ancient building come back into sympathy with earth and cloud. Its stones are carved and fretted by the wind and rain of centuries; tiny mosses have grown in their cavities; the decay of these has formed mould which has spread into every joint and fissure. Here grasses and many kinds of wild plants have found a home, until, viewed from near at hand, the mighty walls and their sustaining buttresses are seen to be shaggy with vegetation.

These immense buttresses on the meadow side come down to a walled terrace; their foundations doubtless far below the visible base. The terrace level is some twelve feet above the grassy space below. The grass then slopes easily away for a distance of a few hundred feet to the alluvial flat of the actual meadow-land.

Large fig-trees grow at the foot of the wall, rising a few feet above the parapet of the terrace, from which the fruit is conveniently gathered.

It is in the deep, well-sheltered bays between the feet of the giant buttresses that the most interesting of the modern flower gardening at Berkeley is done.

White Lilies grow like weeds in the rich red loam, and there are fine groups of many of the best hardy plants and shrubby things, gathered together and well placed by the late Georgina Lady Fitzhardinge, a true lover of good flowers and a woman of sound instinct and well-balanced taste respecting things beautiful both indoors and out.

The chief relic of the older gardening at Berkeley is the remains of the yew hedge that inclosed the bowling-green on three sides; the fourth side having for its boundary the high retaining wall that supports the entrance road beyond the outer gate. The yews, still clipped into bold rounded forms, may have formed a trim hedge in Tudor days, and the level space of turf, which is reached from the terrace by a flight of downward steps that passes under an arch of the old yews, lies cool and sheltered from the westering sun by the stout bulwark of their ancient shade.

The yew arch in the picture shows where the terrace level descends to the bowling-green. The great buttresses of the main castle wall are behind the spectator. A bowery Clematis is in full bloom over the steps

THE LOWER TERRACE, BERKELEY CASTLE

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. Albert Wright

to the shorter terrace above, and near it, on the lower level, is one of the great pear-trees that have been trained upon the wall, and that, with others on the keep above, brighten up the grim old building in spring-time. Campanula pyramidalis has been sown in chinks on the inner side of the low parapet, and the picture shows how handsomely they have grown, supported only by the slight nutriment they could find among the stones. But, like so many of the Bell-flowers, it delights in growing between the stones of a wall. It should be remembered how well this fine plant will succeed in such a place, as well as for general garden use. It is so commonly grown as a pot-plant for autumn indoor decoration that its other uses would seem to be generally overlooked.

SUMMER FLOWERS

The end of June and beginning of July—when the days are hot and long, and the earth is warm, and our summer flowers are in fullest mass and beauty—what a time of gladness it is, and of that full and thankful delight that is the sure reward for the labour and careful thoughtfulness of the last autumn and winter, and of the present earlier year!

The gardens where this reward comes in fullest measure are perhaps those modest ones of small compass where the owner is the only gardener, at any rate as far as the flowering plants are concerned; where he thinks out good schemes of plant companionship; of suitable masses of form and stature; of lovely colour-combination; where, after the day’s work, comes the leisurely stroll, when every flower greets and is greeted as a close friend, and all make willing offering of what they have of scent and loveliness in grateful return for the past loving labour.

This is the high tide time of the summer flowers. It may be a week or two earlier or later according to the district, for our small islands have climatic diversities such as can only be matched within the greater part of the whole area of middle Europe, though inclining to a temperate average. For the Myrtle of the Mediterranean is quite hardy in the South and South-West, and Ivy and Gorse, neither of which is hardy in North and Middle Germany, are, with but few exceptions, at home everywhere. Given, therefore, a moderately good soil, fair shelter and a true love of flowers, there will be such goodly masses as those shown in the pictures.

Advisedly is the word “true” lover of flowers used, for it is now fashionable to like flowers, and much of it is pretence only. The test is to ascertain whether the person professing devotion to a garden works in

ORANGE LILIES AND LARKSPUR

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. George C. Bompas

it personally, or in any way likes it well enough to take a great deal of trouble about it. To those who know, the garden speaks of itself, for it clearly reflects individual thought and influence; and it is in these lesser gardens that, with rare and happy exceptions, the watchful care and happy invention of the beneficent individuality stamps itself upon the place.

There is nothing more interesting to one of these ardent and honest workers than to see the garden of another. Plants that had hitherto been neglected or overlooked are seen used in ways that had never been thought of, and here will be found new combinations of colour that had never been attempted, and methods of use and treatment differing in some manner to those that had been seen before.

There is nothing like the true gardening for training the eye and mind to the habit of close observation; that precious acquirement that invests every country object both within and without the garden’s bounds with a living interest, and that insensibly builds up that bulk of mentally noted incident or circumstance that, taken in and garnered by that wonderful storehouse the brain, seems there to sort itself, to distribute, to arrange, to classify, to reduce into order, in such a way as to increase the knowledge of something of which there was at first only a mental glimpse; so to build up in orderly structure a well-founded knowledge of many of those things of every-day out-door life that adds so greatly to its present enjoyment and later usefulness.

So it comes about that some of us gardeners, searching for ways of best displaying our flowers, have observed that whereas it is best, as a general rule, to mass the warm colours (reds and yellows) rather together, so it is best to treat the blues with contrasts, either of direct complementary colour, or at any rate with some kind of yellow, or with clear white. So that whereas it would be less pleasing to put scarlet flowers directly against bright blue, and whereas flowers of purple colouring can be otherwise much more suitably treated, the juxtaposition of the splendid blues of the perennial Larkspurs with the rich colour of the orange Herring Lily (Lilium croceum) is a bold and grand assortment of colour of the most satisfactory effect.

