Colonial Garden-making 3 



dwelling-places, were they but humble log cabins; 

 and pasture lands and commons were portioned 

 out ; and in a short time all had garden-plots, and 

 thus, with sheltering roof-trees, and warm firesides, 

 and with gardens, even in this lonely new world, 

 they had homes. The first entry in the Plymouth 

 Records is a significant one ; it is the assignment 

 of " Meresteads and Garden-Plotes," not mere- 

 steads alone, which were farm lands, but home 

 gardens : the outlines of these can still be seen in 

 Plymouth town. And soon all sbjourners who bore 

 news back to England of the New-Englishmen and 

 New-Englishwomen, told of ample store of gardens. 

 Ere a year had passed hopeful John Winthrop 

 wrote, " My Deare Wife, wee are here in a Para- 

 dise." In four years the chronicler Wood said in 

 his New England 's Prospect, " There is growing here 

 all manner of herbs for meat and medicine, and that 

 not only in planted gardens, but in the woods, with- 

 out the act and help of man." Governor Endicott 

 had by that time a very creditable garden. 



And by every humble dwelling the homesick 

 goodwife or dame, trying to create a semblance of 

 her fair English home so far away, planted in her 

 " garden plot " seeds and roots of homely English 

 flowers and herbs, that quickly grew and blossomed 

 and smiled on bleak New England's rocky shores 

 as sturdily and happily as they had bloomed in the 

 old gardens and by the ancient door sides in Eng- 

 land. What good cheer they must have brought! 

 how they must have been beloved! for these old 

 English garden flowers are such gracious things ; 



