Stranica 243 [243]
OCR
HiIsTORIC GARDENS OF VIRGINIA Brandon, and Sir Christopher Wren, at Westover, here Downing’s influence seems to prevail. Ihis is especially seen in the grounds, and nowhere could there be found a house more perfectly set. The broad, open lawn in front, the careful selection and grouping of trees, the avenue of elms, are all a monument to Mrs. Watson’s taste, and an inspiration to the landscape architect of this day. The site of Westend is on a part of Bracketts, the older estate of the Watson family. When Mrs. Watson began her garden here, the place was little more than a bare field. Under her efficient direction, however, it soon literally blossomed as the rose. Trees she ordered planted just where they would mean the most. Shrubs she placed where screens were needed to hide the more barren spots. The grounds around the house, including the garden, consist of about twelve acres, all enclosed by a hedge of clipped osage orange. The garden itself is two acres in extent and is rectangular | in shape. The lower part is for vegetables, and this is charming in its simplicity of straight rows and grass walks. This, too, has an osage orange hedge for border. The upper end of the rectangle is given over to the flower garden, which is divided from the lower by shrubbery, and enclosed by a boxwood hedge. There is a raised circle in the center of the garden, about fifty feet in diameter. ‘This is divided into small beds of roses that slope gradually upward to a center circle surrounding a pillar rose. The walks on the ‘‘mound,”’ as it is called, are of grass, and the beds though originally bordered with box, are now edged with periwinkle. In addition to the roses, there are quantities of Madonna lilies; and these lilies, as well as almost all of the roses, were planted over seventy years ago. Unfortunately, no record of the names of the roses has been kept, but to a rosarian they are particularly interesting, as so many have joined the ranks of "old and forgotten far-off things.”’ The beds that surround the mound are large and irregular in shape in order to conform to the circle in the center and to the L146 |
