52 The American Flower Garden 



encouraged the trial of many native to the New. Around about 

 Philadelphia there are still extant a few lovely old flower gardens, 

 their circles, triangles and parallelograms filled with gay flowers 

 and box-bordered with scarcely an exception. These, apart from 

 the kitchen garden, testify to &quot;the pride of life&quot; so innocently 

 fostered by the Friends. At the time of the Revolution there 

 were, perhaps, no finer gardens in the Colonies than were main 

 tained by these worthies. Doubtless they felt the influence of 

 John Bartram, the zealous Quaker botanist, who established in 

 1728 the first botanic garden in America, and both through his 

 travels in this country and exchanges with foreign horticulturists 

 introduced to the Philadelphians, first of all, the treasures of 

 his quest. 



In a country that then contained few homes more imposing 

 than an Indian wigwam, a few English settlers along the James 

 River established estates of enduring beauty immense tracts 

 of fertile, well cultivated land with a stately house and garden on 

 the water front within calling distance of the private pier. Ship 

 loads of brick to build the house and outbuildings, exquisitely 

 carved columns, pilasters, wainscots, mantels, panels, fan-lights 

 and pediments, paintings, silver, dainty china, rich furniture, the 

 latest fashions in clothes, old wine, and every table luxury came 

 to the very doors straight from England. Although nature did 

 so much to adorn these Virginia estates, their luxurious owners 

 laid out convenient gardens, such as they had been accustomed 

 to in the Mother Country, and humoured their wives and 

 daughters fancy by importing quantities of plants when the ships 

 that had carried tobacco to London, came back home. But 

 throughout the South during Colonial days, gardens, like books, 

 among the common people, were so rare as to be almost unknown. 



