142 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 



to which he belonged holds the key. Some have be- 

 lieved they could trace symbols of this fraternity in 

 the design which the boxwood executes, in its two 

 small reservations, allowing for the variation which 

 its growth and lack of intelligent care over the 

 hundred-year interval, might occasion; but others deny 

 these claims. I do not know that anyone has under- 

 taken to explain the broader lines of the place through 

 this interpretation — ^nor indeed that it is possible so to 

 explain them. The suggestion is interesting, however. 

 The old flowers of the General's time are of course 

 long since gathered to their ancestors, for flower lives 

 are not immortal by any means, any more than human. 

 But trees and shrubs which Washington planted are 

 still flourishing; oaks and buckeyes are there which 

 have grown from acorns and "horse chestnuts" brought 

 by him from the battlefields whereon he spent so many 

 years as boy and man; ashes, poplars and indeed all 

 the native trees are all about, for many of the finest 

 were selected by him in his own forests and trans- 

 planted to his mansion grounds. And Lafayette, who 

 loved and revered Washington as only one great man 

 can love another, greater, and was himself loved and 

 revered by Washington in turn, brought to him from 

 that other President's garden at Monticello, a Ken- 

 tucky coffee-tree and two hydrangea bushes, which he 

 planted by the south wall of the flower garden. These 



