Box Edgings 101 



Southern gardens still are in good condition ; those 

 of the old Preston homestead at Columbia, South 

 Carolina (shown on pages 15 and 18, and facing 

 page 54), owe their preservation during the Civil 

 War to the fact that the house was then the refuge 

 of a sisterhood of nuns. The Ridgely estate, 

 Hampton, in County Baltimore, Maryland, has a 

 formal garden in which the perfection of the Box is 

 a delight. The will of Captain Charles Ridgely, in 

 1787, made an appropriation of money and land for 

 this garden. The high terrace which overlooks the 

 garden and the shallow ones which break the south- 

 ern slope and mark the boundaries of each parterre 

 are fine examples of landscape art, and are said to be 

 the work of Major Chase Barney, a famous military 

 engineer. By 1829 the garden was an object of 

 beauty and much renown. A part only of the origi- 

 nal parterre remains, but the more modern flower bor- 

 ders, through the unusual perspective and contour 

 of the garden, do not clash with the old Box-edged 

 beds. These edgings were reset in 1870, and are 

 always kept very closely cut. The circular domes 

 of clipped box arise from stems at least a hundred 

 years old. The design of the parterre is so satis- 

 factory that I give three views of it in order to 

 show it fully. (See pages 57, 60, and 95.) 



A Box-edged garden of much beauty and large 

 extent existed for some years in the grounds con- 

 nected with the County JaiJ in Fitchburg, Massa- 

 chusetts. It was laid out by the wife of the warden, 

 aided by the manual labor of convicted prisoners, 

 with her earnest hope that working among flowers 



