Fulham: The Flower Walk in the Walled Garden, by Jessie Macgregor (1847-1919). 1915. Watercolour drawing. Source: Macgregor, facing p. 90. Macgregor describes Fulham Palace as "the well-known summer residence of the Bishops of London" (62).
Macgregor describes the blossoming fruit trees first, and then the spring flowers in the herbaceous border: with their borders pf green box bushes
it is in spring that this kitchen garden is at its loveliest ; for then the young apple, and pear, and plum trees, in long perspective on either side of the cinder walk, are in blossom. They do not all flower at once, and they have few leaves in early April; but their white and red blend deliciously with the delicately-tinted hyacinth, the daffodil, and the narcissus, and, a little later, with the wallflower and the white iris ; this last is very abundant and much in evidence here, growing in bushy clumps. The pale spring flowers, better behaved than their summer sisters, do not straggle over the borders, but hold themselves upright within their legitimate limits, which are marked out by frontier lines of ancient box. This is ever-green box, of course; dark in winter, but now — "in the sweet of the year," bright with tender young leaves.
But what is especially pleasing, because it is so easily overlooked, is Macgregor's description of the central path, which she has seen with an artist's eye:
The path itself, though only a "cinder walk," assumes in the sunshine an indescribably delicate and beautiful colour — something between lilac and peach-blossom in tint — while the short, smooth, dry tufts of "bent" grass, that push themselves and lift them- selves up everywhere between the minute cinders, turn to pale gold as they catch the light; for that is the way in which Nature always treats her colour schemes; to avoid monotony she carefully embroiders them with something else.
Macgregor ends this fine piece of word-painting with the distant view, the place to which the path leads: "The eye follows the walk up to the old brick boundary wall at its farther end; above this a magnificent evergreen-oak tells as a precious touch of dark, enhancing by contrast the pallid delicacy of the lovely vernal hues of earth and sky" (91).
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Bibliography
MacGregor, Jessie. Gardens of Celebrities and celebrated gardens in and around London. London: Hutchinson, 1918. Internet Archive. Contributed by the University of British Columbia Library. Web. 20 March 2022.
Created 20 March 2022