Authors: Margery Fish
The hyssops make good sturdy bushes that sit down on the beds like a woman curtseying. In the gardens in the barton I have used the blue, white and pink, and in the terraced garden I find a blue hyssop is a good strong subject to grow among fragile herbaceous plants. Unfortunately the hyssops get very woody as they grow older and there comes a time when the old plants have to be scrapped and smaller, newer ones, put in place of them. I was delighted to find recently a blue hyssop that keeps small and avoids the gnarled habits of the larger one.
I bought
Angelica Archangelica
with the idea of candying its hollow green stems, or using it like rhubarb for pies. To my shame I have never used it in either way, but I do find it one of the most decorative plants I have in the garden. It has taken possession of the bed behind the hedge, so lavishly does it seed itself. It has to be curbed somewhat but I leave in a double row of plants behind the hedge, where they rise in majesty, with handsome green leaves and great green umbels of flower. Its bone structure is good and it is quite handsome even in death. Flower arrangement enthusiasts are for ever begging for the seed heads. The live flowers have even more charm and every year I put them in a pewter jug in the dining room, where they are a good foil for the oak panelling. Like all hollow-stemmed plants they will last a long time in water if the hollow stems are first filled with water. It is quite easy to manage this by putting one’s thumb over the filled stalk and keeping it there until it is under water in the container.
Fennel is another herb that has great beauty of form and foliage and really deserves to be grown alone where its loveliness can be seen properly. From the practical angle I like it because its fern-like foliage, finely chopped, adds a distinctive flavour to salads and sauces for fish, but I grow it mostly because of its wonderful colouring and growth. After a shower of rain a big bush of fennel looks like blue smoke. The stems are smooth grey-green, like young bamboos, and the flowers greenish yellow. Though rather aromatic for a very small room an arrangement of fennel and santolina is very pleasant.
The leaves of bergamot are used in
pot pourri
, and the flowers add many lovely colours to the garden. Most people know the scarlet monarda but not so often does one see the white and pink, crimson, lavender and purple. I once saw a whole stand at a Horticultural show devoted to monardas and nothing else, and I was amazed at the number of lovely colours in which it can array itself. The bergamots are very shallow rooting, and though they like plenty of sun they do not like to get too dry.
Rosemary is another herb that has endless uses. Its informal habit of growth makes it ideal for odd, difficult corners, where something not too definite is required. I like the prostrate variety sprawling over a path, and the erect form—Miss Jessup’s Upright—looks well against a stone pedestal or seat. Stoechas lavender is another good plant to grow against stone, particularly round the angular base of a garden ornament, or over steps.
I think most lavenders are worthy of being grown individually instead of being massed in a hedge. A perky little bush of lavender is surprising and pleasant among other shrubs, and an occasional bush among the flowers is very pleasant to meet. Variation can be achieved by using pink, white and deep purple as well as the more usual shades.
Talking of herbs makes one think of bee plants. It is a lovely idea to make a bee garden-a riot of all the plants that bees love best arranged round their hives. Lovely in theory, but difficult in practice, because the bees are so concentrated among the flowers that there is no chance to get near enough to weed or tidy their domain. By all means give them their flowers, but plant them among other things that aren’t so irresistible.
Everyone has their own ideas of what they want to grow in a garden. When I started my idea was to make as long a season as possible but I received no encouragement from my husband. Walter was a fair-weather gardener and was not interested in what happened in the winter. He wanted his brave show when the sun was shining and he could enjoy the garden, and during his lifetime I wasn’t allowed to plant many out of season plants.
But in the last few years I have found many exciting things to bloom very early in the year, and they can usually be planted so that they are not noticeable among the other flowers in their off season.
The hellebores that do so well in the front garden are planted among the hydrangeas and are quite invisible most of the year, but when they do flower, very early in the year, they have the scene all to themselves. Many people complain that
H. orientalis
, the exquisite Lenten rose, is no good as a picked flower. The secret is to slit their stems up as far as the first leaves, and then they will go on for a very long time. If dejected when first picked they soon revive if put in hot water up to their necks.
I have only one complaint to make about
Helleborus orientalis
,and that is the leaves get so untidy and badly marked long before the flowers are finished. When the leaves are very brown and tattered I remove the worst of them, because no flower, however beautiful, can stand up to a background of shabby, scabby foliage. The hellebores are so beautifully foliaged with tiny leaves near every flower that they can get on very well without their own coarse leaves, when those are no longer worthy of them.
Pulmonarias come very early. Even the ordinary one is very beautiful when nothing else is in bloom, and it is a good idea to plant it where it will not be conspicuous later on, as its large leaves get even larger when it has finished flowering. The less rampant varieties need not be relegated in the same way. The bright blue
Vulmonaria azureus
is lovely in the rock garden, its leaves are never
large and disappear completely for most of the year.
P
.
saccharata rubra
and
P
. Mrs Moon are both good enough for a front place as their foliage is always attractive.
Iberis, the perennial candytuft, is another early bird, and it has the great advantage of being an evergreen. Its dark foliage makes a welcome change of colour in the scheme, so that it earns its keep even after the starry white flowers are over. I have been rebuffed by more fastidious gardeners because I have large patches of this, to them, rather ordinary plant, but I like its low growth and I am always aiming at clothing my flower beds so that they avoid that naked look in the winter.
Polyanthus and primroses flower very early and I like to tuck as many of them as I can into odd corners, so that their cheerful little faces are waiting to greet me in March and April. Both are so much more effective used like this instead of being regimented in rows or packed together in large areas. Clumps of them among shrubs look lovely, they seem very happy at the bottom of walls and in wall crevices so long as there is enough moist earth to please them. Under hedges and among the taller herbaceous plants they do well, and in any other unexpected place you can think of. I am certain these woodland plants do not enjoy being planted out in full sunlight. I notice that if they have the shade of some tall plant beside them they make much bigger clumps and the flowers are much finer. In the old days there always seemed too many yellow and orange shades in polyanthus, but now there are beautiful pinks and creams and some magnificent blue forms.
