The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1876-04-20
4 Garden In Natal,

r The following description of q garden
from Lady Barker's letters from South
Africa, was written from Maritzburg,
Natal The beds were as large as small
fields, slightly raised, and bordered by q
thick line of violets.@ Large shrubs of
semi-tropical plants made tangled heaps
OF purple, scarlet and white blossoms on
every side; the large creamy bells of the
datura dropped toward the reddish earth !;
thorny shrubs of that odd blush green
peculiar to Australian foliage grew, side
by side with the somber- leaved myrtle.
Every plant grew in the most liberal fash
ion; green things which we are accustomed
to see in small pots shoot up here to the
height of laurel bushes; q screen of scar
let euphorbia made brilliant line against
a background formed by a hedge of she'll
like cluster roses, and each pillar of the
veranda Of the little house had it's own
magnificent creeper. Up one standard an
ipomea twined closely another pillar
was hidden by the luxuriance of a trum-
pet-honeysuckle, while third was thick
ly covered by an immense passion. flower.
In shady, damp places grew many varie-
ties of roses and blue hydrangeas, while
other be:s were lined by gay patches of
verbenas of every hue and shade. The
sweet-scented verbena is one of the CON-
monest and most successful shrub in a
Natal garden, and just now the large
bushes of it which one sees in every d.
rection are covered by tapering spikes of
its tiny white blossoms. But the feature
of this garden was roses-roses
on each side whichever way you
turned, and I should think of at least a
hundred different sorts. Not the stiff
standard rose tree of an English garden,
with its few precious blossoms, to be
looked at from distance and admired
with respectful gravity. No; in this
garden the roses grow as they might have
grown in Eden-untrained, unpruned, in
enormous bushes covered entirely by
magnificent blossoms, each bloom of
which would have won a prize at rose
show. There was one cloth. gold rose
bush that shall never forget-its size, its
fragrance, its wealth of creamy yellowish
blossoms. A few yards off stood a still
bigger and more luxuriant pyramid, some
ten feet high, covered with the large, deli
cate and regular pink bloom of the souve-
nir-de-malmaison. When I talk of a
bush only mean one special bush which
caught my eye. suppose there were
fifty cloth-of: gold and fifty souvenir rose.
bushes in that garden. Red roses, white
roses, tea-roses, blush-roses, moss-roses,
and last-not least-the dear, old-fash.
ioned, Eomely cabbage-rose, sweetest and
most sturdy Of all. You could wander fol
acres and acres among fruit trees and plan
tations of oaks and willows and Other
trees, but you never got away from the
roses. There they were, beautiful, deli
cious things at every turn-hedges of them
screens of them, and giant bushes of them
on either hand. As l have said before
though kept free from weeds by some
half-dozen scantily-clad but stalwar1
kafirs with their awkward hoes, it was
not bit like trim English garden. il
was like garden in which Lalla Rookh
might have wandered by moonlight, talk
ing sentimental philosophy with hel
minstrel Prince under old Fadladeen's
chapcronage, or garden that Boccaccie
might have peopled with his Arcadiar
fine ladies and gentlemen. 1t was en-
phatically poets or painters garden
not gardeners garden. Then, as though
nothing should be wanting to make thu
scene lovely, one could hear through the
fragrant silence the tinkling of the little
"srruit" or brook al the bottom Of thu
garden, and the sweet song of the Cape
canary, the same sort of greenish fincf
which is the parent stock of all our cana
ries, and whose acquaintance I first made
in Madeira. A very sweet warbler it is
and the clear, fute-like notes sounded
prettily among the roses. From blossom
to blossom lovely butterflies flirted, perch
ing quite fearlessly on the red clay wall
just before me, folding and unfolding
their big painted wings. Every day I SCI
a new Kind of butterfly, and the moth
which one comes upon hidden ava!
under the leaves of the creepers durin,
the bright, noisy day are lovely beyon(
the power of words.