CHAPTER XIX 



GARDEN BOUNDARIES 



' A garden fair . . . with Wandis long and small 

 Railed about, and so with trees set 

 Was all the place ; and Hawthorne hedges knet, 

 That lyf was none walking there forbye 

 That might within scarce any wight espy." 



— Kings Zhthair, King James I of Scotland. 



NE who reads what I have written 

 in these pages of a garden enclosed, 

 will scarcely doubt that to me 

 every garden must have bounda- 

 ries, definite and high. Three 

 old farm boundaries were of neces- 

 sity garden boundaries in early 

 days — our stone walls, rail fences, 

 and hedge-rows. The first two seem typically Ameri- 

 can ; the third is an English hedge fashion. Through- 

 out New England the great boulders were blasted to 

 clear the rocky fields ; and these, with the smaller 

 loose stones, were gathered into vast stone walls. 

 We still see these walls around fields and as the 

 boundaries of kitchen gardens and farm flower gar- 

 dens, and delightful walls they are, resourceful of 

 beauty to the inventive gardener. I know one lovely 

 garden in old Narragansett, on a farm which is now 

 the country-seat of folk of great wealth, where the 



399 



