AUGUST 



151 



This year fate took us to the North, to Northumberland, 

 the home of my maternal family, from which my mother 

 in her youth, with the whole large family, travelled twice 

 a year on the old North Eoad to London and back in 

 carriages and coaches. One of my mother's aunts used 

 to tell a story of how in her youth she had had her hair 

 dressed in London to appear at a Newcastle ball, and 

 she added with pride, ' When I entered the ball-room I 

 had my reward.' 



I was surprised to find that the great changes that 

 have come over our Southern gardens by the re-introducing 

 the old-fashioned flowers and the old methods of culti- 

 vating them are much less noticeable in the North. 

 Apparently changes work slower in the North than 

 around London. I wonder why this is? People there 

 have the same books, the same newspapers, and the same 

 climatic advantage as in Scotland, which makes the 

 herbaceous plants grow to great perfection, and flower 

 much longer than in the South. One would have thought 

 the fashion which has so influenced us would have 

 influenced them. I saw in many places long borders 

 planted with rows of red, violet, white, yellow, and purple 

 — vistas of what used to be called ribbon-borders, very un- 

 picturesque at the best, and nearly always unsatisfactory. 

 Why they ever came in, and why they have lasted so long, 

 it is difficult to understand. The gardens of rich and poor, 

 big house and viUa, were planted on the same system — 

 perennials in lines, annuals in lines. Mignonette in lines ; 

 and where long lines were not possible, the planting was 

 in rows round the shrubberies, which is, I think, the 

 ugliest thing I know. If shrubberies are planted with 

 flowers at all, I like large holes cut back, which makes a 

 good protection, and plants introduced in bold groups. I 

 did not see one garden while I was away — whose owners 

 ought to have known better — where things were what I 



