Page 479 [479]
HisTtToRic: GARDENS OP eV PRGT LA
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The most imposing garden of that region was the garden of
Mrs. Winston Henry. It covered several acres, and was sur¬
rounded by a faultlessly trimmed osage orange hedge. It descended
to the lowgrounds in a series of turfed terraces, and displayed in
a variety of evergreens many specimens of topiary art—the only
examples of that art in the neighborhood. It was filled not only
with hardy flowers, but with rare exotics, housed during the cold
season in a conservatory extending from the ground to the third
story of the mansion. It was no uncommon thing for Mrs. Henry
to commandeer from the plantation thirty men at a time for her
garden, while every drop of water for the conservatory had to be
‘‘toted”’ from a distant spring upon the heads of negroes. Demand¬
ing the labor which does not now exist, this, the most ambitious
of the Charlotte County gardens, has wholly vanished, save for a
few scragegly evergreens and straggling plants. The conservatory
is only a heap of shattered glass.
It is well that these ladies of the century past, feeling them¬
selves in the creation of beauty “workers together with God,” had
no prophetic vision.
When a cedar hedge at Ridgeway, having fallen into decay,
was destroyed, an ancient “mammy’” mournfully remarked: “lI
hates to see dat hedge cut down. Ole Miss scuffled and baflled
Over it so.”
Unless a new generation of owners is inspired to carry on the
work of their predecessors, it will not be long before ‘‘Scuffled and
Baffled” is written over many of these gardens that hold the very
heart of the old Virginia.
It is well, therefore, to gather what we may of the loveliness
and perfume of the day that is dead.
MARIE GORDON PRYOR RICE.
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