Historic Gardens of Virginia 



1745 and undertook the guardianship of young Thomas Mann 

 Randolph and the management of his estate. 



Below the schoolhouse, jonquils have spread into a veritable 

 Cloth-of-Gold field, flinging high their April trumpets above a mass 

 of periwinkle blue as the sky. These signals of spring that dance 

 so joyously leave the memory of their beauty throughout the garden 

 year. And there are so many varieties of daffodils and narcissi at 

 this charming old place. Beginning with the short-stemmed 

 Obvallaris the beautiful Stellas follow in profusion. These bulbs 

 were planted long before the days of the Olympia as the Golden 

 Spur and the double sorts — Orange and Golden Phoenix, familiarly 

 known as Butter and Eggs and Eggs and Bacon — will attest. But, 

 daintiest of all the daffodil family which blooms at Tuckahoe, is 

 the delicate, old-fashioned, little white flower known as "The Lady 

 of Leeds." 



Scattered about the garden, and all over the lawn, are four 

 varieties of narcissi — the Polyanthus, which, though in the minority, 

 compensates in its bright yellow flowers; the white Biflorus, and, 

 most pleasing of all, Ornatus and Poeticus. 



Beyond the schoolhouse comes the garden — the real feature of 

 Tuckahoe. A magnificent elm throws out its arms protectingly 

 over the garden entrance. A simple wood gate, between box- 

 hedged violet beds, leads between this elm tree and two splendid 

 specimens of sempervirens boxwood which rise on the other side. 

 Through the opening, looking east, there is a charming vista down 

 a turfed alley lined with old-fashioned or suffruticosa box and 

 called the Ghost Walk. Shadowing the south side, a row of 

 sempervirens interlines the dwarf hedge rows, and stands as a wind- 

 break for the flowers. Below this lies the formal garden, cut up 

 into fifty-seven "knots" or beds, a decorative arrangement, with 

 paths of grass intervening. These paths are so narrow that only 

 one person can walk there at a time, and they are separated from 

 the flower beds by dwarf-box hedging. 



Known as the "maze," this labyrinth of flower squares and 



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