The Book of Town & Window Gardening — Edition Insights

uitable in our climate for outer windows and balconies.

I am convinced that for furnishing the balcony there is a great future for strong, well-made, handsome pots. It is wonderful what can be grown in them. No one understands this better than the flower-lover who has ever lived in any of the West Indian Islands, where there is no soil, and everything has to be grown in pots and tubs. Tubs are charming, so cheap, so easy to manage, and so decorative when tastefully painted. Plants always take kindly to tubs, and both tubs and pots can be arranged and moved about with ease--a great convenience when ladies undertake the work.

But tubs and pots are not the only receptacles that are useful for balconies, verandahs, leads, and window-doorways. Italian oil-jars answer very well, either whole or sawn in half to make two. Seakale pots serve the same purpose. For painting them in colour, nothing is better than a low-toned green, which harmonizes with all else. There is a certain dull red that pleases some tastes; but red is a colour that tires.

The quality of the material of which the receptacles are made must be considered, as it has a great deal to do with the amount of water the plants will require. Ordinary flower-pot ware is very porous, and plants grown in large flower-pots require more frequent watering than when grown in anything else. The evaporation through plain wood is not nearly so great as through unglazed earthenware, and when the wood is painted it is still less. Glazing an ordinary flower-pot makes it more protective. Old petroleum barrels (when the oil has been turned out) and butter-tubs are excellent plant-holders, but of course must have ample provision made for drainage, and several good-sized holes must be pierced at the bottom. If the tub or pot has not much depth of room underneath, it should be set on bricks, or raised in some other way. This assists drainage, and keeps the holes from being blocked by worms or otherwise. Re-potting is very seldom required if in the first instance good compost is freely given. The best way of feeding our tub plants and shrubs is very clearly explained in a paper on “Tub Gardening,” by Mr. Alger Petts in _The Garden_ of September 21, 1891. It is well worth study by those who mean to take seriously to tub-gardening; but most likely the tub-gardeners of the London balcony do not expect their plants to live long. They would do so, however, if properly looked after and given a fair chance. One great advantage about flowering pot and tub plants is that they bear more blossoms grown in this way than if they were in the open border; the strength of them goes to blossom instead of root, as everybody knows.

London in June! How beautiful it is, especially at the West End, the best End! and who can doubt it owes much of its beauty to plants and flowers? There they are, in shops and dairies, even among the delicate confections of the modiste, pots of green Ferns, even fragrant blossoms. On a summer’s day in Bond Street I have sometimes stopped involuntarily to feast my eyes on the artistic arrangement of a shop-front, where blocks of ice and silvery white-bait, the scarlet lobster and the subtle pinks of salmon mingle with trails of grass and seaweed green. This is delightful, but we should like more of it. Why should not our streets be even gayer than they are now, and sweeter? Over the shop-fronts and on leads, as well as in the window-box or on the balcony, we would see something fresh and growing. Cut flowers are all very well, but they make only for beauty. The growing plant is a health-helper, as well as pleasing to the eye, for the carbonic fumes that kill us are positively good for plants; they live on and enjoy them. Trees and all green things are good; but trees, unless a street is very wide indeed, take up too much room, robbing us of light and preventing the air from circulating.

Balcony-gardening need never do this; we can keep to low-growing things and creepers. Many a town house has balconies large enough to lounge in. On a July evening, under the delicate thin curve of a new moon, or in starlight, how sweet the summer dusk, even in London, and flowers are just as fragrant here as in the country. Where so welcome as in cities are “pointed blossoms rising delicate, with the perfume strong we love”?

I was once a frequent visitor at a London house which was always kept full of growing plants, and could never enjoy one of them. Why? Because I knew each one was dying every moment. They were treated exactly like furniture. A dark corner would be “lighted up” by the splendour of a Scarlet Geranium in full bloom; (it did not remain scarlet long); a Daphne showed its fragrant stars on a davenport close to the fireplace, and a long way off the window. No one ever picked off a dead leaf or gave the plants so much as a cupful of cold water. Every few days the florist’s man came round, took away the invalids--for such they had become--and arranged a fresh lot. Poor plants, they had my sympathy! I do not think this treatment of flowers shows the least real love for them; better were it to grow the humblest blooms out in the open air, upon the balcony.

