Trees and Shrubs for English Gardens Part 1

Trees and Shrubs for English Gardens.

by Ernest Thomas Cook.

PREFACE

It cannot be urged against this work that it travels along a path already well worn, for the subject of trees and shrubs for English gardens, though almost inexhaustible, has never been so fully treated and ill.u.s.trated as it deserves. The book may have many defects, but its pages will show that an honest effort has been made to offer helpful and instructive information to the many who wish to know more of the beauty of trees and shrubs.

In writing this book, the labour of my spare hours for many months, I have been greatly helped by Mr. Bean, the a.s.sistant-curator of the Royal Gardens, Kew, whose deep knowledge of the subject has been willingly imparted; and by Miss Jekyll, to whom I am indebted for many valuable suggestions and notes. Among others to whom grateful thanks are tendered are Mrs. Davidson, Mr. J. Clark, Mr. Dallimore, and Mr. S. W.

Fitzherbert.

Some of the chapters have already appeared in the _Garden_, with the object of making known as widely as possible the importance of the most beautiful trees and shrubs for English woodland and pleasure-grounds.

The ill.u.s.trations will show how a shrub, so often stunted and mutilated by unwise pruning, becomes beautiful when allowed to develop naturally.

The ill.u.s.trations have their own teaching value, and in this matter also I desire to thank many willing helpers, especially Miss Jekyll, Miss Willmott, and Mr. Crump, of the Madresfield Court Gardens. Many of them are from photographs taken in the Royal Gardens, Kew. Under the present director (Sir William Thiselton-Dyer) much has been done in the judicious grouping of plants. Here is a living place of instruction open to all.

Those who desire to know more about trees and shrubs than it is possible to give in this book should consult such famous works as Loudon's "Arboretum Britannic.u.m" (8 vols.), and "Encyclopaedia of Trees and Shrubs"; Professor Sargent's "Silva of North America," and "Forest Flora of j.a.pan"; "Manual of Coniferae," by Messrs. James Veitch & Sons; "The Pinetum," by George Gordon; The "Bamboo Garden," by Lord Redesdale; Sir Joseph Hooker's "Rhododendrons of the Sikkim Himalaya"; and the excellent Kew Hand-list of Trees and Shrubs. Much information can also be gleaned from the volumes of _Garden and Forest_ (American), edited by Professor Sargent, but not now in publication.

The nomenclature at Kew--that is, according to the _Index Kewensis_--is that adopted in this book.

It is the wish and hope of the author, whose notes, taken during many years, are embodied, that the book may do something to make English gardens more beautiful and interesting, and that it may win many to see the better ways of planting; also that it may be the means of bringing forward the many trees and shrubs of rare charm that are generally unknown or unheeded.

E. T. C.

_November 1902._

CHAPTER I

WANT OF VARIETY A BLEMISH

There is a sad want of variety amongst evergreen and deciduous shrubs in the average English garden. Faith is placed in a few shrubs with a reputation for robbing the soil of its goodness and making a monotonous ugly green bank, neither pleasant to look at nor of any protective value. As one who knows shrubs well and the way to group them says, "Even the landscape gardeners, the men who have the making of gardens--with, of course, notable exceptions--do not seem to know the rich storehouse to draw from." Very true is this. We see evidence of it every day. The mixed shrubbery is fondly clung to as a place for all shrubs, whether flowering or otherwise, and the result is a thicket of growths, a case indeed of a survival of the fittest. There are other shrubs than Privet in this fair world of ours, and as for providing shelter, the wind whistles through its bare stems and creates a draught good for neither man, beast, nor plant. Of the cherry laurel again there is far too much in gardens. Few other plants can stand against its greedy, searching roots, and its vigorous branches and big leaves kill other leaf-growth near them. Grown in the proper way, that is, as an isolated shrub, with abundance of s.p.a.ce to develop its graceful branches and brilliant green leaves, the Cherry Laurel is a beautiful evergreen; it is quite happy in shady, half-wooded places. But grown, as it is so often, jammed up and smothering other things, or held in bounds by a merciless and beauty-destroying knife, its presence has not been to the advantage of English gardening.

