Stranica 395 [395]
OCR
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 descending 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, whitepillared tea-house overlooks a grove of great oaks which, more [248 |
