Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women - Wise Acres Yearbook (Ambler, PA)

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terest in garden craft the apple tree is coming back into its own. Almost all English gardens demonstrate how much interest changes of level, which necessitate steps and retaining walls, add to a design. From the more formal St. Catherine’s Court to the more informal terraces of Mr. Peto’s house, the soft-weathered grays of the native stone serve as a foil for the brilliancy of the flowers. Ilford Manor near Bath, the home of the well-known architect, Mr. Peto, boasts a charming terraced area. The clever use of stone features is full of inspiration for the designer. Granted that the architect has been extremely fortunate in his collection of Italian stone antiques, still it is the setting of paved terraces, stone stairways and walls which tie his collection together, and add the feeling for form without which the garden becomes a hodge-podge mixture with no delineation. English gardens are the result of a constant, long-continued growth. England has passed through many schools of garden craft and has learned something from each extravagance. We still enjoy the walled gardens of the monastery type, the stone garden houses, flowering orchards and fish ponds of the mediaeval pleasaunce, and the vine-covered arbors, and fascinating patterns of nosegay flowers and quaintly clipped box of the Tudor days. Since Elizabethan times there has been a logical, intimate relation between house and garden, and the flower border has demanded recognition. The beautiful parks of such estates as Bowood and Wilton House, with their famous lawns, magnificent low-spreading trees, and luxuriance of undergrowth planting tying the lawn to the tree masses, are the results of mistakes made during the reign of the landscape school iconoclasts. The more recent development of wild gardening during the end of the nineteenth century under Robinson, since the atrocious habit of so-called rockeries has disappeared, has resulted in the intelligent planting of wild areas. Miss Jekyll inspires enthusiasm for this kind of work, in descriptions of woodlands where masses or “drifts” of daffodils, scillas, rhododendrons and laurels, foxgloves, roses, lilies, and such trees as birches, beeches and holly give an ever-changing color picture. At her home, Munstead Wood, she has indulged her love of woodland plantings. The main ideas of this wild gardening have not been abandoned, still there has been a decided return to formality. The modern school of garden makers includes many architects who plan gardens depending on precision of line and balance of masses for beauty. The modern schools are tolerant of each other and attempt to use the best of each in its place without extravagance of manner. Elizabeth Dickerman Jones. 9

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ditions, we add charm in proportion as we create secluded enclosures, sheltered from the public gaze. Our design training demands some method of enclosing the flower planting to give unity and background to the picture, and England offers the tangible proof this principle. Everywhere we are impressed anew' with the charming enclosures from the low brick parapet walls of the city gardens of Guilford, and the simple weathered fences of Penshurst village, to the deep green of the yew hedges and the soft colorings of the old brick terrace wall at Penshurst Manor House. Simplicity of planting materials is a characteristic of much of the planting. By this I mean that exotic plants foreign to the country are not used in such abundance as here, where the owner is often influenced by the nurseryman’s glowing description of the latest importation, rather than by an inherent taste for gardening. The English people love their native trees and shrubs, and use them in abundance. In this way they obtain a luxuriance not possible with imported stock, and also the planting takes its proper place in the scheme and does not attract particular interest to itself. Horticultural varieties have their place, and, I think, nowhere have I seen this better shown than in the Golden Box Garden at Penshurst. The garden was one of the many long allees between tall dark green yew hedges with a wall sundial and semi-circular pool at the end of the vista. The deep borders on either side of the broad turf panel were filled with masses of violet and blue larkspur, filmy clouds of cream-colored meadow rue, the pure white trumpets of madonna lilies, and white grass pinks. For accent points at regular intervals on either side were balls of golden box in the midst of the flowers. I saw the garden in a pouring rain, and that may account for my pleasure in the brilliancy of the golden box. Much as I dislike yellow-leaved varieties under most circumstances, here the exotic quality of the box was a part of the well-conceived formal unit, and did not give the restless feeling that golden varieties used in an accidental fashion do. Another pleasing result of their ability to see beauty in the homely trees and shrubs is the use of the apple trees in their gardens. Since the time of the mediaeval pleasaunce, the English have appreciated the picturesque outline of this tree, and have often given it places of honor in the planting. At Penshurst they have a “flowery orchard” laid out with a simple design of grass walks, shade-loving flowers, and unadorned features. Many of the important vistas of this garden are laid through the midst of the orchards so that the apple trees play a definite part in the garden ensemble. The branches spread in a caressing fashion over the hedges, relieving the hard clipped line at points, and adding the glory of flower and fruit in its season. There were apple trees in our colonial gardens, perhaps from necessity, but for a time every useful tree or shrub was banished from the flower area. Now with renewed in- 8

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A Garden A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Fern’d grot— The veriest school Of peace; and yet the fool Contends that God is not— Not God! in Gardens! when the eve is cool? Nay, but I have a sign; ’Tis very sure God walks in mine.” J. E. Brown. Bermuda Through the Eyes of a Horticulturist If you have spent all your life in that part of the temperate region where the active growing season of plants is terminated by the arrival of the frost and snow of winter, and where man and beast have to provide for the winter by laying in stock, fuel and food, then you know of tropical and subtropical vegetation and climate only from accounts, written or spoken; or you may have received a glimpse of the vegetation in the corner of a private conservatory or in the conservatories of the Botanic Gardens in the cities. Since the region of the subtropical climate and the vegetation adapted to it stretches around the whole girth of the earth in zones north and south of the torrid zone, and as the vegetation in the different parts of these zones are modified by the relative distance from the equator, the various influences of atmosphere and water currents as well as relative location to the .oceans, altitude, geological formation and soil conditions,— it would take a long journey to become actually acquainted with the whole scope of subtropical vegetation. Therefore, if you desire to come in contact with subtropical climate and have only little time to spare, the Bermuda Islands with charms, origin, history, all their own should be your goal. A forty-eight-hour trip by boat from New York, covering nearly 700 miles, will take you to a group of coral islands out at sea, their geographical location being 32 deg. north and 64 deg. west. There are 365 islands in number, but only five of them are of importance now. These islands are built up by the coral building polypi on the top of an extinct volcano rising from the ocean. Crushed shells and lime mixed with sand and water under the influence of wind and weather are making the foundation of the islands. A thin layer of soil has accumulated from decomposing organic matter and sand, and plants adapted to conditions in Bermuda have become established. 10