i6 
Old Time Gardens 
for Women. The hedges have been much reduced 
within a few years ; but the garden still bears a 
surprising resemblance to the Garden of the Gen- 
eralife, Granada. The Spanish garden has fewer 
flowers and more fountains, yet I think it must 
have been the model for the Preston Garden. 
The climax of magnificence in Southern gardens 
has been for years, at Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, 
the ancestral home of the Draytons since 1671. 
It is impossible to describe the affluence of color 
in this garden in springtime ; masses of unbroken 
bloom on giant Magnolias; vast Camellia Japonicas, 
looking, leaf and flower, thoroughly artificial, as 
if made of solid wax ; splendid Crape Myrtles, 
those strange flower-trees; mammoth Rhododen- 
drons; Azaleas of every Azalea color, — all sur- 
rounded by walls of the golden Banksia Roses, and 
hedges covered with Jasmine and Honeysuckle. 
The Azaleas are the special glory of the garden ; 
the bushes are fifteen to twenty feet in height, and 
fifty or sixty feet in circumference, with rich blos- 
soms running over and crowding down on the 
ground as if color had been poured over the bushes ; 
they extend in vistas of vivid hues as far as the eye 
can reach. All this gay and brilliant color is over- 
hung by a startling contrast, the most sombre and 
gloomy thing in nature, great Live-oaks heavily 
draped with gray Moss ; the avenue of largest Oaks 
was planted two centuries ago. 
I give no picture of this Drayton Garden, for a 
photograph of these many acres of solid bloom is a 
meaningless thing. Even an oil painting of it is 
