A Resident's wife in Nigeria

I remember that my opinion of the possibilities of gardening successfully in Northern Nigeria expressed itself in three stages: first, on arrival, with joyful confidence: ‘I am certain anything will grow out here!’ Secondly, after six months, in despair: ‘Nothing will grow out here!’ Thirdly, after a year, with renewed but chastened cheerfulness: ‘Some things will do all right!’

The subject was more or less unexplored ground when I arrived in the country five years ago; I could get little or no gardening information, except that one or two enterprising spirits had tried—and failed. Perhaps the chief reason for this was that the amount of work to be got through in each day makes it practically impossible for any Government official to give the personal attention absolutely necessary to the making of a garden.

The country produces no native gardeners, similar to the mali of India; the utmost one can extract from the local artist is that he will scratch up weeds and grass, and faithfully water everything daily in the dry season. The tour of service of from twelve to eighteen months, followed by leave home and an uncertain prospect of returning to the same station, has, I suppose, prevented any attempt at all being made in the majority of cases, and the very few spots that have been started as gardens seem to have flourished until their owners left, when they were utterly neglected, the bush claimed its own, and all traces of cultivation vanished far quicker than they had appeared.

But now that things are progressing generally in Nigeria, life conditions improving somewhat, and each station containing a larger number of white men, willing to carry on each others’ labours in this line, the gardening problem comes nearer solution, though I fancy that, for all time, it will need a stout heart and endless perseverance.

The Flower Garden

The first ‘don’t’ that occurs to me under this heading is on the subject of English out-door flowers. One’s natural instinct is to try and surround oneself with the old favourites, sweet-peas, mignonette, poppies and pinks, but the attempt, I fear, is sheer waste of time and trouble; hardly any will come to maturity and blossom in the verandah; they will grow up cheerfully to a certain point, then wither off, and transplanting seedlings in the open is out of the question, unless permanent shade can be given.

I think I can claim to have given them a fair trial—I brought out the usual ‘collection’ from England, made experimental sowings in boxes on the verandah, nursed and watched them tenderly, but I got no results in the blossom line except from the convolvulus. I then tried a collection from a French firm, and from these seeds, I succeeded in coaxing blossoms, from zinnias, marigolds, nasturtiums, balsams and petunias—the rest were a complete failure.

My third experiment was with acclimatized seeds from India, and these gave far the best results. The first success was a splendid bed of portulacca, blazing with crimson, white, mauve and gold, rejoicing in the sun which shrivelled everything else. I should like every one to make a point of raising this beautiful little flower, for it is easily grown, and gives a real reward for very little trouble. It should be sown at the end of the rains, in boxes on the verandah, sheltered until the little plants look sturdy and fleshy, then planted out in bed or border, and shaded from the sun for a day or two, until growth is started, the plants will then begin to spread and blossom into a carpet of glowing colour.

Balsams, marigolds, sunflowers, vinca and zinnias will do well sown out in the open, under moderate shade, especially the last-named; the finest zinnias I have ever seen were a bunch presented to me out of a bachelor’s little garden at Zaria. Sunflowers attain an immense height and blossom magnificently; I had huge plants, almost trees, at Bussa, fourteen and sixteen feet high, bearing masses of flowers. Balsams I have always been a little contemptuous over, but the best double kinds are well worth while cultivating. A special packet from Sutton, called, I think, ‘Rose,’ gave splendid results, thick clusters of delicate rosy pink blossoms, resembling pink carnations or rosettes of chiffon, flowered in one bed continuously from July to December, and established themselves on the firmest basis in my affections. All varieties of convolvulus can be sown outside, and will climb and twine and riot delightfully everywhere, clothing hideous walls and bare fences. In Lokoja I have taken great pains to cultivate freely that most charming creeper, the sapphire blue Clitoria, a climbing pea of the greatest beauty, and a free grower, bringing, in the first instance, twenty seeds from Government House in Sierra Leone! It has rewarded my efforts so well that now no one need want for quantities of seed; there is also a white variety which is just as beautiful and satisfactory. Cannas flourish, and make capital patches of colour, the finer kinds, some of which are very gorgeous, doing just as well as the ordinary scarlet sort, which grows all over the country, and from the seeds of which Mahomedan rosaries are made. Phloxes, nasturtiums and asters can be induced to flower with a good deal of preliminary care and watering; but those who, not unnaturally, desire to achieve the maximum result with the minimum effort, will do well to concentrate their endeavours on zinnias and sunflowers, especially the single Japanese sunflowers, as they are eminently decorative. Vinca is a flower which might be dubbed uninteresting, but it has a special virtue, that of blossoming practically all the year round, and being available, when everything else is shrivelled and dead, in the dryest season.

