The Upper James 



ovals, covering about one acre, proves upon investigation to be 

 perfectly symmetrical, with direct exits leading from a central 

 bed. Bordering each of the fifty-seven beds, as well as enclosing 

 the garden plot, are hedges of suffruticosa, which average in height 

 from two to four feet, with a girth of sometimes five. Only tall 

 flowers, like phlox and hollyhocks and larkspur, can lift their heads 

 high enough to show to advantage, but, for the pleasure of such 

 glorious box, one is willing to forego many flowers, which, after 

 all, can be had elsewhere. There is probably more of the old- 

 fashioned dwarf or suffruticosa boxwood at Tuckahoe than any- 

 where else in America. By actual measurement, if lined off, it 

 would extend about eight thousand feet, or more than one and one- 

 half miles. 



The beauty of this box garden's unlost configuration is retained 

 with its early and remote contours. The invincible green of the 

 box, darkling amid and above the flowers, takes from and gives to 

 them the cheer which neither could have found without the contrast. 

 It is like some garden of sleep, and here one finds rest that seldom 

 comes in this world of unfortunate change. The spot is lovely 



enough by day; but at night ! With evening there comes 



into the Virginia air a soft, intangible, poetical dreaminess — a 

 dreaminess that, with the fragrant boxwood, lets the Tuckahoe 

 garden smile, even in winter, without any abatement to the effects 

 of summer that would lessen the total of a year of joy. 



Roses grow in the central or key bed of this formal garden and 

 again in the first four long beds around it. The center ovals, also 

 four, show in sequence, tulips — slate blue and yellow; cornflowers 

 in contrast to lilies ; sweet rocket, and last — phlox drummondi. 



The ovals, which radiate from the central bed, begin with the 

 Darwins, ranging from pale pink to purple. Larkspur follows — 

 the old-fashioned kind — and, when it blooms, its purplish mist 

 seems to envelop all the garden. Then come the asters. The 

 general plan shows every plot of the same shape to contain the same 

 flowers. Another group has iris, peonies and chrysanthemums, 



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