Old Time Gardens Part 4

The main walks which formed the basis of the garden design had in ancient days a singular name--forthrights; these were ever to be "s.p.a.cious and fair," and neatly spread with colored sands or gravel.

Parkinson says, "The fairer and larger your allies and walks be the more grace your garden should have, the lesse harm the herbes and flowers shall receive, and the better shall your weeders cleanse both the bed and the allies." "Covert-walks," or "shade-alleys," had trees meeting in an arch over them.

A curious term, found in references to old American flower beds and garden designs, as well as English ones, is the "goose-foot." A "goose-foot" consisted of three flower beds or three avenues radiating rather closely together from a small semicircle; and in some places and under some conditions it is still a charming and striking design, as you stand at the heel of the design and glance down the three avenues.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Parterre and Clipped Box at Hampton.]

In all these flower beds Box was the favorite edging, but many other trim edgings have been used in parterres and borders by those who love not Box. Bricks were used, and boards; an edging of boards was not as pretty as one of flowers, but it kept the beds trimly in place; a garden thus edged is shown on page 63 which realizes this description of the pleasure-garden in the _Scots Gard'ner_: "The Bordures box'd and planted with variety of fine Flowers orderly Intermixt, Weeded, Mow'd, Rolled and Kept all Clean and Handsome." Germander and Rosemary were old favorites for edging. I have seen snowy edgings of Candy-tuft and Sweet Alyssum, setting off well the vari-colored blooms of the border. One of Sweet Alyssum is shown on page 256. Ageratum is a satisfactory edging.

Thyme is of ancient use, but rather unmanageable; one garden owner has set his edgings of Moneywort, otherwise Creeping-jenny. I should be loth to use Moneywort as an edging; I would not care for its yellow flowers in that place, though I find them very kindly and cheerful on dull banks or in damp spots, under the drip of trees and eaves, or better still, growing gladly in the flower pot of the poor. I fear if Moneywort thrived enough to make a close, suitable edging, that it would thrive too well, and would swamp the borders with its underground runners. The name Moneywort is akin to its older t.i.tle Herb-twopence, or Twopenny Gra.s.s. Turner (1548) says the latter name was given from the leaves all "standying together of ech syde of the stalke lyke pence." The striped leaves of one variety of Day Lily make pretty edgings. Those from a Salem garden are here shown.

We often see in neglected gardens in New England, or by the roadside where no gardens now exist, a dense gray-green growth of Lavender Cotton, "the female plant of Southernwood," which was brought here by the colonists and here will ever remain. It was used as an edging, and is very pretty when it can be controlled. I know two or three old gardens where it is thus employed.

Sometimes in driving along a country road you are startled by a concentration of foliage and bloom, a glimpse of a tiny farm-house, over which are cl.u.s.tered and heaped, and round which are gathered, close enough to be within touch from door or window, flowers in a crowded profusion ample to fill a large flower bed. Such is the ma.s.s of June bloom at Wilbur Farm in old Narragansett (page 290)--a home of flowers and bees. Often by the side of the farm-house is a little garden or flower bed containing some splendid examples of old-time flowers. The splendid "running ribbons" of Snow Pinks, on page 292, are in another Narragansett garden that is a bower of blossoms. Thrift has been a common edging since the days of the old herbalist Gerarde.

"We have a bright little garden, down on a sunny slope, Bordered with sea-pinks and sweet with the songs and blossoms of hope."

The garden of Secretary William H. Seward (in Auburn, New York), so beloved by him in his lifetime, is shown on page 146 and facing page 134. In this garden some beds are edged with Periwinkle, others with Polyanthus, and some with Ivy which Mr. Seward brought from Abbotsford in 1836. This garden was laid out in its present form in 1816, and the sun-dial was then set in its place. The garden has been enlarged, but not changed, the old "George II. Roses" and York and Lancaster Roses still grow and blossom, and the lovely arches of single Michigan Roses still flourish. In it are many flowers and fruits unusual in America, among them a bed of Alpine strawberries.

