V <& '> 3lar*lm* (Tuvalu* flferWarg r+- MM Old Time Gardens ^gxxgp. OLD-TIME GAKDENS We inly set forth ALICE MOLSE EALLE - ! ^.' ' HT . - ^ . •■'« . - :,*-. .¥ •* ** V ^ £. t 4 His?-- yM>- • ■ ■ . it Gate and Hedge of Preston Garden. as topiary work. In Camden and Charleston the gardens vied with the finest English manor-house gardens. Remains of their beauty exist, despite de- vastating wars and earthquakes. Views of the Pres- ton Garden, Columbia, South Carolina, are shown on pages 15 and 18 and facing page 54. They are now the grounds of the Presbyterian College 16 Old Time Gardens for Women. The hedges have been much reduced within a few years ; but the garden still bears a surprising resemblance to the Garden of the Gen- eralife, Granada. The Spanish garden has fewer flowers and more fountains, yet I think it must have been the model for the Preston Garden. The climax of magnificence in Southern gardens has been for years, at Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, the ancestral home of the Dray tons since 1671. It is impossible to describe the affluence of color in this garden in springtime ; masses of unbroken bloom on giant Magnolias; vast Camellia Japonicas, looking, leaf and flower, thoroughly artificial, as if made of solid wax ; splendid Crape Myrtles, those strange flower-trees; mammoth Rhododen- drons; Azaleas of every Azalea color, — all sur- rounded by walls of the golden Banksia Roses, and hedges covered with Jasmine and Honeysuckle. The Azaleas are the special glory of the garden ; the bushes are fifteen to twenty feet in height, and fifty or sixty feet in circumference, with rich blos- soms running over and* crowding down on the ground as if color had been poured over the bushes ; they extend in vistas of vivid hues as far as the eye can reach. All this gay and brilliant color is over- hung by a startling contrast, the most sombre and gloomy thing in nature, great Live-oaks heavily draped with gray Moss ; the avenue of largest Oaks was planted two centuries ago. I give no picture of this Drayton Garden, for a photograph of these many acres of solid bloom is a meaningless thing. Even an oil painting of it is Colonial Garden-making 17 confused and disappointing. In the garden itself the excess of color is as cloying as its surfeit of scent pouring from the thousands of open flower cups ; we long for green hedges, even for scanter bloom and for fainter fragrance. It is not a garden to live in, as are our box-bordered gardens of the North, our cheerful cottage borders, and our well- balanced Italian gardens, so restful to the eye; it is a garden to look at and wonder at. The Dutch settlers brought their love of flower- ing bulbs, and the bulbs also, to the new world. Adrian Van der Donck, a gossiping visitor to New Netherland when the little town of New Amsterdam had about a thousand inhabitants, described the fine kitchen gardens, the vegetables and fruits, and gave an interesting list of garden flowers which he found under cultivation by the Dutch vrouws. He says : " Of the Flowers. The flowers in general which the Netherlander have introduced there are the white and red roses of different kinds, the cornelian roses, and stock roses; and those of which there were none before in the country, such as eglantine, several kinds of gillyflowers, jenoffelins, different varieties of fine tulips, crown imperials, white lilies, the lily frutularia, anemones, baredames, violets, mari- golds, summer sots, etc. The clove tree has also been introduced, and there are various indigenous trees that bear handsome flowers, which are unknown in the Nether- lands. We also find there some flowers of native growth, as, for instance, sunflowers, red and yellow lilies, moun- tain lilies, morning stars, red, white, and yeljow maritorfles (a very sweet flower), several species of bell flowers, etc., to which I have not given particular attention, but amateurs c i8 Old Time Gardens would hold them in high estimation and make them widely known." I wish I knew what a Cornelian Rose was, and Jenoffelins, Baredames, and Summer Sots ; and what the Lilies were and the Maritoffles and Bell Flowers. They all sound so cheerful and homelike Fountain Path in Preston Garden, Columbia, South Carolina. — just a"s if they bloomed well. Perhaps the Cor- nelian Rose may have been striped red and white like cornelian stone, and like