160 BROAD-LEAVED EVERGREENS 



flowers or berries. It resides in the foliage. Every one feels 

 it, but I have never seen any attempt to express or explain it, 

 or even a name for it. I venture to call it the "classic" effect, 

 because the first glimpse of a Greek temple in England framed 

 by luxuriant masses of rhododendron, box, and holly over- 

 whelms one with feelings that seem to well up from the depths 

 of the soul. They are deeper than the instinct that England is 

 "our old home." One might almost call them memories of a 

 previous existence. There is a sudden consciousness that we, too, 

 once lived in Italy that Greece also is our old home (see plate 64) . 



I know I spoil this by talking about it, because words are such 

 frightful liars, but I feel assured that the secret of all " garden magic" 

 is simply the power which old plants and old gardens have of stim- 

 ulating the imagination, or, as I like to say, these old memories * 

 Every one knows a few precious moments in life when a sense of the 

 brotherhood of man floods the consciousness. So every one who sees 

 in England this combination of classic architecture and : b road-leaved 

 evergreens is momentarily transported in spirit to Italy and Greece, 

 or, at least, feel some dim sense of kinship with the mighty past. 



Yet the plants I spoke of are not Italian symbols. Rhodo- 

 dendron, box, and holly may flourish in the Mediterranean region, 

 but they are surcharged with British feelings. The master-words 

 to the Italian are laurel, myrtle, and olive. And right here rises 

 our great hope. For if England can transport those who behold 

 her gardens, though she lacks the older symbols, so America may 

 perform this miracle, though she may use American symbols. 

 And these symbols, if I am any prophet, will be American rhodo- 

 dendrons, holly, and mountain laurel. 



* Oliver Wendell Holmes, in "Elsie Venner", says: "They walked over the crackling leaves in the garden, between the 

 lines of box, breathing its fragrance of eternity; for this is one of the odours which carry us out of time into the abysses 

 of the unbeginning past if we ever lived on another ball of stone than this, it must be that there was box growing on 

 it." See also Alice Morse Earle's chapter on box edgings in her "Old Time Gardens." 