King James I. of Scotland thus wrote of the garden which he saw from his prison window in Windsor Castle:--

"A Garden fair, and in the Corners set An Herbere greene, with Wandis long and small Railit about."

These wandis were railings which were much used before Box edgings became universal. Sometimes they were painted the family colors, as at Hampton Court they were green and white, the Tudor colors. These "wandis" still are occasionally seen. In the Berks.h.i.+re Hills I drove past an old garden thus trimly enclosed in little beds. The rails were painted a dull light brown, almost the color of some tree trunks; and Larkspur, Foxglove, and other tall flowers crowded up to them and hung their heads over the top rails as children hang over a fence or a gate.

I thought it a neat, trim fas.h.i.+on, not one I would care for in my own garden, yet not to be despised in the garden of another.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Garden of Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, Waldstein, Fairfield, Conn.]

A garden enclosed! so full of suggestion are these simple words to me, so constant is my thought that an ideal flower garden must be an enclosed garden, that I look with regret upon all beautiful flower beds that are not enclosed, not shut in a frame of green hedges, or high walls, or vine-covered fences and dividing trees. It may be selfish to hide so much beauty from general view; but until our dwelling-houses are made with uncurtained gla.s.s walls, that all the world may see everything, let those who have ample grounds enclose at least a portion for the sight of friends only.

In the heart of Worcester there is a fine old mansion with ample lawns, great trees, and flowering shrubs that all may see over the garden fence as they pa.s.s by. Flowers bloom lavishly at one side of the house; and the thoughtless stroller never knows that behind the house, stretching down between the rear gardens and walls of neighboring homes, is a long enclosure of loveliness--sequestered, quiet, full of refreshment to the spirits. We think of the "Old Garden" of Margaret Deland:--

"The Garden glows And 'gainst its walls the city's heart still beats.

And out from it each summer wind that blows Carries some sweetness to the tired streets!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Shaded Walk in Garden of Miss Harriet P. F. Burnside, Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts.]

There is a shaded walk in this garden which is a thing of solace and content to all who tread its pathway; a bit is shown opposite this page, overhung with shrubs of Lilac, Syringa, Strawberry Bush, Flowering Currant, all the old treelike things, so fair-flowered and sweet-scented in spring, so heavy-leaved and cool-shadowing in midsummer: what pleasure would there be in this shaded walk if this garden were separated from the street only by stone curbing or a low rail? And there is an old sun-dial too in this enclosed garden! I fear the street imps of a crowded city would quickly destroy the old monitor were it in an open garden; and they would make sad havoc, too, of the Roses and Larkspurs (page 65) so tenderly reared by the two sisters who together loved and cared for this "garden enclosed." Great trees are at the edges of this garden, and the line of tall shrubs is carried out by the lavish vines and Roses on fences and walls. Within all this border of greenery glow the cl.u.s.tered gems of rare and beautiful flowers, till the whole garden seems like some rich jewel set purposely to be worn in honor over the city's heart--a cl.u.s.tered jewel, not one to be displayed carelessly and heedlessly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Roses and Larkspur in the Garden of Miss Harriet P. F.

Burnside, Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts.]

Salem houses and gardens are like Salem people. Salem houses present to you a serene and dignified front, gracious yet reserved, not thrusting forward their choicest treasures to the eyes of pa.s.sing strangers; but behind the walls of the houses, enclosed from public view, lie cherished gardens, full of the beauty of life. Such, in their kind, are Salem folk.

