The Piedmont Section 



The wide stretches of velvety grass are shaded with fruit and 

 mimosa trees, and interspersed with flower-beds, so long and wide 

 that you wonder how enough flowers to fill them are ever planted. 

 Fortunately, however, very little planting is now necessary, for, in 

 between the crepe myrtles and lilacs, flowering shrubs and roses, 

 the transient flowers sow their own seeds with the assistance of 

 the wind, and come up every spring with no less grace because 

 planted "by an Unseen Hand." They represent, surely, those 

 "flowery beds of ease" spoken of in the old hymn. 



If the garden-viewer has spent her youth in the mountains, as 

 I have, and then had to live away from them, she will only vaguely 

 realize the garden at first, because she will have to sit down in the 

 summer-house and not merely look at the mountains, but let the 

 sight of them sink into her soul until she is satisfied. For the view 

 is the great feature which individualizes this garden, and makes it 

 the most beautiful of all others, and the most beloved by me. 



In the tropical garden, described in "The Garden of Allah," 

 the beholders looked out over the wall at a marvelous view of the 

 desert, and neither the flowers nor Larbi's flute could lure them 

 away from it. There is no wall to the Bloomfield garden, and the 

 hedge is low on this side; the adjoining country spreads out kindly 

 below in rolling hills and homesteads, the latter only recognizable 

 by position, for that miniature cluster of trees, with the big gable 

 peeping out, is the stately Spring Hill — where my grandmother's 

 grandfather lived when Bloomfield was built. 



Above, the Blue Ridge range, extending from one side of the 

 horizon to the other, with its huge ragged outline against the sky, 

 is a sight to leave one breathless. The dim-blue mountains lie in 

 the distance, the slate-colored and soft-greys nearer, while the few 

 in the foreground are a shaggy dark-green; white clouds floating 

 over them make shadows in strange shapes. A winding trail of 

 smoke — but, no ! it is all too dreamily delicious to describe ! Words 

 only M«-naturalize a beautiful impression. 



Unlike most old places, whose gardens were in their prime 



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