Richmond and Vicinity 



Behind the flowers stand grape trellises, and then the useful, 

 but not decorative, plots where grow beets, radishes, celery, aspa- 

 ragus, and that celebrated tuber which has been so justly called 

 "the unostentatious po-ta-to." 



There was a day when damsons were in this garden; now only 

 the apricot, peach and pear trees survive. The apple trees of 

 fifty years ago no longer furnish even practice grounds for sap- 

 suckers. But the intimate violet, in its ever-enlarging beds, has 

 thriven and multiplied, while the great trees died. 



The garden itself is a rough oval traversed by two walks on 

 different levels, one of grass and the other, gravel. Across these 

 at right angles, under a rose arbor, runs a transverse allee. Around 

 the whole garden, just inside the hedge, is another walk that is 

 purely utilitarian. In this garden are "the new hothouses" as they 

 were called — sixty years ago — the old hothouses stand much nearer 

 to the house itself in the "Little Garden." 



• The date of the latter is unknown, but a colossal magnolia, glori- 

 ous in its symmetry, has spread, from generation to generation, its 

 great trailing limbs, and speaks of an age that really surpasses 

 mere dates. The "little garden" is just for roses, and three great 

 magnolias; true, there are two immense willow oaks on its south 

 border, and flowering almonds, which look very modern in the 

 presence of the old trees, stand on the edge of the central grass 

 plot. This garden is a rough circle. On the side nearest the man- 

 sion is an iron fence, now arbored with trailing roses; within the 

 fence are rosebeds, then comes a narrow walk that runs around the 

 whole. Within this walk stand two great magnolias, and one 

 magnolia grandiflora; there are rosebeds in this grass plot, too. 



On the north side of the garden are three hothouses, one of 

 which has been there for seventy-five or eighty years; the other 

 two are forty years old. 



Just east of the garden stands a group of magnificent ever- 

 greens, under whose peaceful keeping lie the bodies of the ancestors 

 of the present owners of Brook Hill. The whole effect, in its 



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