The Flowers and Gardens of Madeira — Edition Insights

From Fernery to Firewood: The Opening Reversal

The introduction establishes a pattern of expectation and correction. Du Cane admits she had imagined Madeira as a place of “luxuriant vegetation flourishing in a damp, enervating climate,” but the reality is more complex. The primeval forests were burned by early settlers—a fire that raged for over two years, according to old historians. What remains is a managed landscape: pine plantations replace chestnut woods, broom is sown on mountain-sides to be cut for fuel or burned to fertilize the ground. Du Cane notes that the broom, though introduced, has become “perfectly naturalized” over 150 years. This tension between the natural and the utilitarian runs through the book. She does not moralize, but her observations accumulate: the destruction of myrtles for church decorations, the threat to water-sources from deforestation. The voice is that of a careful witness, not a polemicist.

Pace and Elevation: The Ascent to Barrenness

Du Cane’s narrative pace mirrors the physical ascent. In the lower altitudes, sentences are longer, filled with lists of plants—Fuchsia coccinea, Rosa Benghalensis, belladonnas—and the scent of fir woods in the morning dew. As the road climbs toward 4,500 feet, the prose becomes sparser, matching the thinning vegetation. Ferns vanish, foxgloves disappear, myrtles become scarce. By the higher slopes, the text is dominated by basalt and red tufa, with only “large bushes of a heath” (likely Erica scoparia) breaking the turf. Du Cane describes these heath bushes as “distorted and stunted” from being eaten by sheep and goats, yet they eventually attain large size, “suggestive of the dwarfed trees of the Japanese.” The shift from abundance to austerity is handled with a quiet, almost geological patience.

The Human Hand in the Garden

Throughout the excerpts, du Cane pays close attention to how people shape the landscape. The broom is not just a plant but a crop: its twigs are made into faggots, its peeled twigs into the “very fine and delicate basket-work peculiar to Madeira.” Young girls and children carry bundles of giesta into town from great distances, earning a “scanty and hard-earned living.” The pine woods are “strictly utilitarian,” planted for rapid growth and cut down for firewood and trellises. Even the beauty of the gardens is tied to human labor and choice. Du Cane’s descriptions of villa gardens—Azaleas, Daturas, Bougainvillea—are set against this backdrop of economic necessity. The book does not separate the ornamental from the practical; both are part of the same island story.

Du Cane’s prose rewards a slow reading. Pay attention to the verbs of change—vanish, replace, become scarce—and to the way she lets the landscape dictate the rhythm of her sentences. The illustrations by Ella du Cane, listed in the front matter, offer a visual counterpart to this verbal precision. Together, text and image create a record of a place in transition, where every flower has a history of use and every garden is a negotiation between nature and human need.

I keep thinking about du Cane’s gentle way of watching a slope change—how a garden fades into wild hillside without apology. English Hours — Story, Setting & Ideas has that same quiet patience, that careful noticing of place over time. It stayed with me like a long afternoon light, soft and unhurried.