Alice Morse Earle
Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth

CHAPTER I
COLONIAL GARDEN-MAKING

"There is not a softer trait to be found in the character of those stern men than that they should have been sensible of these flower-roots clinging among the fibres of their rugged hearts, and felt the necessity of bringing them over sea, and making them hereditary in the new land."

– American Note-book, Nathaniel Hawthorne.

After ten wearisome weeks of travel across an unknown sea, to an equally unknown world, the group of Puritan men and women who were the founders of Boston neared their Land of Promise; and their noble leader, John Winthrop, wrote in his Journal that "we had now fair Sunshine Weather and so pleasant a sweet Aire as did much refresh us, and there came a smell off the Shore like the Smell of a Garden."

A Smell of a Garden was the first welcome to our ancestors from their new home; and a pleasant and perfect emblem it was of the life that awaited them. They were not to become hunters and rovers, not to be eager to explore quickly the vast wilds beyond; they were to settle down in the most domestic of lives, as tillers of the soil, as makers of gardens.

What must that sweet air from the land have been to the sea-weary Puritan women on shipboard, laden to them with its promise of a garden! for I doubt not every woman bore with her across seas some little package of seeds and bulbs from her English home garden, and perhaps a tiny slip or plant of some endeared flower; watered each day, I fear, with many tears, as well as from the surprisingly scant water supply which we know was on board that ship.

And there also came flying to the Arbella as to the Ark, a Dove – a bird of promise – and soon the ship came to anchor.

"With hearts revived in conceit new Lands and Trees they spy,
Scenting the Cædars and Sweet Fern from heat's reflection dry,"

wrote one colonist of that arrival, in his Good Newes from New England. I like to think that Sweet Fern, the characteristic wild perfume of New England, was wafted out to greet them. And then all went on shore in the sunshine of that ineffable time and season, – a New England day in June, – and they "gathered store of fine strawberries," just as their Salem friends had on a June day on the preceding year gathered strawberries and "sweet Single Roses" so resembling the English Eglantine that the hearts of the women must have ached within them with fresh homesickness. And ere long all had dwelling-places, were they but humble log cabins; and pasture lands and commons were portioned out; and in a short time all had garden-plots, and thus, with sheltering roof-trees, and warm firesides, and with gardens, even in this lonely new world, they had homes. The first entry in the Plymouth Records is a significant one; it is the assignment of "Meresteads and Garden-Plotes," not meresteads alone, which were farm lands, but home gardens: the outlines of these can still be seen in Plymouth town. And soon all sojourners who bore news back to England of the New-Englishmen and New-Englishwomen, told of ample store of gardens. Ere a year had passed hopeful John Winthrop wrote, "My Deare Wife, wee are here in a Paradise." In four years the chronicler Wood said in his New England's Prospect, "There is growing here all manner of herbs for meat and medicine, and that not only in planted gardens, but in the woods, without the act and help of man." Governor Endicott had by that time a very creditable garden.

And by every humble dwelling the homesick goodwife or dame, trying to create a semblance of her fair English home so far away, planted in her "garden plot" seeds and roots of homely English flowers and herbs, that quickly grew and blossomed and smiled on bleak New England's rocky shores as sturdily and happily as they had bloomed in the old gardens and by the ancient door sides in England. What good cheer they must have brought! how they must have been beloved! for these old English garden flowers are such gracious things; marvels of scent, lavish of bloom, bearing such genial faces, growing so readily and hardily, spreading so quickly, responding so gratefully to such little care: what pure refreshment they bore in their blossoms, what comfort in their seeds; they must have seemed an emblem of hope, a promise of a new and happy home. I rejoice over every one that I know was in those little colonial gardens, for each one added just so much measure of solace to what seems to me, as I think upon it, one of the loneliest, most fearsome things that gentlewomen ever had to do, all the harder because neither by poverty nor by unavoidable stress were they forced to it; they came across-seas willingly, for conscience' sake. These women were not accustomed to the thought of emigration, as are European folk to-day; they had no friends to greet them in the new land; they were to encounter wild animals and wild men; sea and country were unknown – they could scarce expect ever to return: they left everything, and took nothing of comfort but their Bibles and their flower seeds. So when I see one of the old English flowers, grown of those days, blooming now in my garden, from the unbroken chain of blossom to seed of nearly three centuries, I thank the flower for all that its forbears did to comfort my forbears, and I cherish it with added tenderness.

We should have scant notion of the gardens of these New England colonists in the seventeenth century were it not for a cheerful traveller named John Josselyn, a man of everyday tastes and much inquisitiveness, and the pleasing literary style which comes from directness, and an absence of self-consciousness. He published in 1672 a book entitled New England's Rarities discovered, etc., and in 1674 another volume giving an account of his two voyages hither in 1638 and 1663. He made a very careful list of vegetables which he found thriving in the new land; and since his flower list is the earliest known, I will transcribe it in full; it isn't long, but there is enough in it to make it a suggestive outline which we can fill in from what we know of the plants to-day, and form a very fair picture of those gardens.

"Spearmint,

Rew, will hardly grow

Fetherfew prospereth exceedingly;

Southernwood, is no Plant for this Country, Nor

Rosemary. Nor

Bayes.

White-Satten groweth pretty well, so doth

Lavender-Cotton. But

Lavender is not for the Climate.

Penny Royal

Smalledge.

Ground Ivey, or Ale Hoof.

Gilly Flowers will continue two Years.

Fennel must be taken up, and kept in a Warm Cellar all Winter

Horseleek prospereth notably

Holly hocks

Enula Canpana, in two years time the Roots rot.

Comferie, with White Flowers.

Coriander, and

Dill, and

Annis thrive exceedingly, but Annis Seed, as also the seed of

Fennel seldom come to maturity; the Seed of Annis is commonly eaten with a Fly.

Clary never lasts but one Summer, the Roots rot with the Frost.

Sparagus thrives exceedingly, so does

Garden Sorrel, and

Sweet Bryer or Eglantine

Bloodwort but sorrily, but

Patience and

English Roses very pleasantly.

Celandine, by the West Country now called Kenning Wort grows but slowly.

Muschater, as well as in England

Dittander or Pepperwort flourisheth notably and so doth

Tansie."

These lists were published fifty years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth; from them we find that the country was just as well stocked with vegetables as it was a hundred years later when other travellers made lists, but the flowers seem few; still, such as they were, they formed a goodly sight. With rows of Hollyhocks glowing against the rude stone walls and rail fences of their little yards; with clumps of Lavender Cotton and Honesty and Gillyflowers blossoming freely; with Feverfew "prospering" to sow and slip and pot and give to neighbors just as New England women have done with Feverfew every year of the centuries that have followed; with "a Rose looking in at the window" – a Sweetbrier, Eglantine, or English Rose – these colonial dames might well find "Patience growing very pleasantly" in their hearts as in their gardens.

They had plenty of pot herbs for their accustomed savoring; and plenty of medicinal herbs for their wonted dosing. Shakespeare's "nose-herbs" were not lacking. Doubtless they soon added to these garden flowers many of our beautiful native blooms, rejoicing if they resembled any beloved English flowers, and quickly giving them, as we know, familiar old English plant-names.

And there were other garden inhabitants, as truly English as were the cherished flowers, the old garden weeds, which quickly found a home and thrived in triumph in the new soil. Perhaps the weed seeds came over in the flower-pot that held a sheltered plant or cutting; perhaps a few were mixed with garden seeds; perhaps they were in the straw or other packing of household goods: no one knew the manner of their coming, but there they were, Motherwort, Groundsel, Chickweed, and Wild Mustard, Mullein and Nettle, Henbane and Wormwood. Many a goodwife must have gazed in despair at the persistent Plantain, "the Englishman's foot," which seems to have landed in Plymouth from the Mayflower.

Josselyn made other lists of plants which he found in America, under these headings: —

"Such plants as are common with us in England.

Such plants as are proper to the Country.

Such plants as are proper to the Country and have no name.

Such plants as have sprung up since the English planted, and kept cattle in New England."

In these lists he gives a surprising number of English weeds which had thriven and rejoiced in their new home.

Mr. Tuckerman calls Josselyn's list of the fishes of the new world a poor makeshift; his various lists of plants are better, but they are the lists of an herbalist, not of a botanist. He had some acquaintance with the practice of physic, of which he narrates some examples; and an interest in kitchen recipes, and included a few in his books. He said that Parkinson or another botanist might have "found in New England a thousand, at least, of plants never heard of nor seen by any Englishman before," and adds that he was himself an indifferent observer. He certainly lost an extraordinary opportunity of distinguishing himself, indeed of immortalizing himself; and it is surprising that he was so heedless, for Englishmen of that day were in general eager botanists. The study of plants was new, and was deemed of such absorbing interest and fascination that some rigid Puritans feared they might lose their immortal souls through making their new plants their idols.

When Josselyn wrote, but few of our American flowers were known to European botanists; Indian Corn, Pitcher Plant, Columbine, Milkweed, Everlasting, and Arbor-vitæ had been described in printed books, and the Evening Primrose. A history of Canadian and other new plants, by Dr. Cornuti, had been printed in Europe, giving thirty-seven of our plants; and all English naturalists were longing to add to the list; the ships which brought over homely seeds and plants for the gardens of the colonists carried back rare American seeds and plants for English physic gardens.

In Pennsylvania, from the first years of the settlement, William Penn encouraged his Quaker followers to plant English flowers and fruit in abundance, and to try the fruits of the new world. Father Pastorius, in his Germantown settlement, assigned to each family a garden-plot of three acres, as befitted a man who left behind him at his death a manuscript poem of many thousand words on the pleasures of gardening, the description of flowers, and keeping of bees. George Fox, the founder of the Friends, or Quakers, died in 1690. He had travelled in the colonies; and in his will he left sixteen acres of land to the Quaker meeting in the city of Philadelphia. Of these sixteen acres, ten were for "a close to put Friends' horses in when they came afar to the Meeting, that they may not be Lost in the Woods," while the other six were for a site for a meeting-house and school-house, and "for a Playground for the Children of the town to Play on, and for a Garden to plant with Physical Plants, for Lads and Lasses to know Simples, and to learn to make Oils and Ointments." Few as are these words, they convey a positive picture of Fox's intent, and a pleasing picture it is. He had seen what interest had been awakened and what instruction conveyed through the "Physick-Garden" at Chelsea, England; and he promised to himself similar interest and information from the study of plants and flowers by the Quaker "lads and lasses" of the new world. Though nothing came from this bequest, there was a later fulfilment of Fox's hopes in the establishment of a successful botanic garden in Philadelphia, and, in the planting, growth, and flourishing in the province of Pennsylvania of the loveliest gardens in the new world; there floriculture reached by the time of the Revolution a very high point; and many exquisite gardens bore ample testimony to the "pride of life," as well as to the good taste and love of flowers of Philadelphia Friends. The garden at Grumblethorp, the home of Charles J. Wister, Esq., of Germantown, Pennsylvania, shown on page 7, dates to colonial days and is still flourishing and beautiful.

In 1728 was established, by John Bartram, in Philadelphia, the first botanic garden in America. The ground on which it was planted, and the stone dwelling-house he built thereon in 1731, are now part of the park system of Philadelphia. A view of the garden as now in cultivation is given on page 9. Bartram travelled much in America, and through his constant correspondence and flower exchanges with distinguished botanists and plant growers in Europe, many native American plants became well known in foreign gardens, among them the Lady's Slipper and Rhododendron. He was a Quaker, – a quaint and picturesque figure, – and his example helped to establish the many fine gardens in the vicinity of Philadelphia. The example and precept of Washington also had important influence; for he was constant in his desire and his effort to secure every good and new plant, grain, shrub, and tree for his home at Mount Vernon. A beautiful tribute to his good taste and that of his wife still exists in the Mount Vernon flower garden, which in shape, Box edgings, and many details is precisely as it was in their day. A view of its well-ordered charms is shown opposite page 12. Whenever I walk in this garden I am deeply grateful to the devoted women who keep it in such perfection, as an object-lesson to us of the dignity, comeliness, and beauty of a garden of the olden times.

There is little evidence that a general love and cultivation of flowers was as common in humble homes in the Southern colonies as in New England and the Middle provinces. The teeming abundance near the tropics rendered any special gardening unnecessary for poor folk; flowers grew and blossomed lavishly everywhere without any coaxing or care. On splendid estates there were splendid gardens, which have nearly all suffered by the devastations of war – in some towns they were thrice thus scourged. So great was the beauty of these Southern gardens and so vast the love they provoked in their owners, that in more than one case the life of the garden's master was merged in that of the garden. The British soldiers during the War of the Revolution wantonly destroyed the exquisite flowers at "The Grove," just outside the city of Charleston, and their owner, Mr. Gibbes, dropped dead in grief at the sight of the waste.

The great wealth of the Southern planters, their constant and extravagant following of English customs and fashions, their fertile soil and favorable climate, and their many slaves, all contributed to the successful making of elaborate gardens. Even as early as 1682 South Carolina gardens were declared to be "adorned with such Flowers as to the Smell or Eye are pleasing or agreeable, as the Rose, Tulip, Lily, Carnation, &c." William Byrd wrote of the terraced gardens of Virginia homes. Charleston dames vied with each other in the beauty of their gardens, and Mrs. Logan, when seventy years old, in 1779, wrote a treatise called The Gardener's Kalendar. Eliza Lucas Pinckney of Charleston was devoted to practical floriculture and horticulture. Her introduction of indigo raising into South Carolina revolutionized the trade products of the state and brought to it vast wealth. Like many other women and many men of wealth and culture at that time, she kept up a constant exchange of letters, seeds, plants, and bulbs with English people of like tastes. She received from them valuable English seeds and shrubs; and in turn she sent to England what were so eagerly sought by English flower raisers, our native plants. The good will and national pride of ship captains were enlisted; even young trees of considerable size were set in hogsheads, and transported, and cared for during the long voyage.

