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LEGE ee ene een eee nen eee nee eee RHE Bre wApreEe:)} PT Rar = =. — = TT SS Gy ——$ —— —— This, too, is bordered and arched with towering trees and shrubbery. One looks down a fine vista of two hundred feet to catch a glimpse of water. The western slope of the garden breaks away suddenly in a broad terrace to the bank of the little estuary of the Ware. Along this bank, willows and cedars rise to a great height, the nearer distance being filled with crepe myrtle, Pride of China, lesser trees, and large clumps of shrubs. The terrace and its banks are given over to bulbs, ferns, and grasses. The walk at the northern end of the garden is edged with numerous fruit trees. Originally the wide central space, allotted to vegetables, berry bushes, asparagus beds, etc., was divided into four squares, separated by lesser walks than those which sweep around the four sides. These have now been abandoned. The space originally designed to contain flowers and flowering or ornamental plants comprises between forty and fifty thousand square feet. In it will be found today many of the original shrubs and bushes placed there by the Seldens. It is needless to say that, in eighty-odd years, they have achieved a growth which renders many of them conspicuously fine specimens of their several varieties. A hastily-made catalogue compiled recently showed the garden to contain more than forty kinds of shrubs and flowering trees. The display of lilies is especially intensive and fine. Iris of every hue; great beds of tiger lilies; lilies, white and yellow, and of other colors. ‘These for the spring and summer. In the autumn thousands of chrysanthemums, dispersed in clumps that vary from one or two stems to a hundred or more, keep the eye well occupied. The abiding interest and the chief distinction of the Sherwood garden are the “old” things it contains. There is a gnarled smoke tree the trunk of which is nearly two feet in diameter. Down another walk a yaupon tree, a veritable cluster of stems, has attained a height of thirty-odd feet. By its side there is a Camelia japonica that might grace the lawn as a shade tree. Before it came to Sherwood, it had formed a single item in a bridal bouquet, [173]
