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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 martgold 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]