The garden at Mount Vernon is probably the oldest in Virginia still in original shape. In Maryland are several fine, formal gardens which do not date, however, to colonial days; the beautiful one at Hampton, the home of the Ridgelys, in Baltimore County, is shown on pages 57, 60 and 95. In both North and South Carolina the gardens were exquisite. Many were laid out by competent landscape gardeners, and were kept in order by skilled workmen, negro slaves, who were carefully trained from childhood to special labor, such as topiary work. In Camden and Charleston the gardens vied with the finest English manor-house gardens. Remains of their beauty exist, despite devastating wars and earthquakes. Views of the Preston Garden, Columbia, South Carolina, are shown on pages 15 and 18 and facing page 54. They are now the grounds of the Presbyterian College for Women. The hedges have been much reduced within a few years; but the garden still bears a surprising resemblance to the Garden of the Generalife, Granada. The Spanish garden has fewer flowers and more fountains, yet I think it must have been the model for the Preston Garden. The climax of magnificence in Southern gardens has been for years, at Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, the ancestral home of the Draytons since 1671. It is impossible to describe the affluence of color in this garden in springtime; masses of unbroken bloom on giant Magnolias; vast Camellia Japonicas, looking, leaf and flower, thoroughly artificial, as if made of solid wax; splendid Crape Myrtles, those strange flower-trees; mammoth Rhododendrons; Azaleas of every Azalea color, – all surrounded by walls of the golden Banksia Roses, and hedges covered with Jasmine and Honeysuckle. The Azaleas are the special glory of the garden; the bushes are fifteen to twenty feet in height, and fifty or sixty feet in circumference, with rich blossoms running over and crowding down on the ground as if color had been poured over the bushes; they extend in vistas of vivid hues as far as the eye can reach. All this gay and brilliant color is overhung by a startling contrast, the most sombre and gloomy thing in nature, great Live-oaks heavily draped with gray Moss; the avenue of largest Oaks was planted two centuries ago.

I give no picture of this Drayton Garden, for a photograph of these many acres of solid bloom is a meaningless thing. Even an oil painting of it is confused and disappointing. In the garden itself the excess of color is as cloying as its surfeit of scent pouring from the thousands of open flower cups; we long for green hedges, even for scanter bloom and for fainter fragrance. It is not a garden to live in, as are our box-bordered gardens of the North, our cheerful cottage borders, and our well-balanced Italian gardens, so restful to the eye; it is a garden to look at and wonder at.

The Dutch settlers brought their love of flowering bulbs, and the bulbs also, to the new world. Adrian Van der Donck, a gossiping visitor to New Netherland when the little town of New Amsterdam had about a thousand inhabitants, described the fine kitchen gardens, the vegetables and fruits, and gave an interesting list of garden flowers which he found under cultivation by the Dutch vrouws. He says:

"Of the Flowers. The flowers in general which the Netherlanders have introduced there are the white and red roses of different kinds, the cornelian roses, and stock roses; and those of which there were none before in the country, such as eglantine, several kinds of gillyflowers, jenoffelins, different varieties of fine tulips, crown imperials, white lilies, the lily frutularia, anemones, baredames, violets, marigolds, summer sots, etc. The clove tree has also been introduced, and there are various indigenous trees that bear handsome flowers, which are unknown in the Netherlands. We also find there some flowers of native growth, as, for instance, sunflowers, red and yellow lilies, mountain lilies, morning stars, red, white, and yellow maritoffles (a very sweet flower), several species of bell flowers, etc., to which I have not given particular attention, but amateurs would hold them in high estimation and make them widely known."

I wish I knew what a Cornelian Rose was, and Jenoffelins, Baredames, and Summer Sots; and what the Lilies were and the Maritoffles and Bell Flowers. They all sound so cheerful and homelike – just as if they bloomed well. Perhaps the Cornelian Rose may have been striped red and white like cornelian stone, and like our York and Lancaster Rose.

Tulips are on all seed and plant lists of colonial days, and they were doubtless in every home dooryard in New Netherland. Governor Peter Stuyvesant had a fine farm on the Bouwerie, and is said to have had a flower garden there and at his home, White Hall, at the Battery, for he had forty or fifty negro slaves who were kept at work on his estate. In the city of New York many fine formal gardens lingered, on what are now our most crowded streets, till within the memory of persons now living. One is described as full of "Paus bloemen of all hues, Laylocks, and tall May Roses and Snowballs intermixed with choice vegetables and herbs all bounded and hemmed in by huge rows of neatly-clipped Box-edgings."

An evidence of increase in garden luxury in New York is found in the advertisement of one Theophilus Hardenbrook, in 1750, a practical surveyor and architect, who had an evening school for teaching architecture. He designed pavilions, summer-houses, and garden seats, and "Green-houses for the preservation of Herbs with winding Funnels through the walls so as to keep them warm." A picture of the green-house of James Beekman, of New York, 1764, still exists, a primitive little affair. The first glass-house in North America is believed to be one built in Boston for Andrew Faneuil, who died in 1737.

Mrs. Anne Grant, writing of her life near Albany in the middle of the eighteenth century, gives a very good description of the Schuyler garden. Skulls of domestic animals on fence posts, would seem astounding had I not read of similar decorations in old Continental gardens. Vines grew over these grisly fence-capitals and birds built their nests in them, so in time the Dutch housewife's peaceful kitchen garden ceased to resemble the kraal of an African chieftain; to this day, in South Africa, natives and Dutch Boers thus set up on gate posts the skulls of cattle.

Mrs. Grant writes of the Dutch in Albany: —

"The care of plants, such as needed peculiar care or skill to rear them, was the female province. Every one in town or country had a garden. Into this garden no foot of man intruded after it was dug in the Spring. I think I see yet what I have so often beheld – a respectable mistress of a family going out to her garden, on an April morning, with her great calash, her little painted basket of seeds, and her rake over her shoulder to her garden of labours. A woman in very easy circumstances and abundantly gentle in form and manners would sow and plant and rake incessantly."

We have happily a beautiful example of the old Dutch manor garden, at Van Cortlandt Manor, at Croton-on-Hudson, New York, still in the possession of the Van Cortlandt family. It is one of the few gardens in America that date really to colonial days. The manor house was built in 1681; it is one of those fine old Dutch homesteads of which we still have many existing throughout New York, in which dignity, comfort, and fitness are so happily combined. These homes are, in the words of a traveller of colonial days, "so pleasant in their building, and contrived so delightful." Above all, they are so suited to their surroundings that they seem an intrinsic part of the landscape, as they do of the old life of this Hudson River Valley.

I do not doubt that this Van Cortlandt garden was laid out when the house was built; much of it must be two centuries old. It has been extended, not altered; and the grass-covered bank supporting the upper garden was replaced by a brick terrace wall about sixty years ago. Its present form dates to the days when New York was a province. The upper garden is laid out in formal flower beds; the lower border is rich in old vines and shrubs, and all the beloved old-time hardy plants. There is in the manor-house an ancient portrait of the child Pierre Van Cortlandt, painted about the year 1732. He stands by a table bearing a vase filled with old garden flowers – Tulip, Convolvulus, Harebell, Rose, Peony, Narcissus, and Flowering Almond; and it is the pleasure of the present mistress of the manor, to see that the garden still holds all the great-grandfather's flowers.

There is a vine-embowered old door in the wall under the piazza (see opposite page 20) which opens into the kitchen and fruit garden; a wall-door so quaint and old-timey that I always remind me of Shakespeare's lines in Measure for Measure: —

"He hath a garden circummured with brick,
Whose western side is with a Vineyard back'd;
And to that Vineyard is a planchéd gate
That makes his opening with this bigger key:
The other doth command a little door
Which from the Vineyard to the garden leads."

The long path is a beautiful feature of this garden (it is shown in the picture of the garden opposite page 24); it dates certainly to the middle of the eighteenth century. Pierre Van Cortlandt, the son of the child with the vase of flowers, and grandfather of the present generation bearing his surname, was born in 1762. He well recalled playing along this garden path when he was a child; and that one day he and his little sister Ann (Mrs. Philip Van Rensselaer) ran a race along this path and through the garden to see who could first "see the baby" and greet their sister, Mrs. Beekman, who came riding to the manor-house up the hill from Tarrytown, and through the avenue, which shows on the right-hand side of the garden-picture. This beautiful young woman was famed everywhere for her grace and loveliness, and later equally so for her intelligence and goodness, and the prominent part she bore in the War of the Revolution. She was seated on a pillion behind her husband, and she carried proudly in her arms her first baby (afterward Dr. Beekman) wrapped in a scarlet cloak. This is one of the home-pictures that the old garden holds. Would we could paint it!

In this garden, near the house, is a never failing spring and well. The house was purposely built near it, in those days of sudden attacks by Indians; it has proved a fountain of perpetual youth for the old Locust tree, which shades it; a tree more ancient than house or garden, serene and beautiful in its hearty old age. Glimpses of this manor-house garden and its flowers are shown on many pages of this book, but they cannot reveal its beauty as a whole – its fine proportions, its noble background, its splendid trees, its turf, its beds of bloom. Oh! How beautiful a garden can be, when for two hundred years it has been loved and cherished, ever nurtured, ever guarded; how plainly it shows such care!

Another Dutch garden is pictured opposite page 32, the garden of the Bergen Homestead, at Bay Ridge, Long Island. Let me quote part of its description, written by Mrs. Tunis Bergen: —

"Over the half-open Dutch door you look through the vines that climb about the stoop, as into a vista of the past. Beyond the garden is the great Quince orchard of hundreds of trees in pink and white glory. This orchard has a story which you must pause in the garden to hear. In the Library at Washington is preserved, in quaint manuscript, 'The Battle of Brooklyn,' a farce written and said to have been performed during the British occupation. The scene is partly laid in 'the orchard of one Bergen,' where the British hid their horses after the battle of Long Island – this is the orchard; but the blossoming Quince trees tell no tale of past carnage. At one side of the garden is a quaint little building with moss-grown roof and climbing hop-vine – the last slave kitchen left standing in New York – on the other side are rows of homely beehives. The old Locust tree overshadowing is an ancient landmark – it was standing in 1690. For some years it has worn a chain to bind its aged limbs together. All this beauty of tree and flower lived till 1890, when it was swept away by the growing city. Though now but a memory, it has the perfume of its past flowers about it."

The Locust was so often a "home tree" and so fitting a one, that I have grown to associate ever with these Dutch homesteads a light-leaved Locust tree, shedding its beautiful flickering shadows on the long roof. I wonder whether there was any association or tradition that made the Locust the house-friend in old New York!

The first nurseryman in the new world was stern old Governor Endicott of Salem. In 1644 he wrote to Governor Winthrop, "My children burnt mee at least 500 trees by setting the ground on fire neere them" – which was a very pretty piece of mischief for sober Puritan children. We find all thoughtful men of influence and prominence in all the colonies raising various fruits, and selling trees and plants, but they had no independent business nurseries.

If tradition be true, it is to Governor Endicott we owe an indelible dye on the landscape of eastern Massachusetts in midsummer. The Dyer's-weed or Woad-waxen (Genista tinctoria), which, in July, covers hundreds of acres in Lynn, Salem, Swampscott, and Beverly with its solid growth and brilliant yellow bloom, is said to have been brought to this country as the packing of some of the governor's household belongings. It is far more probable that he brought it here to raise it in his garden for dyeing purposes, with intent to benefit the colony, as he did other useful seeds and plants. Woadwaxen, or Broom, is a persistent thing; it needs scythe, plough, hoe, and bitter labor to eradicate it. I cannot call it a weed, for it has seized only poor rock-filled land, good for naught else; and the radiant beauty of the Salem landscape for many weeks makes us forgive its persistence, and thank Endicott for bringing it here.

"The Broom,
Full-flowered and visible on every steep,
Along the copses runs in veins of gold."

The Broom flower is the emblem of mid-summer, the hottest yellow flower I know – it seems to throw out heat. I recall the first time I saw it growing; I was told that it was "Salem Wood-wax." I had heard of "Roxbury Waxwork," the Bitter-sweet, but this was a new name, as it was a new tint of yellow, and soon I had its history, for I find Salem people rather proud both of the flower and its story.

Oxeye Daisies (Whiteweed) are also by vague tradition the children of Governor Endicott's planting. I think it far more probable that they were planted and cherished by the wives of the colonists, when their beloved English Daisies were found unsuited to New England's climate and soil. We note the Woad-waxen and Whiteweed as crowding usurpers, not only because they are persistent, but because their great expanses of striking bloom will not let us forget them. Many other English plants are just as determined intruders, but their modest dress permits them to slip in comparatively unobserved.

It has ever been characteristic of the British colonist to carry with him to any new home the flowers of old England and Scotland, and characteristic of these British flowers to monopolize the earth. Sweetbrier is called "the missionary-plant," by the Maoris in New Zealand, and is there regarded as a tiresome weed, spreading and holding the ground. Some homesick missionary or his more homesick wife bore it there; and her love of the home plant impressed even the savage native. We all know the story of the Scotch settlers who carried their beloved Thistles to Tasmania "to make it seem like home," and how they lived to regret it. Vancouver's Island is completely overrun with Broom and wild Roses from England.

The first commercial nursery in America, in the sense of the term as we now employ it, was established about 1730 by Robert Prince, in Flushing, Long Island, a community chiefly of French Huguenot settlers, who brought to the new world many French fruits by seed and cuttings, and also a love of horticulture. For over a century and a quarter these Prince Nurseries were the leading ones in America. The sale of fruit trees was increased in 1774 (as we learn from advertisements in the New York Mercury of that year), by the sale of "Carolina Magnolia flower trees, the most beautiful trees that grow in America, and 50 large Catalpa flower trees; they are nine feet high to the under part of the top and thick as one's leg," also other flowering trees and shrubs.

The fine house built on the nursery grounds by William Prince suffered little during the Revolution. It was occupied by Washington and afterwards house and nursery were preserved from depredations by a guard placed by General Howe when the British took possession of Flushing. Of course, domestic nursery business waned in time of war; but an excellent demand for American shrubs and trees sprung up among the officers of the British army, to send home to gardens in England and Germany. Many an English garden still has ancient plants and trees from the Prince Nurseries.

