824 
August 28, 1886. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
LONDON GARDENING.—TII. 
“ Give me a garden well kept, however small,—two 
or three spreading trees, and a mind at case, —and I 
defy the world ! ” 
In a little garden a very few Annuals go a very long 
way. They can scarcely be sown too thinly, and their 
best place is in borders facing east or south ; a western 
aspect is rather trying in the long June afternoons, 
particularly if there is a wall just behind them. Lupins, 
yellow, crimson, pink and white, should be a standing 
dish ; they figure charmingly as maids-of-honour to 
their queenly Bine Perennial namesake. To these let 
the London Seed-sower add Marigolds, Mignonette, 
^ irginian Stock, Candytufts white and lilac, Calliopsis 
tinctoria, (in my young days it used to be called Core- 
opsis, ) the little lemon-coloured Platystemon, Linum 
grandiflorum, Godetia, (“The Bride,”) Collinsia bi¬ 
color, and Viscaria oculata. I should like to add, 
only experience withholds permission, the beautiful 
Gaillardia picta, and Geum coccineum, properly a 
Perennial, but easily raised from seed. German and 
Brompton Stocks fail here, but might be hopefully tried 
in other gardens. I have not included in this list my 
trusty friends the Sunflowers, double and single, tall 
and short, because they are in their glory in August, 
when most people are out of town. To those who leave 
London then to go home there is of course nothing to 
be said, but to those who leave home in leaving 
London—or at least to all among them who have a 
garden of any kind— I will make bold to suggest that 
perhaps if they were to try one August at home, with 
the Sunflowers and the Torch Lilies, (Tritoma aurea) 
they might be tempted more easily than they think to 
repeat the experiment. I know what I am talking 
about, for I have made many elaborate comparisons of 
town and country August temperatures, and of four 
Augusts which I have spent in London only one was 
really disagreeably hot, while that one was hotter in 
many other places. But Fashion, with the nod of Jove, 
decrees a general and unreasoning exodus, and as Fashion 
has many worshippers and Reason but few, such a 
revolutionary hint as mine is not likely to meet with 
any warmer response than the “0! exclamantis ” on 
every note of the scale of incredulity. Nevertheless, 
expcricntia docet, only none of “ experientia’s ” pupils 
leam vicariously. 
Tell, hot or cool, August is not the time to desert 
one’s garden, for to say nothing of the Auriculas, in 
pots or in the border, which put forth their most 
delicious leafage to implore one to stay and see them 
through the murderous reign of that Nero known as 
Green Fly, there are the Asters just coming into 
bloom,—(I raise them from seed in square pans under 
handlights, and thence prick them out into the open 
ground,) and yonder the white “Honorine ” Anemones 
in the act of mounting them patient autumn guard, and 
everywhere the hardy Fuchsias beginning to toss their 
crimson tassels in the morning wind, —but why should 
I multiply the sweet inducements to stay at home, 
when one is enough for me, and that one the first I 
mentioned, as I passed it,—my Auriculas ? 
About these I want to speak a few words to the two 
or three whom I may possibly have persuaded into a 
resolve henceforth to see for themselves how town 
flowers can smile upon their devotees when—if I may so 
express myself—they are courted in the Oratio Recta 
the Oratio Obliqua has been too long in vogue in the 
garden. To these I should like to say that they will 
not love all their flowers less loyally if they love one 
flower best, and that in seeking to get at all the secrets of 
that one by the magic “ Open, Sesame ! ” of an affection 
that will take no denial, they will find the doors of 
many floral hearts opening to them unawares. The 
Auricula is the flower of my supreme love, and it is so 
well fitted to be the darling of town gardeners that I 
cannot close my notes on town gardening, fragmentary 
though they are, without a special reference to it. 
Now there are Auriculas and Auriculas. In the old 
garden of my childhood the name pointed to comfortable, 
motherly patches of what are now known as “only- 
border kinds,” and regarded with too scanty respect. 
