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The Garden Magazine, December, 1919 



sincere, and expressive of sound principles in things as ap- 

 parently unrelated to gardening or the garden as labor prob- 

 lems, economics, and the social and domestic habits of the 

 household. Then as a second consideration we must re- 

 member that necessity ruled when the early gardens were 

 made — not more than it always does in the last analysis 

 but with a much more obvious sovereignty. No velvet 

 glove disguised its iron grip, no soft delusions ever hid the 

 grim visage of it, no one doubted for an instant that he would 

 promptly starve if he failed to provide, not the money where- 

 with to buy food but the food itself. Likewise every house- 

 hold of necessity provided its own medicines — or went with- 

 out; and its own wines and cordials, and its own preservatives 

 — which, by the way, is what spices and seasonings prob- 

 ably were, away back in the remote past, instead of mere ap- 

 petizers or adjuncts calculated to please and stimulate the 

 sense of taste. So even these that are purely pleasure- 

 giving elements to-day were in the category of necessities 

 when ice boxes and cold storage were undreamed of. This 

 was the time when the only gardens known — the culinary 

 and the physick gardens — were plotted and planted with 

 the greatest care and exactness; and were as far removed 

 therefore from the happy casualness of present day popular 

 conception of the "old-fashioned garden" as anything could 

 possibly be. The old-fashioned garden as it is commonly 

 visualized indeed, is a very modern thing! — for it does not 

 adhere nor pretend to adhere to the stern lines with which 

 economic necessity defined its regular beds — lines figurative 

 and actual which were in full force up to Revolutionary days 

 or even later. On the contrary this element is totally lost 

 sight of, more often than not; and nondescript assemblages 

 of vegetation wherein there is nothing faintly resembling 

 the old garden, save a few doubtful plants, are foisted upon 

 the world as " old-fashioned gardens " — purely on the strength 

 of a lack of orderliness in their planting that is, above all else, 

 the absolute antithesis of the old fashion. 



For it is absolutely certain that without exception old- 

 time gardens did have one common characteristic, whatever 

 their size or their plants. This was the neatness and exact- 

 ness that characterized the times — that sort of pompous 

 elegance which prevailed in cavalier, courtier, and Puritan 

 alike, during the age of knee breeches and powdered hair. 

 It was a formal age and punctilious; and garden design re- 

 flected this, contrary though it is to our ideas to think of the 

 old-fashioned garden as formal. Why we have developed 

 the misconception regarding it that prevails none can say — 

 nor how; presumably it is through careless observation of the 

 untidy charm overlaying some old places, which we have 

 mistaken for their original form and scheme; whereas it has 

 actually destroyed such form and scheme as they were based 

 upon, and left no trace of them as they actually were. As a 

 matter of fact the gardens of " Mt. Vemon-on-the-Powto- 

 mack," to give it General Washington's own name for the 

 place, repeal to us perfectly what the old gardens really were; 

 and there is perhaps nothing in America more formal in 

 general layout as well as in detail, than this estate ! The charm 

 of age moreover which permeates every part of it has not di- 

 minished this formality; but truth to tell, it is of such a 

 peculiar character and the general scale is so magnificent that 

 it does not oppress in the least, as so many modern formal 

 designs do. 



OBVIOUSLY gardens of this type must have been well 

 cared for; and this leads us inevitably to the inference 

 that they were never greater than their creator knew himself 

 abundantly able to maintain. In other words, their size 

 and character were limited, not necessarily by cost or money 

 consideration, but by exactly the thing that is limiting us in 

 so many ways to-day — labor consideration. It is fairly possi- 

 ble indeed to trace along the lines of garden development 

 the labor conditions of each section, from the great estates 

 of the south like Mt. Vernon and Monticello, developed un- 

 der the labor abundance of slavery, to the restricted little 

 dooryards of New England, kept spruce and tidy by the 

 mistress herself as often as not, between the exactions of a 

 vast number of other household duties. 



But great or small all of these gardens developed from the 

 purely utilitarian kitchen and herb garden, as the advance 

 in civilization and its attendant comforts and conveniences 

 relieved the intensity of the economic pressure upon the gar- 

 dener and the garden space. And this is the kind of garden 

 development that embodies a set of principles, since it is 

 these very principles that set it in operation. Hence it is 

 precisely this and this alone that will recreate for us the 

 atmosphere and the charm and all the rest that we find in 

 old gardens. To achieve it we may not even ask ourselves 

 what kind of garden it will be that shall express what we are, 

 as definitely as these old gardens express their creators; but 

 rather we must go ahead honestly — as they did — and let our 

 gardens become the expression of ourselves by making them 

 in conformity with the spirit of our time. 



Make no mistake. If we create gardens to-day under 

 the guidance of conditions as we find them — labor, social, 

 economic, and esthetic or artistic conditions — we cannot fail 

 to produce just the kind of "old-fashioned" garderl that we 

 so extravagantly admire and seek to reproduce by going the 

 long — and wrong! — way around. We may draw on the old 

 if we please, as largely as we please — precisely as they drew 

 on the gardens of an earlier time, embodying much in design 

 that was as old as the gardens of ancient Rome — but we 

 must use it as they did; that is, as wholly secondary to our 

 own timely needs and purposes. This insures that there 

 shall be no slavish imitating. 



THE old-fashioned garden, in other words, is not a thing 

 to be made to order after a pattern and set down upon 

 the ground — certain to be right providing it is limited to the 

 plants of a century ago, and boasts all of the material elements 

 which we know old gardens held. It has so long been the 

 fashion to apotheosize it under this misconception of it how- 

 ever that it will make serious demands upon our patience as 

 well as upon our imaginations to correct the error. But it 

 must be corrected! And we must strip from the genuine 

 old garden its apocryphal attributes and see it as it actually 

 existed — its stiffness the true expression of the extent of 

 civilization, and the life and customs and social outlook of 

 its times — if it is to be the real inspiration to us that it is 

 worthy of being. Then we shall understand it instead of 

 merely dream about it; and be able without trying to copy it, 

 to reproduce its atmosphere by developing our gardens to 

 express the life and customs and social outlook of our 

 time. Which is, after all, the one true reproduction of the 

 garden of the old fashion that can be made! 



