The Order of the Garden

LATE in life I have come into an experience which is to me a very new and fundamental one, although doubtless trite enough to many of my sisters. Advisedly I call them sisters, for my new experience is nothing less than the joining of a sisterhood, — the Order of the Garden. I hesitate to speak of gardens, well appreciating the strain that has already been put upon the reading public by the constantly increasing body of gardening-authors. For years I was myself a member of that public, and vividly enough I remember my own unsympathetic state of mind at the time. But I now live in the country; my home demands the ornament of a garden, and my name is Elizabeth. These facts have proven too compelling for me, and I have indeed joined the Order of the Garden.

The patience which to-day you are putting at my disposal, however, I should not abuse by delivering a technical horticultural treatise, even were such a feat an intellectual possibility on my part. Fascinated as I myself have been by the ‘cultural notes’ of the nurserymen’s catalogues, and credulously as I have gloated over their impossibly illustrated wonders, I think it well, nevertheless, at once to assure my listeners that my enthusiasm is as yet purely visionary, and that the garden I speak of consists to-day of nothing but a few hundred feet of earth, buried under tons of mountain snow; and of a pile of text-books, almanacs, manuals, seed-lists, drawings, and charts, which represent to me a Great Cause. In short, it must remain, until planting-time, purely a MindGarden, — a hot-bed of Ideas, — one of those Eternal Values to which I have only recently given my assent.

As such, it is to me a fresh testimony to Truth and Beauty; it is a vehicle of future Perfection. Existing until spring merely as an ideal, nothing is impossible to it. No beauty of color-scheme but may be mapped out in its plan; no bewildering profusion and length of bloom that cannot be entered upon its charts, assigned a certain number of square feet of soil (scale, ten feet to an inch), or alphabetically listed in my seedling mail-orders. To me, at present, it is perfectly logical to assume the ownership of the most beautiful garden in Berkshire. Everything lovely can be made (on paper) to agree with everything practical, in a marvelous synthesis of horticultural beauty.

I almost dread to plant my little Garden of Eden; the entire authority which I now exercise over its every detail (on paper, again) will, I fear, but ill fit me to deal with the stubborn selfassertion of a firmly-rooted plant, vigorously engaged in its individual struggle for life. It is one thing to wipe out, with a ruthless hand, a border of pansies in a chart, and firmly to replace it by a border of candytuft, in order to balance my purples and whites; it may be a very different matter to discipline a purple pansy that insists on being yellow, or to coerce a bed of hyacinths to stop blooming in time to let me put into the same bed my verbena seedlings, while they are still amenable to transplantation. That is why this period of idealism is so glorious. With time and enthusiasm, almost any desirable fact can be verified by some authority or other, and theory can be adjusted to fit the most beautiful garden-scheme in the world. At all events, such a one I mean to enjoy, up to the very moment of committing my precious seeds to the earth.

My novitiate in the Order of the Garden has been to me an experience of mental, moral, and spiritual discipline; in order to become worthy to enter that sisterhood, I have found my self undergoing the education of almost all the faculties that I have, and the development of others that were, to say the least, very, very latent. Perhaps you will pardon the personality of my topic if, instead of describing to you (as I should adore to do) the immanent glories of my future phlox, or the ravishing combination of my hypothetical white lilies with my potential blue delphiniums, I tell you of the surprising crops of a different nature which my garden has already produced in my character.

Blooming beside the asters and hollyhocks of my imagination, I have discovered the shoots of many spiritual perennials which I had not deemed essential to a well-planned hardy border. I have found it necessary to include these, one by one, in my grouping; to foster their culture and provide them with nourishment, in order that I might the better understand their kinship to other varieties of more concrete ‘habit.’

Thus, I have discovered that one of the most invaluable backgrounds to a good garden is a mixed growth of Enthusiasm and Patience. The soil and climate of my temperament have ever been friendly to the former, so it has not been at all difficult to sow the seeds and raise a large bed of Enthusiasm. Indeed, I soon found that the crop needed a decided thinning-out if space were to be left for anything else, and that a mixture of the blooms of Patience would be a very pleasant relief to the eye. This latter culture has involved a great deal of effort. Patience is an exotic plant in my soul; much cultivation and weeding, careful mulching and pinching back have been necessary in order to induce it to grow; but when I found how much more lovely my beautiful flower-beds would be if set off against them, I determined to coax the tender young Patience-plants into the semblance of a sturdy growth, and the mixture with Enthusiasm proved very helpful to both.