Another public benefactor is salpiglossis, an exquisite plant with velvety glowing flowers of all shades—no well-regulated Nigerian garden should be without it.

To my mind the wild flowers of the country are by no means to be despised in the garden, many are really extremely beautiful; all are indigenous to the soil and therefore no trouble to grow, and I believe that the main reason that they are not more frequently seen in gardens is that the gardeners have never had the opportunity of noticing them in the ‘bush.’

There is a splendid coreopsis with golden daisy-like blossoms some three or four inches in diameter, the seed of which I gathered on the march a year ago, and subsequently sowed in large round beds. The result was a perfectly glorious blaze of brilliant yellow blossoms for weeks together, when the rains had finished. Terrestrial orchids in their mauve, purple, yellow and green beauty would be exquisite dotting the grass, as would the crimson and white striped lilies, fragile babianas, and the lesser gloriosa, which is not a creeper. A tiny scarlet salvia has often appealed to me and the little plant, Striga Senegalensis, would form a carpet of deep cool mauve, delightful to see.

The Lawn

It is said to be very dear to the heart of every Englishman to own a lawn, and it certainly should be doubly so to John Bull in exile; in a tropical country well-kept turf is much to be desired, there is nothing so cool and refreshing to tired eyes dazzled with the glare of sunshine and baked earth, and, perhaps, nothing that gives such a home-like and cared-for look to a West African compound. This demesne is usually reclaimed bush, which in nature grows rank, reed-like, coarse grass, and the ground destined for a lawn must be thoroughly and deeply dug up. It is worse than useless to attempt to remove it by merely pulling up the grass. After digging and turning, all the roots must be picked out most carefully, for it is indeed heartbreaking to see the enemy reappearing all over your infant lawn.

If the fine short grass, called in India ‘dhoob’ grass, can be found in the neighbourhood, and it usually can be, especially along the edges of roads, it should be brought in quantities (with its roots), planted closely in tiny bunches all over the prepared ground, watered daily, patted down to encourage spreading, and your lawn will be fairly started. Another method is to chop up the grass in lengths of about four inches, mix it with good soil and water, and spread the mixture all over the lawn, but, on the whole, I think the planting will be found most satisfactory. If ‘dhoob’ grass is not to be had, English grass seed must be sown, but this is an experiment I have never had occasion to make. I have seen what is called Bahama grass grown with great success in Sierra Leone, and fashioned into lovely velvety croquet lawns.

Trees and Shrubs

The planting of useful and ornamental trees is no less than a positive duty incumbent on every householder in West Africa; they are infinitely less trouble, and give far more lasting satisfaction than flower growing; besides, even in this most selfish of all selfish countries, it behoves us all to think of those who will come after us, and not neglect to plant a mango stone because we ourselves may scarcely hope to gather fruit from the tree that will result. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that I suppose that every flowering tree and shrub in Lokoja, and many in Zungeru, owes its existence to the wise labours of those ‘old hands’ who, years ago, planted out the ground around the old Preparanda with trees, from which innumerable cuttings have been obtained; at all events, I have never forgotten to feel grateful to them.

