Stranica 571 [571]
OCR
HIsTORiIC GARDENS OF VIEGINTA fence, seven or eight feet high, with each paling sharpened like an arrowhead. The entire fence was whitewashed every spring, when the walks were freshly filled with tan-bark. I have never seen tanbark used for this purpose anywhere else, but even months later it made an elastic, quickly-drained path for pedestrians when mud was ankle deep on the country roads. The garden sloped gently towards the east and towards the house. The upper half was laid out in formal beds with a broad walk dividing it in equal parts. Down the center of this walk were apple trees, whose branches spread out on either side forming a long, shady aisle in the heat of summer. This was broken only in the center by an arbor of seven sister roses—red, pink, and white roses borne on the same cluster. From this arbor four other walks radiated to the corner beds of turf which seemed to rivet the plan . together. Groups of cedar trees, whose branches swept the grass, were planted diagonally opposite in these corner beds. To balance them was a gigantic blackheart cherry tree, and a service berry tree. Besides these corner beds there were eight larger beds, formed by the intersection of the walks, each one grass-edged and bordered by flowers. The flower borders were not supposed to interfere with the good, homely vegetables for which the beds were designed, and which were laboriously spaded and raked every spring. Perhaps in the days before 1861, when the trees and shrubs were pruned carefully and when the servants were sufficient in number to furnish competent gardeners, the vegetables were able to hold their own against the encroachment of the flowers: which bordered their domain. But since that time lilies of the valley have spread in many thick mats; lilacs and snowballs have waved their plumes far over the potatoes; tulips and jonquils have associated freely with the onions, while white violets have spread under the cedar trees, over the grass and among the currant bushes, until they appear, when in full bloom, like a light fall of snow, and the passing breeze comes laden with their perfume. In the seventies pink hyacinths grew thickly along the borders, and often in the [350]
