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AVENEL
R WALTER SCOTT says, "Breathes there the
man with soul so dead who ne er to himself hath
said, ‘this is my own, my native land, " and is
there a Virginian whose pulses do not tingle when
there lies before him a garden the beauty of which
is almost eclipsed by the long series of historical
memories that the name of the owners and the plan of the garden
bring to his mind?" —Avenel—home of the Beverleys—Avenel, with
one-half of its garden copied from Tudor Place, the other, the
copy of Blandheld.
With the very name comes the perfect picture of Virginia and
Virginia’s best life from the middle of the seventeenth century.
For it was that William Beverley, the emigrant’s own grandson,
and his wife, Elizabeth Bland, who first laid out the garden at
Blandfield. That same first master of Blandfield was the son of
Robert Beverley and his wife, Ursula Byrd, daughter of William
Byrd the first. This Robert Beverley, you remember, was the first
native historian of Virginia. All honor to him!
The beautiful garden of Blandfield by long closure of the house
has practically fallen into ruin; but we can picture to ourselves
what a charm it had from frequent allusions to it in old letters; and
one can well imagine that its master, William Beverley, would have
brought to it the same intelligent interest that caused his grand¬
father, William Byrd the first, to write in 1690 to his correspondent
in London, one Thomas Wetherold, that he had “saved many
seeds, but all had been ruined except the ones he sent, namely:
Poppeas Arbor, Rhus Sentisie, folias, Laurus Tulipfera.” I be¬
lieve that most of the seeds that were saved were seeds of trees,
but what is a garden without trees!
In 1730, Catesby, the naturalist in London, wrote to his ntece in
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