I know no more speaking, though silent, criticism than those old Salem gardens afford upon the modern fas.h.i.+on in American towns of pulling down walls and fences, removing the boundaries of lawns, and living in full view of every pa.s.ser-by, in a public gra.s.sy park. It is pleasant, I suppose, for the pa.s.ser-by; but homes are not made for pa.s.sers-by. Old Salem gardens lie behind the house, out of sight--you have to hunt for them. They are terraced down if they stretch to the water-side; they are enclosed with hedges, and set behind high vine-covered fences, and low out-buildings; and planted around with great trees: thus they give to each family that secluded centring of family life which is the very essence and being of a home. I sat through a June afternoon in a Salem garden whose gate is within a stone's throw of a great theatre, but a few hundred feet from lines of electric cars and a busy street of trade, scarce farther from lines of active steam cars, and with a great power house for a close neighbor. Yet we were as secluded, as embowered in vines and trees, with beehives and rabbit hutches and chicken coops for happy children at the garden's end, as truly in beautiful privacy, as if in the midst of a hundred acres. Could the sense of sound be as sheltered by the enclosing walls as the sense of sight, such a garden were a city paradise.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Homely Back Yard.]

There is scant regularity in shape in Salem gardens; there is no search for exact dimensions. Little narrow strips of flower beds run down from the main garden in any direction or at any angle where the fortunate owner can buy a few feet of land. Salem gardens do not change with the whims of fancy, either in the shape or the planting. A few new flowers find place there, such as the _Anemone j.a.ponica_ and the j.a.panese shrubs; for they are akin in flower sentiment, and consort well with the old inhabitants. There are many choice flowers and fruits in these gardens. In the garden of the Manning homestead (opposite page 112) grows a flouris.h.i.+ng Fig tree, and other rare fruits; for fifty years ago this garden was known as the Pomological Garden. It is fitting it should be the home of two Robert Mannings--both well-known names in the history of horticulture in Ma.s.sachusetts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Covered Well at Home of Bishop Berkeley, Whitehall, Rhode Island.]

The homely back yard of an old house will often possess a trim and blooming flower border cutting off the close approach of the vegetable beds (see opposite page 66). These back yards, with the covered Grape arbors, the old pumps, and bricked paths, are cheerful, wholesome places, generally of spotless cleanliness and weedless flower beds. I know one such back yard where the pump was the first one set in the town, and children were taken there from a distance to see the wondrous sight. Why are all the old appliances for raising water so pleasing? A well-sweep is of course picturesque, with its long swinging pole, and you seem to feel the refreshment and purity of the water when you see it brought up from such a distance; and an old roofed well with bucket, such as this one still in use at Bishop Berkeley's Rhode Island home is ever a homelike and companionable object. But a pump is really an awkward-looking piece of mechanism, and hasn't a vestige of beauty in its lines; yet it has something satisfying about it; it may be its domesticity, its homeliness, its simplicity. We have gained infinitely in comfort in our perfect water systems and lavish water of to-day, but we have lost the gratification of the senses which came from the sight and sound of freshly drawn or running water. Much of the delight in a fountain comes, not only from the beauty of its setting and the graceful shape of its jets, but simply from the sight of the water.

Sometimes a graceful and picturesque growth of vines will beautify gate posts, a fence, or a kitchen doorway in a wonderfully artistic and pleasing fas.h.i.+on. On page 70 is shown the sheltered doorway of the kitchen of a fine old stone farm-house called, from its hedges of Osage Orange, "The Hedges." It stands in the village of New Hope, County Bucks, Pennsylvania. In 1718 the tract of which this farm of over two hundred acres is but a portion was deeded by the Penns to their kinsman, the direct ancestor of the present owner, John Schofield Williams, Esq.

This is but one of the scores of examples I know where the same estate has been owned in one family for nearly two centuries, sometimes even for two hundred and fifty years; and in several cases where the deed from the Indian sachem to the first colonist is the only deed there has ever been, the estate having never changed owners.h.i.+p save by direct bequest. I have three such cases among my own kinsfolk.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Kitchen Doorway and Porch at the Hedges.]

