THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST 



January, 191 i 



Some Gardens and Gardeners in the Old Land* 



Misa M. E. Blacklock, Toronto, Ont. 



A LOVER of gardens and gardening 

 c-an have no greater treat than a 

 visit to the Mother Land. The 

 love of flowers and indeed of beauty in 

 any form seems inherent in the people, 

 and equally so is the love of neatness 

 and order. 



There is little of the slovenliness in 

 l--ntjland that there is in Canada. From 

 the delightful little railway trains one 

 gets a back;; view of many houses, just 

 as we do hei^e from our trains, but there 

 is a vast difference in the outlook. There 

 you see prettily walled gardens, the 

 walls of either brick or stone, contain- 

 ing vegetables in neat little beds, or 

 flowers, or still more frequently, a hap- 

 py combination of both, with the inevi- 

 table climbing rose on the house wall. 

 Not one here and there, but all, with 

 very few exceptions, are pretty, with 

 everything .to please and nothing to 

 offend the eye. 



We all know, to our sorrow, what the 

 view from our train windows chiefly con- 

 sists of, when passine anywhere near 

 the haunts of man. Wherever there are 

 buildings, scran heans, ashes, tin cans, 

 and rubbish of all kinds obtrude them- 

 selves upon the sieht and we have not 

 even the grace to nlant a Virginia Cree- 

 per or sow a handful of Nasturtium or 

 Morning Glory seed to drape their hide- 

 ousness. There are, of course, a few 

 exceptions, but they are deplorably few. 

 Do we realize the importance of first 

 impressions, I wonder? Surely if we 

 did, we would start a crusade of im- 

 provement along our railway tracks. 



RAILWAY GARDENS 



The grounds around the English rail- 

 way stations are most attractive. For 

 the most part they are beautifully laid 

 out, with shrubs, trees, and flowers in 

 every nook and corner. In the country 

 parts the stationmasters take great 

 pride in their wardens and many of the 

 railway companies give prizes for the 

 best kept station grounds, with the re- 

 sult that every little way-station is a 

 blaze of flowers. They do not use ger- 

 aniums or "bedding" plants for these 

 grounds, but hollyhocks, Madonna Lil- 

 ies, roses, campanulas, iris, and many 

 other hardy things and a great variety 

 of annuals. 



The planting was not confined to one 

 spot. Wherever there was any earth, if 

 it was only a foot square, something 

 was made to grow in it. Quite often 

 narrow borders, a foot or two wide, 

 were all the space that was available. 

 but those little borders often vied with 

 the larger ones in beauty. 



The public parks and gardens are al.so 



walks with shrubs on either side — and 

 such shrubs — hollies, rhododendrons, 

 azaleas, laurels, all with broad ever- 

 green leaves, enough to make any gar- 

 dener, living in so cold a climate as ours, 

 green with envy. For the.se shrubs ar^tr 

 not only extremely beautiful in them- 

 .selves, but they make such an admirable 

 background for other things. 



Then the trees. Wonderful old oaks 

 with huge trunks and mighty branches, 

 so old that one could easily fancy the 

 Druids had worshipped beneath them 

 and yet so hale and vigorous that they 

 seemed to challenge old Father Time to 

 do his worst. Copper beeches, with a 

 smouldering fire in their leaves. Yews 

 with their gr«en mysteriou.sly veiled in 

 a great source of pleasure to the visito--. 

 One can never forget their beautiful 

 velvety blackness and a host of the most 

 delightful Conifers of all shapes, sizes, 

 and tints, some of them tapering mto 

 steeple-like trees, others broad and bu»ri- 

 like, and still others with fringe-.ike 

 branchlets pendant from their sweeping 

 boughs and graceful as a birch. It would 

 be very interesting to know how many of 

 the.se could be orevailed upon to take up 

 their abode with us as permanent set- 

 tlers and not succumb to our winters. 



RHODODENDRONS 



The flowering shrub of England, leav- 

 ing roses out of the question, is the 

 rhododendron. For gorgeousness there 

 is not its equal. At Kew there are enor- 

 mous masses of it which are a wonderful 

 sight when in bloom, but in spite of its 

 magnificence — or perhaps because of it 

 — it is not a very lovable thing. One 

 cannot wax sentimental over it as one 



can over a simple lilac by a gateway, or 

 a bit of gorse on the hillside. 



EUIN8 AND WALLS 



Nature does a great deal of beautify- 

 ing, entirely unassisted, in England, just 

 as she does here, only differently. Every 

 old ruin has its walls or window ledges 

 more or less grown over with various 

 little plants, amongst which the wall- 

 flower makes a wonderfully effective bit 

 of coloring, and one learns why it is pro- 

 vided with such long, flexible, ungainly- 

 looking stems, which are often so ugly 

 when it is grown in pots and beds, but 

 which give it a delightful airiness when 

 we watch it swaying with every passing 

 breeze on some old wall high above our 

 heads. 



LEDBPBT 



The first garden I was fortunate 

 enough to see was in the quaint old town 

 of Ledbury in Herefordshire. From a 

 Canadian standpoint, it was a large gar- 

 den ; from an English one, of quite mo- 

 dest dimensions, the grounds probably 

 being four or five acres in extent, an 

 ideal size, liecause there was room for 

 magnificent trees, shrubs in abundance, 

 a water garden, a rock garden, and a 

 walled enclosure, for fruit and vege- 

 tables chiefly, and yet nothing was 

 crowded. 



This garden was so well laid out that 

 vou did not realize it was laid out at all. 

 With the "art that conceals art," 

 things seem to have grown in just the 

 right places of their own accord. Here, 

 in a sheltered glade, was a low rocky bed 

 of the choicest ferns, not one of our 

 native ones missing that I am familiar 

 with, except our "Christmas Fern" 

 (.Aspidium achrostichoides). Expre.ssing 

 surprise that so handsome a variety had 

 been left out, I was told that it had been 

 tried again and again, but had absolute- 



nl^ P'lPJ,'' read at the annual convention of the 

 Ontnrlo Horticultural Association held in Toron- 

 to. NoTember 17 and 18. 



Some of the Utytlj Uwu uJ Boalovard* of Ckettmit Park Roid, Toiooto.lOBl. 



