MY GARDEN

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1507, 17 January 1901, Page 55

MY GARDEN

ESSAYS ON GARDENING. (Cooper Prize Competition.) NO. 3. (By J. D. C. Lawrence. Otago.) "'Not wholly in the busy world, not quite beyond it, Blooms the garden that I love.’ To one who is fond of gardening a garden is always a source of pleasure. Every .season, every month has its own particular charm. “The daughters of the year, one after another through that still garden passed, each garlanded with her peculiar flower/ Even in the dark, ungenial. days of winter one finds oneself pacing round the paths recalling to memory the glories of the season that is past and planning new designs for the future. And when, after a sharp white frost, we have, as is not unusual in mid-winter, even in Southern Otago, a blue sky and bright sunshine, how eagerly we scan the thawing soil to watch the tiny apikes of crocus, daffodil, and ixia which later will fill our hearts with gladness and our gardens with beauty. In August when the beds are ablaze with crocuses, gold, purple and white, when snowdrops like drifts of pure, unsullied snow whiten the brown earth, when the buds on every fruit tree are swelling and catkins wave upon poplar and hazel, how aoon we forget the icy touch of winter and revel in the fresh spring beauty of clear old mother Nature. Now the tender green leaves of the willow break forth, primroses peep out from their sheltering foliage, chionodoxa lifts its pale blue stars heavenwards, clusters of snowflakes wave their graceful green-tipped bells and hyacinths peal out a joyful chorus. Here violets “sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eye or Cytherea’ breath” betray their presence in delicious fragrance. Princess of Wales and California are yet too precious to be included in the border' with their sturdy Russian kindred, but bloom in sweet seclusion near at hand. Now in September, I always think my garden wears one of its most pleasing aspects. Looking up from the front gate is a grassy slope with flowering shrubs dotted over it. Here clumps of early-blooming daffodils nod their golden heads in the breeze. Countess of Anneslev, Arc! Righ, Golden Spur and Tenby with its prim little perianth seem to love the grass more than the border, and at the foot of a gnarled apple tree, Moschatus of Haworth and Cernuus wave thensilver trumpets. Further up the slope is a pear tree whose boughs, thick with white blossom, droop over a daffodil border just now a mass of bloom. Maximus of deepest yellow contrasting with pale starlike Beatrice Murray, Princess Ida with her distinctive and beautiful frilled trumpet, Colleen Bawn, a .shy bloomer whose gracefully twisted perianth rivets our attention, and William Gobbing, better known perhaps by the name of Swan’s Neck daffodil. Here the bright orange scarlet cups of Maurice \ ilmorin, Barri Oonspicuus, Orphee and Constance only enhance the paler beauties of Mrs Langtry and Queen Bess. Amabilis and Minnie Hume. Dean Herbert, who, for three years refused to bloom, gave me this season some perfect specimens, but Mary Anderson is still unkind and persistently refuses to please me. Here Figaro and Falstaff; William Wilks and Duchess of Brabant are “tossing their heads in sprightly dance.” Queen of Spain, although catalogued among the earlier blooming daffodils, is always late with me, but in a few days’ time we shall see her drooping her graceful head with a shy modesty quite foreign to our ideas of the haughty sovereigns of Castile.