our York and Lan- caster Rose. Tulips are on all seed and plant lists of colonial days, and they were doubtless in every home door- yard in New Netherland. Governor Peter Stuy- vesant had a fine farm on the Bouwerie, and is said Colonial Garden-making 19 to have had a flower garden there and at his home, White Hall, at the Battery, for he had forty or fifty negro slaves who were kept at work on his estate. In the city of New York many fine formal gardens lingered, on what are now our most crowded streets, till within the memory of persons now living. One is described as full of " Paus bloemen of all hues, Laylocks, and tall May Roses and Snowballs inter- mixed with choice vegetables and herbs all bounded and hemmed in by huge rows of neatly-clipped Box- edgings." An evidence of increase in garden luxury in New York is found in the advertisement of one Theophilus Hardenbrook, in 1750, a practical sur- veyor and architect, who had an evening school for teaching architecture. He designed pavilions, summer-houses, and garden seats, and" Green-houses for the preservation of Herbs with winding Funnels through the walls so as to keep them warm." A picture of the green-house of James Beekman, of New York, 1764, still exists, a primitive little affair. The first glass-house in North America is believed to be one built in Boston for Andrew Faneuil, who died in 1737. Mrs. Anne Grant, writing of her life near Albany in the middle of the eighteenth century, gives a very good description of the Schuyler garden. Skulls of domestic animals on fence posts, would seem astounding had I not read of similar decorations in old Continental gardens. Vines grew over these grisly fence-capitals and birds built their nests in them, so in time the Dutch housewife's peaceful 20 Old Time Gardens kitchen garden ceased to resemble the kraal of an African chieftain ; to this day, in South Africa, na- tives and Dutch Boers thus set up on gate posts the skulls of cattle. Mrs. Grant writes of the Dutch in Albany : — " The care of plants, such as needed peculiar care or skill to rear them, was the female province. Every one in town or country had a garden. Into this garden no foot of man intruded after it was dug in the Spring. I think I see yet what I have so often beheld — a respectable mistress of a family going out to her garden, on an April morning, with her great calash, her little painted basket of seeds, and her rake over her shoulder to her garden of labours. A woman in very easy circumstances and abundantly gentle in form and manners would sow and plant and rake in- cessantly." We have happily a beautiful example of the old Dutch manor garden, at Van Cortlandt Manor, at Croton-on-Hudson, New York, still in the posses- sion of the Van Cortlandt family. It is one of the few gardens in America that date really to colonial days. The manor house was built in 1 68 1 ; it is one of those fine old Dutch homesteads of which we still have many existing throughout New York, in which dignity, comfort, and fitness are so hap- pily combined. These homes are, in the words of a traveller of colonial days, " so pleasant in their building, and contrived so delightful." Above all, they are so suited to their surroundings that they seem an intrinsic part of the landscape, as they do of the old life of this Hudson River Valley. Door in Wall of Kitchen Garden at Van Cortlandt Manor. Colonial Garden-making 21 I do not doubt that this Van Cortlandt garden was laid out when the house was built ; much of it must be two centuries old. It has been extended, not altered; and the grass-covered bank supporting the upper garden was replaced by a brick terrace wall about sixty years ago. Its present form dates to the days when New York was a province. The upper garden is laid out in formal flower beds ; the lower border is rich in old vines and shrubs, and all the beloved old-time hardy plants. There is in the manor-house an ancient portrait of the child Pierre Van Cortlandt, painted about the year 1732. He stands by a table bearing a vase filled with old gar- den flowers — Tulip, Convolvulus, Harebell, Rose, Peony, Narcissus, and Flowering Almond ; and it is the pleasure of the present mistress of the manor, to see that the garden still holds all the great-grand- father's flowers. There is a vine-embowered old door in the wall under the piazza (see opposite page 20) which opens