Colonial Garden-making 
2 3 
background, its splendid trees, its turf, its beds of 
bloom. Oh ! how beautiful a garden can be, when 
for two hundred years it has been loved and cher- 
ished, ever nurtured, ever guarded ; how plainly it 
shows such care ! 
Another Dutch garden is pictured opposite page 
32, the garden of the Bergen Homestead, at Bay 
Ridge, Long Island. Let me quote part of its 
description, written by Mrs. Tunis Bergen: — 
u Over the half-open Dutch door you look through the 
vines that climb about the stoop, as into a vista of the 
past. Beyond the garden is the great Quince orchard of 
hundreds of trees in pink and white glory. This orchard 
has a story which you must pause in the garden to hear. 
In the Library at Washington is preserved, in quaint man- 
uscript, c The Battle of Brooklyn,’ a farce written and said 
to have been performed during the British occupation. 
The scene is partly laid in c the orchard of one Bergen,’ 
where the British hid their horses after the battle of Long 
Island — this is the orchard ; but the blossoming Quince 
trees tell no tale of past carnage. At one side of the 
garden is a quaint little building with moss-grown roof and 
climbing hop-vine — the last slave kitchen left standing in 
New York — on the other side are rows of homely bee- 
hives. The old Locust tree overshadowing is an ancient 
landmark — it was standing in 1690. For some years it 
has worn a chain to bind its aged limbs together. All this 
beauty of tree and flower lived till 1890, when it was 
swept away by the growing city. Though now but a 
memory, it has the perfume of its past flowers about it.” 
The Locust was so often a u home tree™ and so 
fitting a one, that I have grown to associate ever 
