Ibampton 
On the afternoon of Tuesday, May 1 1th, The Garden Club of 
America, to the number of some two hundred, was received by Mr. and 
Mrs. Ridgely at Hampton, which opened for us its gates with the 
generous hospitality which has characterized the one hundred and thirty 
odd years of its existence. The drive, shaded by noble trees, led us to 
the house, stately and beautiful to behold, with its columned entrance, its 
high cupola-crowned roof and its two gabled wings. 
The inner man and woman being amply comforted in the dining- 
room, we proceeded through the great hall to the back of the house, 
where before us lay the terraced gardens, designed according to tradi- 
tion in 1 783, when the house was built. 
The first terrace, to which one descends from the house, is flanked 
to right and left by magnificent trees: a paulownia, a catalpa, walnuts 
and pecans undoubtedly dating back to Hampton's beginning, and a 
copper beech, a larch and a cedar of Lebanon, bearing witness to the 
continuation of a love of trees in the Ridgelys of about 1850. 
From the center of this first terrace a great turfed ramp leads down 
through four succeeding terraces to where a wall of evergreens and 
flowering shrubs divides the gardens from the rest of the estate. At the 
level of each terrace the ramp is framed by a pair of Norway spruces 
and a pair of weeping sophoras, and to right and left the gardens are 
bounded all the way down by quite monumental hedges of arbor vitae. 
Fine old Virginia cedars on each terrace stand guard over the formal 
box parterre, and the roses, peonies, bulbs and perennials with which 
they are made gay. 
From gazing on this lovely prospect, we returned to hear Mrs. 
Bruce's interesting paper, giving the history of Hampton and its creators, 
from the first Ridgely of Hampton, the friend of Lafayette, to our kind 
host and hostess, to whom we would express our thanks for the privilege 
of this visit to so fine an example of the "noble art of garden making." 
Eleanor C. Marquand, 
Garden Club of Princeton. 
Baltimore flower flnarfcet 
A fair day in May in Mount Vernon Place is in itself a thing to 
dream of; but fancy that most foreign spot of all our cities, foreign for 
its rare architectural beauty and its atmosphere of age — fancy it under 
a summer sun, the shaft to our great Washington rising from it in fine 
serenity, with fresh foliage of tree and shrub smiling adown the lovely 
terraces of the Place, fountains sparkling among the green and the 
Annual Flower Market of the Civic League in progress — the setting 
and the scene are worthy of each other. 
