The Piedmont Section 



than house or garden, is the living glory of Oatlands. The rest of 

 the garden — the staircase, box-hedges and brick pilasters to one 

 side, with a great ivy-clad wall to the other, a larch tree crowning 

 the whole; and, looking down and southward, an old pink Venetian 

 well head, protecting a deep, cool well. Then the terraces, bearing 

 some vases, a sundial, many low box-hedges, and innumerable 

 flowers — they finish the tale. But the brick walls and, in one place, 

 a slender white fence, shut it all in and give it that sense of 

 separateness, of a certain aloofness almost, befitting the guardian 

 of treasures, the storehouse of old secrets. 



The Oatlands garden should be visited In the springtime first, 

 I believe, so as to see the peonies and iris, after the tulips have 

 faded. Later, the hot summer sun robs it of some of its charm; 

 but the late afternoon hours, before or after twilight, call you 

 imperatively to wander over the grass walks when the heliotrope 

 and mignonette smell strongest, and the mocking-birds and catbirds 

 speak to each other incessantly. Or, again, there are the lovely 

 autumn days, days of cosmos and chrysanthemum, and in Novem- 

 ber or December, when the barberry berries give the only bit of 

 colour to the beds, although the red-birds flash their scarlet notes 

 through the upper foliage, it is always quiet and sheltered under 

 the lea of the walls, even when the most biting northwest wind is. 

 blowing. But, take it all in all, the best of the year is generally 

 June, because the roses are in bloom then on every wall, and the 

 colours of the other flowers — larkspurs, pinks, lilies, with humming- 

 birds among them — vie with each other against backgrounds of 

 stone or brick, ivy or box. 



There are winter scenes, too, worth remembering; mornings 

 after a sleet storm, with the sun reflected on every leaf and twig, 

 every blade of grass, and the stillness so intense that it seems to 

 speak, and to bid one pause. One feels, then, as if the world must 

 be pausing, too, for a moment in its mad rush. At all events, some 

 fragments of an indefinable peace seem to have been caught within 

 its walls, by this old garden. Edith EusTis. 



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