DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16633#0394
374
History of Garden Art
part in the famous gardens of that epoch. We have to take a leap of nearly two centuries
to find gladioli exciting the least attention. Then in 1810 we find Dean Herbert raising
new varieties, and not only so, but twenty-four years later telling of seedlings raised by one
Bidwill, an Englishman, from parents that were destined to become more famous through
their offspring than they had ever been of themselves. One of these parents was certainly
a species called psittacinus, a native of South Africa; the other has been variously stated
as cardinalis, floribundus, and oppositiflorus. Under the name of gandavensis, so called
because the hybrids, obtained from the garden at Enghien in Belgium, were distributed by
a Ghent (Gand) nurseryman, the progeny of this cross, in the hands of Kelway, Standish,
Burrell and other English raisers, as well as in those of the Frenchman Souchet, made the
gladiolus one of the greatest of garden flowers.
This is not the place to pursue the subject of flower-creation, important and fascinating
though it is; it must suffice to say that what happened with gladioli happened also with
other great garden flowers. The English banker Martin-Smith and the Scots gardener
Douglas did for the carnation, Eckford did for the sweet pea, and Michael Foster, Dykes
and Bliss did for the iris, what the florists already named had done for the gladiolus. James
Kelway improved the peony and the delphinium as much as he had improved the gladiolus;
and these two splendid flowers in themselves had an immense influence on the extension
of herbaceous borders. It is one thing to have a conception, it is another to have the
material with which to develop it. Had there been hundreds of magnificent gladioli, peonies,
delphiniums and irises in 1650 there might have been no Versailles, for " Le Roi Soleil"
might have become enamoured of herbaceous borders.
A TRIBUTE TO WRITERS
Having paid one tribute to raisers, let us pay another to writers. At least three authors
of force in William Robinson, Gertrude Jekyll and Reginald Farrer played a great part
in changing the style of English gardening. As a writer of pure genius not less than as an
intrepid collector, the ill-fated Farrer stands supreme. But Robinson was the earlier and
probably on the whole the more influential writer. In such books as The English Flower
Garden, Alpine Flowers for English Gardens and The Wild Garden, he attacked unsparingly
the parterre, bedding-out and ribbon-border systems, with their stiffness, formality and
garish colours; and he argued with great force the superiority of a more natural system,
in which hardy plants (both shrubby and herbaceous), alpine flowers, and trees and shrubs
naturally grown, should play the most prominent parts.
The first edition of The English Flower Garden appeared in November 1883. Forty-
three years later, and at the age of eighty-seven, the author produced a fourteenth edition.
This is a remarkable record, testifying at once to the virility and stamina of both book and
writer. There can be few, if any, such cases in the history of literature. The strength of
the book lay no more in the principles of natural beauty which the author so forcibly
propounded, appealing though they were, than in the thousands of cultural details which
he gave relating to the many thousands of species described.
Robinson's theories were not in all cases new; for example, in attacking "absurd
'knots' and fashions from old books" and "attempts to . . . get colour by the use of
History of Garden Art
part in the famous gardens of that epoch. We have to take a leap of nearly two centuries
to find gladioli exciting the least attention. Then in 1810 we find Dean Herbert raising
new varieties, and not only so, but twenty-four years later telling of seedlings raised by one
Bidwill, an Englishman, from parents that were destined to become more famous through
their offspring than they had ever been of themselves. One of these parents was certainly
a species called psittacinus, a native of South Africa; the other has been variously stated
as cardinalis, floribundus, and oppositiflorus. Under the name of gandavensis, so called
because the hybrids, obtained from the garden at Enghien in Belgium, were distributed by
a Ghent (Gand) nurseryman, the progeny of this cross, in the hands of Kelway, Standish,
Burrell and other English raisers, as well as in those of the Frenchman Souchet, made the
gladiolus one of the greatest of garden flowers.
This is not the place to pursue the subject of flower-creation, important and fascinating
though it is; it must suffice to say that what happened with gladioli happened also with
other great garden flowers. The English banker Martin-Smith and the Scots gardener
Douglas did for the carnation, Eckford did for the sweet pea, and Michael Foster, Dykes
and Bliss did for the iris, what the florists already named had done for the gladiolus. James
Kelway improved the peony and the delphinium as much as he had improved the gladiolus;
and these two splendid flowers in themselves had an immense influence on the extension
of herbaceous borders. It is one thing to have a conception, it is another to have the
material with which to develop it. Had there been hundreds of magnificent gladioli, peonies,
delphiniums and irises in 1650 there might have been no Versailles, for " Le Roi Soleil"
might have become enamoured of herbaceous borders.
A TRIBUTE TO WRITERS
Having paid one tribute to raisers, let us pay another to writers. At least three authors
of force in William Robinson, Gertrude Jekyll and Reginald Farrer played a great part
in changing the style of English gardening. As a writer of pure genius not less than as an
intrepid collector, the ill-fated Farrer stands supreme. But Robinson was the earlier and
probably on the whole the more influential writer. In such books as The English Flower
Garden, Alpine Flowers for English Gardens and The Wild Garden, he attacked unsparingly
the parterre, bedding-out and ribbon-border systems, with their stiffness, formality and
garish colours; and he argued with great force the superiority of a more natural system,
in which hardy plants (both shrubby and herbaceous), alpine flowers, and trees and shrubs
naturally grown, should play the most prominent parts.
The first edition of The English Flower Garden appeared in November 1883. Forty-
three years later, and at the age of eighty-seven, the author produced a fourteenth edition.
This is a remarkable record, testifying at once to the virility and stamina of both book and
writer. There can be few, if any, such cases in the history of literature. The strength of
the book lay no more in the principles of natural beauty which the author so forcibly
propounded, appealing though they were, than in the thousands of cultural details which
he gave relating to the many thousands of species described.
Robinson's theories were not in all cases new; for example, in attacking "absurd
'knots' and fashions from old books" and "attempts to . . . get colour by the use of