Doronicums are very welcome in the early spring, with their bright yellow flowers. There are several varieties, including one very large one which bears magnificent heads on two-foot stems. When these plants have finished flowering we have done with them until the next, so, although their foliage is quite pleasant, I do not allow them a very forward position but plant them far back in the border.
Then there is the elephant saxifrage, which used to be called megasea and is now known as bergenia. The common pink variety sometimes begins to flower in October and November, but is at its best in February. I always look forward to these chubby pink flowers, so closely packed and enchantingly beautiful with their green pistils. The darker flowered form B.
purpurea
, flowers a little later, and the rich rose red flowers are carried on two-foot red stems. I have a smaller form of bergenia with leaves about two inches across, but it is very loth to flower. Bergenia is a most satisfactory plant, as its foliage is lovely all the year round and particularly beautiful when it turns colour in the autumn. There is nothing more attractive than a large clump of this handsome plant among smaller, less definite plants, and it is ideal for merging a path with an awkward bed. Some people use it most effectively as a border between flower beds. It is very easily controlled by the removal of large fleshy chunks from time to time.
Real spring, summer and early autumn look after themselves, but there will be little left in October and November after the Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums have finished unless the gardener gives a little thought to the matter.
This is the time when
Thysostegia
Vivid comes into its own. It often goes on blooming well into November, when its deep orchid flowers have a tropical luxuriance which is rather exotic. It is so sturdy that it needs no staking and lasts well in water. Like many other plants that increase underground it flowers best in rather a constricted area, like a narrow bed beside a path, where it has no temptation to stray and waste its substance on underground roots instead of lovely orchid coloured flowers. I used to think it was called the ‘obedient plant’ because it grew so straight and gave little trouble, but I have discovered it is because the flowers, which grow in lines up the stalk can be pushed one way or the other and will obediently stay just where they were moved.
Verbena venosa
blooms spasmodically in the summer but it gets going really well when it is almost time to stop, as if to make up for lost time. It is sometimes thought to be tender but plant it near a stone path, where it can burrow as it likes, and you’ll never lose it.
The lucky people who have no lime in their soil can enjoy the autumn gentians. They look best grown in a mass, drifting down beside a path or in very large pockets of a rock garden.
G. sinoornata
is the most popular.
G. Macaulayi
is a near favourite, with rather lighter blue flowers, but I find
G.
Kidbrook Seedling the most generous of the lot, and the one that goes on blooming longest, sometimes to December.
G.
Inverleith Seedling has dazzling blue flowers but they are carried on such long stems and the foliage on the stems is inclined to get yellow and brown before the flowers have finished, which destroys much of the beauty of the plant.
Even with lime in the soil it is possible to grow these gentians. It is worth getting a stone trough and filling it with peat and a little sand, or if that is not possible it is quite easy to build a container with stones concreted together, especially if there is a convenient wall to make one side. They can be grown in the same way on a plateau in the rock garden, or on a raised bed made with peat blocks.
Most polygonums are so enthusiastic that they become a nuisance. But there are two late flowering varieties that do not ramble very much.
P
.
vacciniiolium
has tiny green leaves and clear pink flowers.
P
.
affine
is bigger, with coral spikes and leathery leaves that turn bronze in the autumn.
Serratula Shawii
is not a plant that would draw many cries of delight in midsummer, when there are so many more arresting flowers in bloom, but it is very pleasant to meet a clump of it in full bloom in November. The flowers are rather small, shaggy pink-mauve which look like a cross between a cornflower and a small thistle. Its foliage is daintily in keeping and it usually grows about one and a half to two feet.
The cerasostigmas give their lovely blue flowers quite late in the year and are good value even after flowering, when the foliage turns a glowing red.
C
.
plumbaginoides
is a front of the border plant but will grow anywhere, sometimes a little embarrassingly as it is inclined to usurp other people’s territory. The less busy
C
.
Willmottianum
is happiest with a southern aspect.
I always enjoy
Aster Vappei
on crisp autumn days. Its little kingfisher blue flowers are so friendly and brave—until the frost comes and daunts them. But one can always dig the plants up before that happens and let them go on flowering away in a cold greenhouse. It is safest to take cuttings every year to make certain of a plentiful supply of plants the following season.
Agathaea coelestis
, with its broader leaves of darker green, is a very close friend of
Aster Tappei
and likes being treated in the same way. Another little daisy that blooms late in the autumn is
Aster hirsutus
, sometimes known as
Agathaea hirsutus.
It is a South African and grows rather like
Agathaea coelestis
, with a hazy mass of trailing stems, but the daisies are rather bigger and pale blue.
For years
Convolvulus Cneorum
has had the unenviable reputation of being difficult and not quite hardy, but in point of fact it is quite amenable if planted away from draughts and with a wall or other protection behind it. It prefers to face south and then will weather the severest weather. Its grey satin foliage is always lovely and gives its pink buds and creamy white flowers until November. Its lowly relation,
C
.
mauritanicus
, also likes to flower late in the year’. Once established it soon makes a large mat, which spreads over paving or falls over walls covering itself with vivid blue flowers, like inverted limpets. In very severe weather it is not quite trustworthy. Sometimes you think it has succumbed but a little later a few tiny leaves will appear. To save heart-burnings it is a good idea to put a little protective material, like bracken or straw over it in hard frost.