Historic Gardens of Virginia 



As grown women many of these children have lingered long 

 at the summer-house, when the moon was full, and there was one 

 spot in the pleached walk, where a young woman of the first 

 generation reared at The Meadows told her granddaughter that 

 "love had first been whispered in her ears." And she was barely 

 sixteen, but read early Victorian literature: Scott, Miss Austen and 

 Mrs. Sherwood! 



The little garden at The Meadows is to the left of the house, 

 as the old garden is to the right, and was planned a few years 

 later. It was laid out in four square beds, with beds at either 

 end shaped to conform to the road which curved here to the stables. 

 The box-hedge to the east was a screen for the woodyard, very 

 thick and over eight feet in height. The other box-hedges, which 

 outlined the beds, were trimmed severely every spring; but, in 

 spite of this, they reached a height of thirty or thirty-three inches 

 and a breadth of twenty-five, encroaching far over the space left 

 for the walks. The sun-dial, with the name "F. Smith" and the 

 date, 1 82 1, cut sharply into the slate, was placed where the paths 

 intersected. 



It is this garden that later generations have filled with old- 

 fashioned pinks, daily roses, geraniums, heliotropes, and hardy 

 annuals. The bleeding heart and deep-red peonies were crowded 

 in with phlox and mignonette; but, on a sultry afternoon in August, 

 the smell of the box mingles with and dominates them all. 



Gay Robertson Blackford. 



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