This fine Lily is one of those easiest to grow in most gardens. The true flower-lovers, as defined above, take the trouble to find out which are the Lilies that will suit their particular grounds; for it is generally understood that the soil and conditions of any one garden are not likely to suit a large number of different kinds of these delightful plants. Four or five successful kinds are about the average, and the owner is lucky if the superb White Lily is among them. But Lilies are so beautiful, so full of character, so important among other flowers or in places almost by themselves, that, when it is known which are the right ones to grow, those kinds should be well and rather largely used.

The garden in which these fine groups were painted has a good loamy soil, such as, with good gardening, grows most hardy flowers well, and therefore the grand White Lily also thrives. A few of the Lilies like peat, such as the great Auratum, and the two lovely pink ones, Krameri and Rubellum. But the garden of strong loam should never be without the White Lily, the Orange Lily, and the Tiger Lily, an autumn flower that seems to accommodate itself to any soil. The Orange Lilies are grandly grown by the Dutch nurserymen in many varieties, under the names bulbiferum, croceum, and davuricum, and their price is so moderate that it is no extravagance to buy them in fair quantity.

Flowers of pure scarlet colour are so little common among hardy perennials that it seems a pity that the brilliant Lilium chalcedonicum of Greece, Palestine, and Asia Minor, and its ally L. pomponium, the Scarlet Martagon of Northern Italy, should be so seldom seen in gardens. They are some of the most easily grown, and are not dear to buy. Another Lily that should not be forgotten and is easy to grow in strong soils is the old Purple Martagon; not a bright-coloured flower, but so old a plant of English gardens that in some places it has escaped into the woods. The white variety is very beautiful, the colour an ivory white, and the flower of a waxy texture. They are the Imperial Martagon, or Great Mountain Lily of the old writers; the scarlet pomponium, of the same shaped flower, was their Martagon Pompony. The name “pompony,” no doubt, came from the tightly rolled-back petals giving the flower something of the look of the flattened melons of the Cantaloupe kind, with their deep longitudinal furrows; the old name of these being “Pompion.” Another name for this Lily was the Red Martagon of Constantinople. It is so named by that charming old writer Parkinson, who gives evidence of its

WHITE LILIES AND YELLOW MONKSHOOD

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. Herbert D. Turner

popularity and former frequency in gardens in these words: “The Red Martagon of Constantinople is become so common everywhere, and so well known to all lovers of these delights, that I shal seem unto them to lose time, to bestow many lines upon it; yet because it is so fair a flower, and was at the first so highly esteemed, it deserveth his place and commendations, howsoever increasing the plenty hath not made it dainty.”

One more of the Lilies, indispensable for loveliness, should be grown wherever it is found possible. This is the Nankeen Lily (L. testaceum). It is a flower as mysterious as it is beautiful. It is not found wild, and is considered to be a hybrid between the White Lily and the Scarlet Martagon. Whether it occurred naturally, or whether it was the deliberate work of some unknown benefactor to horticulture, will now never be known; we can only be thankful that by some happy agency we have this Lily of mixed parentage, one of the most beautiful in cultivation. The name Nankeen Lily nearly, but not exactly, describes its colour, for a suspicion of pinkish warmth is added to the tender buff-colour usually so named.

Many other Lilies may be grown in different gardens, but the tenderer kinds from Eastern Asia are not for the hardy flower-border, and the vigorous American species have not yet been with us long enough to be familiar as flowers of old English gardens.

A July garden would not show its true character without some masses of the stately blue perennial Larkspurs. No garden plant has been more widely cultivated within the last fifty years, and our nurserymen have produced a large range of beautiful varieties. They have, perhaps, gone a little too far in some directions. The desire to produce something that can be called a novelty often makes growers forget that what is wanted is the thing that is most beautiful, rather than something merely exceptionally abnormal, to be gaped at in wonderment for perhaps one season, and above all for the purpose of being blazoned forth in the trade list. The true points to look for in these grand flowers are pure colour, whether light, medium or dark, fine stature and a well-filled but not overcrowded spike. There are some pretty double flowers, where the individual bloom loses its normal shape and becomes flattened, but the single is the truer form. They are so easily raised from seed that good varieties may be grown at home, when, if space may be allowed for a line of seedlings in the trial-ground, it is pleasant to watch what they will bring forth. Such a good old kind as the one named “Cantab” is a capital seed-bearer, and will give many handsome plants. They must be carefully observed at flowering time, and any of poor or weedy habit in their bloom thrown away. Some will probably have interrupted spikes, that is to say, the spike will have some flowers below and then a bare interval, with more flowers above. This is a fault that should not be tolerated.

The Monkshoods (Aconitum) are related to the Larkspurs (Delphinium); indeed, it is a common thing to hear them confused and the name of one used for the other. It is easy to understand how this may be, for the leaves are much alike in shape, and both genera bear hooded flowers on tall spikes, mostly of blue and purple colours. For ordinary garden knowledge it may be remembered that Monkshood has a smooth leaf and that the colour is a purplish blue, the bluest of those commonly in cultivation being the late-flowering Aconitum japonicum, and that the true pure blues are those of the perennial Larkspurs, whose leaves are downy.