Another form of garden and mode of planting which was in vogue in the "early thirties" is shown facing page 92. This pillared house and the stiff garden are excellent types; they are at Napanock, County Ulster, New York. Such a house and grounds indicated the possession of considerable wealth when they were built and laid out, for both were costly. The semicircular driveway swept up to the front door, dividing off Box-edged parterres like those of the day of Queen Anne. These parterres were spa.r.s.ely filled, the sunnier beds being set with Spring bulbs; and there were always the yellow Day Lilies somewhere in the flower beds, and the white and blue Day Lilies, the common Funkias.

Formal urns were usually found in the parterres and sometimes a great cone or ball of clipped Box. These gardens had some universal details, they always had great s...o...b..ll bushes, and Syringas, and usually white Roses, chiefly Madame Plantiers; the piazza trellises had old climbing Roses, the Queen of the Prairie or Boursault Roses. These gardens are often densely overshadowed with great evergreen trees grown from the crowded planting of seventy years ago; none are cut down, and if one dies its trunk still stands, entwined with Woodbine. I don't know that we would lay out and plant just such a garden to-day, any more than we would build exactly such a house; but I love to see both, types of the refinement of their day, and I deplore any changes. An old Southern house of allied form is shown on page 72, and its garden facing page 70,--Greenwood, in Thomasville, Georgia; but of course this garden has far more lavish and rich bloom. The decoration of this house is most interesting--a conventionalized Magnolia, and the garden is surrounded with splendid Magnolias and c.r.a.pe Myrtles. The border edgings in this garden are lines of bricks set overlapping in a curious manner. They serve to keep the beds firmly in place, and the bricks are covered over with an inner edging of thrifty Violets. Curious tubs and boxes for plants are made of bricks set solidly in mortar. The garden is glorious with Roses, which seem to consort so well with Magnolias and Violets.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Greenwood, Thomasville, Georgia.]

I love a Dutch garden, "circ.u.mmured" with brick. By a Dutch garden, I mean a small garden, oblong or square, sunk about three or four feet in a lawn--so that when surrounded by brick walls they seem about two feet high when viewed outside, but are five feet or more high from within the garden. There are brick or stone steps in the middle of each of the four walls by which to descend to the garden, which may be all planted with flowers, but preferably should have set borders of flowers with a gra.s.s-plot in the centre. On either side of the steps should be brick posts surmounted by Dutch pots with plants, or by b.a.l.l.s of stone.

Planted with bulbs, these gardens in their flowering time are, as old Parkinson said, a "perfect fielde of delite." We have very pretty Dutch gardens, so called, in America, but their chief claim to being Dutch is that they are set with bulbs, and have Delft or other earthen pots or boxes for formal plants or shrubs.

Sunken gardens should be laid out under the supervision of an intelligent landscape architect; and even then should have a reason for being sunken other than a whim or increase in costliness. I visited last summer a beautiful estate which had a deep sunken Dutch garden with a very low wall. It lay at the right side of the house at a little distance; and beyond it, in full view of the peristyle, extended the only squalid objects in the horizon. A garden on the level, well planted, with distant edging of shrubbery, would have hidden every ugly blemish and been a thing of beauty. As it is now, there can be seen from the house nothing of the Dutch garden but a foot or two of the tops of several clipped trees, looking like very poor, stunted shrubs. I must add that this garden, with its low wall, has been a perfect man-trap. It has been evident that often, on dark nights, workmen who have sought a "short cut" across the grounds have fallen over the shallow wall, to the gardener's sorrow, and the bulbs' destruction. Once, at dawn, the unhappy gardener found an ancient horse peacefully feeding among the Hyacinths and Tulips. He said he didn't like the gra.s.s in his new pasture nor the sudden approach to it; that he was too old for such new-fangled ways. I know another estate near Philadelphia, where the sinking of a garden revealed an exquisite view of distant hills; such a garden has reason for its form.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Roses and Violets in Garden at Greenwood, Thomasville, Georgia.]