Orange and lime trees grow readily from pips, mangoes and date palms from stones, pineapples can be raised from the leafy crowns on the fruit, paw-paws spring up wherever the seeds are scattered, but they, like bananas, are not ornamental, and should be relegated to the back garden.

During the rainy season slips of flowering trees and shrubs never fail to strike; ‘frangipani’ with rosy blossoms and delicious scent, Poinciana Regia, better known as ‘flamboyant’ on account of its regal scarlet flowers, three kinds of acacias, red, yellow and white, fragrant rose-coloured oleanders, and many others, can be put in wherever your fancy dictates, and will certainly reward your patience—usually by endeavouring to flower before putting out a single leaf!

There is a delightful, sweet-scented golden allamanda, growing in sturdy bushes, and forming an ideal hedge, as it is loaded with blossom for more than half the year. Another somewhat similar flower is Thevetia, which sows itself pertinaciously from its poisonous seeds, and Tabernaemontana is another most decorative shrubby plant, with shining dark foliage, and a flower resembling a gardenia.

Nigeria abounds in indigenous blossoming trees and creepers, all beautiful, and mostly sweet-scented, from the gorgeous Spathodea Nilotica, Erythrina and Kigelia Africana downwards; indeed, no one who travels about with open eyes can fail to acquire enough seeds, pods and stones to plant acres with beauty and fragrance; day after day, on the march, I have filled my pockets.

The bush, too, is full of flowers well worth cultivating, as I have before remarked. There are creepers and climbing plants innumerable, including Mussaenda elegans, bearing handsome flame-coloured blossoms, crimson Caconia paniculata, Strophanthus with its fantastic, trailing creamy petals, delicate asparagus fern, and Landolphia owariensis (the rubber vine), queen of climbers, a sheet of snow-white, intensely fragrant flowers. And if Landolphia is the queen of climbers, surely the king is a gorgeous apricot-hued Gloriosa Superba, which fastens its delicate persistent tendrils round every available support, and when the flowering season is over is beautiful still with bursting pods full of scarlet seeds. In the forest, beside the river one finds clerodendron, bryophyllum, quisqualis, and a thousand others; indeed, I only wish I had enough botanical knowledge to name half the native flowers and trees I have raised from seed collected casually on the march.

The Verandah Garden

Perhaps the verandah garden is one’s dearest and closest interest; wise people may shake their heads, and mutter about the number of mosquitoes attracted by the watering of ferns and flowers, but, after all, when there are at least two millions of mosquitoes about, a thousand more or less makes very little difference, and I am certain no Englishwoman in Africa will forgo her verandah garden for so trifling a reason!

I have had orchids and ferns, all varieties of so-called crotons, for they are really codeums, hundreds of sturdy little orange trees, raised from pips collected at the luncheon table, cannas and caladiums, and tubs of the invaluable aromatic-scented occimum viride, whose virtues saved us endless annoyance from mosquitoes. Here a few English flowers blossomed, one tiny rose bush, petunias, balsams, Japanese sunflowers, etc., creepers of all kinds flourished, sky-blue, rose-coloured and yellow convolvuli climbing and clasping the verandah posts, sapphire blue clitoria twisting and twining in beautiful confusion, mingled with a brilliant scarlet convolvulus-like climber, while tiny, starry Ipomea quamoclit, crimson and white, wound slender feathery arms round every available twig and stem.

The bath-water must be kept every morning to water the verandah garden, the soapiness and especially the suspicion of Scrubbs ammonia, if that is used, are most beneficial, and by doing the watering yourself you can ensure a due proportion and see that ferns are not starved while seedlings are drowned.