The great Delphiniums love a strong, rich loamy soil, rather damp than dry, and plenty of nourishment.

There is a handsome Monkshood with pale yellow flowers that is well used in the garden of the White Lilies, and most happily in their near companionship. It is Aconitum Lycoctonum; a plant of Austria and the Tyrol. The widely-branched racemes of pale luminous bloom are thrown out in a graceful manner, in pleasant contrast with the equally graceful but quite different upright carriage of the White Lily. The handsome dark green polished leaves of this fine Aconite are also of much value; persisting after the bloom is over till quite into the late autumn.

Many of the charming members of the Bell-flower family are fine things in the flower-border. The best of all for general use is perhaps the well-known Campanula persicifolia, with its slender upright stems and its numbers of pretty bells, both blue and white. There are double

PURPLE CAMPANULA

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Miss Beatrice Hall

kinds, but the doubling, though in some cases it makes a good enough flower, changes the true character so much that it is a Bell-flower no longer; and we think that a Bell-flower should be a bell, and should hang and swing, and not be made into a flattened flower set rather tightly on an ungraceful, thickened stem.

Another beautiful Campanula is C. latifolia, especially the white-flowered form. It is not only a first-rate flower, but it gives that pleasant impression of wholesome prosperity that is so good to see. The tall, pointed spike of large milk-white bells is of fine form, and the distinctly-toothed leaves are in themselves handsome. Like all the Bell-flowers, the bloom is cut into six divisions—“lobes of the corolla,” botanists call them. Each division is sharply pointed and recurved or rolled back after the manner of many of the Lilies. This fine Campanula is not only a good plant for the flower-border, but also for half-shady places in quiet nooks where the garden joins woodland, in the case of those fortunate gardens that have such a desirable frontier-land; the sort of place where the instinct of the best kind of gardener will prompt him to plant, or rather to sow, the white Foxglove, and to plant the white French Willow (Epilobium).

Nothing is more commonly seen in gardens than wide-spread neglected patches of Campanula grandis. The picture shows it better grown. It spreads quickly and in many gardens flowers only sparingly, because the tufts should have been oftener divided. It is perhaps the most commonly grown of all, and though, as the picture shows, it can be more worthily used than is ordinarily done, it is by no means so pretty a plant as others of its family.

In good soils in our southern counties the tall and beautiful Chimney Campanula (C. pyramidalis), commonly grown in pots for the conservatory, should be largely used in the borders; it also loves a place in a wall joint. It is a plant that we are so used to see in a pot that we are apt to forget its great merit in the open ground.

Of the smaller Bell-flowers, C. carpatica, both blue and white, is one of the very best of garden plants; delightful from the moment when the first tuft of leaves comes out of the ground in spring till its full blooming time in middle summer. No plant is better for the front edge of a border, especially where the edge is of stone; though it is just tall enough to show up well over a stout box-edging.

The biennial Canterbury Bells are well known and in every garden. Their only disadvantage is that they flower in the early summer and then have to be cleared away, leaving gaps that may be difficult to fill. The careful gardener, foreseeing this, arranges so that their near neighbours in the border shall be such as can be led or trained over to take their places. It should not be forgotten that the Canterbury Bell is an admirable rock or wall plant, where the size of a rock-wall admits of anything so large. The wild plant from which it came has its home in rocky clefts in Southern Italy.

ROCKINGHAM

In large gardens where ample space permits, and even in those of narrow limits, nothing is more desirable than that there should be some places, or one at least, of quiet greenery alone, without any flowers whatever. In no other way can the brilliancy of flowers be so keenly enjoyed as by pacing for a time in some cool green alley and then passing on to the flowery places. It is partly the unconscious working out of an optical law, the explanation of which in every-day language is that the eye, being, as it were, saturated with the green colour, is the more ready to receive the others, especially the reds.

Even in quite a small garden it is often possible to arrange something of the sort. In the case of a place that has just one double flower-border and a seat or arbour at the end, it would be easy to do by stopping the borders some ten feet away from the seat with hedges of yew or hornbeam, and putting other seats to right and left; the whole space being turfed.

The seat was put at the end in order to give the whole view of the border while resting; but, after walking leisurely along the flowers and surveying their effect from all points, a few minutes’ rest on one of the screened side seats would give repose to the eye and brain as well as to the whole body, and afford a much better preparation for a further enjoyment of the flowers.

It was probably some such consideration that influenced the designers of the many old gardens of England, where yew, the grand walling tree, was so freely used. The first and obvious use was as a protection from wind and a screen for privacy, then as a beautiful background, and lastly perhaps for resting and refreshing the eye, and giving it renewed appetite between its feasts of brilliant colouring and complex design. These green yew-bordered alleys occur without end in the old gardens. They were not always bowling-greens, though now often so called, but rather secluded ambulatories; places either for solitary meditation and refreshment of mind, or where friends would meet in pleasant converse, or statesmen hold their discourse on weightier matters. Such a place of cool green retreat is this straight alley of ancient yews. Almost better it might have been if the path were green and grassy too—Nature herself seems to have thought so, for she greens the gravel with mossy growths. Perhaps this mossiness afflicts the gardener’s heart—let him take comfort in knowing how much it consoles the artist. Though a garden is for the most part the better for being kept trim, there are exceptional cases such as this, where to a certain degree it is well to let natural influences have their way. It is a matter respecting which it is difficult to lay down a law; it is just one for nice judgment. Had the path been freshly scratched up and rolled, and the verges trimmed to a perfectly true line, it would not have commended itself to the artist as a subject for a picture, but, as it is, it is just right. The mossy path is in true relation for colour to the trees and grassy edges, and the degree of infraction of the canons of orderliness stops short of an appearance of actual neglect.