The "Linnæan Botanic Garden and Nurseries" and the "Old American Nursery" thrived once more at the close of the war, and William Prince the second entered in charge; one of his earliest ventures of importance was the introduction of Lombardy Poplars. In 1798 he advertises ten thousand trees, ten to seventeen feet in height. These became the most popular tree in America, the emblem of democracy – and a warmly hated tree as well. The eighty acres of nursery grounds were a centre of botanic and horticultural interest for the entire country; every tree, shrub, vine, and plant known to England and America was eagerly sought for; here the important botanical treasures of Lewis and Clark found a home. William Prince wrote several notable horticultural treatises; and even his trade catalogues were prized. He established the first steamboats between Flushing and New York, built roads and bridges on Long Island, and was a public-spirited, generous citizen as well as a man of science. His son, William Robert Prince, who died in 1869, was the last to keep up the nurseries, which he did as a scientific rather than a commercial establishment. He botanized the entire length of the Atlantic States with Dr. Torrey, and sought for collections of trees and wild flowers in California with the same eagerness that others there sought gold. He was a devoted promoter of the native silk industry, having vast plantations of Mulberries in many cities; for one at Norfolk, Virginia, he was offered $100,000. It is a curious fact that the interest in Mulberry culture and the practice of its cultivation was so universal in his neighborhood (about the year 1830), that cuttings of the Chinese Mulberry (Morus multicaulis) were used as currency in all the stores in the vicinity of Flushing, at the rate of 12½ cents each.

The Prince homestead, a fine old mansion, is here shown; it is still standing, surrounded by that forlorn sight, a forgotten garden. This is of considerable extent, and evidences of its past dignity appear in the hedges and edgings of Box; one symmetrical great Box tree is fifty feet in circumference. Flowering shrubs, unkempt of shape, bloom and beautify the waste borders each spring, as do the oldest Chinese Magnolias in the United States. Gingkos, Paulownias, and weeping trees, which need no gardener's care, also flourish and are of unusual size. There are some splendid evergreens, such as Mt. Atlas Cedars; and the oldest and finest Cedar of Lebanon in the United States. It seemed sad, as I looked at the evidences of so much past beauty and present decay, that this historic house and garden should not be preserved for New York, as the house and garden of John Bartram, the Philadelphia botanist, have been for his native city.

While there are few direct records of American gardens in the eighteenth century, we have many instructing side glimpses through old business letter-books. We find Sir Harry Frankland ordering Daffodils and Tulips for the garden he made for Agnes Surriage; and it is said that the first Lilacs ever seen in Hopkinton were planted by him for her. The gay young nobleman and the lovely woman are in the dust, and of all the beautiful things belonging to them there remain a splendid Portuguese fan, which stands as a memorial of that tragic crisis in their life – the great Lisbon earthquake; and the Lilacs, which still mark the site of her house and blossom each spring as a memorial of the shadowed romance of her life in New England.

Let me give two pages from old letters to illustrate what I mean by side glimpses at the contents of colonial gardens. The fine Hancock mansion in Boston had a carefully-filled garden long previous to the Revolution. Such letters as the following were sent by Mr. Hancock to England to secure flowers for it: —

"My Trees and Seeds for Capt. Bennett Came Safe to Hand and I like them very well. I Return you my hearty Thanks for the Plumb Tree and Tulip Roots you were pleased to make me a Present off, which are very Acceptable to me. I have Sent my friend Mr. Wilks a mmo. to procure for me 2 or 3 Doz. Yew Trees, Some Hollys and Jessamine Vines, and if you have Any Particular Curious Things not of a high Price, will Beautifye a flower Garden Send a Sample with the Price or a Catalogue of 'em, I do not intend to spare Any Cost or Pains in making my Gardens Beautifull or Profitable.

"P.S. The Tulip Roots you were Pleased to make a present off to me are all Dead as well."

We find Richard Stockton writing in 1766 from England to his wife at their beautiful home "Morven," in Princeton, New Jersey: —

"I am making you a charming collection of bulbous roots, which shall be sent over as soon as the prospect of freezing on your coast is over. The first of April, I believe, will be time enough for you to put them in your sweet little flower garden, which you so fondly cultivate. Suppose I inform you that I design a ride to Twickenham the latter end of next month principally to view Mr. Pope's gardens and grotto, which I am told remain nearly as he left them; and that I shall take with me a gentleman who draws well, to lay down an exact plan of the whole."

The fine line of Catalpa trees set out by Richard Stockton, along the front of his lawn, were in full flower when he rode up to his house on a memorable July day to tell his wife that he had signed the Declaration of American Independence. Since then Catalpa trees bear everywhere in that vicinity the name of Independence trees, and are believed to be ever in bloom on July 4th.

In the delightful diary and letters of Eliza Southgate Bowne (A Girl's Life Eighty Years Ago), are other side glimpses of the beautiful gardens of old Salem, among them those of the wealthy merchants of the Derby family. Terraces and arches show a formality of arrangement, for they were laid out by a Dutch gardener whose descendants still live in Salem. All had summer-houses, which were larger and more important buildings than what are to-day termed summer-houses; these latter were known in Salem and throughout Virginia as bowers. One summer-house had an arch through it with three doors on each side which opened into little apartments; one of them had a staircase by which you could ascend into a large upper room, which was the whole size of the building. This was constructed to command a fine view, and was ornamented with Chinese articles of varied interest and value; it was used for tea-drinkings. At the end of the garden, concealed by a dense Weeping Willow, was a thatched hermitage, containing the life-size figure of a man reading a prayer-book; a bed of straw and some broken furniture completed the picture. This was an English fashion, seen at one time in many old English gardens, and held to be most romantic. Apparently summer evenings were spent by the Derby household and their visitors wholly in the garden and summer-house. The diary keeper writes naïvely, "The moon shines brighter in this garden than anywhere else."

The shrewd and capable women of the colonies who entered so freely and successfully into business ventures found the selling of flower seeds a congenial occupation, and often added it to the pursuit of other callings. I think it must have been very pleasant to buy packages of flower seed at the same time and place where you bought your best bonnet, and have all sent home in a bandbox together; each would prove a memorial of the other; and long after the glory of the bonnet had departed, and the bonnet itself was ashes, the thriving Sweet Peas and Larkspur would recall its becoming charms. I have often seen the advertisements of these seedswomen in old newspapers; unfortunately they seldom gave printed lists of their store of seeds. Here is one list printed in a Boston newspaper on March 30, 1760: —

This list is certainly a pleasing one. It gives opportunity for flower borders of varied growth and rich color. There is a quality of some minds which may be termed historical imagination. It is the power of shaping from a few simple words or details of the faraway past, an ample picture, full of light and life, of which these meagre details are but a framework. Having this list of the names of these sturdy old annuals and perennials, what do you perceive besides the printed words? I see that the old mid-century garden where these seeds found a home was a cheerful place from earliest spring to autumn; that it had many bulbs, and thereafter a constant succession of warm blooms till the Coxcombs, Marigolds, Colchicums and Chrysanthemums yielded to New England's frosts. I know that the garden had beehives and that the bees were loved; for when they sallied out of their straw bee-skepes, these happy bees found their favorite blossoms planted to welcome them: Cerinthe, dropping with honey; Cacalia, a sister flower; Lupine, Larkspur, Sweet Marjoram, and Thyme – I can taste the Thyme-scented classic honey from that garden! There was variety of foliage as well as bloom, the dovelike Lavender, the glaucous Horned Poppy, the glistening Iceplants, the dusty Rose Campion.

Stately plants grew from the little seed-packets; Hollyhocks, Valerian, Canterbury Bells, Tree Primroses looked down on the low-growing herbs of the border; and there were vines of Convolvulus and Honeysuckle. It was a garden overhung by clouds of perfume from Thyme, Lavender, Sweet Peas, Pleasant-eyed Pink, and Stock. The garden's mistress looked well after her household; ample store of savory pot herbs grow among the finer blossoms.

It was a garden for children to play in. I can see them; little boys with their hair tied in queues, in knee breeches and flapped coats like their stately fathers, running races down the garden path, as did the Van Cortlandt children; and demure little girls in caps and sacques and aprons, sitting in cubby houses under the Lilac bushes. I know what flowers they played with and how they played, for they were my great-grandmothers and grandfathers, and they played exactly what I did, and sang what I did when I was a child in a garden. And suddenly my picture expands, as a glow of patriotic interest thrills me in the thought that in this garden were sheltered and amused the boys of one hundred and forty years ago, who became the heroes of our American Revolution; and the girls who were Daughters of Liberty, who spun and wove and knit for their soldiers, and drank heroically their miserable Liberty tea. I fear the garden faded when bitter war scourged the land, when the women turned from their flower beds to the plough and the field, since their brothers and husbands were on the frontier.

But when that winter of gloom to our country and darkness to the garden was ended, the flowers bloomed still more brightly, and to the cheerful seedlings of the old garden is now given perpetual youth and beauty; they are fated never to grow faded or neglected or sad, but to live and blossom and smile forever in the sunshine of our hearts through the magic power of a few printed words in a time-worn old news-sheet.

CHAPTER II
FRONT DOORYARDS

"There are few of us who cannot remember a front yard garden which seemed to us a very paradise in childhood. Whether the house was a fine one and the enclosure spacious, or whether it was a small house with only a narrow bit of ground in front, the yard was kept with care, and was different from the rest of the land altogether… People do not know what they lose when they make way with the reserve, the separateness, the sanctity, of the front yard of their grandmothers. It is like writing down family secrets for any one to read; it is like having everybody call you by your first name, or sitting in any pew in church."

– Country Byways, Sarah Orne Jewett, 1881.

Old New England villages and small towns and well-kept New England farms had universally a simple and pleasing form of garden called the front yard or front dooryard. A few still may be seen in conservative communities in the New England states and in New York or Pennsylvania. I saw flourishing ones this summer in Gloucester, Marblehead, and Ipswich. Even where the front yard was but a narrow strip of land before a tiny cottage, it was carefully fenced in, with a gate that was kept rigidly closed and latched. There seemed to be a law which shaped and bounded the front yard; the side fences extended from the corners of the house to the front fence on the edge of the road, and thus formed naturally the guarded parallelogram. Often the fence around the front yard was the only one on the farm; everywhere else were boundaries of great stone walls; or if there were rail fences, the front yard fence was the only painted one. I cannot doubt that the first gardens that our foremothers had, which were wholly of flowering plants, were front yards, little enclosures hard won from the forest.

The word yard, not generally applied now to any enclosure of elegant cultivation, comes from the same root as the word garden. Garth is another derivative, and the word exists much disguised in orchard. In the sixteenth century yard was used in formal literature instead of garden; and later Burns writes of "Eden's bonnie yard, Where yeuthful lovers first were pair'd."

This front yard was an English fashion derived from the forecourt so strongly advised by Gervayse Markham (an interesting old English writer on floriculture and husbandry), and found in front of many a yeoman's house, and many a more pretentious house as well in Markham's day. Forecourts were common in England until the middle of the eighteenth century, and may still be seen. The forecourt gave privacy to the house even when in the centre of a town. Its readoption is advised with handsome dwellings in England, where ground-space is limited, – and why not in America, too?

The front yard was sacred to the best beloved, or at any rate the most honored, garden flowers of the house mistress, and was preserved by its fences from inroads of cattle, which then wandered at their will and were not housed, or even enclosed at night. The flowers were often of scant variety, but were those deemed the gentlefolk of the flower world. There was a clump of Daffodils and of the Poet's Narcissus in early spring, and stately Crown Imperial; usually, too, a few scarlet and yellow single Tulips, and Grape Hyacinths. Later came Phlox in abundance – the only native American plant, – Canterbury Bells, and ample and glowing London Pride. Of course there were great plants of white and blue Day Lilies, with their beautiful and decorative leaves, and purple and yellow Flower de Luce. A few old-fashioned shrubs always were seen. By inflexible law there must be a Lilac, which might be the aristocratic Persian Lilac. A Syringa, a flowering Currant, or Strawberry bush made sweet the front yard in spring, and sent wafts of fragrance into the house-windows. Spindling, rusty Snowberry bushes were by the gate, and Snowballs also, or our native Viburnums. Old as they seem, the Spiræas and Deutzias came to us in the nineteenth century from Japan; as did the flowering Quinces and Cherries. The pink Flowering Almond dates back to the oldest front yards (see page 39), and Peter's Wreath certainly seems an old settler and is found now in many front yards that remain. The lovely full-flowered shrub of Peter's Wreath, on page 41, which was photographed for this book, was all that remained of a once-loved front yard.

The glory of the front yard was the old-fashioned early red "Piny," cultivated since the days of Pliny. I hear people speaking of it with contempt as a vulgar flower, – flaunting is the conventional derogatory adjective, – but I glory in its flaunting. The modern varieties, of every tint from white through flesh color, coral, pink, ruby color, salmon, and even yellow, to deep red, are as beautiful as Roses. Some are sweet-scented; and they have no thorns, and their foliage is ever perfect, so I am sure the Rose is jealous.

I am as fond of the Peony as are the Chinese, among whom it is flower queen. It is by them regarded as an aristocratic flower; and in old New England towns fine Peony plants in an old garden are a pretty good indication of the residence of what Dr. Holmes called New England Brahmins. In Salem and Portsmouth are old "Pinys" that have a hundred blossoms at a time – a glorious sight. A Japanese name is "Flower-of-prosperity"; another name, "Plant-of-twenty-days," because its glories last during that period of time.

Rhododendrons are to the modern garden what the Peony was in the old-fashioned flower border; and I am glad the modern flower cannot drive the old one out. They are equally varied in coloring, but the Peony is a much hardier plant, and I like it far better. It has no blights, no bugs, no diseases, no running out, no funguses; it doesn't have to be covered in winter, and it will bloom in the shade. No old-time or modern garden is to me fully furnished without Peonies; see how fair they are in this Salem garden. I would grow them in some corner of the garden for their splendid healthy foliage if they hadn't a blossom. The Pæonia tenuifolia in particular has exquisite feathery foliage. The great Tree Peony, which came from China, grows eight feet or more in height, and is a triumph of the flower world; but it was not known to the oldest front yards. Some of the Tree Peonies have finely displayed leafage of a curious and very gratifying tint of green. Miss Jekyll, with her usual felicity, compares its blue cast with pinkish shading to the vari-colored metal alloys of the Japanese bronze workers – a striking comparison. The single Peonies of recent years are of great beauty, and will soon be esteemed here as in China.

