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QQ ESSEN HisTORic GARDENS OF VIRGINIA = a = — — a e — zzz ük 1745 and undertook the guardianship of young Thomas Mann Randolph and the management of his estate. Below the schoolhouse, jonquils have spread into a veritable Cloth-of-Gold field, flinging high their April trumpets above a mass of periwinkle blue as the sky. These signals of spring that dance so joyously leave the memory of their beauty throughout the garden year. And there are so many varieties of dattodils and narcissi at this charming old place. Beginning with the short-stemmed Obvallaris the beautiful Stellas follow in profusion. These bulbs were planted long before the days of the Olympia as the Golden Spur and the double sorts—Orange and Golden Phoenix, familiarly known as Butter and Eggs and Eggs and Bacon—will attest. But, daintiest of all the daffodil family which blooms at Tuckahoe, is the delicate, old-fashioned, little white flower known as “The Lady of Leeds. Scattered about the garden, and all over the lawn, are four varieties of narcissi—the Polyanthus, which, though in the minority, compensates in its bright yellow flowers; the white Biflorus, and, most pleasing of all, Ornatus and Poeticus. Beyond the schoolhouse comes the garden—the real feature of Tuckahoe. A magnificent elm throws out its arms protectingly over the garden entrance. A simple wood gate, between boxhedged violet beds, leads between this elm tree and two splendid specimens of sempervirens boxwood which rise on the other side. Through the opening, looking east, there is a charming vista down a turfed alley lined with old-fashioned or suffruticosa box and called the Ghost Walk. Shadowing the south side, a row of sempervirens interlines the dwarf hedge rows, and stands as a windbreak for the flowers. Below this lies the formal garden, cut up into fifty-seven “knots” or beds, a decorative arrangement, with paths of grass intervening. These paths are so narrow that only one person can walk there at a time, and they are separated from the flower beds by dwarf-box hedging. Known as the “maze,” this labyrinth of flower squares and [118]