into the kitchen and fruit garden ; a wall-door so quaint and old-timey that I always remind me of Shakespeare's lines in Measure for Measure : — " He hath a garden circummured with brick, Whose western side is with a Vineyard back'd ; And to that Vineyard is a planched gate That makes his opening with this bigger key : The other doth command a little door Which from the Vineyard to the garden leads." The long path is a beautiful feature of this gar- den (it is shown in the picture of the garden oppo- 22 Old Time Gardens site page 24) ; it dates certainly to the middle of the eighteenth century. Pierre Van Cortlandt, the son of the child with the vase of flowers, and grand- father of the present generation bearing his surname, was born in 1762. He well recalled playing along this garden path when he was a child ; and that one day he and his little sister Ann (Mrs. Philip Van Rensselaer) ran a race along this path and through the garden to see who could first "see the baby' and greet their sister, Mrs. Beekman, who came riding to the manor-house up the hill from Tarry- town, and through the avenue, which shows on the right-hand side of the garden-picture. This beauti- ful young woman was famed everywhere for her grace and loveliness, and later equally so for her intelligence and goodness, and the prominent part she bore in the War of the Revolution. She was seated on a pillion behind her husband, and she car- ried proudly in her arms her first baby (afterward Dr. Beekman) wrapped in a scarlet cloak. This is one of the home-pictures that the old garden holds. Would we could paint it ! In this garden, near the house, is a never failing spring and well. The house was purposely built near it, in those days of sudden attacks by Ind- ians ; it has proved a fountain of perpetual youth for the old Locust tree, which shades it; a tree more ancient than house or garden, serene and beauti- ful in its hearty old age. Glimpses of this manor- house garden and its flowers are shown on many pages of this book, but they cannot reveal its beauty as a whole — its fine proportions, its noble Colonial Garden-making 23 background, its splendid trees, its turf, its beds of bloom. Oh ! how beautiful a garden can be, when for two hundred years it has been loved and cher- ished, ever nurtured, ever guarded ; how plainly it shows such care ! Another Dutch garden is pictured opposite page 32, the garden of the Bergen Homestead, at Bay Ridge, Long Island. Let me quote part of its description, written by Mrs. Tunis Bergen: — " Over the half-open Dutch door you look through the vines that climb about the stoop, as into a vista of the past. Beyond the garden is the great Quince orchard of hundreds of trees in pink and white glory. This orchard has a story which you must pause in the garden to hear. In the Library at Washington is preserved, in quaint man- uscript, ' The Battle of Brooklyn,' a farce written and said to have been performed during the British occupation. The scene is partly laid in ' the orchard of one Bergen,' where the British hid their horses after the battle of Long Island — this is the orchard ; but the blossoming Quince trees tell no tale of past carnage. At one side of the garden is a quaint little building with moss-grown root and climbing hop-vine — the last slave kitchen left standing in New York — on the other side are rows of homely bee- hives. The old Locust tree overshadowing is an ancient landmark — it was standing in 1690. For some years it has worn a chain to bind its aged limbs together. All this beauty of tree and flower lived till 1 890, when it was swept away by the growing city. Though now but a memory, it has the perfume of its past flowers about it." The Locust was so often a " home tree" and so fitting a one, that 1 have grown to associate ever 24 Old Time Gardens with these Dutch homesteads a light-leaved Locust tree, shedding its beautiful flickering shadows on the long roof. I wonder whether there was any association or tradition that made the Locust the house-friend in old New York ! The first nurseryman in the new world was stern old Governor Endicott of Salem. In 1644 he wrote to Governor Winthrop, " My children burnt mee at least 500 trees by setting the ground on fire neere them " — which was a very pretty piece of mischief for sober Puritan children. We find all thoughtful men of influence and prominence