Not the least of the Peony's charms is its exceeding trimness and cleanliness. The plants always look like a well-dressed, well-shod, well-gloved girl of birth, breeding, and of equal good taste and good health; a girl who can swim, and skate, and ride, and play golf. Every inch has a well-set, neat, cared-for look which the shape and growth of the plant keeps from seeming artificial or finicky. See the white Peony on page 44; is it not a seemly, comely thing, as well as a beautiful one?

No flower can be set in our garden of more distinct antiquity than the Peony; the Greeks believed it to be of divine origin. A green arbor of the fourteenth century in England is described as set around with Gillyflower, Tansy, Gromwell, and "Pyonys powdered ay betwene" – just as I like to see Peonies set to this day, "powdered" everywhere between all the other flowers of the border.

I am pleased to note of the common flowers of the New England front yard, that they are no new things; they are nearly all Elizabethan of date – many are older still. Lord Bacon in his essay on gardens names many of them, Crocus, Tulip, Hyacinth, Daffodil, Flower de Luce, double Peony, Lilac, Lily of the Valley.

A favorite flower was the yellow garden Lily, the Lemon Lily, Hemerocallis, when it could be kept from spreading. Often its unbounded luxuriance exiled it from the front yard to the kitchen dooryard as befell the clump shown facing page 48. Its pretty old-fashioned name was Liricon-fancy, given, I am told, in England to the Lily of the Valley. I know no more satisfying sight than a good bank of these Lemon Lilies in full flower. Below Flatbush there used to be a driveway leading to an old Dutch house, set at regular intervals with great clumps of Lemon Lilies, and their full bloom made them glorious. Their power of satisfactory adaptation in our modern formal garden is happily shown facing page 76, in the lovely garden of Charles E. Mather, Esq., in Haverford, Pennsylvania.

The time of fullest inflorescence of the nineteenth century front yard was when Phlox and Tiger Lilies bloomed; but the pinkish-orange colors of the latter (the oddest reds of any flower tints) blended most vilely and rampantly with the crimson-purple of the Phlox; and when London Pride joined with its glowing scarlet, the front yard fairly ached. Nevertheless, an adaptation of that front yard bloom can be most effective in a garden border, when white Phlox only is planted, and the Tiger Lily or cultivated stalks of our wild nodding Lily rise above the white trusses of bloom. These wild Lilies grow very luxuriantly in the garden, often towering above our heads and forming great candelabra bearing two score or more blooms. It is no easy task to secure their deep-rooted rhizomes in the meadow. I know a young man who won his sweetheart by the patience and assiduity with which he dug for her all one broiling morning to secure for her the coveted Lily roots, and collapsed with mild sunstroke at the finish. Her gratitude and remorse were equal factors in his favor.

The Tiger Lily is usually thought upon as a truly old-fashioned flower, a veritable antique; it is a favorite of artists to place as an accessory in their colonial gardens, and of authors for their flower-beds of Revolutionary days, but it was not known either in formal garden or front yard, until after "the days when we lived under the King." The bulbs were first brought to England from Eastern Asia in 1804 by Captain Kirkpatrick of the East India Company's Service, and shared with the Japan Lily the honor of being the first Eastern Lilies introduced into European gardens. A few years ago an old gentleman, Mr. Isaac Pitman, who was then about eighty-five years of age, told me that he recalled distinctly when Tiger Lilies first appeared in our gardens, and where he first saw them growing in Boston. So instead of being an old-time flower, or even an old-comer from the Orient, it is one of the novelties of this century. How readily has it made itself at home, and even wandered wild down our roadsides!

The two simple colors of Phlox of the old-time front yard, white and crimson-purple, are now augmented by tints of salmon, vermilion, and rose. I recall with special pleasure the profuse garden decoration at East Hampton, Long Island, of a pure cherry-colored Phlox, generally a doubtful color to me, but there so associated with the white blooms of various other plants, and backed by a high hedge covered solidly with blossoming Honeysuckle, that it was wonderfully successful.

To other members of the Phlox family, all natives of our own continent, the old front yard owed much; the Moss Pink sometimes crowded out both Grass and its companion the Periwinkle; it is still found in our gardens, and bountifully also in our fields; either in white or pink, it is one of the satisfactions of spring, and its cheerful little blossom is of wonderful use in many waste places. An old-fashioned bloom, the low-growing Phlox amœna, with its queerly fuzzy leaves and bright crimson blossoms, was among the most distinctly old-fashioned flowers of the front yard. It was tolerated rather than cultivated, as was its companion, the Arabis or Rock Cress – both crowding, monopolizing creatures. I remember well how they spread over the beds and up the grass banks in my mother's garden, how sternly they were uprooted, in spite of the pretty name of the Arabis – "Snow in Summer."

Sometimes the front yard path had edgings of sweet single or lightly double white or tinted Pinks, which were not deemed as choice as Box edgings. Frequently large Box plants clipped into simple and natural shapes stood at the side of the doorstep, usually in the home of the well-to-do. A great shell might be on either side of the door-sill, if there chanced to be seafaring men-folk who lived or visited under the roof-tree. Annuals were few in number; sturdy old perennial plants of many years' growth were the most honored dwellers in the front yard, true representatives of old families. The Roses were few and poor, for there was usually some great tree just without the gate, an Elm or Larch, whose shadow fell far too near and heavily for the health of Roses. Sometimes there was a prickly semidouble yellow Rose, called by us a Scotch Rose, a Sweet Brier, or a rusty-flowered white Rose, similar, though inferior, to the Madame Plantier. A new fashion of trellises appeared in the front yard about sixty years ago, and crimson Boursault Roses climbed up them as if by magic.

One marked characteristic of the front yard was its lack of weeds; few sprung up, none came to seed-time; the enclosure was small, and it was a mark of good breeding to care for it well. Sometimes, however, the earth was covered closely under shrubs and plants with the cheerful little Ladies' Delights, and they blossomed in the chinks of the bricked path and under the Box edges. Ambrosia, too, grew everywhere, but these were welcome – they were not weeds.

Our old New England houses were suited in color and outline to their front yards as to our landscape. Lowell has given in verse a good description of the kind of New England house that always had a front dooryard of flowers.

"On a grass-green swell
That towards the south with sweet concessions fell,
It dwelt retired, and half had grown to be
As aboriginal as rock or tree.
It nestled close to earth, and seemed to brood
O'er homely thoughts in a half-conscious mood.
If paint it e'er had known, it knew no more
Than yellow lichens spattered thickly o'er
That soft lead gray, less dark beneath the eaves,
Which the slow brush of wind and weather leaves.
The ample roof sloped backward to the ground
And vassal lean-tos gathered thickly round,
Patched on, as sire or son had felt the need.
But the great chimney was the central thought.

* * * * *

It rose broad-shouldered, kindly, debonair,
Its warm breath whitening in the autumn air."

Sarah Orne Jewett, in the plaint of A Mournful Villager, has drawn a beautiful and sympathetic picture of these front yards, and she deplores their passing. I mourn them as I do every fenced-in or hedged-in garden enclosure. The sanctity and reserve of these front yards of our grandmothers was somewhat emblematic of woman's life of that day: it was restricted, and narrowed to a small outlook and monotonous likeness to her neighbor's; but it was a life easily satisfied with small pleasures, and it was comely and sheltered and carefully kept, and pleasant to the home household; and these were no mean things.

The front yard was never a garden of pleasure; children could not play in these precious little enclosed plots, and never could pick the flowers – front yard and flowers were both too much respected. Only formal visitors entered therein, visitors who opened the gate and closed it carefully behind them, and knocked slowly with the brass knocker, and were ushered in through the ceremonious front door and the little ill-contrived entry, to the stiff fore-room or parlor. The parson and his wife entered that portal, and sometimes a solemn would-be sweetheart, or the guests at a tea party. It can be seen that every one who had enough social dignity to have a front door and a parlor, and visitors thereto, also desired a front yard with flowers as the external token of that honored standing. It was like owning a pew in church; you could be a Christian without having a pew, but not a respected one. Sometimes when there was a "vendue" in the house, reckless folk opened the front gate, and even tied it back. I attended one where the auctioneer boldly set the articles out through the windows under the Lilac bushes and even on the precious front yard plants. A vendue and a funeral were the only gatherings in country communities when the entire neighborhood came freely to an old homestead, when all were at liberty to enter the front dooryard. At the sad time when a funeral took place in the house, the front gate was fastened widely open, and solemn men-neighbors, in Sunday garments, stood rather uncomfortably and awkwardly around the front yard as the women passed into the house of mourning and were seated within. When the sad services began, the men too entered and stood stiffly by the door. Then through the front door, down the mossy path of the front yard, and through the open front gate was borne the master, the mistress, and then their children, and children's children. All are gone from our sight, many from our memory, and often too from our ken, while the Lilacs and Peonies and Flowers de Luce still blossom and flourish with perennial youth, and still claim us as friends.

At the side of the house or by the kitchen door would be seen many thrifty blooms: poles of Scarlet Runners, beds of Portulacas and Petunias, rows of Pinks, bunches of Marigolds, level expanses of Sweet Williams, banks of cheerful Nasturtiums, tangles of Morning-glories and long rows of stately Hollyhocks, which were much admired, but were seldom seen in the front yard, which was too shaded for them. Weeds grew here at the kitchen door in a rank profusion which was hard to conquer; but here the winter's Fuchsias or Geraniums stood in flower pots in the sunlight, and the tubs of Oleanders and Agapanthus Lilies.

The flowers of the front yard seemed to bear a more formal, a "company" aspect; conventionality rigidly bound them. Bachelor's Buttons might grow there by accident, but Marigolds never were tolerated, – they were pot herbs. Sunflowers were not even permitted in the flower beds at the side of the house unless these stretched down to the vegetable beds. Outside the front yard would be a rioting and cheerful growth of pink Bouncing Bet, or of purple Honesty, and tall straggling plants of a certain small flowered, ragged Campanula, and a white Mallow with flannelly leaves which, doubtless, aspired to inhabit the sacred bounds of the front yard (and probably dwelt there originally), and often were gladly permitted to grow in side gardens or kitchen dooryards, but which were regarded as interloping weeds by the guardians of the front yard, and sternly exiled. Sometimes a bed of these orange-tawny Day Lilies which had once been warmly welcomed from the Orient, and now were not wanted anywhere by any one, kept company with the Bouncing Bet, and stretched cheerfully down the roadside.

When the fences disappeared with the night rambles of the cows, the front yards gradually changed character; the tender blooms vanished, but the tall shrubs and the Peonies and Flower de Luce sturdily grew and blossomed, save where that dreary destroyer of a garden crept in – the desire for a lawn. The result was then a meagre expanse of poorly kept grass, with no variety, color, or change, – neither lawn nor front yard. It is ever a pleasure to me when driving in a village street or a country road to find one of these front yards still enclosed, or even to note in front of many houses the traces of a past front yard still plainly visible in the flourishing old-fashioned plants of many years' growth.

CHAPTER III
VARIED GARDENS FAIR

"And all without were walkes and alleys dight
With divers trees enrang'd in even rankes;
And here and there were pleasant arbors pight
And shadie seats, and sundry flowering bankes
To sit and rest the walkers wearie shankes."

– Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser.

Many simple forms of gardens were common besides the enclosed front yard; and as wealth poured in on the colonies, the beautiful gardens so much thought of in England were copied here, especially by wealthy merchants, as is noted in the first chapter of this book, and by the provincial governors and their little courts; the garden of Governor Hutchinson, in Milford, Massachusetts, is stately still and little changed.

English gardens, at the time of the settlement of America, had passed beyond the time when, as old Gervayse Markham said, "Of all the best Ornaments used in our English gardens, Knots and Mazes are the most ancient." A maze was a placing of low garden hedges of Privet, Box, or Hyssop, usually set in concentric circles which enclosed paths, that opened into each other by such artful contrivance that it was difficult to find one's way in and out through these bewildering paths. "When well formed, of a man's height, your friend may perhaps wander in gathering berries as he cannot recover himself without your help."

The maze was not a thing of beauty, it was "nothing for sweetness and health," to use Lord Bacon's words; it was only a whimsical notion of gardening amusement, pleasing to a generation who liked to have hidden fountains in their gardens to sprinkle suddenly the unwary. I doubt if any mazes were ever laid out in America, though I have heard vague references to one in Virginia. Knots had been the choice adornment of the Tudor garden. They were not wholly a thing of the past when we had here our first gardens, and they have had a distinct influence on garden laying-out till our own day.

An Elizabethan poet wrote: —

"My Garden sweet, enclosed with walles strong,
Embanked with benches to sitt and take my rest;
The knots so enknotted it cannot be expressed
The arbores and alyes so pleasant and so dulce."

These garden knots were not flower beds edged with Box or Rosemary, with narrow walks between the edgings, as were the parterres of our later formal gardens. They were square, ornamental beds, each of which had a design set in some close-growing, trim plant, clipped flatly across the top, and the design filled in with colored earth or sand; and with no dividing paths. Elaborate models in complicated geometrical pattern were given in gardeners' books, for setting out these knots, which were first drawn on paper and subdivided into squares; then the square of earth was similarly divided, and set out by precise rules. William Lawson, the Izaak Walton of gardeners, gave, as a result of forty-eight years of experience, some very attractive directions for large "knottys" with different "thrids" of flowers, each of one color, which made the design appear as if "made of diverse colored ribands." One of his knots, from A New Orchard and Garden 1618, being a garden fashion in vogue when my forbears came to America, I have chosen as a device for the dedication of this book, thinking it, in Lawson's words, "so comely, and orderly placed, and so intermingled, that one looking thereon cannot but wonder." His knots had significant names, such as "Cinkfoyle; Flower de Luce; Trefoyle; Frette; Lozenge; Groseboowe; Diamond; Ovall; Maze."

