Introductory 



ington, walks and talks with Lord Fairfax. And in March, 1774, 

 in Northumberland County, young Mr. Philip Fithian, the tutor 

 at Nomini Hall, "has the honour of taking a walk with Mrs. 

 Carter through the Garden, . . . We gathered cowslips in full 

 bloom and as many violets. The English honeysuckle is all out 

 in green and tender leaves." Presently he rides to Mount Airy, 

 in Richmond County, and finds "a large, well-formed, beautiful 

 garden, as fine in every respect as any I have seen in Virginia. 

 In it stand four large, beautiful, marble statues." 



Throughout the Revolutionary and the post-Revolutionary 

 periods come whiffs of colour, song and perfume. There are flowers 

 at Mount Vernon, and flowers at Red Hill where lives Patrick 

 Henry, and John Marshall has his flowers in Richmond, and 

 Jefferson at Monticello. Of Jefferson his granddaughter says, 

 "Every day he rode through his plantation and walked in his 

 garden .... I remember the planting of the first hyacinths and 

 tulips. There was 'Marcus Aurelius' and 'The King of the Gold 

 Mine,' the 'Roman Empress' and the 'Queen of the Amazons.' .... 

 When the flowers were in bloom and we were in ecstacies over 

 the rich purple and crimson, or pure white, or delicate lilac, or 

 pale yellow of the blossoms, how he would sympathize with our 

 admiration, or discuss with my mother and elder sister new group- 

 ings and combinations and contrasts. Oh, these were happy 

 moments for us and for him!" 



The first sixty years of the nineteenth century was probably the 

 heyday of gardens in Virginia. Then long and dread war, and 

 houses burned and gardens trampled! Many old houses, many 

 old gardens, have disappeared from Virginia, But many are left. 

 And other gardens have been begun, are beginning, flourish now 

 and will flourish more and more. 



Those that are written of in this book are major gardens, old, 

 well-known pleasaunces. But it were odd, thinking of Virginia, if 

 the thousand, if the fifty thousand, little gardens did not come into 

 mind, if the flowers in old towns, if the flowers in village yards, 



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