Page 147 [147]
BROOK HILL
wZMIOMPARED with Brook Hill house, the main
4; Brook Hill garden—‘‘the Big Garden” as it is
called—is a very recent affair. Originally, the
vegetable garden lay just north of the house on a
large, level lawn. Within the last few years, the
pear trees that used to be in this garden were still
producing fruit, and the almost imperishable jonquil bulbs—in spite
of browsing cows and ruthless lawn mowers—fought their way
along for twenty-five years after the garden was moved.
Before 1850 this garden was transferred to a location of extra¬
ordinary beauty. It now lies on the crest of a sharply sloping hill
with a charming view across trees and meadows to the north. To
the south and east, at some small distance, lie "the woods,’ which
have never been slaughtered for fuel, and in whose keeping stand
beeches of immemorial age.
The site of the garden, in truth, should have been the site of
the house itself. Yet so beautifully is it located that one is apt to
forget in its contemplation that this particular site could have been
used for any other purpose. Entering by a gateway cut through
an arching hedge, the grass-edged walk runs straight for a hundred
and fifty yards or more. On either side are deep beds of flowers,
so designed that each season, from the earliest
‘Daffodils
That come before the swallows dare and take
Lhe winds of March with beauty,”
to the last Michaelmas daisy, has each its own peculiar gonfalon
of flowers.
Perhaps the most gorgeous period is when the Harrisonii roses
are in bloom. ‘Then it seems as if a field of the cloth-of-gold itself
were spread in waving welcome.
190]