Gervayse Markham gives various knot patterns to be bordered with Box cut eighteen inches broad at the bottom and kept flat at the top – with the ever present thought for the fine English linen. He has a varied list of circular, diamond-shaped, mixed, and "single impleated knots."

These garden knots were mildly sneered at by Lord Bacon; he said, "they be but toys, you see as good sights many times in tarts;" still I think they must have been quaint, and I should like to see a garden laid out to-day in these pretty Elizabethan knots, set in the old patterns, and with the old flowers. Nor did Parkinson and other practical gardeners look with favor on "curiously knotted gardens," though all gave designs to "satisfy the desires" of their readers. "Open knots" were preferred; these were made with borders of lead, tiles, boards, or even the shankbones of sheep, "which will become white and prettily grace out the garden," – a fashion I saw a few years ago around flower beds in Charlton, Massachusetts. "Round whitish pebble stones" for edgings were Parkinson's own invention, and proud he was of it, simple as it seems to us. These open knots were then filled in, but "thin and sparingly," with "English Flowers"; or with "Out-Landish Flowers," which were flowers fetched from foreign parts.

The parterre succeeded the knot, and has been used in gardens till the present day. Parterres were of different combinations, "well-contriv'd and ingenious." The "parterre of cut-work" was a Box-bordered formal flower garden, of which the garden at Hampton, Maryland (pages 57, 60, and 95), is a striking and perfect example; also the present garden at Mount Vernon (opposite page 12), wherein carefully designed flower beds, edged with Box, are planted with variety of flowers, and separated by paths. Sometimes, of old, fine white sand was carefully strewn on the earth under the flowers. The "parterre à l'Anglaise" had an elaborate design of vari-shaped beds edged with Box, but enclosing grass instead of flowers. In the "parterre de broderie" the Box-edged beds were filled with vari-colored earths and sands. Black earth could be made of iron filings; red earth of pounded tiles. This last-named parterre differed from a knot solely in having the paths among the beds. The Retir'd Gard'ner gives patterns for ten parterres.

The main walks which formed the basis of the garden design had in ancient days a singular name – forthrights; these were ever to be "spacious and fair," and neatly spread with colored sands or gravel. Parkinson says, "The fairer and larger your allies and walks be the more grace your garden should have, the lesse harm the herbes and flowers shall receive, and the better shall your weeders cleanse both the bed and the allies." "Covert-walks," or "shade-alleys," had trees meeting in an arch over them.

A curious term, found in references to old American flower beds and garden designs, as well as English ones, is the "goose-foot." A "goose-foot" consisted of three flower beds or three avenues radiating rather closely together from a small semicircle; and in some places and under some conditions it is still a charming and striking design, as you stand at the heel of the design and glance down the three avenues.

In all these flower beds Box was the favorite edging, but many other trim edgings have been used in parterres and borders by those who love not Box. Bricks were used, and boards; an edging of boards was not as pretty as one of flowers, but it kept the beds trimly in place; a garden thus edged is shown on page 63 which realizes this description of the pleasure-garden in the Scots Gard'ner: "The Bordures box'd and planted with variety of fine Flowers orderly Intermixt, Weeded, Mow'd, Rolled and Kept all Clean and Handsome." Germander and Rosemary were old favorites for edging. I have seen snowy edgings of Candy-tuft and Sweet Alyssum, setting off well the vari-colored blooms of the border. One of Sweet Alyssum is shown on page 256. Ageratum is a satisfactory edging. Thyme is of ancient use, but rather unmanageable; one garden owner has set his edgings of Moneywort, otherwise Creeping-jenny. I should be loth to use Moneywort as an edging; I would not care for its yellow flowers in that place, though I find them very kindly and cheerful on dull banks or in damp spots, under the drip of trees and eaves, or better still, growing gladly in the flower pot of the poor. I fear if Moneywort thrived enough to make a close, suitable edging, that it would thrive too well, and would swamp the borders with its underground runners. The name Moneywort is akin to its older title Herb-twopence, or Twopenny Grass. Turner (1548) says the latter name was given from the leaves all "standying together of ech syde of the stalke lyke pence." The striped leaves of one variety of Day Lily make pretty edgings. Those from a Salem garden are here shown.

We often see in neglected gardens in New England, or by the roadside where no gardens now exist, a dense gray-green growth of Lavender Cotton, "the female plant of Southernwood," which was brought here by the colonists and here will ever remain. It was used as an edging, and is very pretty when it can be controlled. I know two or three old gardens where it is thus employed.

Sometimes in driving along a country road you are startled by a concentration of foliage and bloom, a glimpse of a tiny farm-house, over which are clustered and heaped, and round which are gathered, close enough to be within touch from door or window, flowers in a crowded profusion ample to fill a large flower bed. Such is the mass of June bloom at Wilbur Farm in old Narragansett (page 290) – a home of flowers and bees. Often by the side of the farm-house is a little garden or flower bed containing some splendid examples of old-time flowers. The splendid "running ribbons" of Snow Pinks, on page 292, are in another Narragansett garden that is a bower of blossoms. Thrift has been a common edging since the days of the old herbalist Gerarde.

"We have a bright little garden, down on a sunny slope,
Bordered with sea-pinks and sweet with the songs and blossoms of hope."

The garden of Secretary William H. Seward (in Auburn, New York), so beloved by him in his lifetime, is shown on page 146 and facing page 134. In this garden some beds are edged with Periwinkle, others with Polyanthus, and some with Ivy which Mr. Seward brought from Abbotsford in 1836. This garden was laid out in its present form in 1816, and the sun-dial was then set in its place. The garden has been enlarged, but not changed, the old "George II. Roses" and York and Lancaster Roses still grow and blossom, and the lovely arches of single Michigan Roses still flourish. In it are many flowers and fruits unusual in America, among them a bed of Alpine strawberries.

King James I. of Scotland thus wrote of the garden which he saw from his prison window in Windsor Castle: —

"A Garden fair, and in the Corners set
An Herbere greene, with Wandis long and small
Railit about."

These wandis were railings which were much used before Box edgings became universal. Sometimes they were painted the family colors, as at Hampton Court they were green and white, the Tudor colors. These "wandis" still are occasionally seen. In the Berkshire Hills I drove past an old garden thus trimly enclosed in little beds. The rails were painted a dull light brown, almost the color of some tree trunks; and Larkspur, Foxglove, and other tall flowers crowded up to them and hung their heads over the top rails as children hang over a fence or a gate. I thought it a neat, trim fashion, not one I would care for in my own garden, yet not to be despised in the garden of another.

A garden enclosed! so full of suggestion are these simple words to me, so constant is my thought that an ideal flower garden must be an enclosed garden, that I look with regret upon all beautiful flower beds that are not enclosed, not shut in a frame of green hedges, or high walls, or vine-covered fences and dividing trees. It may be selfish to hide so much beauty from general view; but until our dwelling-houses are made with uncurtained glass walls, that all the world may see everything, let those who have ample grounds enclose at least a portion for the sight of friends only.

In the heart of Worcester there is a fine old mansion with ample lawns, great trees, and flowering shrubs that all may see over the garden fence as they pass by. Flowers bloom lavishly at one side of the house; and the thoughtless stroller never knows that behind the house, stretching down between the rear gardens and walls of neighboring homes, is a long enclosure of loveliness – sequestered, quiet, full of refreshment to the spirits. We think of the "Old Garden" of Margaret Deland: —

"The Garden glows
And 'gainst its walls the city's heart still beats.
And out from it each summer wind that blows
Carries some sweetness to the tired streets!"

There is a shaded walk in this garden which is a thing of solace and content to all who tread its pathway; a bit is shown opposite this page, overhung with shrubs of Lilac, Syringa, Strawberry Bush, Flowering Currant, all the old treelike things, so fair-flowered and sweet-scented in spring, so heavy-leaved and cool-shadowing in midsummer: what pleasure would there be in this shaded walk if this garden were separated from the street only by stone curbing or a low rail? And there is an old sun-dial too in this enclosed garden! I fear the street imps of a crowded city would quickly destroy the old monitor were it in an open garden; and they would make sad havoc, too, of the Roses and Larkspurs (page 65) so tenderly reared by the two sisters who together loved and cared for this "garden enclosed." Great trees are at the edges of this garden, and the line of tall shrubs is carried out by the lavish vines and Roses on fences and walls. Within all this border of greenery glow the clustered gems of rare and beautiful flowers, till the whole garden seems like some rich jewel set purposely to be worn in honor over the city's heart – a clustered jewel, not one to be displayed carelessly and heedlessly.

Salem houses and gardens are like Salem people. Salem houses present to you a serene and dignified front, gracious yet reserved, not thrusting forward their choicest treasures to the eyes of passing strangers; but behind the walls of the houses, enclosed from public view, lie cherished gardens, full of the beauty of life. Such, in their kind, are Salem folk.

I know no more speaking, though silent, criticism than those old Salem gardens afford upon the modern fashion in American towns of pulling down walls and fences, removing the boundaries of lawns, and living in full view of every passer-by, in a public grassy park. It is pleasant, I suppose, for the passer-by; but homes are not made for passers-by. Old Salem gardens lie behind the house, out of sight – you have to hunt for them. They are terraced down if they stretch to the water-side; they are enclosed with hedges, and set behind high vine-covered fences, and low out-buildings; and planted around with great trees: thus they give to each family that secluded centring of family life which is the very essence and being of a home. I sat through a June afternoon in a Salem garden whose gate is within a stone's throw of a great theatre, but a few hundred feet from lines of electric cars and a busy street of trade, scarce farther from lines of active steam cars, and with a great power house for a close neighbor. Yet we were as secluded, as embowered in vines and trees, with beehives and rabbit hutches and chicken coops for happy children at the garden's end, as truly in beautiful privacy, as if in the midst of a hundred acres. Could the sense of sound be as sheltered by the enclosing walls as the sense of sight, such a garden were a city paradise.

There is scant regularity in shape in Salem gardens; there is no search for exact dimensions. Little narrow strips of flower beds run down from the main garden in any direction or at any angle where the fortunate owner can buy a few feet of land. Salem gardens do not change with the whims of fancy, either in the shape or the planting. A few new flowers find place there, such as the Anemone Japonica and the Japanese shrubs; for they are akin in flower sentiment, and consort well with the old inhabitants. There are many choice flowers and fruits in these gardens. In the garden of the Manning homestead (opposite page 112) grows a flourishing Fig tree, and other rare fruits; for fifty years ago this garden was known as the Pomological Garden. It is fitting it should be the home of two Robert Mannings – both well-known names in the history of horticulture in Massachusetts.

The homely back yard of an old house will often possess a trim and blooming flower border cutting off the close approach of the vegetable beds (see opposite page 66). These back yards, with the covered Grape arbors, the old pumps, and bricked paths, are cheerful, wholesome places, generally of spotless cleanliness and weedless flower beds. I know one such back yard where the pump was the first one set in the town, and children were taken there from a distance to see the wondrous sight. Why are all the old appliances for raising water so pleasing? A well-sweep is of course picturesque, with its long swinging pole, and you seem to feel the refreshment and purity of the water when you see it brought up from such a distance; and an old roofed well with bucket, such as this one still in use at Bishop Berkeley's Rhode Island home is ever a homelike and companionable object. But a pump is really an awkward-looking piece of mechanism, and hasn't a vestige of beauty in its lines; yet it has something satisfying about it; it may be its domesticity, its homeliness, its simplicity. We have gained infinitely in comfort in our perfect water systems and lavish water of to-day, but we have lost the gratification of the senses which came from the sight and sound of freshly drawn or running water. Much of the delight in a fountain comes, not only from the beauty of its setting and the graceful shape of its jets, but simply from the sight of the water.

Sometimes a graceful and picturesque growth of vines will beautify gate posts, a fence, or a kitchen doorway in a wonderfully artistic and pleasing fashion. On page 70 is shown the sheltered doorway of the kitchen of a fine old stone farm-house called, from its hedges of Osage Orange, "The Hedges." It stands in the village of New Hope, County Bucks, Pennsylvania. In 1718 the tract of which this farm of over two hundred acres is but a portion was deeded by the Penns to their kinsman, the direct ancestor of the present owner, John Schofield Williams, Esq. This is but one of the scores of examples I know where the same estate has been owned in one family for nearly two centuries, sometimes even for two hundred and fifty years; and in several cases where the deed from the Indian sachem to the first colonist is the only deed there has ever been, the estate having never changed ownership save by direct bequest. I have three such cases among my own kinsfolk.

Another form of garden and mode of planting which was in vogue in the "early thirties" is shown facing page 92. This pillared house and the stiff garden are excellent types; they are at Napanock, County Ulster, New York. Such a house and grounds indicated the possession of considerable wealth when they were built and laid out, for both were costly. The semicircular driveway swept up to the front door, dividing off Box-edged parterres like those of the day of Queen Anne. These parterres were sparsely filled, the sunnier beds being set with Spring bulbs; and there were always the yellow Day Lilies somewhere in the flower beds, and the white and blue Day Lilies, the common Funkias. Formal urns were usually found in the parterres and sometimes a great cone or ball of clipped Box. These gardens had some universal details, they always had great Snowball bushes, and Syringas, and usually white Roses, chiefly Madame Plantiers; the piazza trellises had old climbing Roses, the Queen of the Prairie or Boursault Roses. These gardens are often densely overshadowed with great evergreen trees grown from the crowded planting of seventy years ago; none are cut down, and if one dies its trunk still stands, entwined with Woodbine. I don't know that we would lay out and plant just such a garden to-day, any more than we would build exactly such a house; but I love to see both, types of the refinement of their day, and I deplore any changes. An old Southern house of allied form is shown on page 72, and its garden facing page 70, – Greenwood, in Thomasville, Georgia; but of course this garden has far more lavish and rich bloom. The decoration of this house is most interesting – a conventionalized Magnolia, and the garden is surrounded with splendid Magnolias and Crape Myrtles. The border edgings in this garden are lines of bricks set overlapping in a curious manner. They serve to keep the beds firmly in place, and the bricks are covered over with an inner edging of thrifty Violets. Curious tubs and boxes for plants are made of bricks set solidly in mortar. The garden is glorious with Roses, which seem to consort so well with Magnolias and Violets.