Among the interesting features of the grounds at Rockingham is a rose-garden, circular in form, bounded and protected by a yew hedge. Four archways at equal points, cut in the hedge, with straight paths, lead to a concentric path within which is a large round bed, with poles and swinging garlands of free-growing Roses. The outer quarters have smaller beds, some concentric, some parallel with the straight paths. The space is large enough to give ample light and air to the Roses, while the yew hedge affords that comforting shelter from boisterous winds that all good Roses love.

Close to the house a flight of steps leads to a flower garden on the higher level. A sundial on steps stands in the midmost space, with beds and clumps of bright flowers around. There is other good gardening at Rockingham, and a curious “mount”; not of the usual circular

THE YEW ALLEY, ROCKINGHAM

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Miss Willmott

shape, but in straight terraces. But it is these grand old hedges of yew that seem to cling most closely to the fabric and sentiment of the ancient building—half house, half castle, whose windows have looked upon them for hundreds of years, and whose inmates have ever paced within their venerable shade.

BRYMPTON

Brympton d’Evercy in Somersetshire—not far from Montacute, the residence of the Hon. Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane—is a house of mixed architectural character of great interest. A large portion of the earlier Tudor building now shows as the western (entrance) front, while, facing southward, is the handsome façade of classical design, said to be the work of Inigo Jones, but more probably that of a later pupil. The balustraded wall flanking the entrance gates—the subject of the picture—appears to be of the time of this important addition, for it is better in design than the balustrade of the terrace, which was built in the nineteenth century.

But the terrace is of fine effect, with the great flight of steps midway in its length that lead down to a wide unspoilt lawn. This again passes to the fish-pond, then to parkland with undulating country beyond.

The treatment of the ground is admirable. Fifty years ago the lawn would probably have been cut up into flower-beds, a frivolity forbidden by the dignified front.

Gardening is always difficult, often best let alone, in many such cases. When the architecture, especially architecture of the classical type, is good and pure, it admits of no intrusion of other forms upon its surfaces. It is complete in itself, and the gardener’s additions become meddling encroachments. When any planting is allowable against houses of this type—as in cases where they are less pure in style and have larger wall-spaces—it should be of something of bold leafage, or large aspect of one simple character; the strong-growing Magnolia grandiflora as an upright example, and Wistaria as one of horizontal

THE GATEWAY, BRYMPTON

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. Edwin Clephan

growth. There is some planting between the lower windows at Brympton, but it is doubtful whether it would not have been better omitted. It is a place more suitable (if on this front any gardening is desirable) for the standing of Bays or some such trees, in tubs or boxes on the terrace.

There is sometimes a flower-border at the base of such a house; where this occurs it is a common thing to see it left bare in winter and in the early year dotted with bulbous plants and spring flowers; to be followed in summer with bedding-plants. No such things look well or at all in place directly against a building. The transition from the permanent structure to the transient vegetation is too abrupt. At least the planting should be of something more enduring and of a shrubby character, and mostly evergreen. Such plants as Berberis Aquifolium, Savin, Rosemary and Laurustinus would seem to be the most suitable, with the large, persistent foliage of the Megaseas as undergrowth, Pyrus japonica for early bloom, and perhaps some China Roses among the Rosemary.

But happily this house has been treated as to its environment with the wisest restraint. No showy or pretentious gardening intrudes itself upon the great charm of the place, which is that of quiet seclusion in a beautiful but little-known part of the county. The place lies among fields—just the House, the Church and the Rectory. There is no village or public road. The house is approached by a long green forecourt inclosed by walls. Between this and the kitchen garden is the quiet, low, stone-roofed church, in a churchyard that occupies such another parallelogram as the forecourt. The pathway to the church passes across the forecourt into the restful churchyard with its moss-grown tombs and bushes of old-fashioned Roses, and the grassy mounds that mark the last resting-place of generations of long-forgotten country folk.

The church has a bell-cote built upon the gable of its western wall of remarkable and very happy form, stone-roofed like the rest. Among the graves stands the base—three circular steps and a square plinth—of what was once an ancient stone cross. The church seems to lie within the intimate protection of the house, adding by its presence to the general impression of repose and peaceful dignity.

The picture shows the walled and balustraded entrance, probably contemporary with the classical façade, wrought of the local Ham Hill stone; a capital freestone for the working of architectural enrichment. It is of a warm yellowish-brown colour; but grey and yellow lichens and brown mosses have painted the surface after their own wayward but always beautiful manner. A light cloud of Clematis Flammula peeps over the bushes through the balusters. Stonework so good as this can just bear such a degree of clothing with graceful flowery growth; no doubt it is watched and not allowed to hide too much with an excess of overgrowth. Where garden architecture is beautiful in proportion and detail it is not treating it fairly to smother it with vegetation. How many beautiful old buildings are buried in Ivy or desecrated by the unchecked invasion of Veitch’s Virginia Creeper!

BALCASKIE

Equidistant from Pittenweem and St. Monan’s, in Fifeshire, and a mile from the sea, stands Balcaskie, the beautiful home of Sir Ralph Anstruther.

