AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
their isnaypeern atecedetts: no reason at tall fern not welts many of denn are already as Seale 
In speaking of the New World’s early Pilgrim settlers Hawthorne, in ‘“Our Old Home,” had 
this to say apropos of the beginning of gardening in America: ‘* There is not a softer trait to be 
found in these stern men than that they should have been sensible of their flower roots clinging 
among the fibres of their rugged hearts, and have felt the necessity of bringing them over sea and 
making them hereditary in the new land.’’ That was the day of the old-fashioned garden, the old-fashioned gar- 
den whose day extended to Hawthorne's own time. We are inclined to consider the introduction of the formal 
garden into the American landscape as somewhat ‘‘new-fangled’’ because we have been in the habit of liking our 
flower beds and borders a jumble of lovely growing things, and the nice orderly restraint with its very paucity 
of bloom in what we call the Italian gardens; and the quaint but stiffly balance-clipped evergreens we have 
adopted from English gardens have, perhaps, not come to appeal to us as thoroughly in the past as it now does. 
A few years ago we were paying little or no attention to gardens, but just loving them when we came across 
a fine one; now all that is different. Every one of us wants a garden. We have come to be ‘‘discovering”’ 
ing much as Emerson discovered it, when he wrote of what he called his ‘‘new plaything’ —forty acres of woodland 
bordering Walden Pond. ‘‘I go thither every afternoon and cut with my hatchet an Indian path thro’ the thicket, 
all along the bold shore and open the finest pictures.” But it was Emerson who laughingly declared, ‘“‘A brave 
scholar should shun it like gambling, and take refuge in cities and hotels from these pernicious enchantment: € 
never did; nosensible man ever will! There isadelightincomparable in planning a garden, ploughing it and caring 
for it. A delight that has takena firm hold on Americans, a delight which has molded the fair gardens we see here. 