I love a Dutch garden, "circummured" with brick. By a Dutch garden, I mean a small garden, oblong or square, sunk about three or four feet in a lawn – so that when surrounded by brick walls they seem about two feet high when viewed outside, but are five feet or more high from within the garden. There are brick or stone steps in the middle of each of the four walls by which to descend to the garden, which may be all planted with flowers, but preferably should have set borders of flowers with a grass-plot in the centre. On either side of the steps should be brick posts surmounted by Dutch pots with plants, or by balls of stone. Planted with bulbs, these gardens in their flowering time are, as old Parkinson said, a "perfect fielde of delite." We have very pretty Dutch gardens, so called, in America, but their chief claim to being Dutch is that they are set with bulbs, and have Delft or other earthen pots or boxes for formal plants or shrubs.

Sunken gardens should be laid out under the supervision of an intelligent landscape architect; and even then should have a reason for being sunken other than a whim or increase in costliness. I visited last summer a beautiful estate which had a deep sunken Dutch garden with a very low wall. It lay at the right side of the house at a little distance; and beyond it, in full view of the peristyle, extended the only squalid objects in the horizon. A garden on the level, well planted, with distant edging of shrubbery, would have hidden every ugly blemish and been a thing of beauty. As it is now, there can be seen from the house nothing of the Dutch garden but a foot or two of the tops of several clipped trees, looking like very poor, stunted shrubs. I must add that this garden, with its low wall, has been a perfect man-trap. It has been evident that often, on dark nights, workmen who have sought a "short cut" across the grounds have fallen over the shallow wall, to the gardener's sorrow, and the bulbs' destruction. Once, at dawn, the unhappy gardener found an ancient horse peacefully feeding among the Hyacinths and Tulips. He said he didn't like the grass in his new pasture nor the sudden approach to it; that he was too old for such new-fangled ways. I know another estate near Philadelphia, where the sinking of a garden revealed an exquisite view of distant hills; such a garden has reason for its form.

We have had few water-gardens in America till recent years; and there are some drawbacks to their presence near our homes, as I was vividly aware when I visited one in a friend's garden early in May this year. Water-hyacinths were even then in bloom, and two or three exquisite Lilies; and the Lotus leaves rose up charmingly from the surface of the tank. Less charmingly rose up also a cloud of vicious mosquitoes, who greeted the newcomer with a warm chorus of welcome. As our newspapers at that time were filled with plans for the application of kerosene to every inch of water-surface, such as I saw in these Lily tanks, accompanied by magnified drawings of dreadful malaria-bearing insects, I fled from them, preferring to resign both Nymphæa and Anopheles.

After the introduction to English folk of that wonder of the world, the Victoria Regia, it was cultivated by enthusiastic flower lovers in America, and was for a time the height of the floral fashion. Never has the glorious Victoria Regia and scarce any other flower been described as by Colonel Higginson, a wonderful, a triumphant word picture. I was a very little child when I saw that same lovely Lily in leaf and flower that he called his neighbor; but I have never forgotten it, nor how afraid I was of it; for some one wished to lift me upon the great leaf to see whether it would hold me above the water. We had heard that the native children in South America floated on the leaves. I objected to this experiment with vehemence; but my mother noted that I was no more frightened than was the faithful gardener at the thought of the possible strain on his precious plant of the weight of a sturdy child of six or seven years. I have seen the Victoria Regia leaves of late years, but I seldom hear of its blossoming; but alas! we take less heed of the blooming of unusual plants than we used to thirty or forty years ago. Then people thronged a greenhouse to see a new Rose or Camellia Japonica; even a Night-blooming Cereus attracted scores of visitors to any house where it blossomed. And a fine Cactus of one of our neighbors always held a crowded reception when in rich bloom. It was a part of the "Flower Exchange," an interest all had for the beautiful flowers of others, a part of the old neighborly life.

Within the past five or six years there have been laid out in America, at the country seats of men of wealth and culture, a great number of formal gardens, – Italian gardens, some of them are worthily named, as they have been shaped and planted in conformity with the best laws and rules of Italian garden-making – that special art. On this page is shown the finely proportioned terrace wall, and opposite the upper terrace and formal garden of Drumthwacket, Princeton, New Jersey, the country seat of M. Taylor Pyne, Esq. This garden affords a good example of the accord which should ever exist between the garden and its surroundings. The name, Drumthwacket – a wooded hill – is a most felicitous one; the place is part of the original grant to William Penn, and has remained in the possession of one family until late in the nineteenth century. From this beautifully wooded hill the terrace-garden overlooks the farm buildings, the linked ponds, the fertile fields and meadows; a serene pastoral view, typical of the peaceful landscape of that vicinity – yet it was once the scene of fiercest battle. For the Drumthwacket farm is the battle-ground of that important encounter of 1777 between the British and the Continental troops, known as the Battle of Princeton, the turning point of the Revolution, in which Washington was victorious. To this day, cannon ball and grape shot are dug up in the Drumthwacket fields. The Lodge built in 1696 was, at Washington's request, the shelter for the wounded British officers; and the Washington Spring in front of the Lodge furnished water to Washington. The group of trees on the left of the upper pond marks the sheltered and honored graves of the British soldiers, where have slept for one hundred and twenty-four years those killed at this memorable encounter. If anything could cement still more closely the affections of the English and American peoples, it would be the sight of the tenderly sheltered graves of British soldiers in America, such as these at Drumthwacket and other historic fields on our Eastern coast. At Concord how faithfully stand the sentinel pines over the British dead of the Battle of Concord, who thus repose, shut out from the tread of heedless feet yet ever present for the care and thought of Concord people.

We have older Italian gardens. Some of them are of great loveliness, among them the unique and dignified garden of Hollis H. Hunnewell, Esq., but many of the newer ones, even in their few summers, have become of surprising grace and beauty, and their exquisite promise causes a glow of delight to every garden lover. I have often tried to analyze and account for the great charm of a formal garden, to one who loves so well the unrestrained and lavished blossoming of a flower border crowded with nature-arranged and disarranged blooms. A chance sentence in the letter of a flower-loving friend, one whose refined taste is an inherent portion of her nature, runs thus: —

"I have the same love, the same sense of perfect satisfaction, in the old formal garden that I have in the sonnet in poetry, in the Greek drama as contrasted with the modern drama; something within me is ever drawn toward that which is restrained and classic."

In these few words, then, is defined the charm of the formal garden – a well-ordered, a classic restraint.

Some of the new formal gardens seem imperfect in design and inadequate in execution; worse still, they are unsuited to their surroundings; but gracious nature will give even to these many charms of color, fragrance, and shape through lavish plant growth. I have had given to me sets of beautiful photographs of these new Italian gardens, which I long to include with my pictures of older flower beds; but I cannot do so in full in a book on Old-time Gardens, though they are copied from far older gardens than our American ones. I give throughout my book occasional glimpses of detail in modern formal gardens; and two examples may be fitly illustrated and described in comparative fulness in this book, because they are not only unusual in their beauty and promise, but because they have in plan and execution some bearing on my special presentation of gardens. These two are the gardens of Avonwood Court in Haverford, Pennsylvania, the country-seat of Charles E. Mather, Esq., of Philadelphia; and of Yaddo, in Saratoga, New York, the country-seat of Spencer Trask, Esq., of New York.

The garden at Avonwood Court was designed and laid out in 1896 by Mr. Percy Ash. The flower planting was done by Mr. John Cope; and the garden is delightsome in proportions, contour, and aspect. Its claim to illustrative description in this book lies in the fact that it is planted chiefly with old-fashioned flowers, and its beds are laid out and bordered with thriving Box in a truly old-time mode. It affords a striking example of the beauty and satisfaction that can come from the use of Box as an edging, and old-time flowers as a filling of these beds. Among the two hundred different plants are great rows of yellow Day Lilies shown in the view facing page 76; regular plantings of Peonies; borders of Flower de Luce; banks of Lilies of the Valley; rows of white Fraxinella and Lupine, beds of fringed Poppies, sentinels of Yucca – scores of old favorites have grown and thriven in the cheery manner they ever display when they are welcome and beloved. The sun-dial in this garden is shown facing page 82; it was designed by Mr. Percy Ash, and can be regarded as a model of simple outlines, good proportions, careful placing, and symmetrical setting. By placing I mean that it is in the right site in relation to the surrounding flower beds, and to the general outlines of the garden; it is a dignified and significant garden centre. By setting I mean its being raised to proper prominence in the garden scheme, by being placed at the top of a platform formed of three circular steps of ample proportion and suitable height, that its pedestal is also of the right size and not so high but one can, when standing on the top step, read with ease the dial's response to our question, "What's the time o' the day?" The hedges and walls of Honeysuckle, Roses, and other flowering vines that surround this garden have thriven wonderfully in the five years of the garden's life, and look like settings of many years. The simple but graceful wall seat gives some idea of the symmetrical and simple garden furnishings, as well as the profusion of climbing vines that form the garden's boundaries.

This book bears on the title-page a redrawing of a charming old woodcut of the eighteenth century, a very good example of the art thought and art execution of that day, being the work of a skilful designer. It is from an old stilted treatise on orchards and gardens, and it depicts a cheerful little Love, with anxious face and painstaking care, measuring and laying out the surface of the earth in a garden. On his either side are old clipped Yews; and at his feet a spade and pots of garden flowers, among them the Fritillary so beloved of all flower lovers and herbalists of that day, a significant flower – a flower of meaning and mystery. This drawing may be taken as an old-time emblem, and a happy one, to symbolize the making of the beautiful modern Rose Garden at Yaddo; where Love, with tenderest thought, has laid out the face of the earth in an exquisite garden of Roses, for the happiness and recreation of a dearly loved wife. The noble entrance gate and porch of this Rose Garden formed a happy surprise to the garden's mistress when unveiled at the dedication of the garden. They are depicted on page 81, and there may be read the inscription which tells in a few well-chosen words the story of the inspiration of the garden; but "between the lines," to those who know the Rose Garden and its makers, the inscription speaks with even deeper meaning the story of a home whose beauty is only equalled by the garden's spirit. To all such readers the Rose Garden becomes a fitting expression of the life of those who own it and care for it. This quality of expression, of significance, may be seen in many a smaller and simpler garden, even in a tiny cottage plot; you can perceive, through the care bestowed upon it, and its responsive blossoming, a something which shows the life of the garden owners; you know that they are thoughtful, kindly, beauty-loving, home-loving.

Behind the beautiful pergola of the Yaddo garden, set thickly with Crimson Rambler, a screenlike row of poplars divides the Rose Garden from a luxuriant Rock Garden, and an Old-fashioned Garden of large extent, extraordinary profusion, and many years' growth. Perhaps the latter-named garden might seem more suited to my pages, since it is more advanced in growth and apparently more akin to my subject; but I wish to write specially of the Rose Garden, because it is an unusual example of what can be accomplished without aid of architect or landscape gardener, when good taste, careful thought, attention to detail, a love of flowers, and intent to attain perfection guide the garden's makers. It is happily placed in a country of most charming topography, but it must not be thought that the garden shaped itself; its beautiful proportions, contour, and shape were carefully studied out and brought to the present perfection by the same force that is felt in the garden's smallest detail, the power of Love. The Rose Garden is unusually large for a formal garden; with its vistas and walks, the connected Daffodil Dell, and the Rock Garden, it fills about ten acres. But the estate is over eight hundred acres, and the house very large in ground extent, so the garden seems well-proportioned. This Rose Garden has an unusual attraction in the personal interest of every detail, such as is found in few American gardens of great size, and indeed in few English gardens. The gardens of the Countess Warwick, at Easton Lodge, in Essex, possess the same charm, a personal meaning and significance in the statues and fountains, and even in the planting of flower borders. The illustration on page 83 depicts the general shape of the Yaddo Rose Garden, as seen from the upper terrace; but it does not show how the garden stretches down the fine marble steps, past the marble figures of Diana and Paris, and along the paths of standard Roses, past the shallow fountain which is not so large as to obscure what speaks the garden's story, the statue of Christalan, that grand creation in one of Mrs. Trask's idyls, Under King Constantine. This heroic figure, showing to full extent the genius of the sculptor, William Ordway Partridge, also figures the genius of the poet-creator, and is of an inexpressible and impressive nobility. With hand and arm held to heaven, Christalan shows against the background of rich evergreens as the true knight of this garden of sentiment and chivalry.

"The sunlight slanting westward through the trees
Fell first upon his lifted, golden head,
Making a shining helmet of his curls,
And then upon the Lilies in his hand.
His eyes had a defiant, fearless glow;
Against the sombre background of the wood
He looked scarce human."

The larger and more impressive fountain at Yaddo is shown on these pages. It is one hundred feet long and seventy feet wide, and is in front of the house, to the east. Its marble figures signify the Dawn; it will be noted that on this site its beauties show against a suited and ample background, and its grand proportions are not permitted to obscure the fine statue of Christalan from the view of those seated on the terrace or walking under the shade of the pergola.

Especially beautiful is the sun-dial on the upper terrace, shown on page 86. The metal dial face is supported by a marble slab resting on two carved standards of classic design representing conventionalized lions, these being copies of those two splendid standards unearthed at Pompeii, which still may be seen by the side of the impluvium in the atrium or main hall of the finest Græco-Roman dwelling-place which has been restored in that wonderful city. These sun-dial standards at Yaddo were made by the permission and under the supervision of the Italian government. I can conceive nothing more fitting or more inspiring to the imagination than that, telling as they do the story of the splendor of ancient Pompeii and of the passing centuries, they should now uphold to our sight a sun-dial as if to bid us note the flight of time and the vastness of the past.