They bore heavy trusses of soft brown, or purple, or 
sulphur-coloured flowers, which hung their heads "for 
very bigness, and had a sweet, dim, woodland scent, 
due—though, to be sure, nobody thought about that— 
to their primulaceous pedigree. They took good care 
of themselves, just as the Apricots did, (and as Apricots 
do not, it seems, nowadays, ) and were not the objects of 
anybody’s solicitude, though my dear mother loved them 
cordially. As to measuring the diameter or criticising 
the tints of their palish centres, or making remarks 
upon the “sit” of their petals, or dreaming of improving 
upon their family arrangements in general, none of 
these things occurred to us in our South Midland garden, 
as they might well have done if we had been living 
in Lancashire, where Auriculas have been cultivated 
since the 16th century. Until I was twenty, these 
homely beauties were the only Auriculas I knew, but 
then—it fell upon a day that an Auricula Show was 
held at Cambridge, thirty miles distant, and my father 
and I went to see it. "What a revelation it was to me ! 
I saw then what Auriculas might be, and from that day 
to this I have been at their feet. For years, however 
and especially after I came to London, it seemed too 
wild a hope to cherish that I myself might grow those 
exquisitely refined green, grey, and white-edged gems, 
and I have to thank the Revd. F. D. Horner, champion 
Auricula-grower of England, that I cast my faithless¬ 
ness behind me at last. He, at the top of the ladder, 
is always kindly willing to look down and let fall words 
of counsel and encouragement to aspirants with one 
foot on the first rung. I began, quakingly, -with four 
Auriculas in pots, not so very long ago ; I have now a 
little collection of about seventy named varieties 
(counting duplicates and triplicates of many of them), 
two hundred and twenty-three seedlings of my own 
raising, and three dozen “border” sorts in the open 
ground:—family duties and pleasures may well keep 
me at home in August ! 
Into so large a subject as the general culture of the 
Auricula I cannot, of course, enter here,—the two 
little books named in the foot-note below* will supply 
all the information needed,—but ordinary sugar-tongs 
will not pick up grains of sugar, and no book can be 
expected to condescend to the level of operations on so 
diminutive a scale as mine, so that I think I ought 
just to give a few particulars as to the “plant” of the 
Auricula-growing business as I carry it on. It will 
recal to my readers that scene in the nursery drama of 
“ Simple Simon,” in which Simon “went a fishing For 
to catch a whale, And all the water that he had Was in 
his mother’s pail.” In both cases the means are dis¬ 
proportionate to the end proposed, only I do catch 
whales, and Simon did not. Eight small hand-lights 
with sliding tops, some long, some square, one ‘ ‘ long- 
legged” Auricula-frame proper, two makeshift non¬ 
descripts,—(four-legged boxes, let us call them,)—a 
dozen seed-pans, square and long, a goodly number of 
“Long Tom” flower-pots, a couple of dozen air bricks, 
about a dozen superannuated pantry cloths in the 
stage of decline known to housekeepers as “goino- all 
over,” five fine-pointed, stiff-bristled paint-brushes, a 
steel table-fork, a bricklayer’s sharp-nosed mortar- 
trowel, and the washing-tub before mentioned, full of 
“ bulb compost ” and crumbly loam. Such is the far 
from imposing machinery !—I mount my hand-lights 
on the air-bricks set edge-ways, and each pan of seed¬ 
lings they shelter rests on the edges of two such bricks. 
The cloths protect the lights from the summer sun, 
between eleven and four o’clock, which would other¬ 
wise make short work with the delicate blooms 
and succulent leaves beneath them. It used to be 
considered an apt and artful device to clothe our 
riflemen in green, that they might be indistinguish¬ 
able (to hostile eyes) from the grass and bushes in 
which it was presumably their peculiar province to 
lurk. We have now changed all that, perhaps because 
it has Occurred to us that our fighting is not usually, so 
far, done at home, and that as many countries are less 
green than Great Britain, it is a still more cunning 
thing to match mother Earth’s “neutral tints,” par¬ 
ticularly the sun-baked class. But the most deadly 
enemies of the Auricula have had no reason to change 
their tactics ; they are still “wearing o’ the green” in 
the hope of escaping his notice, and the work of the 
bristly paintbrushes is to probe the folded foliage, and 
dislodge and bring forth to judgment the odious green fly 
or green caterpillar tucked up in it, which untucking has 
to be done daily throughout the summer months. As 
to the little steel fork, it stealthily breaks and freshens 
the surface sod without tearing the juicy white fibres 
just underneath it, while the point of the bricklayer’s 
trowel delicately lifts and transplants the rooted seed¬ 
lings ; and the washing-tub—is the larder ! 
♦ (I.) Hardy Florists' Flowers. By Jas. Douglas, F.R.H.S., 
Great Gearies. 