Prudence, too, I found it wise to add as an edging; without it I might have been tempted, by the alluring advertisements I saw, to experiment with totally impracticable and very strange novelties indeed. Dimorphotheca aurantiaca, ‘ a rare and showy annual from South Africa’; eryngium amethystium, ‘fine for winter bouquets’; or cyperus artemifolius, ‘excellent for growing in water and damp spots ’ (my garden being designed for the sunny slope of a hill!), would, but for the Prudence, probably have attracted me by their unusual merits. ‘Pocket-like flowers’ and ‘spiny foliage’ would have sounded irresistibly interesting; and the very superlativeness of such names as helichrysum monstrosum, gomphrena superba, kermesina splendens, or çelosia plumosa thompsonii magnifica, would have exercised a fatal fascination upon my imagination. But having planted my Prudence, I chose to go with it a selection of pinks and poppies and petunias and pansies, which will bloom anywhere and involve no risk.

I never knew, before I had this mindgarden, that the pursuit of horticulture, even in the most amateurish way, even, I might say, in a purely abstract way, was a tremendous stimulus to the cardinal virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Pray how is one to put one’s trust in the seed-catalogues (which one’s friends unanimously declare to be mendacious); or to glow over pictures and descriptions that one knows to be romance; or actually to write out money-orders with hands trembling in eagerness, money-orders for packets and ounces and dozens and hundreds, — without faith? Faith in man, faith in Nature, faith in seeds, and faith in print? Hope, too, receives the same vivifying stimulus; and Charity, most, of all, is necessary if one would plan a pretty garden; the charity that believeth all things and hopeth all things, and must be ready to endure and forgive all things, when Nature and the Garden take things into their own control. Without charity for the misinforming guides I have consulted, and still more charity for my own invincible and happy credulity, I should not dare to face the failures of next summer; but with charity, I go gladly forward, feeling that to seek and learn the truth about my own dear garden will be to me a precious soul-experience, even though the most conspicuous truths of all should prove to be the mistakes.

The history of my paper-garden runs thus. Duly incorporated into a central scheme for the creation of a new home, — thrown in, as it were, with the general outlay of plans for the house, the driveways, the fences, the garage, the planting of thickets, the grading and drainage of the land, and the general overhauling of old neglected acres, — came from the hands of the architects the casual drawing of a little formal flower-gardon. It was brightly colored with chalks and its delicate pencilings showed forth charming possibilities of arbor and bench, pool and pergola. But it had to be laid away in our pigeon-hole of ‘perhapses’ and ‘some-days’ until one year should have completed the roadways, another the vegetable garden, another the miles of fence, and another the out-buildings. Once in every six months, or thereabouts, it was taken out of the pigeonhole and affectionately regarded as the promise of a vague future happiness; or its destined rôle in the general scheme was explained to an interested friend, much as one might explain the topography of Carcassonne. But then it was put back again, among the other perhapses, and we went on with the fence.

Last October, however, when we had planted the last of dozens of small trees between our windows and a reeking brewery chimney, we realized that most of the really necessary perhapses had come true; that the some-days had gone by, adding one touch to another, until at last the Garden Some-day stood at our threshold with the alluring crayon plan in its hand. We recognized that instead of a paper Perhaps it might become a fragrant, blooming Certainty. Joyfully we looked our happiness in the face, and, with the intrepidity of ignorance, prepared to lay the garden out immediately, and to plant it in the spring. As usual, I decided to do the deciding. (If I were writing in the popular gardenauthor idiom I should label the other members of my family in some such way as this, — the Man of Trustfulness, or the Youth of Reposefulness; indicating that they were the ones to regard and admire, I the one to do and to dare; but I prefer to summarize our case by repeating that I, as usual, decided to do the deciding.) So I began to map out the beds as they were designed to lie, in front of our south terrace, allowing the yellow chalk-marks to indicate yellow lilies; the blue spots, canterbury-bells; and the pink patches, poppies and hollyhocks.

Here began the first term in my new course of education. The flower-beds showed such a marked inclination to lay themselves out that, in order to get the paths in the middle, the grassplots of equal size, and the beds running at right angles and parallel to the house, I was obliged to grope my way fumblingly back to the rudiments of geometry and arithmetic. To what I had imagined I could do in a few hours, I devoted several days, growing ever more enthusiastic as I noted the transition from pencil-marks to clothes-lines, from clothes-lines to rows of sod, and from these to actual flower-beds in the solid earth.

Meantime, when wind and labor and happiness had tired me to the point of a retreat indoors, I sat down to make out a list of plants which should carry out the promise of the colored chalks, for I had been told that it was well to order early, against the first spring warmth and rains.

I selected blue canterbury-bells to fill in a bed which was visible from my favorite sofa; and here began my repolishing of another branch of mathematics,— algebra: to let x represent the square space to be filled, and y the size of a canterbury-bell, and find z, the number of plants I should need, — knowing absolutely nothing of canterbury-bells, except that my friend’s vases of them had enchanted me, and that I had been the recipient of a beautiful blue bunch one day last April, — or was it October? I remembered that they illumined my blue dining-room upon the occasion of a luncheon-party; and by that token I knew that it must have been in June. But perhaps they had come out of a greenhouse?

