The Upper James 



reaching magnolias and long-lived forest trees — some wrapped, 

 trunk and bough, in ivy — are a wide variety of shrubs. 



The garden is approached over the serpentine brick walk which 

 leads across the lawn from the south porch. Sempervirens box- 

 wood, eighteen inches in height, follows the walk along both sides. 

 It is noteworthy that the six hundred and eighty-five specimens 

 hedging the bricks were propagated at Elk Hill by Mrs. Stokes. 

 Her hand also planted many of the shrubs and flowering trees that 

 in the spring make of the place a double garden— half hanging, 

 almost, in the air — the other half under foot. She was the presid- 

 ing spirit who, short-handed at times during our day, yet continued 

 to add so much to the old-fashioned beauty of the place by skill, 

 personal care and indefatigable zeal. In a paper read some years 

 ago before the James River Garden Club, Mrs. Stokes told the 

 secret of her success with box. 



"I am going to tell you very briefly just what I did in growing 

 my boxwood," she said. "I took a square In my vegetable garden, 

 had it deeply plowed and laid off In rows three feet apart. I opened 

 the rows, mixed the soil with thoroughly well-rotted cow-pen 

 manure, leaving the surface flat. I then broke off pieces from 

 four to five Inches from a hedge box In my flower garden, being sure 

 each piece was pronged instead of being straight, as a root puts out 

 much quicker from a pronged slip. I set the slips four inches 

 apart in the rows, covering them so that only two Inches showed 

 above ground. These slips were put out In November, 19 13 — 

 four thousand of them. The first winter I cut just the tips from 

 each slip, laying pine brush between the rows to break the wind, 

 as nothing is so disastrous to slips rooting as being blown to and 

 fro by the wind. By the ist of April, 1914, I could not tell from 

 appearances whether rooting had taken place or the shps were dead, 

 but, on pulling up several, I found the fine rootlets putting out. 

 It was as though I had made a real discovery, for raising boxwood 

 was with me a pure experiment. The weeds growing between the 



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