The park is entered from the north by a fine gateway with stone piers bearing “jewelled” balls, dating from the later middle of the seventeenth century. The entrance road is joined by two others from east and west, all passing through a park of delightful character. The road leads straight through a grassy forecourt walled on the three outer sides by yew hedges, and reaches the door by a gravelled half-circle formed by the projection on either side, of the curved walls of the offices and stables. The house, of the middle seventeenth century, though just too late to have been built as a fortress, retains much of the character of the older Scottish castles, but adds to it the increased comfort and commodiousness of its own time. There have been considerable later additions and alterations, but much of the old still remains, including some rooms with very interesting ceilings.

The main entrance on the north leads straight through to a door to the garden on the south. The garden occupies a space equal to about five times the length of the house-front. The ground falls steeply, something like fifty feet in all, and is boldly terraced into three levels. Looking southward from the door and across the garden, the eye passes down a great vista between trees in the park to the Firth of Forth, and across it to the Bass Rock, some twelve miles away and near the further shore.

The upper garden level, reached from the house by a double flight of descending steps, has a broad walk running the whole length, with an excellently modelled lead statue at each end; to the west an Apollo, a singularly graceful figure, and to the east a female statue, possibly a Diana. The space in front of the house is divided into three portions; the two outer compartments having hedges of yew from four to five feet high. One of these incloses a bowling-green, the other a lawn with some beds. The middle turfed space has a sundial and beds of flowers. Here is also the remaining one of what was formerly a pair of fine cedars, placed symmetrically to right and left. Adjoining the house and next to the end of the broad walk where stands the Apollo, is the rose-garden, which, with this graceful statue, forms the subject of the picture. The rose-garden is of beds cut in the grass, containing not Roses only but also other bright garden flowers. A female statue of more modern work stands in the centre.

The great terrace wall, eighteen feet high, that forms the retaining wall of the upper portion of the garden, rises towards both ends to its full height as a wall, but the middle space is lightened by being treated with a handsome balustrade. At the extreme ends flights of steps lead down to the next, the middle level. The first long flight reaches a wide stone landing, the lower, shorter flight turning inwards at a right angle. Great buttresses, projecting forward eight feet at the ground-line, add much to the dignity and beauty of the wall. They are roofed with stone, and each one carries the bust of a Roman emperor. From the steps on each side come broad gravelled walks, leading by one step down to a slightly sunk rectangular lawn, which occupies the middle space. On each side of the paths are groups of flower-beds on a long axial line that is parallel with the wall. They have a broad turf verge and a nearly equal space of gravel next to their box-edges. Piers and other important points have stone balls or flower-vases. Stone seats stand upon the landings above the lowest flights or steps, against the walls which bound the garden to right and left. Beyond these boundaries are tall trees, their protecting masses giving exactly that comforting screen that the eye and mind desire, and forming the best possible background to the structure and garnishing of the beautiful garden.

It is one of the best and most satisfying gardens in the British Isles;

THE APOLLO, BALCASKIE

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Miss Bompas

Italian in feeling, and yet happily wedding with the Scottish mansion of two and a half centuries ago, and forming, with the house and park-land, one of the most perfect examples of a country gentleman’s place. All of it is pleasant and beautiful, home-like and humanly sympathetic; the size is moderate—there is nothing oppressively grand.

More than once already in these pages attention has been drawn to the danger of letting good stone-work become overgrown with rank creepers. At Balcaskie this is evidently carefully regulated. The wall-spaces between the great buttresses, and the buttresses themselves, are sufficiently clothed but never smothered with the wall-loving and climbing plants. The right relation of masonry and vegetation is carefully observed; each graces and dignifies the other; the balance is perfect.

The lowest level is given to the kitchen garden. It is not put out of the way, but forms part of the whole scheme. It is reached by a single flight of handsome balustraded stone steps.

Balcaskie occurs as a place-name early in the thirteenth century. From 1350 to 1615 it was owned by a family named Strang, afterwards by the Moncrieffs, till 1665. It is not known whether any portion of the present house and garden belonged to these earlier dates, but it is probable that the designer of both was Sir William Bruce, one of the best architects of the time of Charles II., and an owner of Balcaskie for twenty years.

CRATHES CASTLE

Crathes Castle in Kincardineshire presents one of the finest examples of Scottish architecture of the sixteenth century. It is the seat of Sir Robert Burnett of Leys, the eleventh baronet and descendant of the founder.

Profoundly impressive are these great northern buildings, rising straight and tall out of the very earth. As to their lower walls, they are grim, forbidding, almost fiercely repellent. There is an aspect of something like ruthless cruelty in the very way they come out of the ground, without base or plinth or any such amenity—built in the old barbarous days of frequent raiding and fighting, and constant need of protection from marauders; when a man’s house must needs be a strong place of defence.

This is the first impression. But the eye travelling upward sees the frowning wall blossom out above into what has the semblance of a fairy palace. It is like a straight, tall, rough-barked tree crowned with fairest bloom and tenderest foliage. Turrets both round and square, as if in obedience to the commanding wave of a magician’s wand, spring out of the angles of the building and hang with marvellous grace of poise over the abyss. There seems to be no actual plan, and yet there is perfect harmony; the whole beautiful mass appears as if it had come into being in some one far-away, wonderful, magical night! It is a sight full of glamour and romantic impression—grim fortalice below, ethereal fantasy aloft. Rough and rugged is the rock-like wall, standing dark and dim in the evening gloom; intangible, opalescent are the mystic forms above, in the tender warmth of the afterglow; cloud-coloured, faintly rosy, with shadows pearly-blue.

