2 COMMON SENSE GARDENS 



gardens of England, for the homes of the bet- 

 ter classes were generally situated in the heart 

 of the town. The New England merchant when 

 he retired from business was careful to re- 

 main in touch with civilization as he had al- 

 ways known it, and rarely isolated himself on a 

 large and lonely estate in the depths of the 

 country, which in those days, to be sure, was 

 for the most part an un tracked wilderness abound- 

 ing in wild beasts and savages. His pleasure 

 seems to have been derived principally from 

 watching the struggles of his successors with 

 the problems that he had met and conquered, 

 rather than from an unlimited contemplation 

 of nature, for which he had a certain amount of 

 respect and perhaps regard, but rarely any inti- 

 mate friendship. 



The early gardens of New England were made 

 when grandeur and magnificence were not much 

 practised by the descendants of the most stern 

 Puritans, when their resources were somewhat 

 limited. They were maintained more as a link 

 between the old and the new, between the past 

 of bitter memory and the future fulsome with the 