When the planting season comes round, think of some of the good shrubs not yet in the garden, and forget pontic Rhododendron, Laurel, Aucuba, and Privet. By this is not meant rare shrubs, such as may only be had from the few nurseries of the very highest rank or from those that make rare shrubs a speciality, but good things that may be grown in any garden and that appear in all good shrub catalogues.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _CHINESE GUELDER ROSE._]

Perhaps no beautiful and now well-known shrub is more neglected than beautiful _Exochorda grandiflora_ (the Pearl Bush). Its near relatives, the Spiraeas, are in every shrubbery, but one may go through twenty and not see Exochorda. Even of the Spiraeas one does not half often see enough of _S. Thunbergi_, a perfect milky way of little starry bloom in April and a most shapely little bush, or the double-flowered _S.

prunifolia_, with its long wreaths of flower-like double thorn or minute white roses and its autumn bravery of scarlet foliage. The hardy Magnolias are not given the opportunity they deserve of making our gardens lovely in earliest summer. Who that has seen _Magnolia stellata_ in its April dress of profuse white bloom and its summer and autumn dignity of handsome though not large foliage, would endure to be without it? or who would not desire to have the fragrant chalices of _M.

soulangeana_, with their outside staining of purple, and _M. conspicua_, of purest white in the early months of March and April? And why does not every garden hold one, at least, of the sweet _Chimonanthus_, offering, as it does in February, an abundance of its little blooms of a fragrance so rich and powerful that it can be scarcely matched throughout the year?

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A GROUPING OF MAGNOLIA STELLATA._]

_Ca.s.sinia fulvida_, still known in nurseries by its older name of Diplopappus, in winter wears its fullest dress of tiny gold-backed leaf.a.ge in long graceful sprays, that are borne in such profusion that they only beg to be cut to accompany the rare flowers of winter that we bring indoors to sweeten and enliven our rooms.

Of small-flowering trees none is lovelier than the Snowy Mespilus (_Amelanchier_), and for a tree of somewhat larger size the good garden form of the native Bird Cherry is beautiful in the early year. The North American _Halesia_ (the Snowdrop Tree) should be in every garden, either as a bush or tree, every branch hung in May with its full array of pendent bloom of the size and general shape of Snowdrops, only of a warm and almost creamy instead of a cold snow-white colour.

Few spring-flowering shrubs are more free and graceful than _Forsythia suspensa_, and if it can be planted on a slight eminence and encouraged to throw down its many-feet-long graceful sprays it then exhibits its best garden use. The Chinese _Viburnum plicatum_ is another shrub well known but unfairly neglected, flowering with the earliest Irises.

Grouped with the grand _Iris pallida dalmatica_ it is a thing never to be forgotten.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _aeSCULUS PARVIFLORA (late July)._]

_aesculus (Pavia) parviflora_, blooming in July when flowering shrubs are rare, is easily grown and strikingly handsome, and yet how rarely seen!

_Calycanthus floridus_, with its spice-scented blooms of low-toned crimson, also a late summer flower, is a fine thing in a cool, well-sheltered corner, where the sun cannot burn the flowers. The Rose Acacia (_Robinia hispida_), trained on a wall or house, is as beautiful as any Wistaria, and the quality of the low-toned rosy bloom of a much rarer colour. It is quite hardy, but so brittle that it needs close and careful wall training or other support. To name a few others in the same kind of category, but rather less hardy, the Sweet Bay is the n.o.blest of evergreen bushes or small trees; the Tamarisk, with its grey plumes of foliage and summer flower-plumes of tenderest pink, is a delightful plant in our southern counties, doing especially well near the sea.