THE YEW WALK, CRATHES

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. Charles P. Rowley

Direct descendants of the old Norman keep, these Scottish castles, for the most part, retain the four-sided tower, as to the main portion of the structure. The walls need no buttresses, for they are of immense thickness, and the vaulted masonry, usually of the simple barrel form, that carries the floors of, at any rate, the lower stories, ties the whole structure together. The angle turrets carried on bold corbels that are so conspicuous a feature of these northern castles, broke away from the Norman forms and became a distinct character of the Scottish work. They were a helpful addition to the means of defence, and, as long as they were built for use, added much to the beauty and dignity of the structure. The only detail that shows a tendency to debasement in Crathes is the quantity of useless cannon-shaped gargoyles, put for ornament only, in places where they could not possibly do their legitimate work of carrying off rain-water from the roof.

There could have been no pleasure garden in the old days; but now these ancient strongholds, mellowed by the centuries, seem grateful for the added beauty of good gardening. The grand yew hedges may be of the seventeenth century. They stand up solid and massive for ten feet or more, with roof-shaped tops, and then rise again at intervals into great blocks, bearing ornaments like circular steps crowned with a ball. The ornament is simpler, a low block and ball only, in the first picture, where they accentuate the arches that lead right and left into the two divisions of the flower garden. This plainer form is perhaps more suitable to this grand old place than the more elaborate, just because it is simpler and more dignified.

The flower garden, as it is to-day, is quite modern. The finest of the hardy flowers are well grown in bold groups. Luxuriant are the masses of Phlox and tall Pyrethrum, of towering Rudbeckia, of Bocconia, now in seed-pod but scarcely less handsome than when in bloom; of the bold yellow Tansy and Japan Anemones; all telling, by their size and vigour, of a strong loamy soil.

Many are the arches of cluster and other climbing Roses; at one point in the kitchen garden coming near enough together to make a tunnel-like effect.

Wonderful is the colouring and diversity of texture!—the bright flowers, the rich, dark velvet of the half-distant yews, the weather-worn granite and rough-cast of the great building.

If the flowers in the second and third pictures were in our southern counties the time would be the end of August or at latest the middle of September, but the seasons of the flowers in Scotland are much later, and these would be October borders.

The Castle stands upon a wide, level, grassy terrace, which is stopped on the north-eastern side by the parapet of a retaining wall, broken by a flight of steps down to the path that is bounded by the two hedges of ancient yews shown in the first picture. These hedges divide the flower garden into two equal parts on the lower level, for, from where the Castle stands, the ground falls to the south and east. On each side of the steps, just beneath the terrace wall, is a flower border. Immediately on entering the double wall of yew there is an opening to right and left—an arch cut in the living green—giving access to the two square gardens, in both of which a path passes all round next the yews. There is also a flower border on two sides. The middle space is grass with flower beds; in the left-hand garden (coming from the Castle) are bold masses of herbaceous plants in beds grouped round a fountain; in the one on the right, for the most part, Roses and Lilies.

To the south-east, and occupying the space next beyond the rose garden and the end of the lawn adjoining the Castle, is the kitchen garden. The main walks have flower borders. Where the two cross paths intersect is a Mulberry tree with an encircling seat. The subjects of the second and third pictures are within the kitchen garden.

Many are the beautiful points of view from the kitchen garden, for there the grand yew hedges show beyond the flowers; then, towering aloft, comes the fairy castle, and then fine trees; for trees are all around, closely approaching the garden’s boundaries.

The brilliancy of colour masses in these Scottish gardens is something remarkable. Whether it is attributable to soil or climate one cannot say; possibly the greater length of day, and therefore of daily sunshine, of these northern summers, may account for it. Of the great number of people who go North for the usual autumn shooting, those

CRATHES

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mr. George C. Bompas

who love the summer flowers find their season doubled, for the kinds they have left waning in the South are not yet in bloom in the more northern latitude. The flowers of our July gardens, Delphiniums, Achilleas, Coreopsis, Eryngiums, Geums, Lupines, Scarlet Lychnis, Bergamot, early Phloxes, and many others, and the hosts of spring-sown annuals, are just in beauty. Sweet Peas are of astounding size and vigour. Strawberries are not yet over, and early Peas are coming in. The Gooseberry season, that had begun in the earliest days of August with the Early Sulphurs and had been about ten days in progress in the Southern English gardens, is for a time interrupted, but resumes its course in September in the North, where this much-neglected fruit comes to unusual excellence. It is a hardy thing, and appears to thrive better north of the Border than elsewhere.

It is one of the wholesomest of fruits; its better sorts of truly delicious flavour. It is a pleasure, to one who knows its merits, to extol them. It is essentially a fruit for one who loves a garden, because, for some reason difficult to define, it is less enjoyable when brought to table in a dessert dish. It should be sought for in the garden ground and eaten direct from the bush. Perhaps many people are deterred by its spiny armature, and it is certain that, when, as is too often the case, the bushes are in crowded rows and have been allowed to grow to a large size, the berries are difficult to get at.

But the true amateur of this capital autumn fruit has them in espalier form, in a few short rows, with ample space—about six feet—between each row.

