Stranica 22 [22]
INTRODUCTORY
ah garden ; and ideas it 18 the aruueait refreshment
I to the spirits of man.’
Let us add, "Of women also."
For—at least in Virginia women and gardens
go together. Perhaps it is so in those British Isles
from which sprang Virginia. At any rate, dwell in memory or in
imagination upon Virginia gardens and there arise women—
in late seventeenth century dress, in eighteenth century dress, in
nineteenth century, in twentieth century dress. Men also have
planned, men also walk in these gardens, and there forever children
sing and play. But women, young and in prime and old—it 1s
chiefly women. They move among the box-bushes; they train the
roses and tie the hollyhocks; they sow pansies and candytuft and
snapdragon and mignonette; they cut the dead away, they gather
for bowls and vases, gather from daftodil and lilac to the last mart¬
gold and mourning bride. They are there in the spring time, in
the summer and the autumn.
For Virginia gardens are not, after all, affairs of huge expanse
and expense, given over to gardeners, the owners’ knees and fingers
warned off. After all, they are simple—Virginia gardens—simple
and sweet. We call them old. Many of them are old, even very
old as our country goes. Others are not so old. But alike they are
fragrant, alike they are dear. There is something—I do not
know—they are poetic.
So it is fitting that this book—the book of the Historic Gardens
of Virginia—should be a book thought of and largely written by
women. Once they interchanged knowledge of one anothers’
gardens through letters and long, leisurely visits. Nowadays they
make Garden Associations. Such an one, the James River Garden
[13]