Colonial Garden-making 13 



shrub, and tree for his home at Mount Vernon. 

 A beautiful tribute to his good taste and that of 

 his wife still exists in the Mount Vernon flower 

 garden, which in shape, Box edgings, and many 

 details is precisely as it was in their day. A view 

 of its well-ordered charms is shown opposite page 

 12. Whenever I walk in this garden I am deeply 

 grateful to the devoted women who keep it in such 

 perfection, as an object-lesson to us of the dignity, 

 comeliness, and beauty of a garden of the olden 

 times. 



There is little evidence that a general love and 

 cultivation of flowers was as common in humble 

 homes in the Southern colonies as in New England 

 and the Middle provinces. The teeming abun- 

 dance near the tropics rendered any special garden- 

 ing unnecessary for poor folk ; flowers grew and 

 blossomed lavishly everywhere without any coaxing 

 or care. On splendid estates there were splendid 

 gardens, which have nearly all suffered by the devas- 

 tations of war — in some towns they were thrice 

 thus scourged. So great was the beauty of these 

 Southern gardens and so vast the love they pro- 

 voked in their owners, that in more than one case 

 the life of the garden's master was merged in that 

 of the garden. The British soldiers during the 

 War of the Revolution wantonly destroyed the ex- 

 quisite flowers at " The Grove," just outside the 

 city of Charleston, and their owner, Mr. Gibbes, 

 dropped dead in grief at the sight of the waste. 



The great wealth of the Southern planters, their 

 constant and extravagant following of English cus- 



