Garden Calendars

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22507, 15 September 1938, Page 6 (Supplement)

Garden Calendars

At this time of the year, whatever the weather may be, our thoughts are occupied with plans for the coming season. At this moment, the postman brings the illustrated catalogues and 'the garden calendars complete with instructions. While the catalogues tempt us with glowing descriptions of novelties and improved varieties of old favourites, the calendars offer all the information we think we can possibly need to grow perfect blooms. If we followed the calendar, and indeed if the clerk of the weather did so, too, all might be accomplished to schedule. Alas! How often we fall short in actual achievement.

The nurserymen are disciples of the gospel of “do it now.” They give comprehensive suggestions for every month, every week of the year. Although we may feel a little uneasy, remembering past spasmodic efforts, experience teaches that “now is the time” to reform and follow their advice. The language of the calendars is dry as dust, and terse in the extreme, but it. expresses the epitome of the principles of gardening. These instructions are the result of years of practical experience, and as such, merit respect. The phraseology is reminiscent of the oldest of calendars —in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible—

“To every thing there is a season . . There is a time to plant, And a time to pluck up that which is planted.”

No one knows the truth of this better than the practical gardener, who ultimately finds the repetition of necessary operations guided by certain conditions in the world of nature. There is a proper time to carry out these operations, and for

(By Winifred . Chapman)

various reasons no other time will be so suitable.

Modern garden calendars lack the charm of the classic calendar of the seventeenth century, compiled by John Evelyn, a great diarist and nature lover of the time of Charles I. He was a man to whom the smallest thing was of interest and was also a close observer of the manifestations of nature in its many moods. In picturesque language his calendar gives advice on the care of flowers, vegetables, and trees which were known at that time. Reading it, one finds many familiar names, sometimes written in the old English spelling, and also some quite unfamiliar, probably of plants no longer grown. The directions in a” cases are precise and practical. “Now have a care your carnations catch not too much wet; therefore retire them to covert, where they, may be kept from the rain, not the air.” The whole of the Calendarium Hortense is written with an understanding and a kind philosophy lost, perhaps, to us. "Stake and binde up your weaker Plants and flowers against the windes, before they come too fiercely, and in a moment prostrate a whole year’s labour." The late, unwelcome frosts which come like the sting in the tail of winter and blight our dearest hopes in spring, were known to Evelyn ‘—“Now do the Farewell-frosts and Easterly windes prejudice your choicest tulips and spot them; cover such with mats or canvas to prevent freckles and sometimes destruction.”

In this wise old calendar, there is included each month a list of dowers in bloom, either in their prime or yet lasting. This is a veryuseful custom still, and one which ensures successful colour-schemes.