in all the colonies raising various fruits, and selling trees and plants, but they had no independent business nurseries. If tradition be true, it is to Governor Endicott we owe an indelible dye on the landscape of eastern Massachusetts in midsummer. The Dyer's-weed or Woad-waxen (Genista tinctoria\ which, in July, covers hundreds of acres in Lynn, Salem, Swamp- scott, and Beverly with its solid growth and brill- iant yellow bloom, is said to have been brought to this country as the packing of some of the gov- ernor's household belongings. It is far more prob- able that he brought it here to raise it in his garden for dyeing purposes, with intent to benefit the col- ony, as he did other useful seeds and plants. Woad- waxen, or Broom, is a persistent thing ; it needs scythe, plough, hoe, and bitter labor to eradicate it. I cannot call it a weed, for it has seized only poor rock-filled land, good for naught else ; and the radiant beauty of the Salem landscape for many o c c o O c > c T3 o Colonial Garden-making 25 weeks makes us forgive its persistence, and thank Endicott for bringing it here. " The Broom, Full -flowered and visible on every steep, Along the copses runs in veins of gold." The Broom flower is the emblem of mid-summer, the hottest yellow flower I know — it seems to throw out heat. I recall the first time I saw it growing ; I was told that it was " Salem Wood-wax." I had heard of " Roxbury Waxwork," the Bitter-sweet, but this was a new name, as it was a new tint of yellow, and soon I had its history, for I find Salem people rather proud both of the flower and its story. Oxeye Daisies (Whiteweed) are also by vague tra- dition the children of Governor Endicott's planting. I think it far more probable that they were planted and cherished by the wives of the colonists, when their beloved English Daisies were found unsuited to New England's climate and soil. We note the Woad-waxen and Whiteweed as crowding usurpers, not only because they are persistent, but because their great expanses of striking bloom will not let us forget them. Many other English plants are just as determined intruders, but their modest dress permits them to slip in comparatively unobserved. It has ever been characteristic of the British colo- nist to carry with him to any new home the flowers of old England and Scotland, and characteristic of these British flowers to monopolize the earth. Sweetbrier is called " the missionary-plant," by the Maoris in New Zealand, and is there regarded 16 Old Time Gardens as a tiresome weed, spreading and holding the ground. Some homesick missionary or his more homesick wife bore it there ; and her love of the home plant impressed even the savage native. We all know the story of the Scotch settlers who car- ried their beloved Thistles to Tasmania " to make it seem like home," and how they lived to regret it. Vancouver's Island is completely overrun with Broom and wild Roses from England. The first commercial nursery in America, in the sense of the term as we now employ it, was estab- lished about 1730 by Robert Prince, in Flushing, Long Island, a community chiefly of French Hu- guenot settlers, who brought to the new world many French fruits by seed and cuttings, and also a love of horticulture. For over a century and a quarter these Prince Nurseries were the leading ones in Amer- ica. The sale of fruit trees was increased in 1774 (as we learn from advertisements in the New York Mercury of that year), by the sale of "Carolina Magnolia flower trees, the most beautiful trees that grow in America, and 50 large Catalpa flower trees ; they are nine feet high to the under part of the top and thick as one's leg," also other flowering trees and shrubs. The fine house built on the nursery grounds by William Prince suffered little during the Revolu- tion. It was occupied by Washington and after- wards house and nursery were preserved from depredations by a guard placed by General Howe when the British took possession of Flushing. Of course, domestic nursery business waned in time of Colonial Garden-making 27 war ; but an excellent demand for American shrubs and trees sprung up among the officers of the British army, to send home to gardens in England and Ger- many. Many an English garden still has ancient plants and trees from the Prince Nurseries. The " Linnaean Botanic Garden and Nurseries ' and the " Old American