138 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 



tions and so skilful the planting, that there is none of 

 the oppressiveness against which those who were rail- 

 ing at formalism and stripping their gardens of it, 

 complained. General Washington could no more 

 have made a garden that was informal, however, than 

 he could have descended to act the clown in cap and 

 bells. His matchless poise and grave and beautiful 

 majesty could only reflect in a creation of similar bal- 

 ance and stateliness. And so I think by studying 

 Mount Vernon, both in its plan and in its endless beau- 

 tiful perspectives and vistas, we may come nearer to 

 an understanding of that quality in him which made 

 all men ever stand a little in awe of him, than in any 

 other way. Here is that bigness of his mold, physical, 

 mental and spiritual, that set him apart from all his 

 kind, and yet made him to be so greatly loved. 



In his own plan for the place he calls both gardens, 

 "kitchen gardens" — ^but as everyone very well knows, 

 the enclosed garden on the nortb side of the lawn is 

 the flower and famous garden of boxwood. The 

 kitchen garden lies opposite on the south, back of its 

 similar brick wall, topped with white palings. Sit- 

 uated here, on the gentle slope where the land begins 

 to fall away towards the river, this garden is terraced 

 into two levels its entire length. The gate in the wall 

 which leads in from the lawn is met by a walk that 

 crosses the upper terrace to steps which descend to the 



