CHAPTER XI GARDENS OF SPECIAL COLOURING

Previous

It is extremely interesting to work out gardens in which some special colouring predominates, and to those who, by natural endowment or careful eye-cultivation, possess or have acquired what artists understand by an eye for colour, it opens out a whole new range of garden delights.

Arrangements of this kind are sometimes attempted, for occasionally I hear of a garden for blue plants, or a white garden, but I think such ideas are but rarely worked out with the best aims. I have in mind a whole series of gardens of restricted colouring, though I have not, alas, either room or means enough to work them out for myself, and have to be satisfied with an all-too-short length of double border for a grey scheme. But, besides my small grey garden I badly want others, and especially a gold garden, a blue garden, and a green garden; though the number of these desires might easily be multiplied.

It is a curious thing that people will sometimes spoil some garden project for the sake of a word. For instance, a blue garden, for beauty's sake, may be hungering for a group of white Lilies, or for something of palest lemon-yellow, but it is not allowed to have it because it is called the blue garden, and there must be no flowers in it but blue flowers. I can see no sense in this; it seems to me like fetters foolishly self-imposed. Surely the business of the blue garden is to be beautiful as well as to be blue. My own idea is that it should be beautiful first, and then just as blue as may be consistent with its best possible beauty. Moreover, any experienced colourist knows that the blues will be more telling—more purely blue—by the juxtaposition of rightly placed complementary colour. How it may be done is shown in the plan, for, as I cannot have these gardens myself, it will be some consolation to suggest to those who may be in sympathy with my views, how they may be made.


The Grey garden is so called because most of its plants have grey foliage, and all the carpeting and bordering plants are grey or whitish. The flowers are white, lilac, purple, and pink. It is a garden mostly for August, because August is the time when the greater number of suitable plants are in bloom, but a Grey garden could also be made for September, or even October, because of the number of Michaelmas Daisies that can be brought into use.

A plan is given of a connected series of gardens of special colouring. For the sake of clearness they are shown in as simple a form as possible, but the same colour-scheme could be adapted to others of more important design and larger extent.

The Gold garden is chosen for the middle, partly because it contains the greater number of permanent shrubs and is bright and cheerful all the year round, and partly because it is the best preparation, according to natural colour-law, for the enjoyment of the compartments on either side. It is supposed that the house is a little way away to the north, with such a garden-scheme close to it as may best suit its style and calibre. Then I would have a plantation of shrubs and trees. The shade and solidity of this would rest and refresh the eye and mind, making them the more ready to enjoy the colour garden. Suddenly entering the Gold garden, even on the dullest day, will be like coming into sunshine. Through the shrub-wood there is also a path to right and left parallel to the long axis of the colour garden, with paths turning south at its two ends, joining the ends of the colour-garden paths. This has been taken into account in arranging the sequence of the compartments.

The hedges that back the borders and form the partitions are for the most part of Yew, grown and clipped to a height of seven feet. But in the case of the Gold garden, where the form is larger and more free than in the others, there is no definite hedge, but a planting of unclipped larger gold Hollies, and the beautiful Golden Plane, so cut back and regulated as to keep within the desired bounds. This absence of a stiff hedge gives more freedom of aspect and a better cohesion with the shrub-wood.

In the case of the Grey garden the hedge is of Tamarisk (Tamarix gallica), whose feathery grey-green is in delightful harmony with the other foliage greys. It will be seen on the plan that where this joins the Gold garden the hedge is double, for it must be of gold Holly on one side and of Tamarisk on the other. At the entrances and partition where the path passes, the hedge shrubs are allowed to grow higher, and are eventually trained to form arches over the path.

In the Gold and Green gardens, the shrubs, which form the chief part of the planting, are shown as they will be after some years' growth. It is best to have them so from the first. If, in order to fill the space at once, several are planted where one only should eventually stand, the extra ones being removed later, the one left probably does not stand quite right. I strongly counsel the placing of them singly at first, and that until they have grown the space should be filled with temporary plants. Of these, in the Gold garden, the most useful will be Œnothera lamarckiana, Verbascum olympicum, and V. phlomoides, with more Spanish Broom than the plan shows till the gold Hollies are grown; and yellow-flowered annuals, such as the several kinds of Chrysanthemum coronarium, both single and double, and Coreopsis Drummondi; also a larger quantity of African Marigolds, the pale primrose and the lemon-coloured. The fine tall yellow Snapdragons will also be invaluable. Flowers of a deep orange colour, such as the orange African Marigold, so excellent for their own use, are here out of place, only those of pale and middle yellow being suitable.

