Massachusetts Audubon Society 3 



LOST GARDENS 

 By Winthrop Packard 



(From the Christio'i Science Monitor) 



Deep in the woodlands of New England I find traces of abandoned 

 homes where to the casual glance there is no registration save that of the 

 forest primeval. These are not traces of the aboriginal inhabitants. The 

 Indians' home life was too casual to have left such. The most likely 

 would be marks of their cornfields, for the Indians taught the white settlers 

 how to plant Indian corn. Traces, indeed, of very ancient corn fields 

 remain, often in the depths of pine forests, for the pine thrives on just 

 such land as does corn, soft, easily worked, sandy loam. But I am always 

 confident that these traces are of the white man's planting. They are the 

 little spaces regularly laid out in which the early settler planted. It was 

 the custom of the Pilgrim forefathers to "hill up" their corn, hoeing up 

 the dirt about the base of the stalks. These little mounds of earth are 

 strangely persistent. They show today in places within fifteen miles of 

 Boston where, two hundred years ago some farmer planted his corn, 

 showing the place plainly though the farm house itself is but forest mould, 

 the cellar-hole merelv a depression in the brown earth, and deep woods 

 shade the region all about. 



These corn fieldsi may well have been planted by the Massachusetts 

 Indians before the settlers took them over. The only trace of such occu- 

 pancy w^ould be an ancient stone mortar and pestle, so primitive in shape 

 that it takes the keen eye of the Archoeologist to recognize it, or perhaps 

 the more easily known stone hatchet or flint arrow head. The soft sand 

 of the surface hides these, and only the plough or the spade would disclose 

 them, if there. 



Thus, so far as eastern North America goes, homestead traces are 

 those of the white man. These, however, are more than corn-hills and 

 cellar-holes. The rising tide of civilization that swept over New England's 

 highest hills two centuries ago was a civilization of farm life. In it the 

 pioneer spirit was still strong and it hewed homes out of the hillside where 

 the forest was primeval. I believe almost every town today has acreage 

 where the forest has come back, sweeping in silent majesty over the farmer's 

 holdings, making mould of his fences and buildings and leaving often 

 only the slightest traces of his former occupancy. The pioneer spirit 

 and its farm life moved west with the passing of the years and the 

 forests which only the farmer's axe and plough had kept out, returned 

 to their own. 



But not quite; most things that the pioneer planted passed with him; 

 some remained, more faithful to the land than the land owner. 



Often, roaming the deep woods where you expect to find only 

 creatures of the primal forests you find a waif of civilization living 

 serenely, a hermit in the wilderness. I know on a hillside a purple lilac 

 that every May sends its rich fragrance questing far through cathedral 

 pines. Careful search only shows a tiny hollow that marks the site of 

 the wee house that stood there. Of the home and its life of more than a 

 century ago only this record remains. Yet the sturdy shrub blooms 

 bravely there, holding in its heart wood recollections that go far beyond 

 the hand that planted it and the pioneer days of New England. 



We propagate the lilac from the root and the same sap flows through 

 the veins of the shrubs of today that flowed in those of a thousand years 