We have had few water-gardens in America till recent years; and there are some drawbacks to their presence near our homes, as I was vividly aware when I visited one in a friend's garden early in May this year.

Water-hyacinths were even then in bloom, and two or three exquisite Lilies; and the Lotus leaves rose up charmingly from the surface of the tank. Less charmingly rose up also a cloud of vicious mosquitoes, who greeted the newcomer with a warm chorus of welcome. As our newspapers at that time were filled with plans for the application of kerosene to every inch of water-surface, such as I saw in these Lily tanks, accompanied by magnified drawings of dreadful malaria-bearing insects, I fled from them, preferring to resign both _Nymphaea_ and _Anopheles_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Water Garden at Sylvester Manor, Shelter Island, New York.]

After the introduction to English folk of that wonder of the world, the Victoria Regia, it was cultivated by enthusiastic flower lovers in America, and was for a time the height of the floral fas.h.i.+on. Never has the glorious Victoria Regia and scarce any other flower been described as by Colonel Higginson, a wonderful, a triumphant word picture. I was a very little child when I saw that same lovely Lily in leaf and flower that he called his neighbor; but I have never forgotten it, nor how afraid I was of it; for some one wished to lift me upon the great leaf to see whether it would hold me above the water. We had heard that the native children in South America floated on the leaves. I objected to this experiment with vehemence; but my mother noted that I was no more frightened than was the faithful gardener at the thought of the possible strain on his precious plant of the weight of a st.u.r.dy child of six or seven years. I have seen the Victoria Regia leaves of late years, but I seldom hear of its blossoming; but alas! we take less heed of the blooming of unusual plants than we used to thirty or forty years ago.

Then people thronged a greenhouse to see a new Rose or Camellia j.a.ponica; even a Night-blooming Cereus attracted scores of visitors to any house where it blossomed. And a fine Cactus of one of our neighbors always held a crowded reception when in rich bloom. It was a part of the "Flower Exchange," an interest all had for the beautiful flowers of others, a part of the old neighborly life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Terrace Wall at Drumthwacket, Princeton, New Jersey.]

Within the past five or six years there have been laid out in America, at the country seats of men of wealth and culture, a great number of formal gardens,--Italian gardens, some of them are worthily named, as they have been shaped and planted in conformity with the best laws and rules of Italian garden-making--that special art. On this page is shown the finely proportioned terrace wall, and opposite the upper terrace and formal garden of Drumthwacket, Princeton, New Jersey, the country seat of M. Taylor Pyne, Esq. This garden affords a good example of the accord which should ever exist between the garden and its surroundings. The name, Drumthwacket--a wooded hill--is a most felicitous one; the place is part of the original grant to William Penn, and has remained in the possession of one family until late in the nineteenth century. From this beautifully wooded hill the terrace-garden overlooks the farm buildings, the linked ponds, the fertile fields and meadows; a serene pastoral view, typical of the peaceful landscape of that vicinity--yet it was once the scene of fiercest battle. For the Drumthwacket farm is the battle-ground of that important encounter of 1777 between the British and the Continental troops, known as the Battle of Princeton, the turning point of the Revolution, in which Was.h.i.+ngton was victorious. To this day, cannon ball and grape shot are dug up in the Drumthwacket fields. The Lodge built in 1696 was, at Was.h.i.+ngton's request, the shelter for the wounded British officers; and the Was.h.i.+ngton Spring in front of the Lodge furnished water to Was.h.i.+ngton. The group of trees on the left of the upper pond marks the sheltered and honored graves of the British soldiers, where have slept for one hundred and twenty-four years those killed at this memorable encounter. If anything could cement still more closely the affections of the English and American peoples, it would be the sight of the tenderly sheltered graves of British soldiers in America, such as these at Drumthwacket and other historic fields on our Eastern coast. At Concord how faithfully stand the sentinel pines over the British dead of the Battle of Concord, who thus repose, shut out from the tread of heedless feet yet ever present for the care and thought of Concord people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Garden at Avonwood Court, Haverford, Pennsylvania, Country-seat of Charles E. Mather, Esq.]

