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el TT EÓNO
Historic GARDENS “OEP” V.ERGINIA
bowling green, or by the vault, or in the wistaria arbour, near the
south gate. It is this atmosphere that gives the garden its charm,
and makes it speak a ditterent language from that of the most
beautiful gardens of this age.
When the present owners bought it—not from the Carters—
but from one who had not sensed its beauties, the Oatlands garden
was falling into ruins; bricks were crumbling, weeds crowding the
flowers and yet the very moss-grown paths seemed to say, “*We are
still what we were." It was a thankful task to restore the old
beauty, although the thoughts and conceptions were new, but they
fitted it, and every stone vase or bench, every box-hedge planted,
seemed to fall into its rightful place and become a part of the whole.
Certain improvements were made—improvements the old designer
and builder would have approved; fruit trees, hiding huge box and
yew, were cut down, and a rosary laid out as a counterpart to the
box-grove. It was not always easy to get the right effect.
More than one-half of the garden can be seen from several
vantage points: from the upper balustrade, looking down; from the
oak grove, looking up, and from each separate terrace. ‘The things
to be striven for—mystery, variety, the unexpected—were difficult
of attainment; but in certain places they have been attained. The
tall north wall, with brick coping and its small beds above descend¬
ing stone walls—yjust the same as in Carter days; .a shady, almost
neglected spot, where the grass grows too tall sometimes, is a thing
apart from the rest. ‘hen the rose garden with its background of ~
tall box and pine, in an enclosure of dark-green fencing, cedar
posts and chains, overhung with Dorothy Perkins roses, cannot be
seen until you turn a corner and are on it unawares. And the
bowling green, a long stretch of greensward, bordered by
euonymus, flowering shrubs and Oriental Biota, is nearly always
shaded, giving that sense of stillness and remoteness which a hidden
mass of green so often suggests. At one end of it, the tall north
wall shields it from blustering winds; at the other a sunny, white¬
pillared tea-house overlooks a grove of great oaks which, more
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