I have always longed to have real roses in my verandah garden, but I fear they would but add one more to the long list of disappointments. Though they do well in Southern Nigeria, I have so far seen only one rose tree here at Zungeru; it was growing an immense height, full of green leaves and long stalks, an infallible sign that the general temperature is too high, and its blossoms have been few and poor. Still, I believe with much care and pruning the more delicate kinds might succeed; I hope to try one day. Last year I devoted my energies to the cultivation of geraniums and pelargoniums, which were only a partial success, but were handicapped by being carried about the country. I also experimented with tuberoses, which were an immense success, growing freely as if they really liked the soil and temperature. I have great hopes that the more delicate bulbous plants will flourish in Nigeria during the rains, therefore I have included a few of them in the list at the end of this chapter.

The Vegetable Garden

It seems to me a matter for the gravest regret that the culture of vegetables is not more seriously undertaken in this country where fresh vegetables are so essential to health, and such a priceless addition to the daily menu of tough and tasteless meat. To any one who has lived in the tiniest Indian station, and seen the Government garden supplying each household with an enormous basket of vegetables for the noble sum of 1s. 6d. per month, it seems as incredible as it is almost criminal that West Africa is not as well catered for; it could be done, as many private gardens in the country have amply proved, but—it is not done! To quote Major Ronald Ross:—‘Government sometimes maintains, at considerable cost, botanical gardens for various economical purposes. I was told that these gardens used to grow vegetables for the Europeans, until stopped by a mandate from England, on the ground that a Government botanist is not a market gardener!’ Comment is quite needless, but there is some comfort in reflecting that if we cannot all soar to the giddy eminence of a ‘Government botanist’ we may yet emulate, more or less, the humble market gardener, and to this end I am offering my small experience in this line.

Growing vegetables is, to my mind, the most satisfactory part of garden work in West Africa; the percentage of failures is certainly smaller, and the results so entirely to be desired. But, like the rest of your garden, it will have to be made before you can set to work to grow vegetables. Divide the ground into beds as long as space will allow, and not more than three feet wide, with paths between. Every bed must have a roof or shelter, consisting of matting or palm branches, fastened to uprights four or five feet high, and the earth must be well banked up so as to be quite a foot above the ground level.

Vegetables do best when sown in September, when the heaviest rains are over, though a few kinds can be sown even in the dry season with some success if care and regular watering are given to them; I have sown vegetables in May, August and December, always with satisfactory results, my object being to secure fresh vegetables nearly all the year round.

The most important factor in the success of the vegetable garden (and, indeed, amongst the flowers too) is that the seed should be quite fresh from England. A small quantity arriving twice a year will give far better results than one of the large ‘collections’ which, moreover, invariably contain many items that are quite useless in this country. I had a huge tin of vegetable seeds given me last year—a precious prize—only to find, to my dismay, that it consisted mainly of strawberries and peas! I have heard of English peas being grown and eaten in the Bornu country; my own experience has been that they grow most hopefully until they are about two feet high, they then begin to wither off and disappear.

Tomatoes will be found to succeed admirably; if they are inclined to grow too luxuriantly and to run to leaf rather than to fruit, this can be checked by cutting off half the leaves and snipping away many of the flowers. I have never seen better tomatoes than those grown in Nigeria.

French beans and scarlet runners are most successful; the young plants of the latter shoot up in the most amazing ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ fashion, and the dwarf beans are quite loaded with beans six weeks after sowing.

Cucumbers give excellent results, also vegetable marrows. These should be sown in boxes on the verandah, and planted out when they attain the dignity of four leaves. Let them be planted close to the uprights so that they can commence climbing at once instead of sprawling along the ground. I found it quite a good plan at Bussa to plant these vegetables out beside a low clay wall, and, after assisting them to reach the top, to leave them to their own devices; it was always an amusement to hunt for and happen upon unexpected ripe cucumbers!

