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Edward Augustus Bowles - My garden in spring

Here you can read online Edward Augustus Bowles - My garden in spring full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 1997, publisher: Timber Press, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

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E. A. Bowless trilogy reflects his understanding of the plants in his legendary garden at Myddelton House. Each of the volumes contains a new preface by Charles Elliott.

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title My Garden in Spring author Bowles E A publisher - photo 1

title:My Garden in Spring
author:Bowles, E. A.
publisher:Timber Press, Inc.
isbn10 | asin:0881923753
print isbn13:9780881923759
ebook isbn13:9780585307756
language:English
subjectMyddelton House Garden (Enfield, London, England) , Bowles, E. A.--(Edward Augustus)--Homes and haunts--England--London, Plants, Ornamental--England--London, Spring--England--London.
publication date:1997
lcc:SB406.G7B68 1997eb
ddc:635.9/53
subject:Myddelton House Garden (Enfield, London, England) , Bowles, E. A.--(Edward Augustus)--Homes and haunts--England--London, Plants, Ornamental--England--London, Spring--England--London.
Page iii
MY GARDEN IN SPRING
By E. A. Bowles, M.A.
London T C E C Jack 67 Long Acre WC And Edinburgh 1914 - photo 2
London: T. C. & E. C. Jack
67 Long Acre, W.C.
And Edinburgh
1914
Page v
TO
MY FATHER
HENRY C. B. BOWLES
WHO HAS SO KINDLY AND PATIENTLY ALLOWED ME
TO EXPERIMENT WITH HIS CARDEN FOR
THE LAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
Page vii
Preface
It is a pleasure and a privilege to be asked to write about a real garden. There are nowadays so many gardeners that gardens are growing every year more rare. Every one must have their "rock-work," and the very rich are out to purchase the glories of the Alps at so much a yardwith all the more contentment if the price be heavy, so that their munificence may be the more admired. Passion for display appears the ruling note in English horticulture of every kind and in every period: we want a show. It is now not so very long since carpet-bedding went out of fashion with a roar of contemptuous execration; and for a short period we were all for a return to what we spoke of as "Nature," but what was merely wobbly anarchy reduced to a high art. But in those days at least the rock garden was a place of plants, and if such a thing existed in one's ground at all, it was not a mere dog's grave to trail Nasturtiums over, but a fabric framed because its owner really wanted to do his best for Dianthus glacialis or Campanula pulia. But now the accursed thing is once more rearing its head, and carpet-bedding is bursting up to life again in the midst of the very rock garden itself, of all places impermissible and improbable. For the rich must have their money's worth in show; culture will not give it them, nor rarity, nor interest of
Page viii
the plants themselves: better a hundred yards of Arabis than half a dozen vernal Gentians. So now their vast rock-works are arranged like the pattern of a pavement: here is a large triangle filled neatly with a thousand plants of Alyssum saxatile, neatly spaced like bedded Stocks, and with the ground between them as smooth and tidy as a Guardsman's head; then, fitting into this, but separated by stone or rock, more irregular great triangles of the same orderone containing a thousand Aubrietia "Lavender," and the next a thousand Lithospermum prostratum But nothing else; neither blending nor varietynothing but a neat unalloyed exhibit like those on "rock-works" at the Chelsea Show. But what a display is here! You could do no better with coloured gravels. Neat, unbroken blanks of first one colour and then another, until the effect indeed is sumptuous and worthy of the taste that has combined such a garden. But "garden" why call it? There are no plants here; there is nothing but colour, laid on as callously in slabs as if from the paint-box of a child. This is a mosaic, this is a gambol in purple and gold; but it is not a rock garden, though tin chamois peer never so frequent from its cliffs upon the passer-by, bewildered with such a glare of expensive magnificence. This is, in fact, nothing but the carpet-bedding of our grandfathers, with the colour-masses laid on in pseudo-irregular blots and drifts, instead of in straight stretches; and with outlines of stone between each definite patch, instead of the stitching that divides similar colour patch from patch in the crazy quilt. Well, such artists in the grand style have their reward.
Page ix
What would they say now if they were led into the garden through which we are now going to be conducted by its creator? Never before having seen a place for growing plants in, never having heard the names of Ellacombe or Wolley-Dodor, if they have, connecting them with no vitalising work or ideahow will their noses not corrugate in scorn on merely perceiving plantsonly plants, plants well grown, plants happy, plants well suited and consulted and made at home. But there are others, less rich, who will be glad of traversing such holy ground, and learning how the hills. can be made to yield up their secret, and their children taught to forget the far highlands of their birth, and feel themselves contented and at home within a dozen miles of London. The essence of the real garden is the insignificance of the garden itself; the soul of the real garden lies in the perfect prosperity of the plants of which it is the home, instead of being merely, by the modern reversal of right laws, the expensive and unregarded colour-relief of its titanically-compounded cliffs of stucco and Portland cement. Come into Mr. Bowles's garden and learn what true gardening is, and what is the real beauty of plants, and what the nature of their display.
A lowly piece of ground, wandering here and there in gentle natural ravines and slopes. No vast structures, but bank added to bank as the plants require it, and nothing asked of the structure except that it be simple and harmonious, and best calculated to serve the need of the little people it is to accommodateto accommodate, and not be shown off by. For here the plants are lords,
Page x
and the rocks take their dim place in the background as helps and comforts indeed, but by no means as the raison d'tre and pompous origin of the whole edifice. And the result? Let the lovers of display go home abashed before a display such as not a hundred bedded-out Aubrietias can give. If it were ever to be thought for a moment that the real rock garden is a place of minute moribund plants and microscopic minutenesses, so that the only alternative lies between this and the gorgeous soullessness of the Portland cementery, let those who have held such notions only visit Mr. Bowles's garden at almost any moment of the year, and wander past great tuft after tuft of the rarest and most difficult brilliancies that have quite forgotten they are rare or difficult at all or in exile, but are here making individual masses individually beloved and tended, as full of rich colour and the blood of life as they were on the Cima Tombea or the Col de Tenda. There is no lack of show, indeed, as we wander past blazing old clump after clump of glorious Tulips that no one else can make survive two seasons, or wonder at the glowing rows of Primulas that no one else can flower, here gorgeous in their patches as on the ridge of the Frate di Breguzzo itself. Indeed, the most passionate admirer of Aubrietia will have to confess that his eye is no less completely filled here, and filled with more satisfaction and less monotony than in the most expensive show-garden, filled with plants at so much per thousand.
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