In such a garden it will be best to have, next the path, either a whole edging of dwarf, gold-variegated Box-bushes about eighteen inches to two feet high, or a mixed planting of these and small bushes of gold-variegated Euonymus clipped down to not much over two feet. The edge next the path would be kept trimmed to a line.

THE GREY BORDERS: GYPSOPHILA, ECHINOPS,
PINK HOLLYHOCK, HELIOTROPE AND SILVER THISTLE.

OCTOBER BORDERS OF MICHAELMAS DAISIES.

A SEPTEMBER GREY GARDEN.

THE GREY BORDER: PINK HOLLYHOCK, ECHINOPS,
ACHILLEA PEARL, GYPSOPHILA, STACHYS, etc.

The strength of colour and degree of variation is so great that it is well worth going to a nursery to pick out all these gold-variegated plants. It is not enough to tell the gardener to get them. There should be fervour on the part of the garden's owner such as will take him on a gold-plant pilgrimage to all good nurseries within reach, or even to some rather out of reach. No good gardening comes of not taking pains. All good gardening is the reward of well-directed and strongly sustained effort.

Where, in the Gold garden, the paths meet and swing round in a circle, there may be some accentuating ornament—a sundial, a stone vase for flowers, or a tank for a yellow Water-lily. If a sundial, and there should be some incised lettering, do not have the letters gilt because it is the Gold garden; the colour and texture of gilding are quite out of place. If there is a tank, do not have goldfish; their colour is quite wrong. Never hurt the garden for the sake of the tempting word.

The word "gold" in itself is, of course, an absurdity; no growing leaf or flower has the least resemblance to the colour of gold. But the word may be used because it has passed into the language with a commonly accepted meaning.

I have always felt a certain hesitation in using the free-growing perennial Sunflowers. For one thing, the kinds with the running roots are difficult to keep in check, and their yearly transplantation among other established perennials is likely to cause disturbance and injury to their neighbours. Then, in so many neglected gardens they have been let run wild, surviving when other plants have been choked, that, half unconsciously, one has come to hold them cheap and unworthy of the best use. I take it that my own impression is not mine alone, for often when I have been desired to do planting-plans for flower borders, I have been asked not to put in any of these Sunflowers because "they are so common."

But nothing is "common" in the sense of base or unworthy if it is rightly used, and it seems to me that this Gold garden is just the place where these bright autumn flowers may be employed to great advantage. I have therefore shown Helianthus rigidus and its tall-growing variety Miss Mellish, although the colour of both is quite the deepest I should care to advise; the paler yellow of H. lÆtiflorus being better, especially the capital pale form of this Sunflower, and of one that I know as a variety of H. orgyalis, described at p. 69.

The golden Planes, where the path comes in from the north, are of course deciduous, and it might be well to have gold Hollies again at the back of these, or gold Yews, to help the winter effect.

In some places in the plan the word "gold" has been omitted, but the yellow-leaved or yellow-variegated form of the shrub is always intended. There is a graceful cut-leaved Golden Elder that is desirable, as well as the common one.

A DETAIL OF THE GREY SEPTEMBER GARDEN.
PERENNIAL ASTERS AND WHITE CHINA
ASTER MAMMOTH IN FRONT.

Perhaps the Grey garden is seen at its best by reaching it through the orange borders. Here the eye becomes filled and saturated with the strong red and yellow colouring. D on the plan stands for Dahlia; the other plant names are written in full. This filling with the strong, rich colouring has the natural effect of making the eye eagerly desirous for the complementary colour, so that, standing by the inner Yew arch and suddenly turning to look into the Grey garden, the effect is surprisingly—quite astonishingly—luminous and refreshing. One never knew before how vividly bright Ageratum could be, or Lavender or Nepeta; even the grey-purple of Echinops appears to have more positive colour than one's expectation would assign to it. The purple of the Clematises of the Jackmanii class becomes piercingly brilliant, while the grey and glaucous foliage looks strangely cool and clear.

The plan shows the disposition of the plants, with grey-white edging of Cineraria maritima, Stachys and Santolina. There are groups of Lavender with large-flowered Clematises (C in the plan) placed so that they may be trained close to them and partly over them. There are the monumental forms of the taller Yuccas, Y. gloriosa and its variety recurva towards the far angles, and, nearer the front (marked Yucca in plan), the free-blooming Yucca filamentosa of smaller size. The flower-colouring is of purple, pink and white. Besides the Yuccas, the other white flowers are Lilium longiflorum and Lilium candidum (L C on plan), the clear white Achillea The Pearl and the grey-white clouds of Gypsophila paniculata. The pink flowers are Sutton's Godetia Double Rose, sown in place early in May, the beautiful clear pink Hollyhock Pink Beauty, and the pale pink Double Soapwort. Clematis and white Everlasting Pea are planted so that they can be trained to cover the Gypsophila when its bloom is done and the seed-pods are turning brown. As soon as it loses its grey colouring the flowering tops are cut off, and the Pea and Clematis, already brought near, are trained over. When the Gypsophila is making its strong growth in May, the shoots are regulated and supported by some stiff branching spray that is stuck among it. A little later this is quite hidden, but it remains as a firm sub-structure when the top of the Gypsophila is cut back and the other plants are brought over.