The entire sun-dial, with its beautiful adjuncts of carefully shaped marble seats, stands on a semicircular plaza of marble at the head of the noble flight of marble steps. The engraved metal dial face bears two exquisite verses – the gift of one poet to another – of Dr. Henry Van Dyke to the garden's mistress, Katrina Trask. These dial mottoes are unusual, and perfect examples of that genius which with a few words can shape a lasting gem of our English tongue. At the edge of the dial face is this motto:

"Hours fly,
Flowers die,
New Days,
New Ways,
Pass by;
Love stays."

At the base of the gnomon is the second motto: —

Time is
Too Slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
Too Short for those who Rejoice;
But for those who Love,
Time is
Eternity.

I have for years been a student of sun-dial lore, a collector of sun-dial mottoes and inscriptions, of which I have many hundreds. I know nowhere, either in English, on English or Scotch sun-dials, or in the Continental tongues, any such exquisite dial legends as these two – so slight of form, so simple in wording, so pure in diction, yet of sentiment, of thought, how full! how impressive! They stamp themselves forever on the memory as beautiful examples of what James Russell Lowell called verbal magic; that wonderful quality which comes, neither from chosen words, nor from their careful combination into sentences, but from something which is as inexplicable in its nature as it is in its charm.

To tree lovers the gardens and grounds at Yaddo have glorious charms in their splendid trees; but one can be depicted here – the grand native Pine, over eight feet in diameter, which, with other stately sentinels of its race, stands a sombrely beautiful guard over all this loveliness.

CHAPTER IV
BOX EDGINGS

"They walked over the crackling leaves in the garden, between the lines of Box, breathing its fragrance of eternity; for this is one of the odors which carry us out of time into the abysses of the unbeginning past; if we ever lived on another ball of stone than this, it must be that there was Box growing on it."

– Elsie Venner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1861.

To many of us, besides Dr. Holmes, the unique aroma of the Box, cleanly bitter in scent as in taste, is redolent of the eternal past; it is almost hypnotic in its effect. This strange power is not felt by all, nor is it a present sensitory influence; it is an hereditary memory, half-known by many, but fixed in its intensity in those of New England birth and descent, true children of the Puritans; to such ones the Box breathes out the very atmosphere of New England's past. I cannot see in clear outline those prim gardens of centuries ago, nor the faces of those who walked and worked therein; but I know, as I stroll to-day between our old Box-edged borders, and inhale the beloved bitterness of fragrance, and gather a stiff sprig of the beautiful glossy leaves, that in truth the garden lovers and garden workers of other days walk beside me, though unseen and unheard.

About thirty years ago a bright young Yankee girl went to the island of Cuba as a governess to the family of a sugar planter. It was regarded as a somewhat perilous adventure by her home-staying folk, and their apprehensions of ill were realized in her death there five years later. This was not, however, all that happened to her. The planter's wife had died in this interval of time, and she had been married to the widower. A daughter had been born, who, after her mother's death, was reared in the Southern island, in Cuban ways, having scant and formal communication with her New England kin. When this girl was twenty years old, she came to the little Massachusetts town where her mother had been reared, and met there a group of widowed and maiden aunts, and great-aunts. After sitting for a time in her mother's room in the old home, the reserve which often exists between those of the same race who should be friends but whose lives have been widely apart, and who can never have more than a passing sight of each other, made them in semi-embarrassment and lack of resources of mutual interest walk out into the garden. As they passed down the path between high lines of Box, the girl suddenly stopped, looked in terror at the gate, and screamed out in fright, "The dog, the dog, save me, he will kill me!" No dog was there, but on that very spot, between those Box hedges, thirty years before, her mother had been attacked and bitten by an enraged dog, to the distress and apprehension of the aunts, who all recalled the occurrence, as they reassured the fainting and bewildered girl. She, of course, had never known aught of this till she was told it by the old Box.

Many other instances of the hypnotic effect of Box are known, and also of its strong influence on the mind through memory. I know of a man who travelled a thousand miles to renew acquaintance and propose marriage to an old sweetheart, whom he had not seen and scarcely thought of for years, having been induced to this act wholly through memories of her, awakened by a chance stroll in an old Box-edged garden such as those of his youth; at the gate of one of which he had often lingered, after walking home with her from singing-school. I ought to be able to add that the twain were married as a result of this sentimental memory-awakening through the old Box; but, in truth, they never came very close to matrimony. For when he saw her he remained absolutely silent on the subject of marriage; the fickle creature forgot the Box scent and the singing-school, while she openly expressed to her friends her surprise at his aged appearance, and her pity for his dulness. For the sense of sight is more powerful than that of smell, and the Box might prove a master hand at hinting, but it failed utterly in permanent influence.

Those who have not loved the Box for centuries in the persons and with the partial noses of their Puritan forbears, complain of its curious scent, say, like Polly Peacham, that "they can't abear it," and declare that it brings ever the thought of old graveyards. I have never seen Box in ancient burying-grounds, they were usually too neglected to be thus planted; but it was given a limited space in the cemeteries of the middle of this century. Even those borders have now generally been dug up to give place to granite copings.

The scent of Box has been aptly worded by Gabriel d'Annunzio, in his Virgin of the Rocks, in his description of a neglected garden. He calls it a "bitter sweet odor," and he notes its influence in making his wanderers in this garden "reconstruct some memory of their far-off childhood."

The old Jesuit poet Rapin writing in the seventeenth century tells a fanciful tale that —

"Gardens of old, nor Art, nor Rules obey'd,
But unadorn'd, or wild Neglect betray'd;"

that Flora's hair hung undressed, neglected "in artless tresses," until in pity another nymph "around her head wreath'd a Boxen Bough" from the fields; which so improved her beauty that trim edgings were placed ever after – "where flowers disordered once at random grew."

He then describes the various figures of Box, the way to plant it, its disadvantages, and the associate flowers that should be set with it, all in stilted verse.

Queen Anne was a royal enemy of Box. By her order many of the famous Box hedges at Hampton Court were destroyed; by her example, many old Box-edged gardens throughout England were rooted up. There are manifold objections raised to Box besides the dislike of its distinctive odor: heavy edgings and hedges of Box "take away the heart of the ground" and flowers pine within Box-edged borders; the roots of Box on the inside of the flower knot or bed, therefore, have to be cut and pulled out in order to leave the earth free for flower roots. It is also alleged that Box harbors slugs – and I fear it does.

We are told that it is not well to plant Box edgings in our gardens, because Box is so frail, is so easily winter-killed, that it dies down in ugly fashion. Yet see what great trees it forms, even when untrimmed, as in the Prince Garden (page 31). It is true that Box does not always flourish in the precise shape you wish, but it has nevertheless a wonderfully tenacious hold on life. I know nothing more suggestive of persistence and of sad sentiment than the view often seen in forlorn city enclosures, as you drive past, or rush by in an electric car, of an aged bush of Box, or a few feet of old Box hedge growing in the beaten earth of a squalid back yard, surrounded by dirty tenement houses. Once a fair garden there grew; the turf and flowers and trees are vanished; but spared through accident, or because deemed so valueless, the Box still lives. Even in Washington and other Southern cities, where the negro population eagerly gather Box at Christmas-tide, you will see these forlorn relics of the garden still growing, and their bitter fragrance rises above the vile odors of the crowded slums.

Box formed an important feature of the garden of Pliny's favorite villa in Tuscany, which he described in his letter to Apollinaris. How I should have loved its formal beauty! On the southern front a terrace was bordered with a Box hedge and "embellished with various figures in Box, the representation of divers animals." Beyond was a circus formed around by ranges of Box rising in walls of varied heights. The middle of this circus was ornamented with figures of Box. On one side was a hippodrome set with a plantation of Box trees backed with Plane trees; thence ran a straight walk divided by Box hedges into alleys. Thus expanses were enclosed, one of which held a beautiful meadow, another had "knots of Plane tree," another was "set with Box a thousand different forms." Some of these were letters expressing the name of the owner of all this extravagance; or the initials of various fair Roman dames, a very gallant pleasantry of young Pliny. Both Plane tree and Box tree of such ancient gardens were by tradition nourished with wine instead of water. Initials of Box may be seen to-day in English gardens, and heraldic devices. French gardens vied with English gardens in curious patterns in Box. The garden of Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV. had a stag chase, in clipped Box, with greyhounds in chase. Globes, pyramids, tubes, cylinders, cones, arches, and other shapes were cut in Box as they were in Yew.

A very pretty conceit in Box was —

"Horizontal dials on the ground
In living Box by cunning artists traced."

Reference is frequent enough to these dials of Box to show that they were not uncommon in fine old English gardens. There were sun-dials either of Box or Thrift, in the gardens of colleges both at Oxford and Cambridge, as may be seen in Loggan's Views. Two modern ones are shown; one, on page 98, is in the garden of Lady Lennox, at Broughton Castle, Banbury, England. Another of exceptionally fine growth and trim perfection in the garden at Ascott, the seat of Mr. Leopold de Rothschild (opposite page 100.) These are curious rather than beautiful, but display well that quality given in the poet's term "the tonsile Box."

Writing of a similar sun-dial, Lady Warwick says: —

"Never was such a perfect timekeeper as my sun-dial, and the figures which record the hours are all cut out and trimmed in Box, and there again on its outer ring is a legend which read in whatever way you please: Les heures heureuses ne se comptent pas. They were outlined for me, those words, in baby sprigs of Box by a friend who is no more, who loved my garden and was good to it."

Box hedges were much esteemed in England – so says Parkinson, to dry linen on, affording the raised expanse and even surface so much desired. It can always be noted in all domestic records of early days that the vast washing of linen and clothing was one of the great events of the year. Sometimes, in households of plentiful supply, these washings were done but once a year; in other homes, semi-annually. The drying and bleaching linen was an unceasing attraction to rascals like Autolycus, who had a "pugging tooth" – that is, a prigging tooth. These linen thieves had a special name, they were called "prygmen"; they wandered through the country on various pretexts, men and their doxies, and were the bane of English housewives.

The Box hedges were also in constant use to hold the bleaching webs of homespun and woven flaxen and hempen stuff, which were often exposed for weeks in the dew and sunlight. In 1710 a reason given for the disuse and destruction of "quicksetted arbors and hedges" was that they "agreed very ill with the ladies' muslins."

Box was of little value in the apothecary shop, was seldom used in medicine. Parkinson said that the leaves and dust of boxwood "boyld in lye" would make hair to be "of an Aborne or Abraham color" – that is, auburn. This was a very primitive hair dye, but it must have been a powerful one.

Boxwood was a firm, beautiful wood, used to make tablets for inscriptions of note. The mottled wood near the root was called dudgeon. Holland's translation of Pliny says, "The Box tree seldome hath any grain crisped damaske-wise, and never but about the root, the which is dudgin." From its esteemed use for dagger hilts came the word dudgeon-dagger, and the terms "drawn-dudgeon" and "high-dudgeon," meaning offence or discord.

I plead for the Box, not for its fragrance, for you may not be so fortunate as to have a Puritan sense of smell, nor for its weird influence, for that is intangible; but because it is the most becoming of all edgings to our garden borders of old-time flowers. The clear compact green of its shining leaves, the trim distinctness of its clipped lines, the attributes that made Pope term it the "shapely Box," make it the best of all foils for the varied tints of foliage, the many colors of bloom, and the careless grace in growth of the flowers within the border.

Box edgings are pleasant, too, in winter, showing in grateful relief against the tiresome monotony of the snow expanse. And they bear sometimes a crown of lightest snow wreaths, which seem like a white blossoming in promise of the beauties of the border in the coming summer. Pick a bit of this winter Box, even with the mercury below zero. Lo! you have a breath of the hot dryness of the midsummer garden.

Box grows to great size, even twenty feet in height. In Southern gardens, where it is seldom winter-killed, it is often of noble proportions. In the lovely garden of Martha Washington at Mount Vernon the Box is still preserved in the beauty and interest of its original form.

The Box edgings and hedges of many other Southern gardens still are in good condition; those of the old Preston homestead at Columbia, South Carolina (shown on pages 15 and 18, and facing page 54), owe their preservation during the Civil War to the fact that the house was then the refuge of a sisterhood of nuns. The Ridgely estate, Hampton, in County Baltimore, Maryland, has a formal garden in which the perfection of the Box is a delight. The will of Captain Charles Ridgely, in 1787, made an appropriation of money and land for this garden. The high terrace which overlooks the garden and the shallow ones which break the southern slope and mark the boundaries of each parterre are fine examples of landscape art, and are said to be the work of Major Chase Barney, a famous military engineer. By 1829 the garden was an object of beauty and much renown. A part only of the original parterre remains, but the more modern flower borders, through the unusual perspective and contour of the garden, do not clash with the old Box-edged beds. These edgings were reset in 1870, and are always kept very closely cut. The circular domes of clipped box arise from stems at least a hundred years old. The design of the parterre is so satisfactory that I give three views of it in order to show it fully. (See pages 57, 60, and 95.)

A Box-edged garden of much beauty and large extent existed for some years in the grounds connected with the County Jail in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. It was laid out by the wife of the warden, aided by the manual labor of convicted prisoners, with her earnest hope that working among flowers would have a benefiting and softening influence on these criminals. She writes rather dubiously: "They all enjoyed being out of doors with their pipes, whether among the flowers or the vegetables; and no attempt at escape was ever made by any of them while in the comparative freedom of the flower-garden." She planted and marked distinctly in this garden over seven hundred groups of annuals and hardy perennials, hoping the men would care to learn the names of the flowers, and through that knowledge, and their practise in the care of Box edgings and hedges, be able to obtain positions as under-gardeners when their terms of imprisonment expired.

The garden at Tudor Place, the home of Mrs. Beverley Kennon (page 103), displays fine Box; and the garden of the poet Longfellow which is said to have been laid out after the Box-edged parterres at Versailles. Throughout this book are scattered several good examples of Box from Salem and other towns; in a sweet, old garden on Kingston Hill, Rhode Island (page 104) the flower-beds are anchor-shaped.