_Clethra alnifolia_, against a wall or in the open, is a ma.s.s of flower in late summer, and the best of the _Hibiscus syriacus_, or _Althaea frutex_, the shrubbery representatives of Mallows and Hollyhocks, are autumn flowers of the best cla.s.s. A bushy plant of half-woody character that may well be cla.s.sed among shrubs, and that was beloved of our grandmothers, is _Leycesteria formosa_, a delightful thing in the later autumn. The large-fruited Euonymus (Spindle Tree) is another good thing too little grown.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _DOUBLE-FLOWERED SLOE OR BLACKTHORN._]

For a peaty garden there are many delightful plants in the neglected though easy-to-be-had list. One of these is the beautiful and highly fragrant _Azalea occidentalis_, all the better that the flowers and leaves come together and that it is later than the Ghent Azaleas. Then there are the two sweet-scented North American Bog Myrtles, _Myrica cerifera_ and _Comptonia asplenifolia_, the charming little _Leiophyllum buxifolium_, of neatest bushy form, and the _Ledum pal.u.s.tre_, whose bruised leaves are of delightful aromatic fragrance; _Vaccinium pennsylvanic.u.m_, pretty in leaf and flower and blazing scarlet in autumn, and _Gaultheria Shallon_, a most important sub-shrub, revelling in moist peat or any cool sandy soil.

These examples by no means exhaust the list of desirable shrubs that may be found for the slightest seeking. This brief recital of their names and qualities is only meant as a reminder that all these good things are close at hand, while many more are only waiting to be asked for.

CHAPTER II

ORNAMENTAL PLANTING IN WOODLAND

Where woodland adjoins garden ground, and the one pa.s.ses into the other by an almost imperceptible gradation, a desire is often felt to let the garden influence penetrate some way into the wood by the planting within the wood of some shrubs or trees of distinctly ornamental character.

Such a desire very naturally arises--it is wild gardening with the things of larger growth; but, like all forms of wild gardening (which of all branches of gardening is the most difficult to do rightly, and needs the greatest amount of knowledge), the wishes of the planter must be tempered with extreme precaution and restraint. It does not do to plant in the wild garden things of well-known garden character. This is merely to spoil the wood, which, in many cases, is already so good that any addition would be a tasteless intrusion of something irrelevant and unsuitable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _IN THE WOODLAND AT KEW, SHOWING TREE AND SHRUB BY GRa.s.sY WAY._]

Still, there are certain wooded places where a judicious planting would be a gain, and there are a certain number of trees and shrubs which those who have a fair knowledge of their ways, and a true sympathy with the nature of woodland, recognise as suitable for this kind of planting.

They will be found in these cla.s.ses: Native growths that are absent or unusual in the district, such as the Spindle Tree (_Euonymus_), White Beam, Service Tree, White and Black Thorn, Wild Cherry, Bird Cherry, Wild Guelder Rose (_Viburnum Opulus_), and _V. Lantana_, Honeysuckle, Wild Roses, Juniper, and _Daphne Laureola_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _WAYFARING TREE (Viburnum Lantana); A NATIVE SHRUB ON CHALK._]

Then, among cultivated trees and shrubs, those that are nearly related to our wild kinds, including some that are found in foreign woodlands that have about the same lat.i.tude and climate as our own. Among these will be Quinces and Medlars, many kinds of ornamental Crataegus, Scarlet Oaks, various Elders and Crabs, and the grand _Pyrus americana_, so like our native Mountain Ash, but on a much larger scale.

A very careful planting with trees and shrubs of some of these and, perhaps, other allied kinds, may give additional beauty and interest to woodland. Differences of soil will, of course, be carefully considered, for if a piece of woodland were on chalky soil, a totally different selection should be made from one that would be right for a soil that was poor and sandy.

In moist, sandy, or, still better, peaty ground, especially where there is a growth of Birches and Scotch Firs, and not many other kinds of trees, a plantation of Rhododendrons may have a fine effect. But in this case it is better to use the common _R. pontic.u.m_ only, as a mixture of differently coloured kinds is sure to give a misplaced-garden look, or an impression as if a bit of garden ground had missed its way and got lost in the wood.

CHAPTER III

GROUPING OF TREES AND SHRUBS