Nursery ' thrived once more at the close of the war, and William Prince the second entered in charge ; one of his earliest ventures of importance was the introduction of Lombardy Poplars. In 1798 he advertises ten thousand trees, ten to seventeen feet in height. These became the most popular tree in America, the emblem of democracy — and a warmly hated tree as well. The eighty acres of nursery grounds were a centre of botanic and horticultural interest for the entire country ; every tree, shrub, vine, and plant known to England and America was eagerly sought for ; here the important botanical treasures of Lewis and Clark found a home. William Prince wrote several notable horticultural treatises ; and even his trade catalogues were prized. He estab- lished the first steamboats between Flushing and New York, built roads and bridges on Long Isl- and, and was a public-spirited, generous citizen as well as a man of science. His son, William Robert Prince, who died in 1869, was the last to keep up the nurseries, which he did as a scientific rather than a commercial establishment. He bota- nized the entire length of the Atlantic States with Dr. Torrey, and sought for collections of trees and wild flowers in California with the same eagerness 28 Old Time Gardens that others there sought gold. He was a devoted promoter of the native silk industry, having vast plantations of Mulberries in many cities; for one at Norfolk, Virginia, he was offered $100,000. It is a curious fact that the interest in Mulberry cul- ture and the practice of its cultivation was so uni- Garden at Prince Homestead, Flushing, Long Island. versal in his neighborhood (about the year 1830), that cuttings of the Chinese Mulberry [Morus multi- caulis) were used as currency in all the stores in the vicinity of Flushing, at the rate of I2-| cents each. The Prince homestead, a fine old mansion, is here shown ; it is still standing, surrounded by that forlorn sight, a forgotten garden. This is of con- siderable extent, and evidences of its past dignity Colonial Garden-making 29 appear in the hedges and edgings of Box; one symmetrical great Box tree is fifty feet in circumfer- ence. Flowering shrubs, unkempt of shape, bloom and beautify the waste borders each spring, as do the oldest Chinese Magnolias in the United States. Gingkos, Paulownias, and weeping trees, which need no gardener's care, also flourish and are of unusual size. There are some splendid evergreens, such as Mt. Atlas Cedars ; and the oldest and finest Cedar of Lebanon in the United States. It seemed sad, as I looked at the evidences of so much past beauty and present decay, that this historic house and gar- den should not be preserved for New York, as the house and garden of John Bartram, the Philadelphia botanist, have been for his native city. While there are few direct records of American gardens in the eighteenth century, we have many in- structing side glimpses through old business letter- books. We find Sir Harry Frankland ordering Daffodils and Tulips for the garden he made for Agnes Surriage ; and it is said that the first Lilacs ever seen in Hopkinton were planted by him for her. The gay young nobleman and the lovely woman are in the dust, and of all the beautiful things belonging to them there remain a splendid Portuguese fan, which stands as a memorial of that tragic crisis in their life — the great Lisbon earth- quake; and the Lilacs, which still mark the site of her house and blossom each spring as a memorial of the shadowed romance of her life in New England. Let me give two pages from old letters to illus- trate what I mean by side glimpses at the contents 30 Old Time Gardens of colonial gardens. The fine Hancock mansion in Boston had a carefully-filled garden long previous to the Revolution. Such letters as the following were sent by Mr. Hancock to England to secure flowers for it : — " My Trees and Seeds for Capt. Bennett Came Safe to Hand and I like them very well. I Return you mv hearty Thanks for the Plumb Tree and Tulip Roots you were pleased to make me a Present off, which are very Accep- table to me. I have Sent mv friend Mr. Wilks a mmo. to procure for me 2 or 3 Doz. Yew Trees, Some Hollvs and Jessamine Vines, and if you have Any Particular Curious Things not of a high Price, will Beautifye a flower Garden Send a Sample with the Price or a Catalogue of 'em, I do not intend