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te HE OUPPER? -JAME'S mm a = SS sitt a = =— —— = —= KEZD = boxwood at Elk Hill shows better and more consistent care than any in Virginia, excepting, perhaps, Mount Vernon. Seven terraces fall vertically below these evergreen groupings, and upon the topmost stand twenty-seven conical box trees, ranging in height from ten to twenty feet, their soaring, dark green, glittering foliage standing out against the skyline. In lines of four. three, two and one, these trees grow ten feet apart, and below them, but still on the same terrace, a semi-circular grassy plateau hedged with dwarf box extends. From this, the six terraces of the kitchen garden, each grassed as it falls, drop to the lowest, which once was given over entirely to the cultivation of box. To Randolph Harrison is given the credit for the beginning of the Elk Hill garden, which is supposed to have been laid off about 1840. There is a local legend that after the seven terraces were made, in order to enrich them, with the aid of teams of oxen, he had soil hauled from an island in James River, nearly a mile away. With this fertile soil he topped each terrace, with a result that has proven it well worth while. The proportion of box to the other shrubbery at Elk Hill and the scheme of its distribution are as correct and effective for contrast and background to the transient foliage and flowers of June as amid the bare ramage of January. Both winter and summer. as the gravest item in the garden, the box retains its values and gives the year round a note both virile and conservative. There -is a French saying, ‘““Evergreens are the joy of winter and the mourning of summer months.’’ Even if this be true, those who see it will agree that the effect of spring and summer color is doubled at Elk Hill by its splendid box, which, though dusky in winter, with spring, or "the sweet of the year, becomes bright with tender, green leaves. And all this box, even on dull days, makes the bright flowers look as if the sun were shining. One reason latter-day Americans garden along lines of least resistance is that they are always in a hurry. The garden art is preeminently one of leisure. The designers of Elk Hill knew this. L133]