I realized that I must really inform myself about these flowers. To that end I looked up some old and slighted seed-catalogues and began my researches. With shame I now recall the depths of ignorance, in spite of which I gayly undertook the disposition of my garden space. Why! I could not even find the canterburybells until I stumbled upon a preposterous lithograph of their familiar faces, and through this clue discovered them to be campanulœ. So Latin was to be added to my curriculum! My pretty bouquets of pinks and baby’sbreath were henceforth to be gathered from beds of dianthi and gypsophilœ; my daisies and lilies became bunches of bellis perennis and of longiflori rubri; a double flower claimed the adjective plenissimum, and the colors changed from blue and white and pink to ceruleum, album, roseum. It was all very interesting; soon my tired sense of humor began to be roused. I found myself laughing at the mixed assembly who had stood godfathers to my plants — especially the Latinized Irishmen, Scotchmen and Germans; the O’Brieni, the MacArthuri, the Kuhli, the Hoopesi, the Smalli, the Shorti. I began to think of my dearest friends as Jonesi, Browni, and Dickensonii.

I felt as I used to feel when I and the other small girls in the neighborhood indulged in what was known to us as ‘ pig-Latin.’ And when, at night, my overcharged brain attempted to sleep, I fancied myself to be Ophelia, distractedly scattering my treasures before the Danish monarchs and singing, ‘There’s rosmarinus officinalis, that’s for remembrance; pray you, love, remember: and there is viola lutea splendens, that’s for thoughts . . . There’s phœniculum vulgare for you, and aquilegiœ cœruleœ hybridœ; there’s thalictrum paniculatum; . . . you must wear your thalictra with a difference. There’s an arctotis grandis; I would give you some violœ odoratœ, but they withered all when my father died.’ Poor Hamlet and his poor crazy love! What might not a Berkshire garden have done for them!

But further in regard to my canterbury-bells. I think I can no more vividly picture to you my complete horticultural ignorance than by telling you that I used often to wonder what there was to be done in a garden in the autumn; was not the out-of-door period almost over? The astonishing information that my pretty campanulœ; should have been planted early in October (and then not by seeds, but with well-started little plants) was somewhat disquieting, as it was already the middle of that month, and the ground was not even ready. I had been supposing that all that was necessary was to deposit my seeds next April, and to pick my flowers next June; whereas they should have been started at least three months ago! My disappointment would have been very great had I not found comfort in my catalogues, which assured me that the nurserymen had previously dealt with unprepared amateurs, and had raised, for my benefit apparently, young plants all ready for their second season of existence.

In determining not to be caught unawares again, I acquired a new sense of the value of Foresight, a virtue which I had hitherto somewhat underprized, along with thrift and caution, as being of too utilitarian a nature to be strictly beautiful or noble. Spontaneity is to me so much more charming, always, than calculation! Generosity so much more lovable than prudence! But my little prospective blue-bells were teaching me many things, and this was one of their most emphatic lessons, — that foresight is morally and æsthetically more dependable than impulse; and that painstaking may be duller than ardor, but that it produces more and longer bloom.

The moral course of discipline thus connected with my novitiate ran side by side with the mental. While Patience, Prudence, Foresight, Faith, Hope, and Charity had all been pressed into the service of my future garden, I had been reviving at the same time my disused talents for Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra, and Latin. Now it became necessary to take up Chemistry and Climatology in order that my little seedlings might have the proper kind of soil, and that they should be chosen with regard to the mountain-climate which was their destined environment. The subject of fertilizers (who would ever have thought it!) became to me an engrossing fad. My sisters of the Order, who seem to possess an a priori knowledge of the proper proportion of sand and leaf-mould, of sunshine and shade, of dampness and dryness, requisite to the needs of their various gardens, can hardly imagine the reassurance which I found in the statement that such and such an enticing plant was ‘ perfectly hardy in any soil’; or my discouragement in learning that I had selected an alluring variety which could thrive only in the Southern States. A new world of unheardof fascinations was opened up to me through the insidious pages of those seedmen’s lists!

As an aid to the assimilation and quick application of so much undigested and recent information, I finally drew up a series of colored maps and tables; for the thing was growing so complicated to my mental grasp that I needed visual assistance in classifying the colors, heights, periods of bloom, lengths of life, and methods of culture, of my prospective garden-products. To verify the conflicting statements of different, text-books, to tabulate this mass of contradictory statistics, and then to draw and color the plans and order the seeds, — for these labors all my faculties were marshaled into service: imagination and business acumen, technique, and creative impulse.