to spare Any Cost or Pains in making my Gardens Beautifull or Profitable. " P.S. The Tulip Roots you were Pleased to make a present off to me are all Dead as well." We find Richard Stockton writing in 1766 from England to his wife at their beautiful home " Morven," in Princeton, New Jersey : — " I am making you a charming collection of bulbous roots, which shall be sent over as soon as the prospect of freezing on your coast is over. The first of April, I believe, will be time enough for you to put them in your sweet little flower garden, which you so fondly cultivate. Suppose I inform you that I design a ride to Twickenham the latter end of next month principally to view Mr. Pope's gardens and grotto, which I am told remain nearly as he left them ; and that I shall take with me a gentleman who draws well, to lay down an exact plan of the whole." Colonial Garden-making 3i The fine line of Catalpa trees set out by Richard Stockton, along the front of his lawn, were in full flower when he rode up to his house on a memor- able July day to tell his wife that he had signed the Declaration of American Independence. Since then Catalpa trees bear everywhere in that vicinity Old Box at Prince Homestead. the name of Independence trees, and are believed to be ever in bloom on July 4th. In the delightful diary and letters of Eliza South- gate Bowne {A Girl's Life Eighty Years Ago), are other side glimpses of the beautiful gardens of old Salem, among them those of the wealthy mer- chants of the Derby family. Terraces and arches Colonial Garden-making 33 and have all sent home in a bandbox together ; each would prove a memorial of the other; and long after the glory of the bonnet had departed, and the bonnet itself was ashes, the thriving Sweet Peas and Larkspur would recall its becoming charms. I have often seen the advertisements of these seedswomen in old newspapers ; unfortunately they seldom gave printed lists of their store of seeds. Here is one list printed in a Boston newspaper on March 30, 1760 : — Lavender. Palma Christi. Cerinthe or Honeywort, loved of bees. Tricolor. Indian Pink. Scarlet Cacalia. Yellow Sultans. Lemon African Marigold. Sensitive Plants. White Lupine. Love Lies Bleeding. Patagonian Cucumber. Lobelia. Catchfly. Wing-peas. Convolvulus. Strawberry Spinage. Branching Larkspur. White Chrysanthemum. Nigaella Romano. Rose Campion. Snap Dragon. D Nolana prostrata. Summer Savory. Hyssop. Red Hawkweed. Red and White Lavater. Scarlet Lupine. Large blue Lupine. Snuff flower. Caterpillars. Cape Marigold. Rose Lupine. Sweet Peas. Venus' Navelwort. Yellow Chrysanthemum. Cyanus minor. Tall Holyhock. French Marigold. Carnation Poppy. Globe Amaranthus. Yellow Lupine. Indian Branching Cox- combs. Iceplants. 34 Old Time Gardens Thyme. Sweet Marjoram. Tree Mallows. Everlasting. Greek Valerian. Tree Primrose. Canterbury Bells. Purple Stock. Sweet Scabiouse. Columbine. Pleasant-eyed Pink. Dwarf Mountain Pink. Sweet Rocket. Horn Poppy. French Honeysuckle. Bloody Wallflower. Sweet William. Honesty (to be sold in small parcels that every one mav * J J have a little). Persicaria. Polyanthos. 50 Different Sorts of mixed Tulip Roots. Ranunculus Gladiolus. Starry Scabiouse. Curled Mallows. Painted Lady topknot peas. Colchicum. Persian Iris. Star Bethlehem. This list is certainly a pleasing one. It gives opportunity for flower borders of varied growth and rich color. There is a quality of some minds which may be termed historical imagination. It is the power of shaping from a few simple words or details of the faraway past, an ample picture, full of light and life, of which these meagre details are but a framework. Having this list of the names of these sturdy old annuals and perennials, what do you perceive besides the printed words ? I see that the old mid-century garden where these seeds found a home was a cheerful place from earliest spring to autumn ; that it had many bulbs, and thereafter a constant succession of warm blooms till the Cox- combs, Marigolds, Colchicums and Chrysanthe- mums yielded to New England's frosts. I know Colonial Garden-making 35 that the garden had beehives and that the bees were loved ; for when they sallied out of their straw bee-skepes, these happy bees found their favorite blossoms planted to welcome them : Cerinthe, drop- ping with honey; Cacalia, a sister flower; Lupine, Larkspur, Sweet Marjoram, and Thyme — I can rfll 1 ^^"^ ^JhJBJBFTTf^ f"""^ " m m ' ?