16 Old Time Gardens 



for Women. The hedges have been much reduced 

 within a few years ; but the garden still bears a 

 surprising resemblance to the Garden of the Gen- 

 eralife, Granada. The Spanish garden has fewer 

 flowers and more fountains, yet I think it must 

 have been the model for the Preston Garden. 

 The climax of magnificence in Southern gardens 

 has been for years, at Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, 

 the ancestral home of the Dray tons since 1671. 

 It is impossible to describe the affluence of color 

 in this garden in springtime ; masses of unbroken 

 bloom on giant Magnolias; vast Camellia Japonicas, 

 looking, leaf and flower, thoroughly artificial, as 

 if made of solid wax ; splendid Crape Myrtles, 

 those strange flower-trees; mammoth Rhododen- 

 drons; Azaleas of every Azalea color, — all sur- 

 rounded by walls of the golden Banksia Roses, and 

 hedges covered with Jasmine and Honeysuckle. 

 The Azaleas are the special glory of the garden ; 

 the bushes are fifteen to twenty feet in height, and 

 fifty or sixty feet in circumference, with rich blos- 

 soms running over and* crowding down on the 

 ground as if color had been poured over the bushes ; 

 they extend in vistas of vivid hues as far as the eye 

 can reach. All this gay and brilliant color is over- 

 hung by a startling contrast, the most sombre and 

 gloomy thing in nature, great Live-oaks heavily 

 draped with gray Moss ; the avenue of largest Oaks 

 was planted two centuries ago. 



I give no picture of this Drayton Garden, for a 

 photograph of these many acres of solid bloom is a 

 meaningless thing. Even an oil painting of it is 



