96 Old Time Gardens 



We are told that it is not well to plant Box edg- 

 ings in our gardens, because Box is so frail, is so 

 easily winter-killed, that it dies down in ugly fashion. 

 Yet see what great trees it forms, even when un- 

 trimmed, as in the Prince Garden (page 31). It 

 is true that Box does not always flourish in the 

 precise shape you wish, but it has nevertheless a 

 wonderfully tenacious hold on life. I know nothing 

 more suggestive of persistence and of sad sentiment 

 than the view often seen in forlorn city enclosures, 

 as you drive past, or rush by in an electric car, of 

 an aged bush of Box, or a few feet of old Box hedge 

 growing in the beaten earth of a squalid back yard, 

 surrounded by dirty tenement houses. Once a fair 

 garden there grew ; the turf and flowers and trees 

 are vanished ; but spared through accident, or be- 

 cause deemed so valueless, the Box still lives. Even 

 in Washington and other Southern cities, where the 

 negro population eagerly gather Box at Christmas- 

 tide, you will see these forlorn relics of the garden 

 still growing, and their bitter fragrance rises above 

 the vile odors of the crowded slums. 



Box formed an important feature of the garden of 

 Pliny's favorite villa in Tuscany, which he described 

 in his letter to Apollinaris. How I should have 

 loved its formal beauty ! On the southern front a 

 terrace was bordered with a Box hedge and " embel- 

 lished with various figures in Box, the representa- 

 tion of divers animals." Beyond was a circus 

 formed around by ranges of Box rising in walls 

 of varied heights. The middle of this circus was 

 ornamented with figures of Box. On one side was a 