Grandis has not yet ventured from its brown sheath, but tlie Poeticu-, Almira, Ornatus, and Poetarum. m gleaming, silvery robes delight us with their dainty beauty. Beyond this border, beneath the apple trees whose boughs are just breaking forth in pink and white glory, Emperor and Empress hold tiieir court in golden splendour with bold Sir Watkin in waiting upon their Imperial Highnesses. Taking our leave now of the daffodils we come to a bed of Anemones gorgeous in array of purple, scarlet, blue and pink and a tulip bed which requires another week of sunshine to tempt its gaudy blossoms into full luxuriance. Pa-sing the prosaic but useful kitchen garden with its neat rows of spinach, peas and beans, its rhubarb and potatoes, we come to a wide border where Lilac bushes are preparing to scent the aq- with fragrance and where later tall spires of foxglove woo the bees to their dappled bells. Shaded by their broad green leaves are lillies of the valley and peonies red, white and pink, stately delphiniums, long-spurred aquilegias, and many-coloured irises vie with one another in grace and beauty. Here is a white camellia bush, but our climate, except in very sheltered situations, is too cold for the flowers to attain perfection. Near it is a magnolia, beneath whose fostering protection I am trying to acclimatise the beautiful little Triandrus Alb us. Close by, a Syringa* droops lovingly over the cowslips and forget-me-nots clustering round its roots. The silvery globes of the guelder rose are yet only in bud and the glowingsplendours of the Rhododendrons are still within folded green calyx. Here in its seasQn flowers the snake Lily, more quaint than beautiful, and groups of the double white poeticus and tall lilimn candidum shine forth in radiant beauty. When December comes all other garden glories pale' before the wealth of roses, to whose sweet sovereignty is conceded two large Eastern-sloping beds. One longs for the pen of Dean Hole to describe the varied tints and form, the matchless grace and charm of fids, the Queen of. Flowers. Here Mrs W. J. Grant holds us spell-bound by her exquisite tapering, shell-shaped buds ; there Prince Camille cle Rohan in priceless robe of dark velvet challenges our admiration. Here we have the stately beauty of Manutn Cochat Madame Lambard, with buds ranging in shade from salmon pink to deep rose, Niphetos, truly reminding us of the meaning of its name “falling snow.” L’ideal and Grace Dar_ ling, Rubens and Gloii'e Lyonnaise, Princess cle Sagan, whose crimson blossoms contrast yet harmonise with the creamy gold of Isabella Sprunt and Madame Watteville inviting us to linger and worship at her shrine. Here La France, the first Hybrid Tea, scents the air with her sweet breath, and here, too, are Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, Princess of Wales, Viscountess Folkstone, the Earl of Dufferin, Marquis de Castellane, Baroness Rothschild, and a host of others, lesser perhaps in dignity of title, but n ot in grace and fragrance. Against a trellis, Devoniensis flings afar its creamy pink blossoms, while round the house, peeping in at the windows, climb Marechal Niel, Celine Forestieiq and Whit© Banksian. Even the washhouse is garlanded with Crimson Rambler, which has well earned its name, while William Allen Richardson, Gloire de Dijon, Marie Vann Houtte, Anna Olivier, and Rev. T. C. Cole, twine in loving harmony against a trellis beyond. At the other side of my garden are the beautiful briars Lord and Lady Penzance, and Anne of Gierstein. but Austrian Copper, I think, eclipses them all by its deepeolOured blossoms, which shine afar like beacon fires. In Autumn the tea roses still give me a profusion of bloom, indeed, from the middle of November until the April frosts set in I am never with, out roses. “And when the high midsummer pomps come on” how everything runs riot, as if determined to bloom as much as possible while the fine weather lasts. Here we truly have “Sweet William, with his homely cottage smell, and stocks in fragrance blow,” clusters of clove-scented carnations, sweet Sultans, white, yellow, and purple, tall spires of the beautiful waxlike anemone japonica rising above their dark green foliage, Iceland 1 poppies, orange, scarlet, white and yellow, the beautiful golden rayed lilium auratum with its lowlier but not less lovely sisters lilium Harrisii and lilium speciosm. Beyond tower stately holyhocks, the old-fashioned favourites of bygone clays in varied hues of terra cotta and crimson, white sulphur, and salmon pink. On the south side of the house sheltered from the fierce rays of the noonday sun is a raised pansy bed where last autumn I planted out some good seedlings which are now in full bloom and supply me with beautiful flowers for table decoration. One of a peculiar shade of bright terra, cotta “freak’d with jet” is my favourite. Now we come to a hedge of sweet peas “on tiptoe for a flight.” This year I have sown over forty varieties, many of them old; 4tnd; well loved favourites, others unknown except by name. Stanley is to my mind the best of the claret seifs, its flowers being larger and fuller than those of Boreaton. Black Ivnight may be an improvement, but as neither is as yet in bloom this point must be decided later. Here Duke of York glows in bronze purple, and Captain of the Blues holds his own bravely in the field. Firefly and Cardinal shine resplendent,

and dainty Coquette and Lady Beacons, field, Aurora, and Saidee Surplice. Countess of Radnor and Emily Ec-kforcl beckon us lovingly to stay and enjoy their fragrance. Here an old apple tree stump has been taken captive by Lovely, whose green tendrils and pink blossoms will shortly conceal its rugged trunk. Beyond, the starry blossoms of a white / jessamine perfume the air, Virginian creeper glows in crimson and bronze, and honey.-.uckle trails in -ceuted clusters of gold and pink. Here are- dainty miniature sunflowers, as well as their giant kindred gypsophila, unrivalled for decorative purposes, clusters of golden coreopsis and delicately veined saipiglosxis, bu-iies of Paris daisies and ‘early flowering chrysanthemums. Sweet mignonette asserts its presence everywhere and verbenas and phloxes, asters and montbretias, heliotrope and lepto.syne frolic in the sunshine. The latest glory of my garden is the mountain ash. For a few days in January it- clusters of bright coral berries give us pleasure, but . alas, the thrushes and blackbirds, soon rob it of its splendour. But in March what a picture it make, its leave- all shades, of crimson, bronze, and gold, till, nipped by winter’s frosty breath, they fall, and for a few months we have bnt the bare branches to look at. And yet we know that while all looks .so dead and drear the germs of next year’s glories are being slowly hut surely perfected, and our hearts are filled with reverent gladness as we feel with C'owper that there “Lives and works a Soul in all thing.-. And that Soul is God, Who, ere one flowery season fades and dies, Designs the blooming wonders of the next.”