140 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 



the soberer beds of salad and savory. Poppies, sweet 

 peas, hollyhocks, sweet Williams, gillyflowers, stocks, 

 mingle in the oldest garden fashion with the cabbages, 

 lettuces, cucumbers, the sage, marjoram, lavender and 

 thyme. Here verily is a garden that might be three 

 centuries old instead of only a little above a third 

 that age, so true is it to the earliest modes, before 

 purely "pleasure gardens" of flowers alone, were made. 

 Opposite, in the finer flower garden, are the old- 

 fashioned flowers, too; but this is essentially modem 

 when compared to the sweet south garden. For back- 

 ing this are the great greenhouses where many rare 

 exotics found a home. Gifts such as these came often 

 to the idolized General, and of course continued to 

 come to the President in even greater numbers. And 

 he was never too busy to thank, personally, the giver. 

 "With much sensibility I received your polite letter," 

 he writes to one from Philadelphia, in 1795, "I thank 

 you, Sir, for the plants which are mentioned in the list 

 which accompanied it. — Presuming they arrived at 

 Norfolk with the letter, I have requested a gentleman 

 of my acquaintance at that place to forward them to 

 my garden at Mount Vernon on the Potomack River, 

 near Alexandria, Virginia, and I feel myself particu- 

 larly obliged by the offer to supply me with other plants 

 from the Botanical Gardens in Jamaica. When my 

 situation will allow me to pay more attention than I 



