Oldal 194 [194]
MEL EGYET PB ERR | PAMES
—_—_——_
ovals, covering about one acre, proves upon investigation to be
perfectly symmetrical, with direct exits leading from a central
bed. Bordering each of the fifty-seven beds, as well as enclosing
the garden plot, are hedges of suffruticosa, which average in height
from two to four feet, with a girth of sometimes five. Only tall
flowers, like phlox and hollyhocks and larkspur, can lift their heads
high enough to show to advantage, but, for the pleasure of such
glorious box, one is willing to forego many flowers, which, after
all, can be had elsewhere. There is probably more of the old¬
fashioned dwarf or suffruticosa boxwood at Tuckahoe than any¬
where else in America. By actual measurement, if lined off, it
would extend about eight thousand feet, or more than one and one¬
half miles.
The beauty of this box garden’s unlost configuration is retained
with its early and remote contours. ‘The invincible green of the
box, darkling amid and above the flowers, takes from and gives to
them the cheer which neither could have found without the contrast.
It 1s like some garden of sleep, and here one finds rest that seldom
comes in this world of unfortunate change. The spot is lovely
enough by day; but at night ! With evening there comes
into the Virginia air a soft, intangible, poetical dreaminess—a
dreaminess that, with the fragrant boxwood, lets the Tuckahoe
garden smile, even in winter, without any abatement to the effects
of summer that would lessen the total of a year of Joy.
Roses grow in the central or key bed of this formal garden and
again in the first four long beds around it. The center ovals, also
four, show in sequence, tulips—slate blue and yellow; cornflowers
in contrast to lilies; sweet rocket, and last—phlox drummondi.
The ovals, which radiate from the central bed, begin with the
Darwins, ranging from pale pink to purple. Larkspur follows—
the old-fashioned kind—and, when it blooms, its purplish mist
seems to envelop all the garden. Then come the asters. The
general plan shows every plot of the same shape to contain the same
flowers. Another group has iris, peonies and chrysanthemums,
[119]