AMONG THE BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1903, 24 July 1890, Page 36

AMONG THE BOOKS.

WIT AND WISDOM IN THE GARDEN.*

In this most enjoyable and companionable volume, Mr Ellwanger discourses most delightfully, and with a certain piquant quaintnesß, concerning the delectable associations belonging to a well-ordered garden, and the pursuit of gardening, as that term is understood by the amateur. Although the story of an American garden, its life history, as it were, by an American, it is singularly free from American smartness, and that indefinable, suggestion of •'underdone," peculiar to much American literature. The subtle fragrance of an olden day permeates Mr Ellwanger's pages, and but for certain incidental reminders concerning plants and flowers, their times and seasons of bud and bloom, so lovingly does he depict the charm, and linger over the abiding restfulnes3, the happy cares, the soothful change, indwelling his garden life, that we should not have hesitated to claim him as a native of our own land, in which reposeful growth and development is indigenous, rather than assign him a native of the country in which hurry is a deity and scuffle a worship. Among writers on horticulture, scientific and empiric, old and new, he has freely ranged, and not less so amongst authors who have said or sung in praise of the tranquil joys of that life which Andrew Marvel expresses with such sweetness and grace, " Fair quiet, have I found thee here ? " His pages are all the rioher for apt and apposite quotations from Gerarde and Culpeper, all the brighter for many a passage from the poets, yet withal a strong, practical thread of common sense and real work knits his story together, and the result is that not one of his chapters is dull, uninteresting, or uninstroctive. On the purely practical side of his horticultural work we have not space to make comment; furthermore, that side more immediately concerns the horticulturist, and chiefly him of the amateur brigade ; to him Mr Ellwanger has no little to say that is at once opportune and profitable ; amateurs ambitious of a rockery, the most dismal failure in small grounds, will do well to consider the following :—

Of »U forma of cultivating flowers, rook* gardening is the most fascinating. Within a small Bpaca yon may grow innumerably dainty plants whioh would be swallowed up, or would not thrive, in the border ; delicate Alpines, little oreeping vinea, cool moaaea, rare orohids, and nmoh of the minute and charming flora of the wood and mountains, ... I speak of the rook garden as distinguished from the "rookery, that embellishment to be found in company with the geranium bed surrounded by white-washed stones, and iron stags or greyhounds, standing guard over the growth of a hop-vine up a mutilated Norway spruce. With the "rockery" we are all familiar, that nightmare of boulders, that earthquake of stones, dumped on to the hottest portion of the lawn, with a few spadefuls of toil scattered among them. Into this soanty pasture, where even a burdock would ory out for meroy< dainty plants aro turned to graae. And the amateur will often sigh fcho sigh of envy as he reads Mr Ellwanger's glowing accounts of the indigenous glories of the woodlands, and the happy floral riot of the swamp. Of the swamp Mr Bllwanger finely says : — ' There ia lomethtag faioinating about * swamp, its rare flora, its gloom in daylight, its freshneaa in drought, its ever-present mystery ; you cannot graßp it as as yon oan the dry woodland. The very birds are evasive, and its flora leads one deeper and deeper into the tangle, where the woodcock springs from the thickets of jawelweed, and the owl skims noiselessly from his twilight haunt. . . , The swamp is Nature's sanctuary. . . . Within its sheltering arm is nurtured tha most beautiful of sylvan utterances, the roll call of the ruffed grouse,

Concerning flowers and odonwi, Mr Ellwanger observes :—

Why shouldievery thing dainty be monopolised by the fair aex? . . . Let those of the sterner box who love the aroma of a flower not hesitate to use its essenoa. . . . flower essenoss Me prophylactic and antiseptic, the more reason they should be employed in moderation, aud that their use bo not monopolised by women. . . • There are perfumes, says Gautier, reoalling the flush of sunrise, and carrying with them thoughts of innocenoat others, like mußk, amber (gris), benzoin, spikenard, and incense, are superb, triumphant, mundane, provooativa of coquetry, love, luxury, festivity, and splendour. Were they transposed to the sphere of oolourn they would represent gold and purple.

In this chapter Mr Ellwanger lays down a formula for making potpourri, "not the dry, soapy-smelling article of commerce labelled • Tea* rose pot pourri from Japan,' but the old-fashioned rose-jar, made from your own garden roses, blended with a sufficiency of other sweets to hold its perfume immutable." Somehow or other the blending of a pot pourri has become a lost art, and yet what a caoJiet of distinction belongs to this perfume. Rich, rare, ohoice, suggestive, it conjuies up ancient rooms, tapestried chambers, coiridors and galleries of historic houses and in such place sensuously pleads tenderness for frailty, and sighs regrets for vanished bravery." "Nevermore" aromatised. Not many years ago the bow pot, or rose- jar, was to be met with in many a manor or farmhouse, and who does not remember its exquisite sweetness ? But, like many other things once held to be essential to the refinements of life, it has been banished, and in its stead reigns some hideous crockery pedestalled— on that totem of respectability— a piano in walnut, with gilt candlesticks.

- About mushrooms Mr Ellwanger has something to say worth reading, if only for the recipe quoted from Baron Brisse, oham~ pignons a la Bordelaise; this/when executed by a competent hand, is, as Mr Ellwanger says, " a fragrant flower of the table." We must refer those desiring further particulars concerning this bonne louche to the book itself.

English readers owe their introduction to this writer to the Rev. O. Woolley Dod, of Edge Hall, Malpas, who remarks in his prefatory notice, " No apology is needed for wishing to make this pleasant and instructive little book better known amongst us by means of an edition published in London," an observvation in which we fully concur, "The Garden's Story" is fully entitled to a place by the side of the sylvan canticles

» "The Garden 1 ! Story; or, The Pleaiure* ami TriaU of an Amateur Gardener." By G«°fj(« «» BUwWtt, iWlUtam He!u«mM>, landon, mo.)

of Richard Jefferies, and the enchanting pastorals of John Burroughs. — Land aud Water.