(II.) Gardening for Amateurs. By tlie Revd. F. D. Homer 
and Jlr. G. Kiuson, Hull. 
Frost does not hurt Auriculas, which are essentially 
hardy, but rain damages the mealed flowers and foliage, 
and yet their most pressing requisite is air. Hence 
the proper frames for them are those with easily movable 
roofs and no floors, which no man in England knows 
better how to make than Mr. M. E. Horley, of Todding- 
ton, Beds. 
But I must break off; not willingly, for I have much 
more to say, and could talk through many pages about 
my green-edged, grey-edged, white-edged, golden 
throated, velvet-habited, snow-powdered darlings. Only 
it would seem very small talk to those’who have not 
yet learnt to love them for themselves. Remember, 
you who are strangers to the Auricula, if—as a sequel 
to an experiment (sure to be successful) in all-round 
gardening, you should elect to grow it as a crowning 
pleasure, that to neglect plants in pots is almost as 
cruel as to neglect birds in cages. If you go on to 
raise seedlings, do not be dejected because nursery cares 
keep you at home in August; there comes a time, you 
know, for all mothers, when the children are in bed at 
last, and your whole family can be put to bed in October, 
when an occasional peep to see that all is right will be 
enough, and that can (if desired) be taken by proxy, 
supposing the proxy to be decently intelligent. In 
October, too, if you leave it, your garden will not be 
likely to miss you so much as you will miss it, go 
where you will,—aye, though there is no lovelier month 
for the sea-side or the country. 
Let me advise you to use only such tools for your 
London garden as you can keep in the house ; a spade, 
fork, trowel, watering-pot, a pair of “kitchen scissors,’ 
and a whalebone broom will do to begin with, but as 
it is bad policy to catch cold, provide yourself further 
with a housemaid’s kneeling-mat, and your boots with 
a pair of fluffy cork soles. I wear a lilac print apron 
of generous width and length, buttoning over at the 
back, and furnished with deep pockets, to protect my 
gown,—and as to gloves, there are none like one’s 
friends’ old kid ones, for which I am a chronic suppli¬ 
cant ; to the last they retain the suave manners con¬ 
tracted in good society, and are very preferable to the 
stiff cracklers sold as “ gardening gloves ” in the shops. 
I would forego the grace of Creepers garlanding the 
walls, even if the walks and not the borders lie—as 
they should lie—-next them : in London many creepers 
often mean few flowers. But you can have no more 
excellent general guide than this aim—to give every 
plant you grow its heart’s desire, a far as you can. 
And plants speak plainly enough to those who love 
them. Before long you will be able to say with Mary 
Russell Mitford : “ The pride of my heart and the de¬ 
light of my eyes is—my garden ! ” 
Put on your bonnets, then, friends, and go, make a 
beginning ! So shall I have been pleading the cause of 
London gardens, however feebly, not altogether in 
vain.— C. A. (?.* 
-- 
CHALFONT PARK, BUCKS. 
Ir is well known that travellers per rail see but 
comparatively little of the more beautiful features of 
our country, and especially of our parks and gardens. 
Travellers by road have advantages over railway 
travellers, so far that they not infrequently skirt fine 
parks, and now and again see beauties which flyers by 
train may not. Still tens of thousands of persons pass 
along our highways and remain ignorant of the beautiful 
places which lie just a little from the main road, hence 
there is much general ignorance prevailing as to the 
numerous pleasing features which adorn the landscape 
of this fair country. Thus it happens that whilst any¬ 
one passing out of Uxbridge towards "Wycombe will pass 
within a couple of miles of Chalfont Park, they may 
yet remain absolutely ignorant that there lies in the finely 
wooded valley, which runs away to the right in the 
direction of Rickmansworth such a beautiful park, and 
altogether charming place as is that above named. 
That it lies in a fertile and well watered valley, doubt¬ 
less adds something to its charms, whilst it very 
materially adds to its seclusion. 
The house is of the Tudor style, looks somewhat 
dwarfed by the noble trees which here grow so luxuri¬ 
antly, but is yet very pleasantly situated, and admirably 
sheltered. Just before it runs a broad stream or lake 
* In the first paragraph at p. SOS of our last issue, the reader 
is requested to read “ posts ” for “ frosts ’’ in the sixteenth line; 
and “ corps ’’ for 11 crops ” in the twenty-fifth line. 
