Box Edgings 
IOI 
Southern gardens still are in good condition ; those 
of the old Preston homestead at Columbia, South 
Carolina (shown on pages 15 and 18, and facing 
page 54), owe their preservation during the Civil 
War to the fact that the house was then the refuge 
of a sisterhood of nuns. The Ridgely estate, 
Hampton, in County Baltimore, Maryland, has a 
formal garden in which the perfection of the Box is 
a delight. The will of Captain Charles Ridgely, in 
1787, made an appropriation of money and land for 
this garden. The high terrace which overlooks the 
garden and the shallow ones which break the south- 
ern slope and mark the boundaries of each parterre 
are fine examples of landscape art, and are said to be 
the work of Major Chase Barney, a famous military 
engineer. By 1829 the garden was an object of 
beauty and much renown. A part only of the origi- 
nal parterre remains, but the more modern flower bor- 
ders, through the unusual perspective and contour 
of the garden, do not clash with the old Box-edged 
beds. These edgings were reset in 1870, and are 
always kept very closely cut. The circular domes 
of clipped box arise from stems at least a hundred 
years old. The design of the parterre is so satis- 
factory that I give three views of it in order to 
show it fully. (See pages 57, 60, and 95.) 
A Box-edged garden of much beauty and large 
extent existed for some years in the grounds con- 
nected with the County Jai] in Fitchburg, Massa- 
chusetts. It was laid out by the wife of the warden, 
aided by the manual labor of convicted prisoners, 
with her earnest hope that working among flowers 
