The Old-Fashioned Garden 53 



They seem to have been considered a luxury for a few aristocrats 

 only. The intelligence, wealth, and luxurious living ascribed to 

 the Southern Colonies in the early days have been greatly exagger- 

 ated by our imaginative novelists. 



One may never rightly judge a man, perhaps, until he has 

 seen his home. How one's admiration for George Washington 

 is increased by a visit to Mount Vernon! Fresh respect for the 

 dignity and simple grandeur of his life comes with an exploration 

 of the place by the most casual observer. A stroll through the 

 lovely garden and cool bosquets, still affectionately, reverently 

 tended, brings one nearer to the man and the gentle mistress of 

 his home, than any amount of reading could ever do, nearer, 

 somehow than the house itself, which they did not build; for the 

 very trees that shaded them, the hedges too, that they set out, the 

 boxwood borders of the paths they walked through, among the 

 parterres of intricate patterns which they filled with their favourite 

 flowers (whose lineal descendants flourish there to-day), are still 

 alive the living expressions of George and Martha Washington's 

 personalities. 



Although there were many other Colonial gardens in Virginia, 

 Maryland, and the Carolinas, whose charms have not been wholly 

 obliterated by time nor the ravages of war, let us take the well- 

 preserved, familiar Mount Vernon garden, as fairly representative 

 of the Colonist's pleasaunce, to note wherein the American type 

 differs from the formal garden in vogue in Europe during the 

 eighteenth century. On this side of the Atlantic the terrace 

 practically disappeared with the retaining walls, steps, balus- 

 trades and other expensive architectural features which hereto- 

 fore had been thought necessary accompaniments of the Italian 

 style. American gardens were, therefore, laid out on flat spaces, 



