Garden Furnishings 385 



platforms built in the branches of large trees. Park- 

 inson called one that would hold fifty men, " the 

 goodliest spectacle that ever his eyes beheld.'* A 

 distinction was made between arbors and bowers. 

 The arbor might be round or square, and was domed 

 over the top ; while the long arched way was a 

 bower. In our Southern states that special use of 

 the word bower is still universal, especially in the 

 term Rose bowers. A quaint and universal furnish- 

 ing of old Southern gardens were the trellises known 

 as garden lyres. Two are shown in this chapter, 

 from Waterford, Virginia ; one bearing little foliage 

 and another embowered in vines, in order to show 

 what a really good vine support they were. Garden 

 lyres and Rose bowers are rotting on the ground 

 in old Virginia gardens, and I fear they will never 

 be replaced. 



The word pergola was seldom heard here a cen- 

 tury ago, save as used by the few who had travelled 

 in Italy ; but pergolas were to be found in many 

 an old American garden. An ancient oval pergola 

 still stands at Arlington, that beautiful spot which 

 was once the home of the Virginia Lees, and is now 

 the home of the honored dead of our Civil War. 

 This old pergola has remained unharmed through 

 fierce conflict, and is wreathed each spring with the 

 verdure of vines of many kinds. It is twenty feet 

 wide between the pillars, and forms an oval one 

 hundred feet long and seventy wide, and when in 

 full greenery is a lovely thing. It was called 

 indeed it is still termed in the South a "green 

 gallery," a word and thing of mediaeval days. 



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