In a lady’s paper the other day I chanced to see some practical hints on how to convert a London balcony into a miniature garden, and thought them worth transcribing.

“One of the first things to be considered is what flowers will flourish in the smoky atmosphere. I have noticed that the ivy-leaf Geranium does well, and this makes a brave show, and grows rapidly. Close to the front of the balcony have some narrow boxes made of wood, painted green, and fill these with plenty of plants, which can be trained to the rails of the ironwork, and thus make quite a screen. A striped awning should be fixed to the wall of the house just above the drawing-room windows, and this can be made removable by driving iron staples into the wall and sewing rings on to the canvas awning. In the front three iron uprights must be fixed to the balcony, one at each end, and one in the middle. The top of each upright can be bent over to form a ring, and the awning can be tied on to these with strong tapes. Two large hanging baskets of ferns should be suspended from a thin rod, which is passed from end to end of the iron uprights, and if two more baskets are hung from the lowest rail of the balcony in front, the bower will be complete. With some matting on the floor and two lounge wicker chairs, this will make a charming retreat on a hot day and a cool lounge on a sultry evening.”

I can exactly picture such a balcony as this, and would edge the box with plants of musk, the smell of which would be delicious in the drawing-room, especially on a summer’s afternoon, just after it had been watered.

ROOF AND BACK-YARD GARDENS IN THE CITY

“High over roaring Temple Bar And set in Heaven’s third story.”

“O, green is the colour of faith and truth.”

When one comes to write of roof and back-yard gardens the pen must run less glibly; such oases in the dust and drouth of towns are few and rare. The roofs of English houses are not shaped well for gardening, and if there happen to be a back-yard, it is often more like a well than a garden; not a dripping well lined with fern and soft with moss, but a well walled round with smoke-black bricks, and not much of a sky above it. Yet garden-lovers do make their little plots somehow, even in London’s heart, and live there happily tending their flowers. In the broad City thoroughfare that leads from Blackfriar’s Bridge to St. Paul’s Cathedral stands a church among the shops and marts--an old church built by Sir Christopher Wren. Behind this building, up a narrow street--little more than a passage--is a Rectory-house hemmed in at back and sides with factories; yet, hidden away in this strange corner may be found a bower of greenery. Mrs. Clementi-Smith, the Rector’s wife, shall tell the story of her City garden in her own words. We must imagine it to be in the month of March.

“The foreground of our garden consists of a bank of rock work, interspersed by hundreds of the very finest Crocuses which one could find anywhere, mostly purple, bright mauve, pure white, and a few yellow. These were put in last autumn, and have certainly done splendidly, in spite of smuts and smoke. The only grievous thing about them is that, when the flowers are over, the bulbs will have to be pulled up and thrown away, as we have found that one season is quite enough for them; they would not flower again if left in for another year.”

In gardens such as this bulbs do better than anything else; they give back the treasure that was stored up by them when living in the air and sunshine. A little greenhouse between the wall and rock garden is full of ferns. Geraniums will not grow, but Cyclamen and Palms are well content, and Azaleas manage to bloom for one year--not more, as there is not enough sun to ripen the new wood. One fair-sized tree stands in the middle of the plot, a Lime; not a good town tree, because its foliage fades and falls so soon. This one is to come down and make room for an apple-tree.

The annals of another City garden are worth recording because so instructive. They were confided to the sympathetic ears of the editor of _The Garden_ under the title of “Struggles in Smoke.” Every reader sympathized. This garden, too, lay in the shadow of a cathedral, but in the north of England.

“Everything we touched was black, and how strong it all smelt of smoke and the mingled fumes of fried fish and burnt shoe-leather from the small shops that backed on to it! The garden was at the very edge of a wind-swept hill, the ground falling away so suddenly below it that the tops of the chimneys of the City beneath were just at the proper level to pour their smoke right into it. When the wind blew from the south, the thick clouds from the foundry and factory chimneys made it impossible to see across the garden. Then we had to set to work.”

