My first gardener had been employed at the Manor, when I came, for
very many years, and at the end of ten more he was obliged to resign
through old age. He had planted the poplars round the mill-pond in his
earliest days, and, among other trees, the beautiful weeping wych-elm
on the lawn behind the house. The weeping effect he produced by
beheading the tree when quite small and grafting it with a slip of the
weeping variety, and the junction was still plainly visible. It was a
symmetrical and, especially when in bloom, a lovely tree, but as the
blossoms died and scattered themselves all over the grass, they
worried the methodical old man, and every spring he wished it had
never been planted. It had flourished amazingly, and we could
comfortably find sitting room at tea for sixty or seventy people at a
garden-party in its shade.
He was an excellent gardener, but did not care about novelties in
flowers, though at one time he made a hobby of raising new kinds of
potatoes. His greatest success was the original Ashleaf variety, the
stock of which he sold to Mr. Myatt for a guinea, and which was
afterwards introduced to the public as "Myatt's Early Ashleaf." It was
one of the best potatoes ever grown, very early, and splendid in
quality, and it was unfortunate that he parted with it so cheaply,
though, of course, the purchaser of the first few tubers had no idea
of its immense potential value, and possibly, like so many novelties,
it might have proved a failure.
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