BOSTON AND VICINITY. 



merchant and fellow-citizen, John L. Gardner, and 

 from him the latter probably inherited that love of 

 the fruits and flowers which for many years have distin- 

 guished his conservatories in Brookline, and graced the 

 exhibitions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. 

 Of this estate the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop remarks, 

 " No garden in Boston had finer fruit fifty years ago, 

 and it was cultivated and cared for with the highest 

 intelligence and skill. The best specimens of all the 

 old varieties of pears were to be found there, and Mr. 

 Gardner had a peculiar art of preserving them from 

 decay and bringing them out after the season for them 

 was over." How many of Wayte's trees or plants sur- 

 vived till these grounds carne into the possession of Mr. 

 Gardner we know not, but we have a diagram of the 

 garden, and the lists of its fruits in 1811, furnished us 

 by Mr. John L. Gardner, and as late as 1870 there was 

 an old pear tree in the yard that was in a thrifty con- 

 dition. 



Summer street was for a long time one of the most 

 delightful in the city, and well merited its name from 

 the overhanging branches of ornamental trees and the 

 beauty and fruits of the gardens attached to the man- 

 sions of its wealthy occupants. 



Here, in the early part of this century, were the 

 residences of Gov. James Sullivan, afterwards of Wil- 

 liam Gray, Joseph Barrell, Benjamin Bussey, Nathaniel 

 Goddard, Henry Hill, and David Ellis, father of Rev. 

 Dr. George E. Ellis, whose gardens were supplied with 

 the fruits and flowers of those days, and where peaches 

 and foreign grapes, and the old pears of which we have 

 spoken, ripened every year. 



Perrin May, a retired old merchant of Boston, was 

 a skilful cultivator of fruits. His garden was on Wash- 

 ington street, at the South End, where he produced 



