48 The American Flower Garden 



the Italian method. Reduced to a small scale, in keeping with 

 the simple living of frugal-minded Colonials, the classic garden 

 here was but a contraction of the elaborate design of some European 

 estate into the space of a small door-yard. It is said that the 

 original Longfellow garden was laid out after Le Notre s designs for 

 the parterres at Versailles. How much of the enduring charm of 

 old Concord, Cambridge, Portsmouth, Hartford, Fairfield, New 

 port, and Kingston, among scores of other New England towns, 

 was due to their broad straight street in the centre of the original 

 village with the formal planting of trees on either side a single 

 or a double row of arching elms or maples! 



In the good old days, when every busy housekeeper worked 

 awhile among her flowers each day, and, without consciousness of 

 cravings for capitalised Art, nevertheless achieved as much, per 

 haps, toward that end as her modern sisters who spend the summer 

 on hotel piazzas embroidering sofa pillows or painting alleged 

 decorations on china, the garden was necessarily close to the house 

 usually in front of it, next to the village street. Time to work 

 in the garden had to be snatched from multitudinous household 

 duties, for the care of the flowers almost invariably devolved 

 upon the women of the family who most loved them. Little 

 wonder that the hardy perennials or annuals that sow their own 

 seed plants that very nearly take care of themselves were 

 the prime favourites in the old-time gardens: fragrant rose peonies, 

 sweet Williams, spicy little fringed pinks, flaming poppies, spires 

 of blue larkspur, foxgloves, deliciously scented valerian, 

 fraxinella with its penetrating, aromatic perfume, periwinkle, 

 hollyhocks, pansies, Lancaster and York and damask roses, and 

 Canterbury bells. Increased numbers of these popular favourites 

 might be relied upon to come up year after year until the weeds 