Lettuces, radishes and cress may all be relied upon, also spinach (the native sort) and carrots; kohl rabi, the turnip-rooted cabbage, is a most excellent and useful vegetable eaten quite young; we found it one of our best crops, and beyond the thinning out required no attention at all. My beet-root, cabbages, Brussels sprouts and rhubarb all failed, but that I strongly suspect was in some degree due to the incursions of greedy fowls. In this connexion, I may mention that a low close railing, made even of guinea-corn stalks, is most useful to fence in each bed if there is a farm-yard loose in the compound.

English potatoes have been grown at Zungeru, I believe, but rather as an interesting experiment than as an article of diet. Onions are so extensively grown by the natives that they are hardly required in the garden, except the tiny spring onions for use in a salad.

I do not think it is widely enough known that, when English vegetables are ‘out’ the native bean (wake) if gathered very, very young, is practically indistinguishable from French beans, and a tuber (tumuku) in appearance and taste closely resembles new potatoes; both plants grow like weeds and are immensely prolific; I have seen fifty pounds of tumukus gathered from seven plants!

I should say, from my study of the climatic effect on plants generally, that hardly any of the really hardy English vegetables would ever reward one for the trouble of growing them in Nigeria, such as cauliflower, turnips, etc. Sea kale might do well, and such a delicacy would be well worth striving after. A valiant effort has been made to grow mushrooms from imported spawn, but the process entailed a good deal of rather elaborate arrangement, and the result was nil. But I see no reason why they should not be cultivated in grass; I have eaten quite delicious tiny mushrooms which I gathered myself on the polo-ground at Lokoja. It seems to me that if a crisp fresh salad and cucumber can be produced daily, with a dish of tomatoes and another of French beans, one may well be grateful for small mercies, and concentrate attention on growing these, experimenting meanwhile with everything and anything that comes to hand.

I am specially anxious to see the Avocada pear grown freely in Northern Nigeria; it flourishes on the coast, and a more delicious fruit could hardly be desired. I raised four strong little trees in Lokoja, which, alas, went the way of all things in my absence, and I believe there are a few at Zungeru. It is a very easy matter to bring a quantity of the large seeds from Sierra Leone, or from off the ship, where they usually appear at table.

In conclusion, I am appending a list of flower and vegetable seeds which I hope will find their way into every one’s baggage, for they will, according to my small experience, reward the amateur gardener best; also a few of the flowering shrubs and creepers which ought to have a place in the garden, and which would, I feel sure, flourish in Nigeria.

Flower Seeds

• Convolvulus, of all kinds.
• Zinnias.
• Sunflowers.
• Portulacca.
• Marigolds.
• Balsams.
• Phlox.
• Vinca.
• Petunias.
• Cannas.
• Dahlias.
• Sweet-scented Tobacco.
• Cinerarias.
• Aquilegia.
• Heliotrope.
• Asters.
• Coleus.
• Pelargoniums.
• Carnations.
• Nasturtiums.
• Sweet Sultans.
• Gaillardias.
• Salpiglossis.
• Geraniums.

It will be observed that many familiar garden flowers are omitted from this list; this is not an oversight, simply—they will not thrive. I am, moreover, drawing on my own limited experience only, and that not merely of successes, but also of failures and disappointments.

Bulbs, etc.

• Tuberoses.
• Achimenes.
• Eucharis, and various hot-house lilies.
• Freesia.
• Agapanthus.
• Monbretia.
• Ixia.
• Amaryllis.

Flowering Shrubs, Climbers, etc.

• Poinsettias.
• Hibiscus.
• Stephanotis.
• Tacsonia, and other Passion flowers.
• Lapageria.
• Roses
• Princess Alice of Monaco.
• Comtesse Riza du Parc.
• Ma Surprise.
• Comtesse d’Auerstadt.

Vegetables

• French Beans.
• Scarlet Runners.
• Broad Beans.
• Cucumbers.
• Melons.
• Sea Kale.
• Spinach.
• Egg Plant.
• Tomatoes.
• Cress.
• Lettuces.
• Radishes.
• Marrows.
• Carrots.
• Parsley.
• Spring Onions.