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THE OAKS
aI MONG the large estates on the Staunton River in
} Charlotte County are Red Hill, the home and
Mol burial place of Patrick Henry; Staunton Hill, of
Cc the Bruces, whose noble mansion was for many
b years the most costly in Virginia, and is still one
mM} of the most beautiful; Ridgeway, of the Carring¬
tons, and The Oaks, of the Rices—to name only a few of many,
noted for their spacious homes and lovely surroundings.
The Oaks was for years known as South Isle, but the changing
course of the river having left the distinctive island in its low¬
grounds high and dry save in times of freshet, the name had become
a case of “lucus a non lucendo,’ and was accordingly changed
about two decades ago to one made obvious by a surrounding grove.
We hear, however, that the present owner has returned to the
earlier title.
Every old house was noted for its garden. In ante-bellum
Virginia her garden was the pride, almost the passion, of the
mistress of the plantation; it was as much outside the masculine
province as was the cut of her gown. All that was required of
the master was the loan of “hands” in times of emergency. ‘The
garden was designed by the Lady of the Manor and planted under
her supervision. It was the expression of herself: a landscape
gardener would have been an impertinent intruder.
The garden of The Oaks, as it now exists, was the creation,
before mid-Victorian days, of Mrs. Izard Bacon Rice, a woman
with the latent powers of an artist. Its ample acreage was divided
by broad, turf-edged walks into plots of varying size and shape.
The central walk was bordered by alternating shrubs of box and
of “‘pink perpetual” roses. The roses have now become lost in a
continuous wall of box more than six feet in height. Midway its
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