The plants may be had ready trained in espalier shape, but it is almost as easy to train them from the usual bush form. The vigorous young growth that will spring out every year is cut away at the sides in middle summer; just a shoot or two of young wood being left, when the bushes have grown to a fair size, to train in, to take the place of older wood. The plants being restricted to the fewer branches that form the flat espalier, more strength is thrown into the ones that remain, so that the berries become larger; and, as plenty of light and sun can get to the fruits, even the best kinds are sweeter and better flavoured than when they are allowed to grow in dense bushes.

Then when the kinds are ripe how pleasant it is to take a low seat and sit at ease before each good sort in succession! The best and ripest fruits can be seen at a glance and picked without trouble, in pleasant contrast to the painful, prickly groping that goes on among the crowded bushes. No one would ever regret planting such excellent sorts as Red Champagne, Amber Yellow, Cheshire Lass, Jolly Painter, a large, well-flavoured and little-known berry, and Red Warrington, a trusty late kind. To these should be added two admirable Gooseberries lately brought out by Messrs. Veitch, namely, Langley Green and Langley Gage, both fine fruits of delicious flavour.

If such a little special fruit space were planted in these large Scottish gardens, and the merits of the kinds became known, the daily invitation of the hostess, “Let us go to the gooseberry garden,” would be gladly welcomed, and guests would also find themselves, at various times of day, sauntering towards the gooseberry plot.

How grandly the scarlet Tropæolum (T. speciosum) grows in these northern gardens is well known; indeed, in many places it has become almost a pest. It is much more difficult to grow in the South, where it is often a failure; in any case, it insists on a northern or eastern exposure. Where it does best in gardens in the English counties is in deep, cool soil, thoroughly enriched. When well established, the running roots ramble in all directions, fresh growths appearing many feet away from the place where it was originally planted. It looks perhaps best when running up the face of a yew hedge, when the bright scarlet bloom, and leaves of clear-cut shape, are seen to great advantage, and many of the free growths of the plant take the form of hanging garlands.

CRATHES: PHLOX

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF

Mrs. Croft

KELLIE CASTLE

Kellie Castle in Fifeshire, very near Balcaskie, is another house of the finest type of old Scottish architecture. The basement is vaulted in solid masonry, the ground-floor rooms have a height of fourteen feet; the old hall, now the drawing-room, is nearly fifty feet long. A row of handsome stone dormers to an upper floor, light a set of bedrooms, which, as well as the main rooms below, have coved plaster ceilings of great beauty.

There is no certain record of the date of the oldest part of the castle. It is assigned to the fourteenth century, but may be older. The earliest actual date found upon the building is 1573, and it is considered that the mass of the castle, as we see it now, was completed by that date, though another portion bears the date 1606. It belonged of old to the Oliphants, a family that held it for two and a half centuries, when it passed by sale to an Erskine, who, early in the seventeenth century, became Earl of Kellie. In 1797, after the death of the seventh Earl, it was abandoned by the family and soon showed signs of deterioration from disuse. About thirty years later the Earldom of Kellie descended to the Earl of Mar, and the family seat being elsewhere, Kellie was allowed to go to ruin.

In 1878 the ruined place was taken, to its salvation, on a long lease by Mr. James Lorimer, whose widow is the present occupier. It has undergone the most careful and reverent reparation. The broken roofs have been made whole, the walls are again hung with tapestries, and the rooms furnished with what might have been the original appointments.

The castle stands at one corner of the old walled kitchen garden, a door in the north front opening directly into it. The garden has no architectural features. There are walks with high box edgings and quantities of simple flowers. Everywhere is the delightful feeling that there is about such a place when it is treated with such knowledge and sympathy as have gone to the re-making of Kellie as a delightful human habitation. For two sons of the house are artists of the finest faculty—painter and architect—and they have done for this grand old place what boundless wealth, in less able hands, could not have accomplished.

Close to the house on its western side is a little glen, and in it a rookery. When strong winds blow in early spring the nests in the swaying tree-tops come almost within hand reach of the turret windows of the north-west tower.

How the flowers grow in these northern gardens! Here they must needs grow tall to be in scale with the high box edging. But Shirley Poppies, when they are autumn sown, will rise to four feet, and the grand new strains of tall Snapdragons will go five and even over six feet in height.

As the picture shows, this is just the garden for the larger plants—single Hollyhocks in big free groups, and double Hollyhocks too, if one can be sure of getting a good strain. For this is just the difficulty. The strains admired by the old-fashioned florist, with the individual flowers tight and round, are certainly not the best in the garden. The beautiful double garden Hollyhock has a wide outer frill like the corolla of the single flowers in the picture. Then the middle part, where the doubling comes, should not be too double. The waved and crumpled inner petals should be loosely enough arranged for the light to get in and play about, so that in some of them it is reflected, and in some transmitted. It is only in such flowers that one can see how rich and bright it can be in the reds and roses, or how subtle and tender in the whites and sulphurs and pale pinks. Other flowers beautiful in such gardens are the taller growing of the Columbines, the feathery herbaceous Spiræas, such as S. Aruncus, that displays its handsome leaves, and waves its creamy plumes, on the banks of Alpine torrents, and its brethren the lovely pale pink venusta, the bright rosy palmata and the cream-white Ulmaria, the

KELLIE CASTLE

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION

Mr. Arthur H. Longman

garden form of the wild Meadow-sweet of our damp meadow-ditches. Then the tall Bocconia, with its important bluish leaves and feathery flower-beads, which shows in the picture in brownish seed-pod; and the Thalictrums, pale yellow and purple, and Canterbury Bells, and Lilies yellow and white, and the tall broad-leaved Bell-flowers.