Nothing teaches so well as an object-lesson. Let us hear what flowers were persuaded to grow in this garden of difficulties, where cats and sparrows, we learn, were nearly as troublesome as the smoke.

“Tiger Lilies seemed to love us best. These grew and spread and triumphed, till at times the garden glowed with an orange glory. Their cousins, the White Lilies, would have nothing to do with us. Naturally, bulbs were the most satisfactory things, and Crocus, Narcissus and Tulip were joyful, but soot-coloured Snowdrops were not inspiring. We felt rich when the Lilies of the Valley were in bloom--there were always enough to give away. We revelled in the carpets of Woodruffe and white Periwinkle, from which sprang great clumps of the yellow Trollius and the silvery stars of Astrantia. Auriculas, Double Daisies, Violas and Pansies did their best to make up to us for the lack of Violets and Mignonette.” A good list, and there is more to follow. “Christmas Roses did well, but very few bedding plants answered. Various Irises, Campanulas, Monkshood, Canterbury Bells, Lychnis and masses of _Epilobium-Angustifolium_ made things bright. The old pink Cabbage Rose and Gloire-de-Dijon flowered well. Cornflowers and Larkspurs were happy, and one small Pear-tree yielded fruit.” What love and toil must have gone to give such rich results, and how great the joy, can only be guessed by those who have had a like experience.

Roof-gardens are even rarer than yard-gardens. One that is full of interest may be seen in Bishopsgate Street, E.C., at the Home for Working Boys. Trees of quite a respectable size are grown in it; Sycamore trees twenty feet high, Limes from eight to ten feet, with Nut and Cedar, Chestnut, Holly, Fir, and Plane. Cats are, of course, a hindrance, but the wire netting which keeps them out is hidden in summer by Virginia Creeper, and on the parapets and in tubs and boxes are Evergreens and Orange plants, and bushes of Rose and Lilac. Eight or ten sorts of flowers bloom freely, Petunias doing best of all. Gardening operations, as carried on by the boys and Superintendent, are an unfailing source of amusement to the children of the surrounding poor. A pond and fountain with spray rising sixteen feet high are crowning glories of this shady jungle, where, but a few years since there was nothing to be seen but a bare zinc roof, some twelve yards square. The place has now been pet-named “Pelham Park.”

A private roof-garden at the back of a London house, four stories from the ground, is graphically described by an amateur gardener, who says he “fights for failure,” but he does so cheerfully. There are some points, he says, on which the many-acred owner of a country garden might envy his rival on the roof. One is his personal intimacy with his garden kingdom and its subjects.

“Up among the chimney pots he has watched each plant through all difficulties struggling up into timid blossoms; he has washed away daily smuts and combated incessant sparrows with cotton entanglements, and now knows every flower, nay, every petal, with a personal love. He will tell you which day of the week the Pansy lost its second bud through the sparrows, just when it looked certain to be quite as good as the flower he got last year; or he will show you how the Canariensis, baffled by the same marauders last Friday week, has tried again with a second shoot which will be out before Wednesday; those Pansies were specially bought at Covent Garden; as for the Sweet Peas, they came as seedlings, not a tenth their present size, and they will be even better in a fortnight. The Solanum is a special prize, and comes from a country garden; but dearer than that is the Geranium, grown from one of his own cuttings, a real scion of the family.”

A Geranium among the slates and chimney stacks! This was a triumph indeed; enough to make the Clementi-Smiths at St. Andrew’s Rectory envious.

In these roof-gardens there are joys undreamed of by the stranger. A real honey-bee buzzing and working over the flower-beds, even a spider--a real garden spider, with a shining web, a country-looking weed, a stinging nettle,--a lively one that knows how to sting, and on one bright still evening, when the sunshine lingered on the gas-work’s chimneys, a humming-bird hawk-moth fluttering well-pleased among the flowers.