We have older Italian gardens. Some of them are of great loveliness, among them the unique and dignified garden of Hollis H. Hunnewell, Esq., but many of the newer ones, even in their few summers, have become of surprising grace and beauty, and their exquisite promise causes a glow of delight to every garden lover. I have often tried to a.n.a.lyze and account for the great charm of a formal garden, to one who loves so well the unrestrained and lavished blossoming of a flower border crowded with nature-arranged and disarranged blooms. A chance sentence in the letter of a flower-loving friend, one whose refined taste is an inherent portion of her nature, runs thus:--

"I have the same love, the same sense of perfect satisfaction, in the old formal garden that I have in the sonnet in poetry, in the Greek drama as contrasted with the modern drama; something within me is ever drawn toward that which is restrained and cla.s.sic."

In these few words, then, is defined the charm of the formal garden--a well-ordered, a cla.s.sic restraint.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Garden at Drumthwacket, Princeton, New Jersey.]

Some of the new formal gardens seem imperfect in design and inadequate in execution; worse still, they are unsuited to their surroundings; but gracious nature will give even to these many charms of color, fragrance, and shape through lavish plant growth. I have had given to me sets of beautiful photographs of these new Italian gardens, which I long to include with my pictures of older flower beds; but I cannot do so in full in a book on Old-time Gardens, though they are copied from far older gardens than our American ones. I give throughout my book occasional glimpses of detail in modern formal gardens; and two examples may be fitly ill.u.s.trated and described in comparative fulness in this book, because they are not only unusual in their beauty and promise, but because they have in plan and execution some bearing on my special presentation of gardens. These two are the gardens of Avonwood Court in Haverford, Pennsylvania, the country-seat of Charles E. Mather, Esq., of Philadelphia; and of Yaddo, in Saratoga, New York, the country-seat of Spencer Trask, Esq., of New York.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sun-dial at Avonwood Court, Haverford, Pennsylvania.]

The garden at Avonwood Court was designed and laid out in 1896 by Mr.

Percy Ash. The flower planting was done by Mr. John Cope; and the garden is delightsome in proportions, contour, and aspect. Its claim to ill.u.s.trative description in this book lies in the fact that it is planted chiefly with old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers, and its beds are laid out and bordered with thriving Box in a truly old-time mode. It affords a striking example of the beauty and satisfaction that can come from the use of Box as an edging, and old-time flowers as a filling of these beds. Among the two hundred different plants are great rows of yellow Day Lilies shown in the view facing page 76; regular plantings of Peonies; borders of Flower de Luce; banks of Lilies of the Valley; rows of white Fraxinella and Lupine, beds of fringed Poppies, sentinels of Yucca--scores of old favorites have grown and thriven in the cheery manner they ever display when they are welcome and beloved. The sun-dial in this garden is shown facing page 82; it was designed by Mr. Percy Ash, and can be regarded as a model of simple outlines, good proportions, careful placing, and symmetrical setting. By placing I mean that it is in the right site in relation to the surrounding flower beds, and to the general outlines of the garden; it is a dignified and significant garden centre. By setting I mean its being raised to proper prominence in the garden scheme, by being placed at the top of a platform formed of three circular steps of ample proportion and suitable height, that its pedestal is also of the right size and not so high but one can, when standing on the top step, read with ease the dial's response to our question, "What's the time o' the day?" The hedges and walls of Honeysuckle, Roses, and other flowering vines that surround this garden have thriven wonderfully in the five years of the garden's life, and look like settings of many years. The simple but graceful wall seat gives some idea of the symmetrical and simple garden furnis.h.i.+ngs, as well as the profusion of climbing vines that form the garden's boundaries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Entrance Porch and Gate to the Rose Garden at Yaddo.]