Elymus is the blue-green Lyme Grass, a garden form of the handsome blue-leaved grass that grows on the seaward edges of many of our sea-shore sandhills. The Soapwort next to it is the double form of Saponaria officinalis, found wild in many places.

Of Ageratum, two kinds are used—a brightly coloured one of the dwarf kinds for places near the front, where it tells as a close mass of colour, and the tall A. mexicanum for filling up further back in the border, where it shows as a diffuse purple cloud. The Nepeta is the good garden Catmint (N. Mussini). Its normal flowering time is June, but it is cut half back, removing the first bloom, by the middle of the month, when it at once makes new flowering shoots.

YUCCAS AND GREY FOLIAGE.
A FRONT EDGE OF GREY FOLIAGE.

Now, after the grey plants, the Gold garden looks extremely bright and sunny. A few minutes suffice to fill the eye with the yellow influence, and then we pass to the Blue garden, where there is another delightful shock of eye-pleasure. The brilliancy and purity of colour are almost incredible. Surely no blue flowers were ever so blue before! That is the impression received. For one thing, all the blue flowers used, with the exception of Eryngium and Clematis davidiana, are quite pure blues; these two are grey-blues. There are no purple-blues, such as the bluest of the Campanulas and the perennial Lupines; they would not be admissible. With the blues are a few white and palest yellow flowers; the foam-white Clematis recta, a delightful foil to Delphinium Belladonna; white perennial Lupine with an almond-like softness of white; SpirÆa Aruncus, another foam-coloured flower. Then milk-white Tree Lupine, in its carefully decreed place near the bluish foliage of Rue and Yucca. Then there is the tender citron of Lupine Somerset and the full canary of the tall yellow Snapdragon, the diffused pale yellow of the soft plumy Thalictrum and the strong canary of Lilium szovitzianum, with white Everlasting Pea and white Hollyhock at the back. White-striped Maize grows up to cover the space left empty by the Delphiniums when their bloom is over, and pots of Plumbago capense are dropped in to fill empty spaces. One group of this is trained over the bluish-leaved Clematis recta, which goes out of flower with the third week of July.

Yuccas, both of the large and small kinds, are also used in the Blue garden, and white Lilies, candidum and longiflorum. There is foliage both of glaucous and of bright green colour, besides an occasional patch of the silvery Eryngium giganteum. At the front edge are the two best Funkias, F. grandiflora, with leaves of bright yellow-green, and F. Sieboldi, whose leaves are glaucous. The variegated Coltsfoot is a valuable edge-plant where the yellowish white of its bold parti-colouring is in place, and I find good use for the variegated form of the handsome Grass Glyceria or Poa aquatica. Though this is a plant whose proper place is in wet ground, it will accommodate itself to the flower border, but it is well to keep it on the side away from the sun. It harmonises well in colour with the Coltsfoot; as a garden plant it is of the same class as the old Ribbon Grass, but is very much better. The great white-striped Japanese grass, Eulalia japonica striata (EU on the plan), is planted behind the Delphiniums at the angles, and groups well with the Maize just in front.

From the Blue garden, passing eastward, we come to the Green garden. Shrubs of bright and deep green colouring and polished leaf-surface predominate. Here are green Aucubas and Skimmias, with Ruscus racemosus, the beautiful Alexandrian or Victory Laurel, and more polished foliage of Acanthus, Funkia, Asarum, Lilium candidum and longiflorum, and Iris foetidissima. Then feathery masses of paler green, Male Fern and Lady Fern and Myrrhis odorata, the handsome fern-like Sweet Cicely of old English gardens. In the angles are again Eulalias, but these are the variety zebrina with the leaves barred across with yellow.

In the Green garden the flowers are fewer and nearly all white—Campanulas latifolia and persicifolia, Lilies, Tulips, Foxgloves, Snapdragons, Peonies, Hellebores—giving just a little bloom for each season to accompany the general scheme of polished and fern-like foliage. A little bloom of palest yellow shows in the front in May and June, with the flowers of Uvularia and Epimedium. But the Green garden, for proper development, should be on a much larger scale.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Clyx.com


Top of Page
Top of Page