Exquisite variety of shades in a winter garden: Country diary 100 years ago

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 9 December 1915

In Kew Gardens they leave the Siberian crabs unharvested, and this year the crop has been of a magnificence never surpassed. Several weeks ago every leaf had fallen, but the thousands of shining fruits still hang on and light up with the sun, the trees from a distance looking as if they were on fire. It is a singular effect, and most beautiful. For the most part the colours in a winter garden are quieter than this, but they are infinitely varied if planting has been intelligently done. Berries, evergreens, the varieties of tint in bark and wood, and the remainder of dried reeds and grasses and bamboos make up the chief sources of colour, but there is no season when some flowers are not to be had, too.

One of the things one appreciates most in coming to the country after long sojourning in town is the exquisite variety of shades in the stems of trees and shrubs. In towns even healthy trees are of a uniform black. In a country garden or plantation each kind has its distinct shade of colour. The arbutus is in every way one of the most beautiful of the smaller trees and its bark is one of its chief beauties. This is of a warm Indian red, and the tint runs to the tips of the smallest twigs, threading the glossy deep green leaves with colour throughout. As the bark grows older it peals off in a thin papery curl, leaving a most delicious pale green item revealed. Arbutus Andrachne is even more beautiful in this way than the commoner Arbutus Unedo, and there is a fine hybrid between the two. The shape of this romantic tree is as beautiful as its stem and leaf, and the pretty heath-like white flower is followed by crimson bells about the size of a small cherry, and very persistent.