In favorable climates Box edgings may grow in such vigor as to entirely fill the garden beds. An example of this is given on page 105, showing the garden at Tuckahoe. The beds were laid out over a large space of ground in a beautiful design, which still may be faintly seen by examining the dark expanse beside the house, which is now almost solid Box. The great hedges by the avenue are also Box; between similar ones at Upton Court in Camden, South Carolina, riders on horseback cannot be seen nor see over it. New England towns seldom show such growth of Box; but in Hingham, Massachusetts, at the home of Mrs. Robbins, author of that charming book, The Rescue of an Old Place, there is a Box bower, with walls of Box fifteen feet in height. These walls were originally the edgings of a flower bed on the "Old Place." Read Dr. John Brown's charming account of the Box bower of the "Queen's Maries."

Box grows on Long Island with great vigor. At Brecknock Hall, the family residence of Mrs. Albert Delafield at Greenport, Long Island, the hedges of plain and variegated Box are unusually fine, and the paths are well laid out. Some of them are entirely covered by the closing together of the two hedges which are often six or seven feet in height.

In spite of the constant assertion of the winter-killing of Box in the North, the oldest Box in the country is that at Sylvester Manor, Shelter Island, New York. The estate is now owned by the tenth mistress of the manor, Miss Cornelia Horsford; the first mistress of the manor, Grissel Sylvester, who had been Grissel Gardiner, came there in 1652. It is told, and is doubtless true, that she brought there the first Box plants, to make, in what was then a far-away island, a semblance of her home garden. It is said that this Box was thriving in Madam Sylvester's garden when George Fox preached there to the Indians. The oldest Box is fifteen or eighteen feet high; not so tall, I think, as the neglected Box at Vaucluse, the old Hazard place near Newport, but far more massive and thrifty and shapely. Box needs unusual care and judgment, an instinct almost, for the removal of certain portions. It sends out tiny rootlets at the joints of the sprays, and these grow readily. The largest and oldest Box bushes at Sylvester Manor garden are a study in their strong, hearty stems, their perfect foliage, their symmetry; they show their care of centuries.

The delightful Box-edged flower beds were laid out in their present form about seventy years ago by the grandfather of the present owner. There is a Lower Garden, a Terrace Garden, which are shown on succeeding pages, a Fountain Garden, a Rose Garden, a Water Garden; a bit of the latter is on page 75. In some portions of these gardens, especially on the upper terrace, the Box is so high, and set in such quaint and rambling figures, that it closely approaches an old English maze; and it was a pretty sight to behold a group of happy little children running in and out among these Box hedges that extended high over their heads, searching long and eagerly for the central bower where their little tea party was set.

Over these old garden borders hangs literally an atmosphere of the past; the bitter perfume stimulates the imagination as we walk by the side of these splendid Box bushes, and think, as every one must, of what they have seen, of what they know; on this garden is written the history of over two centuries of beautiful domestic home life. It is well that we still have such memorials to teach us the nobility and beauty of such a life.

CHAPTER V
THE HERB GARDEN

"To have nothing here but Sweet Herbs, and those only choice ones too, and every kind its bed by itself."

– Desiderius Erasmus, 1500.

In Montaigne's time it was the custom to dedicate special chapters of books to special persons. Were it so to-day, I should dedicate this chapter to the memory of a friend who has been constantly in my mind while writing it; for she formed in her beautiful garden, near our modern city, Chicago, the only perfect herb garden I know, – a garden that is the counterpart of the garden of Erasmus, made four centuries ago; for in it are "nothing but Sweet Herbs, and choice ones too, and every kind its bed by itself." A corner of it is shown on page 108. This herb garden is so well laid out that I will give directions therefrom for a bed of similar planting. It may be placed at the base of a grass bank or at the edge of a garden. Let two garden walks be laid out, one at the lower edge, perhaps, of the bank, the other parallel, ten, fifteen, twenty feet away. Let narrow paths be left at regular intervals running parallel from walk to walk, as do the rounds of a ladder from the two side bars. In the narrow oblong beds formed by these paths plant solid rows of herbs, each variety by itself, with no attempt at diversity of design. You can thus walk among them, and into them, and smell them in their concentrated strength, and you can gather them at ease. On the bank can be placed the creeping Thyme, and other low-running herbs. Medicinal shrubs should be the companions of the herbs; plant these as you will, according to their growth and habit, making them give variety of outline to the herb garden.

There are few persons who have a strong enough love of leaf scents, or interest in herbs, to make them willing to spend much time in working in an herb garden. The beauty and color of flowers would compensate them, but not the growth or scent of leafage. It is impossible to describe to one who does not feel by instinct "the lure of green things growing," the curious stimulation, the sense of intoxication, of delight, brought by working among such green-growing, sweet-scented things. The maker of this interesting garden felt this stimulation and delight; and at her city home on a bleak day in December we both revelled in holding and breathing in the scent of tiny sprays of Rue, Rosemary, and Balm which, still green, had been gathered from beneath fallen leaves and stalks in her country garden, as a tender and grateful attention of one herb lover to another. Thus did she prove Shakespeare's words true even on the shores of Lake Michigan: —

"Rosemary and Rue: these keep
Seeming and savor all the winter long."

There is ample sentiment in the homely inhabitants of the herb garden. The herb garden of the Countess of Warwick is called by her a Garden of Sentiment. Each plant is labelled with a pottery marker, swallow-shaped, bearing in ineradicable colors the flower name and its significance. Thus there is Balm for sympathy, Bay for glory, Foxglove for sincerity, Basil for hatred.

A recent number of The Garden deplored the dying out of herbs in old English gardens; so I think it may prove of interest to give the list of herbs and medicinal shrubs and trees which grew in this friend's herb garden in the new world across the sea.

Arnica, Anise, Ambrosia, Agrimony, Aconite.

Belladonna, Black Alder, Betony, Boneset or Thorough-wort, Sweet Basil, Bryony, Borage, Burnet, Butternut, Balm, Melissa officinalis, Balm (variegated), Bee-balm, or Oswego tea, mild, false, and true Bergamot, Burdock, Bloodroot, Black Cohosh, Barberry, Bittersweet, Butterfly-weed, Birch, Blackberry, Button-Snakeroot, Buttercup.

Costmary, or Sweet Mary, Calamint, Choke-cherry, Comfrey, Coriander, Cumin, Catnip, Caraway, Chives, Castor-oil Bean, Colchicum, Cedronella, Camomile, Chicory, Cardinal-flower, Celandine, Cotton, Cranesbill, Cow-parsnip, High-bush Cranberry.

Dogwood, Dutchman's-pipe, Dill, Dandelion, Dock, Dogbane.

Elder, Elecampane, Slippery Elm.

Sweet Fern, Fraxinella, Fennel, Flax, Fumitory, Fig, Sweet Flag, Blue Flag, Foxglove.

Goldthread, Gentian, Goldenrod.

Hellebore, Henbane, Hops, Horehound, Hyssop, Horseradish, Horse-chestnut, Hemlock, Small Hemlock or Fool's Parsley.

American Ipecac, Indian Hemp, Poison Ivy, wild, false, and blue Indigo, wild yellow Indigo, wild white Indigo.

Juniper, Joepye-weed.

Lobelia, Lovage, Lavender, Lemon Verbena, Lemon, Mountain Laurel, Yellow Lady's-slippers, Lily of the Valley, Liverwort, Wild Lettuce, Field Larkspur, Lungwort.

Mosquito plant, Wild Mint, Motherwort, Mullein, Sweet Marjoram, Meadowsweet, Marshmallow, Mandrake, Mulberry, black and white Mustard, Mayweed, Mugwort, Marigold.

Nigella.

Opium Poppy, Orange, Oak.

Pulsatilla, Pellitory or Pyrethrum, Red Pepper, Peppermint, Pennyroyal, False Pennyroyal, Pope-weed, Pine, Pigweed, Pumpkin, Parsley, Prince's-pine, Peony, Plantain.

Rhubarb, Rue, Rosemary, Rosa gallica, Dog Rose.

Sassafras, Saxifrage, Sweet Cicely, Sage (common blue), Sage (red), Summer Savory, Winter Savory, Santonin, Sweet Woodruff, Saffron, Spearmint, wild Sarsaparilla, Black Snakeroot, Squills, Senna, St. – John's-Wort, Sorrel, Spruce Fir, Self-heal, Southernwood.

Thorn Apple, Tansy, Thyme, Tobacco, Tarragon.

Valerian, Dogtooth Violet, Blue Violet.

Witchhazel, Wormwood, Wintergreen, Willow, Walnut.

Yarrow.

It will be noted that some common herbs and medicinal plants are missing; there is, for instance, no Box; it will not live in that climate; and there are many other herbs which this garden held for a short time, but which succumbed under the fierce winter winds from Lake Michigan.

It is interesting to compare this list with one made in rhyme three centuries ago, the garland of herbs of the nymph Lelipa in Drayton's Muse's Elyzium.

"A chaplet then of Herbs I'll make
Than which though yours be braver,
Yet this of mine I'll undertake
Shall not be short in savour.
With Basil then I will begin,
Whose scent is wondrous pleasing:
This Eglantine I'll next put in
The sense with sweetness seizing.
Then in my Lavender I lay
Muscado put among it,
With here and there a leaf of Bay,
Which still shall run along it.
Germander, Marjoram and Thyme,
Which uséd are for strewing;
With Hyssop as an herb most prime

Here in my wreath bestowing.
Then Balm and Mint help to make up
My chaplet, and for trial
Costmary that so likes the Cup,
And next it Pennyroyal.
Then Burnet shall bear up with this,
Whose leaf I greatly fancy;
Some Camomile doth not amiss
With Savory and some Tansy.
Then here and there I'll put a sprig
Of Rosemary into it,
Thus not too Little nor too Big,
'Tis done if I can do it."

Another name for the herb garden was the olitory; and the word herber, or herbar, would at first sight appear to be an herbarium, an herb garden; it was really an arbor. I have such satisfaction in herb gardens, and in the herbs themselves, and in all their uses, all their lore, that I am confirmed in my belief that I really care far less for Botany than for that old-time regard and study of plants covered by the significant name, Wort-cunning. Wort was a good old common English word, lost now in our use, save as the terminal syllable of certain plant-names; it is a pity we have given it up since its equivalent, herb, seems so variable in application, especially in that very trying expression of which we weary so of late – herbaceous border. This seems an architect's phrase rather than a florist's; you always find it on the plans of fine houses with gardens. To me it annihilates every possibility of sentiment, and it usually isn't correct, since many of the plants in these borders are woody perennials instead of annuals; any garden planting that is not "bedding-out" is wildly named "an herbaceous border."

Herb gardens were no vanity and no luxury in our grandmothers' day; they were a necessity. To them every good housewife turned for nearly all that gave variety to her cooking, and to fill her domestic pharmacopœia. The physician placed his chief reliance for supplies on herb gardens and the simples of the fields. An old author says, "Many an old wife or country woman doth often more good with a few known and common garden herbs, than our bombast physicians, with all their prodigious, sumptuous, far-fetched, rare, conjectural medicines." Doctor and goodwife both had a rival in the parson. The picture of the country parson and his wife given by old George Herbert was equally true of the New England minister and his wife: —

"In the knowledge of simples one thing would be carefully observed, which is to know what herbs may be used instead of drugs of the same nature, and to make the garden the shop; for home-bred medicines are both more easy for the parson's purse, and more familiar for all men's bodies. So when the apothecary useth either for loosing Rhubarb, or for binding Bolearmana, the parson useth damask or white Rose for the one, and Plantain, Shepherd's Purse, and Knot-grass for the other; and that with better success. As for spices, he doth not only prefer home-bred things before them, but condemns them for vanities, and so shuts them out of his family, esteeming that there is no spice comparable for herbs to Rosemary, Thyme, savory Mints, and for seeds to Fennel and Caraway. Accordingly, for salves, his wife seeks not the city, but prefers her gardens and fields before all outlandish gums."

Simples were medicinal plants, so called because each of these vegetable growths was held to possess an individual virtue, to be an element, a simple substance constituting a single remedy. The noun was generally used in the plural.

You must not think that sowing, gathering, drying, and saving these herbs and simples in any convenient or unstudied way was all that was necessary. Not at all; many and manifold were the rules just when to plant them, when to pick them, how to pick them, how to dry them, and even how to keep them. Gervayse Markham was very wise in herb lore, in the suited seasons of the moon, and hour of the day or night, for herb culling. In the garret of every old house, such as that of the Ward Homestead, shown on page 116, with the wreckage of house furniture, were hung bunches of herbs and simples, waiting for winter use.

The still-room was wholly devoted to storing these herbs and manufacturing their products. This was the careful work of the house mistress and her daughters. It was not intrusted to servants. One book of instruction was entitled, The Vertuouse Boke of Distyllacyon of the Waters of all Manner of Herbs.

Thomas Tusser wrote: —

"Good huswives provide, ere an sickness do come,
Of sundrie good things in house to have some,
Good aqua composita, vinegar tart,
Rose water and treacle to comfort the heart,

Good herbes in the garden for agues that burn,
That over strong heat to good temper turn."

Both still-room and simple-closet of a dame of the time of Queen Elizabeth or Queen Anne had crowded shelves. Many an herb and root, unused to-day, was deemed then of sovereign worth. From a manuscript receipt book I have taken names of ingredients, many of which are seldom, perhaps never, used now in medicine. Unripe Blackberries, Ivy berries, Eglantine berries, "Ashen Keys," Acorns, stones of Sloes, Parsley seed, Houseleeks, unripe Hazelnuts, Daisy roots, Strawberry "strings," Woodbine tops, the inner bark of Oak and of red Filberts, green "Broom Cod," White Thorn berries, Turnips, Barberry bark, Dates, Goldenrod, Gourd seed, Blue Lily roots, Parsnip seed, Asparagus roots, Peony roots.

From herbs and simples were made, for internal use, liquid medicines such as wines and waters, syrups, juleps; and solids, such as conserves, confections, treacles, eclegms, tinctures. There were for external use, amulets, oils, ointments, liniments, plasters, cataplasms, salves, poultices; also sacculi, little bags of flowers, seeds, herbs, etc., and pomanders and posies.

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