Colonial Garden-making 1 1 



homely seeds and plants for the gardens of the 

 colonists carried back rare American seeds and plants 

 for English physic gardens. 



In Pennsylvania, from the first years of the set- 

 tlement, William Penn encouraged his Quaker 

 followers to plant English flowers and fruit in 

 abundance, and to try the fruits of the new world. 

 Father Pastorius, in his Germantown settlement, 

 assigned to each family a garden-plot of three acres, 

 as befitted a man who left behind him at his death 

 a manuscript poem of many thousand words on the 

 pleasures of gardening, the description of flowers, 

 and keeping of bees. George Fox, the founder of 

 the Friends, or Quakers, died in 1690. He had 

 travelled in the colonies ; and in his will he left 

 sixteen acres of land to the Quaker meeting in 

 the city of Philadelphia. Of these sixteen acres, 

 ten were for " a close to put Friends' horses in 

 when they came afar to the Meeting, that they 

 may not be Lost in the Woods," while the other 

 six were for a site for a meeting-house and school- 

 house, and "for a Playground for the Children 

 of the town to Play on, and for a Garden to plant 

 with Physical Plants, for Lads and Lasses to know 

 Simples, and to learn to make Oils and Oint- 

 ments." Few as are these words, they convey a 

 positive picture of Fox's intent, and a pleasing 

 picture it is. He had seen what interest had been 

 awakened and what instruction conveyed through 

 the " Physick-Garden " at Chelsea, England ; and 

 he promised to himself similar interest and informa- 

 tion from the study of plants and flowers by the 



