14 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



August, 1913 



"I love to peep around the corner of the manor 

 house and see its mate — a simple, sturdy, well pro- 

 portioned house built about 1682. The garden is 

 simply a direct walk between the two houses, bor- 

 dered on both sides by ancient shrubs and old 

 fashioned flowers" 



the York-and-Lancaster rose, the most 

 celebrated variety that has survived from 

 pre-revolutionary days. 



Speaking of roses reminds me of the one 

 rose garden that really satisfies my soul 

 ■ — the Ward garden at Roslyn, Long 

 Island. I know thirty rose gardens on 

 which fortunes have been spent, but to 

 me they are all nightmares. My recol- 

 lection of them is a chamber of horrors, 

 containing three main types among the 

 criminals. First, are those rose gardens 

 which are insufferably stiff, by reason of 

 their insistent geometry. Some of these 

 are terraced to distraction, and others are 

 flat as a pancake, putting all their goods 

 in the show window, and leaving nothing 

 to the imagination. The second type of 

 murderous rose garden is a graveyard of cold 

 inhospitable marble — backless benches 

 on which no one can ever sit without 

 taking cold, waterless well curbs, and a 

 general air of pretense and fake. My eyes 

 ache at the memory of the August sun 

 flashing upon these blinding reminders of 

 the antique shops. The third type of 

 rose garden is that masterpiece of gaudiness, 

 the "rosery," which is a place apart that 

 is locked up forty-eight weeks of the year 

 in order to make the biggest possible show 

 during the remaining four. It contains 

 nothing but roses, and exhibits them in 

 such a way as to make a flower of senti- 

 ment appear only as a flower for display. 

 The detestable heresy that "roses do not 

 belong in a garden, but must be grown in a 

 place apart" originated in the same period 

 which gave an eager world the hoop skirt, 

 the Mansard roof, the false front, the cast- 

 iron stag, jig saw ornamentation, corkscrew 



curls, b'iled dinners, infant damnation, 

 and bedding plants. 



On the face of it the proposition is 

 perfectly clear. A garden without roses 

 is like a story without a point or life with- 

 out sentiment. As a queen looks best when 

 surrounded by her courtiers, so every 

 flower needs a foil. In the Ward garden 

 the queen of flowers is surrounded by 

 many old-time favorites — larkspurs, can- 

 terbury bells, pinks, lemon lilies, irises, 

 and others of delightful memory. There 

 are eight hundred varieties of roses in the 

 Ward garden — a collection big enough 

 to ruin all sentiment and repose in any 

 ordinary garden, for a collector's testing 

 ground is usually a graveyard in which 

 the stakes and labels loom more important 

 than the plants. But the Wards have a 

 system by which all labels can be abolished 

 in a few minutes and you may float on 

 floods of sentiment, if you wish to. And, 

 then, what a setting for a rose garden! 

 You look down toward salt water through 

 shimmering sprays of locust foliage, and it 

 is all so secluded from worldly things! 



To the lover of old plants the spot of 

 supreme interest on Long Island is Dosoris 

 — a forty-acre tree garden founded by 

 Charles A. Dana. A garden, to thought- 

 less young folks is a spot of bright color — 

 a mass of fleeting flowers. Alas, that such 

 a garden goes to ruin the first summer that 

 we go to Europe. As we grow older taste 

 refines and love of permanence becomes 

 dominant. Just in the worst period of 

 American taste, right after the Civil War, 

 Dana went to England and got from Kew 

 the idea of a permanent garden — a col- 

 lection of evergreens that would outlive 









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"What a setting for a rose garden ! You look down 

 toward salt water thro' glimmering sprays of locust 

 foliage and it is all so secluded from worldly 



things" 



The Breese garden at Southampton, f"" 'The won- 

 der of it is that so much charm can ,be had in 



any flat place The views are aU within a 



rectangle, enclosed on three sides by k pergola" 



several generations and grow in grace 

 every year. He sought a city of refuge 

 for his garden. An island — a whole 

 island — is admirable for the purpose. 

 Mark Twain told why. One can banish the 

 telephone, and if a messenger approaches 

 there is time to slay him, since he must 

 come by boat. A "garden," they say, 

 means "an enclosed place." Well, an 

 island is an enclosed place, for it is sur- 

 rounded by water. A forty-acre island 

 is big enough for a house and all the nec- 

 essaries, including kitchen garden, green- 

 house, flower gardens, a vista of the Sound, 

 a lawn view, and a collection of evergreens. 

 There are military windbreaks to shelter 

 this blessed haven — battle scarred pines 

 from Austria and Scotland, and stately 

 white spruces from our northern woods. 

 In the sunny lee of their strength thrive 

 some of the most precious features of 

 southern climes — cedar of Lebanon and 

 blue Atlantic cedar, the Big Tree of Cali- 

 fornia, pendulous Himalayan spruce, 

 Mexican pine, and nature's finest expres- 

 sion of her arborvitae thought — Thuyopsis 

 dolobrata. The gardening literature of 

 America is saturated with references to 

 Dosoris and pictures of its beauties. It 

 should be preserved forever as a monu- 

 ment in the history of American horti- 

 culture and landscape gardening. 



There is only one other garden on Long 

 Island that I permit to come again and 

 again to my mind. The Breese garden at 

 Southampton is always a welcome guest 

 in my memory. The wonder of it is that 

 so much charm can be had in any flat place. 

 There are no views toward hills, woods or 

 water. The views are all within a rect- 

 angle, enclosed on three sides by a pergola. 

 The vines change with every post or two. 



