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80 ooo OOO = eee THE POTOMAC AND RAPPAHANNOCK The gardens were of the oval design customary for homes of important families before the Revolution. The shape probably was adopted not only because of its beauty and grace, but for the practical convenience of the driveway leading from the entrance of the ground to the house and making it easy to drive a vehicle in or out without need for turning. The oval at the entrance to Stratford was bordered with box, favorite evergreen and outdoor decoration of the colonists, doubtless brought from the old home gardens in the mother country. In this oval, convenient for observation, stood the usual sundial, infallible timekeeper so long as the weather allowed. The box-border enclosed the familiar flowers of the English garden—hollyhock, wallflower, cinnammon-pink, larkspur and the ever-cherished, beloved and admired roses. Endeavoring to get clearly into our minds the picture of the old garden fronting the broad building with field and forest on one side and river on the other, we may assume that the oval was filled with beds, or ‘‘boutons,’’ as they were called, of more or less intricate and fanciful designs, according to the fashion of the times. There was the box-walk, the box-maze and the rose-embowered summerhouse. Fithian says a celebrated dancing master of the day held classes at Stratford on certain days, from ten in the morning until late afternoon, and it is pleasant to think of the pupils, in the intervals between lessons, wandering amid the box-borders, playing at hide-and-seek in the box-mazes, or resting in the shade of the towering oaks and beeches which had been left from the original growth. The kitchen garden at the side of the house, surrounded by high brick walls, held squares of vegetables, outlined by the usual iris, grown for its roots, furnishing orris powder and perfume. Ihe herb garden was a part of the equipment of every plantation house, the medicinal herbs furnishing much of the medicine used in days before convenient drug stores and doctors were in evidence. The quiet, dignified gardens of old Virginia had a charm all their own, supervised as they were by flower-loving owners, with [187 ]
