Elizabeth and her German Garden | Page 8

in time for this summer. The eleven beds round
the sun-dial are filled with roses, but I see already that I have made
mistakes with some. As I have not a living soul with whom to hold
communion on this or indeed on any matter, my only way of learning is
by making mistakes. All eleven were to have been carpeted with purple
pansies, but finding that I had not enough and that nobody had any to
sell me, only six have got their pansies, the others being sown with
dwarf mignonette. Two of the eleven are filled with Marie van Houtte
roses, two with Viscountess Folkestone, two with Laurette Messimy,
one with Souvenir de la Malmaison, one with Adam and Devoniensis,
two with Persian Yellow and Bicolor, and one big bed behind the
sun-dial with three sorts of red roses (seventy-two in all), Duke of Teck,
Cheshunt Scarlet, and Prefet de Limburg. This bed is, I am sure, a
mistake, and several of the others are, I think, but of course I must wait
and see, being such an ignorant person. Then I have had two long beds
made in the grass on either side of the semicircle, each sown with
mignonette, and one filled with Marie van Houtte, and the other with
Jules Finger and the Bride; and in a warm corner under the
drawing-room windows is a bed of Madame Lambard, Madame de
Watteville, and Comtesse Riza du Parc; while farther down the garden,
sheltered on the north and west by a group of beeches and lilacs, is
another large bed, containing Rubens, Madame Joseph Schwartz, and
the Hen. Edith Gifford. All these roses are dwarf; I have only two
standards in the whole garden, two Madame George Bruants, and they
look like broomsticks. How I long for the day when the tea-roses open
their buds! Never did I look forward so intensely to anything; and every
day I go the rounds, admiring what the dear little things have achieved
in the twentyfour hours in the way of new leaf or increase of lovely red
shoot.
The hollyhocks and lilies (now flourishing) are still under the south
windows in a narrow border on the top of a grass slope, at the foot of
which I have sown two long borders of sweetpeas facing the rose beds,
so that my roses may have something almost as sweet as themselves to

look at until the autumn, when everything is to make place for more
tea-roses. The path leading away from this semicircle down the garden
is bordered with China roses, white and pink, with here and there a
Persian Yellow. I wish now I had put tea-roses there, and I have
misgivings as to the effect of the Persian Yellows among the Chinas,
for the Chinas are such wee little baby things, and the Persian Yellows
look as though they intended to be big bushes.
There is not a creature in all this part of the world who could in the
least understand with what heart-beatings I am looking forward to the
flowering of these roses, and not a German gardening book that does
not relegate all tea-roses to hot-houses, imprisoning them for life, and
depriving them for ever of the breath of God. It was no doubt because I
was so ignorant that I rushed in where Teutonic angels fear to tread and
made my tea-roses face a northern winter; but they did face it under fir
branches and leaves, and not one has suffered, and they are looking
to-day as happy and as determined to enjoy themselves as any roses, I
am sure, in Europe.
May 14th.--To-day I am writing on the verandah with the three babies,
more persistent than mosquitoes, raging round me, and already several
of the thirty fingers have been in the ink-pot and the owners consoled
when duty pointed to rebukes. But who can rebuke such penitent and
drooping sunbonnets? I can see nothing but sunbonnets and pinafores
and nimble black legs.
These three, their patient nurse, myself, the gardener, and the gardener's
assistant, are the only people who ever go into my garden, but then
neither are we ever out of it. The gardener has been here a year and has
given me notice regularly on the first of every month, but up to now
has been induced to stay on. On the first of this month he came as usual,
and with determination written on every feature told me he intended to
go in June, and that nothing should alter his decision. I don't think he
knows much about gardening, but he can at least dig and water, and
some of the things he sows come up, and some of the plants he plants
grow, besides which he is the most unflaggingly