All these should be in these good gardens, besides the many kinds of Scotch Briers, and big bushes of the old, almost forgotten garden Roses of a hundred years ago, many of which are no longer to be found, except now and then in these old gardens of Scotland. For here some gardens seem to have escaped that murderously overwhelming wave of fashion for tender bedding plants alone, that wrought such havoc throughout England during three decades of the last century.

Here, too, are Roses trained in various pretty simple ways. Our garden Roses come from so many different wild plants, from all over the temperate world, that there is hardly an end to the number of ways in which they can be used. Some of them, like the Scotch Briers, grow in close bushy masses; some have an upright habit; some like to rush up trees and over hedges; others again will trail along the ground and even run downhill. Some are tender and must have a warm wall; some will endure severe cold; some will flower all the summer; others at one season only. So it is that we find in various gardens, Roses grown in many different ways. In one as small bushes in beds, or budded on standards, in another as the covering of a pergola, or as fountain roses, throwing up many stems which arch over naturally. Some of the oldest garden Roses, such as The Garland, Dundee Rambler and Bennett’s Seedling are the best for this kind of use.

The Himalayan R. polyantha will grow in this way into a huge bush, sometimes as much from thirty to forty feet in diameter, and many of the beautiful modern garden Roses that have polyantha for a near ancestor, will do well in the same way, though none of them attain so great a size. Roses grown like this take a form with, roughly speaking, a semi-circular outline, like an inverted basin. If they are wanted to take a shape higher in proportion they must be trained through or over some simple framework. This is called balloon-training. Some roses are grown in this fashion at Kellie, the framework being a central post from which hoops are hung one above the other. The Rose grows up inside the framework and hangs out all over. If this kind of training is to be on a larger scale, long half-hoops have their ends fixed in the ground, and pass across and across one another at a central point, where they are fixed to a strong post, thus forming ten or twelve ribs. Horizontal wires, like lines of latitude upon a globe, pass all round them at even intervals. Then Roses can be trained to any kind of trellis, either a plain one to make a wall of roses or a shaped one, whose form they will be guided to follow. Then again, there may be rose arches, single, double or grouped; or in a straight succession over a path; or alternate arches and garlands, a pretty plan where paths intersect; the four arches kept a little way back from the point of intersection, with garlands connecting them diagonally in plan. Then there are Roses, some of the same that serve for several of these kinds of free treatment, for making bowers and arbours.

And there are endless possibilities for the beautiful treatment of Rose gardens, though seldom does one see them well done. There are many who think that a Rose garden must admit no other flowers but Roses. This may be desirable in some cases, but the present writer holds a more elastic view. Beds and clumps of Roses where no other flower is allowed, often look very bare at the edges, and might with advantage be under-planted with Pinks and Carnations, Pansies, London Pride, or even annuals. And any Lilies of white and pink colouring such as candidum, longiflorum, Brownii, Krameri, or rubellum suit them well, also many kinds of Clematis. The gardener may perhaps, object that the usual cultivation of Roses, the winter mulch and subsequent digging in and the frequent after-hoeing precludes the use of other plants; but all these rules may be relaxed if the Rose garden is on a fairly good rose soil. For the object is the showing of a space of garden ground made beautiful by garden Roses—not merely the production of a limited number of blooms of exhibition quality.

The way the bushes of garden Roses grow and bloom in close companionship with other strong-growing plants, at Kellie and in thousands of other gardens, shows how amicably they live with their near neighbours; and often by a happy accident, they tell us what plants will group beautifully with them.

The Roses that are best kept out of the Rose garden, are those delightful ones of the end of June; the Damasks, and the Provence, the sweet old Cabbage Rose of English gardens. These, and the Scotch Briers of earlier June, bloom for one short season only. Of late years the possibilities of beautiful Rose gardening have been largely increased by the raising of quantities of beautiful Roses of the Hybrid Tea class that bloom throughout the summer, and that, with the coming of autumn, seem only to gain renewed life and strength.

HARDWICK

Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, one of the great houses of England, is, with others of its approximate contemporaries of the later half of the sixteenth century, such as Longleat, Wollaton, and Montacute, an example of what was at the time of its erection an entirely new aspect of the possibilities of domestic architecture.

The country had settled down into a peaceful state. A house was no longer a castle needing external defence. Hitherto the homes of England had been either fortresses, or had needed the protection of moats and walls. They had been poorly lighted; only the walls looking to an inner court, or to a small walled garden could have fair-sized openings. No spacious windows could look abroad upon open country, field or woodland. But by this time such restriction was a thing of the past, and we see in these great houses, and in Hardwick especially, immense window spaces in the outer walls. The architects of the time, John Thorpe, the Smithsons and others, ran riot with their great windows, as if revelling in their exemption from the older bonds. The new freedom was so tempting that they knew not how to restrain themselves, and it was only later, when it was found that the amount of lighting was overmuch for convenience, that the relation of degree of light to internal comfort came to be better understood and more reasonably adjusted.

The famous Countess of Shrewsbury (Bess of Hardwick), to whose initiative this great house owes its origin, set an imperishable memorial of her imperious arrogance upon the balustrading that crowns the square tower-like projections at the angles and ends of the building, where the

THE FORECOURT: HARDWICK

FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF