IF, on reflection, I have an ungratified wish in gardening, it is the wish to live in a country where were many fine gardens within easy distance from my own. There is no sight so stimulating to the gardener as that of other people's ways of growing and grouping flowers. Thus it is that horticultural societies make annual and semi-annual pilgrimage to fine gardens; amateurs will soon group themselves into such bands as these, garden clubs go forth bent upon searching out such lovely and informing sights. For many of us still, however, all our adventures, like those of the Vicar of Wakefield, must be by the fireside, all our travels from the blue bed to the brown. For these the photograph, the printed page, must serve for the charming sights themselves.

This book began pianissimo with a rather hesitating account of my own attempts at gardening; it has continued crescendo as my experience seemed to broaden and pleasure certainly to increase in planting, working, and writing. And it ends, thanks to the goodness of stranger and friend alike, fortissimo and allegro too, with garden picture and garden sketch in writing, the latter intimate and fresh to a degree, since in most instances it is supplied by the garden's owner. It will be readily seen that these, like Sir Thomas More's Utopians, "sett great stoore be theyr gardeins."

From East to West these gardens lie in a sort of dipping line across the continent, with the exception of the Philadelphia example. But before setting forth on this horticultural journey, there are here to be noticed pictures of two gardens at a London flower show — one, though in an unfinished state when photographed, giving excellent suggestion in design; the other beautiful, rarely so, for its flower grouping. These were examples of fine gardening on exhibition at the International Show of 1912 in London by the English firm of Wallace & Company, of Colchester — at that show which will live in the history of horticulture as the largest and best ever held in Great Britain. The little sunken garden carries with it a quiet charm of line and proportion. Perhaps the dry wall (farther left of picture) might have been more beautifully laid, but from the photograph one catches the precious quality of serenity in a garden. The use of flowers is apparently somewhat restrained. Eremuri, it will be noticed, are used at regular intervals, and beside these there are in this so-called English border iris, anchusa Dropmore, habranthus, Nepeta Mussini, cerastium, erigeron (a low, daisylike flower not often seen in our own gardens), and dianthus.

In the illustration showing the old stone seat — a vision of beauty and a most lovely example for the American gardener — the things which surround the seat are for the most part plants with scented foliage. Campanula Carpatica, however, may be noticed here; also irises, hypericum, and again erigeron, a variety by the name of Quakeress. The masses of delicate aspiring flowers back of the seat and below the Madonna lilies are, I fancy, either anchusas or heucheras in bloom. And, may I ask, was ever that flower beloved of poets and writers of songs, the water-lily, as perfectly set as in this place? Notice, too, the small ferns so cunningly placed as to overhang the pools. In this picture nothing is overdone — the walls are not smothered under flowers nor is the dark water hidden by mats of uninteresting lily-pads, as is too often the case when one has a fancy for aquatics.

Taking now our gardens in non-geographical order, but in their general groups as Eastern, Western, and Middle Western, we will look first at the two in the Middle West. This, happily, we may do through the medium of the pens of the gardens' owners. The first description is of an Ohio garden at Gates Mills, not far from Cleveland; the second a lawyer's garden in the lively and agreeable city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The descriptions follow as given me, even to the humorous thrust in the line which concludes the second.

"My garden is like my house; perhaps that is what all gardens should be. But it has pleased me to play that the old lady, with New England traditions, who built the little cottage seventy years ago, made a garden to go with it, which has gone on seeding itself and tangling all sorts of things up together.

"There is an uneven stone walk leading from the gate to the front door, and before the deed of the place was in my possession I had planted on either side of it a border which blooms from February, when the snowdrops appear, until December, when the snow covers the chrysanthemums still gayly flowering.

"Old-fashioned flowers have always had the preference, though I have had to slip in the lovely blue salvia, Japanese anemone, summer hyacinths, and others which, alas, the first owner of my bit of ground never knew. There must be the historic 'fifty-seven varieties' in these borders, which are my chiefest joy. Next is the bed around the sun-dial with its foundation of an old millstone — for this is a Gates Mills garden. Here only things with spiky leaves are allowed to grow. The crocus begins the season; daffodils, scillas, all sorts of iris, yellow lilies, yuccas, gladioli, montbretias follow in procession until summer hyacinths and red-hot poker end the summer in a charming combination, and not one of them but has the long, slender leaves. My latest joy is my white border connecting two sets of beds where many old and some new fashioned flowers are massed according to a plan which does change somewhat every year, as my visions of color combinations vary. What a lot of white flowers one can find to crowd in front of the background of tall white phlox! For close planting carries out my pretending that it is really Mrs. Gates's old garden instead of an imitation of a dozen years' growth.

"Here are all the white-flowering bulbs, and rock-cress, sweet-william, columbine, lilies, peonies, Japanese anemones, achilleas, the lovely Campanula pyramidalis, summer hyacinths, feverfews; and after the bulbs have faded away every spot is filled with white annuals.

"This border has just had its first birthday, but in my imagination — that first necessity of a garden — a charming and still more charming future stretches out before this band of lovely whiteness.

"These and the long arbor with its flowering vines are the parts of my garden nearest my heart, the rest is just garden."

The description of the Grand Rapids garden is next in order.

"The conditions to which my flower garden is subject have made it what it is. These conditions are:

"1. It is close to my house and not so large but that every part of it is always in full view therefrom.

"2. I restrict myself to a garden which I can care for without a regular gardener and with only occasional hired help.

"Because of the first of these conditions, the garden is always on parade. It must, therefore, be always sightly throughout its entire extent. So it must be treated as a whole; for pleasing beds, or groups of flowers, without regard to the condition at all times of the rest of the garden, will not produce a result always beautiful in its entirety. That effect will be the result not of the flowers alone, but of flowers, plants, and foliage, so massed and grouped as always, throughout the season's changes, to convey to the eye a pleasing impression of the garden as a whole. This involves consideration of the flowers, foliage, and habit of growth of each of the plants used, and of the time of its growth, its bloom, its decline and decay. It requires the proper grouping of all that the garden contains, so as to cover the ground, to hide unsightly plants in their decline, to present always a pleasing sky-line, and to secure harmony of color in foliage as well as in flowers. This is to treat the garden as a picture; and these things are the main factors in its composition. To make the picture effective in its place there must be a relatively large quantity of flowers, the high lights of the picture, and also an unbroken succession of bloom. The flowers chosen for this purpose should be reliable and prolific bloomers, and I think that only such kinds should be used as yield the most beautiful and effective flowers that can be had at the particular blooming season of each. Why seek to get results by using flowers insignificant in themselves when these results may be got with flowers that are more beautiful as single specimens?

"To obtain my unbroken succession of bloom and the other results I have outlined, I have used the following: crocuses, daffodils, Darwin tulips, German irises and pink Oriental poppies, peonies, Thunberg's lilies, larkspurs and Madonna lilies, Japanese irises, pink annual poppies, phloxes, late aconites, and Japanese anemones. These may be called my main-line forces, although nothing in the garden is planted in rows or in lines or according to any set figure or design. May-flowering scillas, heucheras, Rocky Mountain columbines, •leeding-hearts, broditeas, ixias, lupines, gladioli, etc., come in as aids or reinforcements to add to the beauty and gay effect. Peonies and late aconites, on account of their lasting foliage, are used not only for their flowers but with reference to the sky-line and to desired screen effects. In this I am greatly aided also by the thalictrums and native ferns. Out of beds of the last-named come up many daffodils, tulips, and lilies. The peonies allow the larkspurs as well as the Dutch bulbs to retire and hide their unsightliness after they have bloomed. By the aid of the lasting foliage and difference in height of these plants, I am able also to obtain a varied and pleasing sky-line and to keep the ground from showing bare or unsightly spots. I have had more difficulty in treating the garden picture as regards these things than in matters relating to flowers and color in the garden.

"My way of treating the garden for successional bloom and for continuous sightliness involves planting many crops in the same space. No plant has any exclusive preserve in my garden. All are set in irregular groups or drifts, one kind crowded on top of another. In the same space the various kinds come up, put forth leaves and branches, bloom, and die down, or serve as ground screen — all in their allotted times, and according to their respective habits. This promiscuous commingling and crowding of races involves a 'struggle for existence'; but since things follow in succession it is chiefly a question of sufficient fertilizing, rather than of room or of light and air, so far as the flowers and garden plants are concerned. It is the weeds that this struggle bears most heavily upon; for such thick and constant cover as results from my scheme of planting holds them down. It also holds moisture and minimizes the necessity of cultivation, and thereby I satisfy the second of the conditions which I stated at the beginning.

"A little thought will show that a garden maintained on the plan outlined is no place for annuals or for most of the biennials. It is too crowded for their development, and, moreover, too much labor is involved in raising and renewing them. For the same reasons perennials that are difficult, or that run out in a year or two, are excluded, although I am still over-indulgent to the peach-leaved campanulas, the late-flowering aconites (chiefly on account of their height and the lateness and excellence of their foliage), and to the capricious Rocky Mountain columbine.

"It is obvious, too, that color and color schemes are not the first thought, or the last word, in my garden. Flowers are not invited to grow there because they are pink or blue or mauve or this or that art shade. Color is not the test determining whether a given species or variety can come in, but, so far as it is a test at all, whether it must stay out. Even if the color be satisfactory and harmonious, yet if the plant is bad in its habits, if it sprawls and is unsightly, if it is hoggish and overruns its neighbors, it cannot get in. Color in this garden is a material factor in making the picture, only in the same way as beauty of foliage or of sky-line. Its importance may be greater, but that is a matter of degree only. Beauty of color and color harmony are essential, because if the colors are bad, or if they jar, the effect of the picture will be spoiled. Color combinations and color schemes have no other recognition, however.

 
"'If this be treason, make the most of it."'

Now come four Eastern gardens. Two are upon the Atlantic coast, one in the hills of Berkshire, and the third in a suburb of the most finished of all American suburbs, those of Philadelphia.

On Nantucket Island has been created a garden spot which, from its very pictures, so delights me that to sometime see it, its lights and shadows, its lovely watery distances, is a thing to expect with special pleasure. This garden is the more successful when one hears that its space is restricted, that its proportions are perhaps one hundred and fifty feet deep by fifty wide, and that the ground was originally the site of an ancient dwelling. The old levels of cellar and main floor were scrupulously and closely retained giving the necessary drop for two short flights of low steps. Along the street line there is a fence. Steppingstones go through the entire garden, which overlooks at the opposite end the harbor of Nantucket. As foreground for this lovely picture of water, tree and flower have been used with a most excellent eye for effect. The house is connected with the garden by a terrace of brick and against the wall of this terrace is a fine border of annual flowers. The first or lower garden, next the house, is oblong; the second square; the third informal in treatment, with the sea-lavender leading up to a charming little pool with goldfish — papyrus growing there.

In the cut, page 144, showing a part of the terrace wall, one notices the old-time, fan-shaped supports for roses always a feature of the early New England garden. Here are seen tall foxgloves rising from groups of the wonderful Iris Kaempferi, the little pointed box-tree at the left a good foil for the gay colors of the flowers. Everywhere balance, symmetry — that regularity which is perhaps more precious for the small piece of ground than for the large, since it produces, in little, effects both agreeable and finished. In the foreground of the highest garden shown in the illustration a perfect use is made of Statice latifolia, or, appropriately, sea-lavender. Below these plants, the beauty of whose purple bloom against the distant blues can be but faintly imagined, one may notice little gleams of sweet alyssum and, looking straight toward the sea, their flowers shining against the green of the next lower level, one sees delphiniums most happily introduced into the picture. Flowers found in this garden are, with others, Shasta daisies and many purple and yellow Japanese irises; hedges and box-trees everywhere to form enclosures, to afford backgrounds, to give that richness of dark green always peculiarly effective near the sea. The photograph of this garden with its sight of ocean is one of the loveliest gardening compositions ever falling beneath my eye; I am delighted that it may grace these pages (frontispiece).

At Swampscott, Mass., set upon a great ram-part of rock overhanging the Atlantic, is a series of small gardens on a property of three acres. The forms and flowers of these gardens send one's thoughts swiftly to divers beautiful parts of the earth. The house in this case has a site of great picturesqueness. It is also true that good minds as well as good gardeners have been at work here. Ingenious, indeed brilliant, use has been made of boldly varying levels, of the suddenly changing outlines of the property as a whole, of the glorious outlook upon the sea.

Entrance to the house from the highroad is obtained through a bit of wooded land, passing on the left the first of a group of gardens on lower and yet lower levels. This is the sunken garden of one hundred by fifty feet. Surrounded by a broad grass walk, bordered on one side by an arrangement for two periods of bloom of dahlias and hollyhocks, this is an English garden of perennials. The design shows four balanced beds, with central features in the form of three circular ones. Of these the middle is kept in turf, the endmost circles delightfully planted as color-harmonizing foci for their gay surroundings, in hues of lavender and white. One of these circles is filled with white geranium bordered by lavender-blue ageratum, the other has for occupants heliotropes encircled by a band of sweet alyssum.

Terraces are here with fine retaining walls, well-planted terraces; curving stone steps and walks also curving follow the line of the precipitous rock which divides the wild from the cultivated part of this place; a charming fan-shaped rose-garden occupies a secluded spot but with its own view of the ocean. A little platform of greensward enclosed by a square-clipped hedge of privet forms a base for the fine Italian well-head with its "overthrow" of restrained design shown in the illustration. All this clear green and dazzling architectural whiteness shines against the blue expanse of sea and sky. And in another portion of the place such blooming of Iris Kaempferi takes place as is seldom seen away from the Flowery Kingdom. (By the by, why does not some one have the sense and grace to call his or her garden by this ever-charming title?)

It is with the mind's eye only that I have seen this garden. May it be my happy lot to walk in it at no distant time. While the work it requires is done, its mistress assures me, only by herself and her Italian gardener, the harvest of flowers here above the "unharvested sea" is truly remarkable.

There is at Lenox, in the Berkshire Hills, a place with the musical name of Fernbrook Farm. It is high on one of the glorious hillsides between Pittsfield and Lenox and reached by a romantic drive through pretty by-roads. The house itself is of white stucco and dark wood and here the eye catches first of all, perhaps, the decorative use of fruit, especially of rich black grapes, as the vines are caught upward above windows of the second story. The clusters hang clear and beautiful from the stem all the way up; few leaves are allowed to remain. Japanese plums and crabapples grow as espaliers, and the effect of this bold decoration of fruit and leaf against the white stucco gives an Italian touch, a lovely reminiscence of that land of sun and shadow.

At the back of this house, looking into the mountainside, there is first a grass terrace in a court made by the projection of two wings of the house upon it; a fe'w steps down a second and much larger terrace. Here is a fine sun-dial, a bronze cupid astride a globe — "Love Ruling the World," modelled by the artist-owner of Fern-brook. Flowers are so disposed about the pedestal as to beautifully adorn it. At the farther side of this main terrace, through a small pergola covered with berried matrimony-vine occurs a descent of a few steps into a long pleached walk of apple-trees running through the kitchen garden. In places the steep balustrades leading from the first to the second terraces are accented by the use of dwarf apple-trees in pots. These were in fruit when I saw them, and the shining red globes in the green leaves against that Italianesque wall of white were again good to see. Italian gourds hanging through roofs of light pavilions and against trellises showed a fine use of what to me was a new horticultural subject, physalis, the Chinese lantern plant, with its vermilion fruit lighting the borders against the house on the upper terrace, and higher up its color was repeated by festoons of scarlet peppers and tomatoes hung with careless art against the plastered wall. Actinidia arguta, the fine creeper from Japan, and our native bittersweet were in evidence here, very much thinned as to branches but full of fruit. The garden proper at Fernbrook Farm has been built on a bit of level and projecting ground before and to the left of the entrance front of the house. This is an oblong hedged garden planted gayly in long narrow beds with delphiniums, roses, and very fine scabiosas. At the garden's end farthest from the entrance is a circular pavilion, an informal gazeebo, its roof a light framework of rods or canes. Along these run bold vines full of blue-black clusters, this fruit of the vine hung against a distance of valley and mountain rich in every autumn color and bound together by that heavenly October haze of blue.

It was in October, too, that I saw another garden, Fancy Field, at Chestnut Hill, near Philadelphia. In the soft autumnal light the summer freshness of all green was touched here almost to the gray-greens of Italy. Would that my memory of this garden equalled my delight in it! I might then hope to describe with some degree of accuracy what I so enjoyed upon that day. My recollection is of garden after garden, one out-of-door apartment after another, perfectly connected, with a most knowing use of structural green in the way of hedges low and high; of the quiet effect of broad spaces of hedge-enclosed turf; of one garden modelled upon the Lemon Garden of the Villa Colonna at Rome; of another, illustrated here, a reproduction of the Dutch Garden at Hampton Court made in the time of William and Mary; of a third, a knot or parterre fashioned after an ancient pattern still existing somewhere among the English dukeries — all these enchantingly enclosed and giving a series of delightful surprises; and last, a remarkable pergola at the back of all the gardens and bounding their whole length. This, very high, was so well proportioned that to look either at or through it gave instant pleasure. At the moment, too, all of its great rose-vines carried but bare stems. In this garden one had everywhere the sense of proportions finely maintained. The use of dwarf fruit-trees and of espaliers; of box, of privet, and of poplar in hedging; of slight but effective bits of terra cotta, marble, and stone now and again in these gardens, was exceedingly good. Indeed, a few pieces of bright Italian faience made one spot in the garden "si gai et si coquette" that the brightness of summer itself seemed to be caught and held there for the further beauty of that autumn day.

Is there not true and tranquil beauty in the picture of one of these gardens? — June, with some late foxgloves just overlapping the first delphiniums; and the cleverest introduction of the two dogs into the picture, quite unconscious that they are the living repetitions of those lions cut in stone! The end of my chapter comes quite naturally with those gardens which lie toward the setting sun.

Two gardens near Tacoma fill me with envy of that wonderful climate of the Pacific coast. Lavender flourishes in Tacoma gardens; the broom is magnificent in May on the prairies which stretch from Tacoma toward American Lake some ten or twelve miles from the city; and here the heaths are at home as well, both Scotch and Mediterranean. The winter is mild, with much rain; the summer cool but rainless, therefore constant watering of lawns and flowers in the latter season is the practice. A glorious picture of natural planting presents itself upon these prairies where superb spruce-trees are so cunningly grouped in colonies as to give an appearance of the utmost achievement in studied art. At the far edge of one of these great natural parks we drive through a grove of beautiful dark trees and come suddenly upon a rustic gateway dripping with pale-pink rambler roses.

We pass inside the gate between short bordering beds of hybrid perpetual roses, turn sharply to the right, and behold one of the most lovely flowering vistas it has ever been my good luck to see real and living. It seems painted; it is too good to be true, this artist's arrangement of colors within a long pergola built of saplings with the bark still upon them. "I made it all myself," delightedly exclaims our hostess as our unconcealed surprise and pleasure in this lovely garden pour forth in excited talk. On the right, entering the pergola a pergola with a raison d'être, for it conducts from gate to house — are gray foliage of pinks, Canterbury bells back of those; farther down, masses of Shasta daisies, gigantic here in stature; beyond those, clouds of the gray gypsophila; and then a delicious mass of color in tones ranging from pale lavender to deepest purple, the flowers most excellently grouped, an effect of carelessness which in an informal border is supremest art; among the flowers used, the hyacinth-flowered candytuft which Burpee sends out, here appearing in pinkish mauve, deep purplish pink, and white; purple pansies snuggling among these; rich purple annual larkspur sending up a few spires here and there; and climbing above all a lavender and mauve sweet pea, faint notes of the color below reflected in the air.

Pictures are here shown of the rustic tea-house, or recessed arbor, at one end of this pergola immediately after its erection (this is now wreathed in rambler rose Dorothy Perkins); of the pergola itself in its first summer, a tangle of scarlet dahlias; and in the following summer, when annuals were the mainstay. During the third summer these were the subjects here: decorative dahlia Golden West, white dahlias, and a hundred feet of Burpee's Superb Spencer sweet peas, some unusual Spencer seedlings among them, especially the heliotrope Tennant Spencer. No reds, not a red blossom in the pergola! Outside of it are white dahlias and white sweet peas.

Turning again to the prairie for a mile or so farther, our road leads again to the lake. Here is a surprise of a totally different character. Tacoma's "year one," as some one has said, is the year 1889, yet twenty years later, only twenty years later, here stands, surrounded by giant firs, between whose columns the blue reaches of the lake and the greener blues of distant shores are seen, an English house, a dignified and serene country house of the earlier Tudor period, with walled garden and lily-pool. The latter is set at a suitable distance from the house for effect from the second-floor windows; and a large cutting-garden, formal in design, lies farther back toward the prairie. The wonder of the main garden lies in the fact that it has been most skilfully placed on an axis with that noblest of American peaks, Mount Tacoma. Clouds hid the mountain vision on the day of my visit, but what a sensation to see Mount Tacoma from one's garden!

 

 To come upon this English picture, this delightful red-brick house, its low outlines possessing much of the sweetness of the ancient English manor-house, with its gardens masterly in design and rich with flowers — to come upon this, in the farthest Northwest, in the new country, is to find a thing almost unbelievable. "And I saw in my dream" — yet the dream is a reality. One recalls the beautiful house of Kipling's in "They" — it is here in America, in that noble State of Washington, near Tacoma.

For the following description, full of sympathy and charm, of the gardens of Glendessary, not far from Santa Barbara, I am indebted to the owner herself. Parenthetically may it be said here that nothing the writer has ever seen in pictures has so strengthened her desire to see California as have these entrancing vistas full of color and of sunlight, the roses and the fountains, of this so evidently cherished garden.

Writing first of the picture shown here, the garden's owner says: "This is taken from the edge of a fountain basin looking toward the house. The trees are Italian cypress, and oaks in the extreme background.

"The large bushes in the foreground are: right, the yellow Southern jasmine, Thuya aurea, fifteen feet high; pale-purple veronicas; the rough stone copings laid in sand along the paths are covered with Ficus repens. Left, Southern jasmine, Laurel nobilis, Swainsonia, and various small things. This left bed is filled with Camellia Japonica in different colors, which bloom profusely from November to May and are too perfect for words. They are small yet, not more than four feet high. There are palms alike in each bed, the Chamerops excelsa, whose very delicate fanlike leaves quiver with the faintest breeze. At the second steps there is a high green clipped hedge which encloses and also separates the Little Garden from the forecourt, in which there are only the lawn and the oaks with a stone railing.

"It was in 1902 that we began taking the scattered rocks and bowlders out of the small piece of pasture, through which an old stream-bed still could be followed, and built the walls around the `Little Garden,' as it is called, to distinguish it from the Orchard, the Rock Garden, and the Shrubbery, etc. The ideas expressed in this small place were harmonious color, fragrance, plants mentioned in literature, and water. There were several large ' Live Oaks,' as the California oak is called, in the enclosure, which served as a starting-point for the walls, the seats, and the general shape of the garden. A formal plan of walks and beds was decided upon in the first place, varied slightly by the position of existing objects in the way that a Turkish rug varies from its pattern in places. I am told by garden architects that it is not exact enough, but I could not bear to lose a single old tree; and the mathematical glories must suffer a little.

"A garden seems to me a collection of the flowers one loves best or has a very dear association with in one's mind from poems or books, and mine began with Laurus nobili8 and orange-trees, jasmine and ivy, and climbing roses on the walls — Madame Alfred Carriere, La Marque, and Olga of Wtirtemberg, Celine Forestier and Beauty of Glazenwood — the white wistaria in the oak-trees in the spring and the Daphne odorata and lemon verbena to lean over and breathe in. . . . The pool in the centre is full of brilliant lilies, and the lotus-tank below is, in summer, a lovely group of perfect beauty around which the darting green dragon-flies, the humming-birds, and bees are constantly seen. The colors are very carefully considered, and the flowers are separated by green shrubs and plantings which break the garden into many nooks and corners.

"Everything will grow in California if the proper care is taken, and the succession of flowers is a never-ending source of happiness. The earth is quite covered, as there are many low-growing plants, which serve as a setting for their more ambitious sisters; and, since we cannot easily have grass, the earth must be covered with tiny plants. The use of plants in pots is also very helpful in places where one needs a certain form or color; and the big, coarse red Mexican jar made in Los Angeles is a great boon. We have many plants indigenous to California which are most valuable to the lover of formal gardening; among them the numerous agaves and aloes fill many an important spot."

It is gardening such as this which gives joy to the discriminating; it is beyond all a question of the mind and eye. The nobler the intellect, the more poetic the imaginative vision, the happier he or she who gardens. And is there any one so happy as the fortunate possessor of a bit of ground and the wish to give a loveliness higher than earth has yet been known to show? He who has done this should be a supremely happy man, and "to the supremely happy man, all times are times of thanksgiving, deep, tranquil, and abundant, for the delight, the majesty, and the beauty of the fulness of the rolling world."