After these flights among the tiles and chimney-stacks it is tame work, talking of the City gardens of the level ground; but, after all, they are the commonest and most generally useful. The dreary churchyards now made into play-grounds, where a few simple flowers bloom, and there is a shrub or two; we may see such any day at St. John’s in the Waterloo Road. And there are the old, old gardens about the Temple and the Law Courts; how many generations of lawyers they have cheered (not one space can be spared); and who has not felt a thrill of joy when nearing St. Paul’s Cathedral, to see the fresh green of the trees and the indescribable beauty of the rustling, swaying boughs, so strangely sweet in such a spot.

Not the least good done by our City gardens is the welcome given by them to bird and butterfly; even the seagulls did not come to London till after we had planted trees on the Embankment and laid down turf. The more gardens we make, the more country visitors will come to them, gladdening the Londoner with rural sounds.

“A cuckoo cried at Lincoln’s Inn Last April, somewhere else one heard The missel-thrush with throat of glee; And nightingales at Battersea.”

PLANTS FOR THE CITY POOR

“Along the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves and ways--every leaf a miracle.”

A kindly K.C. of my acquaintance is always telling us we ought to provide pianos for the poor. “So elevating”--this is his argument. Mine is, that pianos want too much practising--poor people have no time for it; much better give them window-boxes and a spade. A taste for gardening raises the most uneducated, and the mixed elements of chance and skill secure perennial freshness, giving a zest to the pursuit that makes it like the best kind of game.

Mrs. Free, of St. Cuthbert’s Lodge, Millwall, is doing an excellent work in encouraging a love of flowers among her poor. About four years ago, through her efforts, a Window-box Society was started. Members (there are now about seventy) pay twopence annually, and in return receive gifts in kind of bulbs and plants. Prizes are awarded for the best display of flowers. Few families, alas! possess the smallest bit of garden ground, and many have no space for a window-box, but must make the best of a few plants indoors, on a table as near the light as possible. This arrangement, often as I see it, never fails to give a double pang. The first is for the owners, and the second for the plants, that, although taking up more room than ought to be allowed them, are themselves starving for want of air and light.

Last summer, travelling by railway in the heart of London, a poorish-looking, but respectable man entered our carriage, carrying a basket of really beautiful flowers. He had grown them all himself, in a narrow little plot of ground where every single flower was a personal acquaintance. His Lilies were as fragrant as if from a cottage garden in the country. The Madonna-Lily always does grow well for poor people, as we have noticed in many a country garden.

Many good-hearted people have tried to bring the pleasure of plants and gardens to the City poor. Many of the schemes set out are quite Utopian. We cannot build cities after a plan, they grow, but individual enterprise may do much. I had enjoyed Mr. Cadbury’s well-made chocolate for many a year, before I found out a very good, and to me quite new reason for liking it. For forty years the good man had watched the class of people who worked for him in Birmingham, and came to the conclusion that the only practical way of raising them up from the degradation of their surroundings was to bring the factory-worker out on to the land, and give him a piece of garden, in which he could enjoy that most delightful of all recreations--the coming in touch with Nature on the soil. So he withdrew his great cocoa manufactory from the town, and established it in the pretty village of Bournville. The move was a great success.

Town board schools in some places are doing what they can to give their scholars practical instruction in Nature knowledge. In cities this is very difficult. Seeds do not germinate well in pots indoors. A school garden, however small, is worth anything; results are so much more satisfactory. The boys’ garden at Crook’s Place Board School, Norwich, is an example of what may be done in a town. The enclosure measures 50 yards by 20, and was formerly an ugly and uninviting corner of the Chapel Field. Builders’ rubbish has been cleared away, and replaced by good soil. Friends have sent seeds and bulbs and plants; stones have been gathered for a rock-garden, the boys work with enthusiasm, and the Norwich school-garden in summer is as bright a spot as one could see.

The young gardeners are instructed for an hour a day three times a week, and show great aptitude in learning. What a pleasant change from books and slates, and how educating in the best sense of the word! No occupation brings to light the better qualities of the mind so much as gardening, even if it is on ever so small a scale. Patience, forethought, sympathy, and tenderness all belong to the gardener--they must do so or his work will be a failure.