My charts demanded toll of Art, Science, and Philosophy, with an uncompromising peremptoriness that no live garden would ever inflict. One little growing plant that fails to bloom cannot have much significance in a big flower-bed; but one little error in the reckoning of its distance apart from its neighbors may make a difference of hundreds of plants and thousands of blossoms. One small discrepancy in the statistics of the blooming period of some particular plant, upon which one has depended to supply a pink patch in an otherwise colorless bed, — say the tulip bed after June, — may give rise to an elaborate revision of the whole color scheme, when, for instance, one textbook tells you that it blooms all summer, and another that it blooms from July sixteenth to August twelfth.

But, close as my concentration was obliged to be, I felt that it was good for my relaxed mind. Even if to-day I did not confidently hope to see my dear posies where I now see but a watercolor drawing, I should thank them (or my visions of them) for the beneficial discipline which my mind and heart have undergone in their imaginary behalf.

My acquaintance with flowers, hitherto, has been mainly conducted through the medium of the botanist or the florist; as though one should seek to acquire a pleasant circle of friends by studying their physiology and anatomy, or by visiting an ethnological exhibit! I intend henceforth to make friends with my family of plants, and am already taking much delight in learning to speak the language of their domestic life. Certain words and phrases which I have but recently heard or understood I now can never speak without an exultant feeling of intimacy which belongs to the inner circles of the Order of the Garden. Such a term is ‘mulch,’ which seems to me to signify a sort of poultice; another is ‘pinching back’; still another is ‘a habit of growth.'

According to the dictum of modern analysis, it is habit of growth that actually makes a personality; our habits lay the very corner-stone of our mental, moral, and physical selves; so that it would be quite justifiably profound to say, ‘ by men’s habits shall ye know them.’ As, in my researches, I was constantly meeting the application to plant-life of this term ‘habit,’ I perceived that a very nice appreciation of values might be displayed in the choice of the plants which one is thinking of introducing into one’s own garden. This choice involves the imparting, or the not imparting, of a certain moral tone to the garden. A welldefined individuality seems to inhere in a plant which is described as ‘very dwarf in habit.’ When I remember the pettiness, the closeness to earthy things, the low spiritual stature, that go with a dwarf habit of mind outside our flower-gardens, I think I will not have, in my own, very many plants of that kind. Then I think of the ‘dense, bushy habit’ of certain other people; the ‘spreading’ habit, the ‘trailing, drooping’ habit, and even the ‘weeping’ habit; and turn instinctively toward the plants whose habits are said to be ‘branching and free,’ ‘stately,’ ‘erect,’ ‘feathery and graceful,’ or ‘neat and compact’; realizing that one flower differeth in glory from another even as do one’s other friends; and that in the garden of plants, as in the garden of Life, one may be fastidious without learning to be unkind.

There are also other traits in plants which, although they may not exactly have a moral bearing upon our regard for them, may, nevertheless, remind us of secret affinities or exasperations existing between us and our fellowperennials. Do you not feel, in regarding a seed which requires six months to germinate (as in the case of certain violets), that you have had the same sensation before? Perhaps in the presence of a leisurely friend whose irritating delays and procrastinations are always forgotten and atoned for by the violet-like freshness and aroma of her personality? Or when you are told that other seeds, like those of the morning-glory, will be greatly facilitated and hastened in their sprouting, if given a night’s soaking in warm water, do you not recall a friend with symptoms?

Do not the splendid varieties of poppies and larkspur labeled ‘hybrid ’ and glowing among their aristocratic, but uninteresting, relatives of purer descent, remind you of a glorious western girl in Boston? And by the habit, color, perfume, and generosity of bloom, in fact, by all the excellences of its species which are foretold upon its label, I find much to symbolize the best and pleasantest of American society, in a packet of seeds catalogued as ‘specially-selected double-mixed.'

My heart expands to meet the little flowers that shall some day bloom for me, as I think of all that I want them to do for me. I must be ambitious if I am to associate with their teeming, striving life; but also very calm when I come into their silence, their still rapture in the hot sunshine, their patient endurance of drought, their quiet, steadfast growth. They must free me from envy if my neighbor’s garden outshines mine; when their own superiority gladdens my eyes, they must make me very magnanimous; and I must be tender and helpful toward their struggles and weakness. Freely they will have received their bounty from sun and wind and bee and bird; freely they will spill their perfume for me, their only rivalry lying in their endeavor to be the more alive, the more abundant, the more responsive, to the universal life about them. So they must, make me very generous. I want them, too, to bring me their own health of soul and body; to teach me to love their unconscious, openair freedom, their joy in the common soil and the skyward gaze of their faces. Let their honest clamor for light and warmth teach me to love the vivid, innocent life of the senses. Let my imagination see in them the poetry and religion of the summer world.