I have often been asked whether the
Portuguese have any distinctive form of gardening, and in answer I can only say
that, though there is no attempt to compete with the grand terraced gardens of
Italy or France, or the prim conventionality of the gardens of the Dutch,
still the little well-cared-for garden of the Portuguese has a great charm of
its own. Here, in Madeira, their gardens are usually on a very small, almost
diminutive, scale, according to our ideas of a garden. In the mother-country,
where they probably surround more imposing houses, they may attain to a larger scale,
but of that I know nothing.
The love of gardening, unfortunately, seems
to be dying out among the Portuguese in Madeira, and many a garden which was
formerly dear to its owner, each plant being tended with loving hands, has now
fallen into ruin and decay. The little paths, neatly paved with small round
cobble-stones of a pleasing brownish colour, have become overgrown and a prey
to the worst pest in Madeira gardens, the coco grass, which is enough to break
the heart of any gardener once it is allowed to get possession; its little
green shoots seem to spring up in a single night, and the labour of yesterday has
to be again the work of to-day if the neat, trim paths so necessary to any
garden are to be kept free from the invader. Or the box hedges, which were formerly
the pride of their owner, have lost their trimness and regularity from the lack
of the shears at the necessary season, and the garden only suggests departed
glories.
Luckily, a few of these gardens still
remain in all their beauty, and the pleasure their owners display in showing
them speaks for itself of their true love of gardening.
The plan of the garden is usually somewhat
formal in design, and as a rule centres in a fountain or water-tank, which
serves the double purpose of being an ornament to the garden and of supplying it
with water. The entrance to the garden is certain to be through a
corridor, with either square cement and plaster pillars, or merely stout wooden
posts, which carry the vine or creeper-clad trellis. The beds are not each
devoted to the cultivation of a separate flower, as would be the case in an English
garden, but single well-grown specimens of different kinds of plants fill the
beds. Begonias, in great variety, tall and short, with blossoms large and
small, shading from white through every gradation of pink to deep scarlet, form
a most important foundation for every Portuguese garden ; as, from their
prolonged season of blooming, some varieties seeming to be in perpetual bloom,
they always provide a note of colour. Pelargoniums, allowed to grow into tall
bushes, in due season make bright masses of colour, the velvety texture of
their petals seeming to enhance the brilliancy of their colouring. Fuchsias in
endless variety, salvias red and blue, mauve lantanas, scarlet bouvardias, and Linum
trigynum, with its clear yellow blossoms, help to keep the little gardens gay
through the winter months. The latter, though commonly called Linum, is a
synonym of Reinwardtia trigynum and a native of the mountains of the East
Indies.