Colonial Garden-making 29 



appear in the hedges and edgings of Box ; one 

 symmetrical great Box tree is fifty feet in circumfer- 

 ence. Flowering shrubs, unkempt of shape, bloom 

 and beautify the waste borders each spring, as do the 

 oldest Chinese Magnolias in the United States. 

 Gingkos, Paulownias, and weeping trees, which need 

 no gardener's care, also flourish and are of unusual 

 size. There are some splendid evergreens, such as 

 Mt. Atlas Cedars ; and the oldest and finest Cedar 

 of Lebanon in the United States. It seemed sad, 

 as I looked at the evidences of so much past beauty 

 and present decay, that this historic house and gar- 

 den should not be preserved for New York, as the 

 house and garden of John Bartram, the Philadelphia 

 botanist, have been for his native city. 



While there are few direct records of American 

 gardens in the eighteenth century, we have many in- 

 structing side glimpses through old business letter- 

 books. We find Sir Harry Frankland ordering 

 Daffodils and Tulips for the garden he made for 

 Agnes Surriage ; and it is said that the first Lilacs 

 ever seety^r? Hopkinton were planted by him for 

 her. The gay young nobleman and the lovely 

 woman are in the dust, and of all the beautiful 

 things belonging to them there remain a splendid 

 Portuguese fan, which stands as a memorial of that 

 tragic crisis in their life the great Lisbon earth- 

 quake ; and the Lilacs, which still mark the site of 

 her house and blossom each spring as a memorial of 

 the shadowed romance of her life in New England. 



Let me give two pages from old letters to illus- 

 trate what I mean by side glimpses at the contents 