- W*^; K> v 1 a& ^ „. ■ ■ . .- 1^ BSw*ji,'*.£ ' ~ > Old Garden at Duck Cove Farm in Narragansett. taste the Thyme-scented classic honev from that garden ! There was variety of foliage as well as bloom, the dovelike Lavender, the glaucous Horned Poppy, the glistening Iceplants, the dusty Rose Campion. Stately plants grew from the little seed-packets ; Hollyhocks, Valerian, Canterbury Bells, Tree Prim- roses looked down on the low-growing herbs of the 2,6 Old Time Gardens border ; and there were vines of Convolvulus and Honeysuckle. It was a garden overhung by clouds of perfume from Thyme, Lavender, Sweet Peas, Pleasant-eyed Pink, and Stock. The garden's mis- tress looked well after her household ; ample store of savory pot herbs grow among the finer blossoms. It was a garden for children to play in. I can see them ; little boys with their hair tied in queues, in knee breeches and flapped coats like their stately fathers, running races down the garden path, as did the Van Cortlandt children ; and demure little girls in caps and sacques and aprons, sitting in cubby houses under the Lilac bushes. I know what flowers they played with and how they played, for they were my great-grandmothers and grandfathers, and they played exactly what I did, and sang what I did when I was a child in a garden. And suddenly my picture expands, as a glow of patriotic interest thrills me in the thought that in this garden were sheltered and amused the boys of one hundred and forty years ago, who became the heroes of our American Revo- lution ; and the girls who were Daughters of Lib- erty, who spun and wove and knit for their soldiers, and drank heroically their miserable Liberty tea. I fear the garden faded when bitter war scourged the land, when the women turned from their flower beds to the plough and the field, since their brothers and husbands were on the frontier. But when that winter of gloom to our country and darkness to the garden was ended, the flowers bloomed still more brightly, and to the cheerful seed- lings of the old garden is now given perpetual youth Colonial Garden-making 37 and beauty ; they are fated never to grow faded or neglected or sad, but to live and blossom and smile forever in the sunshine of our hearts through the magic power of a few printed words in a time-worn old news-sheet. CHAPTER II FRONT DOORYARDS " There are few of us who cannot remember a front yard garden which seemed to us a very paradise in childhood. Whether the house was a fine one and the enclosure spacious, or whether it was a small house with only a narrow bit of ground in front, the yard was kept with care, and was different from the rest of the land altogether. . . . People do not know what they lose when they make way with the reserve, the separateness, the sanctity, of the front yard of their grandmothers. It is like writing down family secrets for any one to read ; it is like having everybody call you by your first name, or sitting in any pew in church." — Country Byways, Sarah Orne Jewett, i 88 r . LD New England villages and small towns and well-kept New England farms had universally a simple and pleasing form of garden called the front yard or front dooryard. A few still may be seen in conservative the New England states and in Pennsylvania. I saw flourishing ones this summer in Gloucester, Marblehead, and Ipswich. Even where the front yard was but a narrow strip of land before a tiny cottage, it was carefully fenced in, with a gate that was kept rigidly closed and latched. There seemed to be a law 38 communities in New York or Front Dooryards 39 which shaped and bounded the front yard ; the side fences extended from the corners of the house to the front fence on the edge of the road, and thus formed naturally the guarded parallelogram. Often the fence around the front yard was the only one on the farm ; everywhere else were boun- daries of great stone walls ; or if there were rail The Flowering Almond under the Window. fences, the front yard fence was the only painted one. I cannot doubt that the first gardens that our foremothers had, which were wholly of flower- ing plants, were front yards, little enclosures hard won from the forest. The word yard, not generally applied now to any enclosure of elegant cultivation, comes from the same root as the word garden. Garth is another 4