Garden Furnishings 
3 8 5 
platforms built in the branches of large trees. Park- 
inson called one that would hold fifty men, “ the 
goodliest spectacle that ever his eyes beheld/’ A 
distinction was made between arbors and bowers. 
The arbor might be round or square, and was domed 
over the top ; while the long arched way was a 
bower. In our Southern states that special use of 
the word bower is still universal, especially in the 
term Rose bowers. A quaint and universal furnish- 
ing of old Southern gardens were the trellises known 
as garden lyres. Two are shown in this chapter, 
from Waterford, Virginia; one bearing little foliage 
and another embowered in vines, in order to show 
what a really good vine support they were. Garden 
lyres and Rose bowers are rotting on the ground 
in old Virginia gardens, and I fear they will never 
be replaced. 
The word pergola was seldom heard here a cen- 
tury ago, save as used by the few who had travelled 
in Italy ; but pergolas were to be found in many 
an old American garden. An ancient oval pergola 
still stands at Arlington, that beautiful spot which 
was once the home of the Virginia Lees, and is now 
the home of the honored dead of our Civil War. 
This old pergola has remained unharmed through 
fierce conflict, and is wreathed each spring with the 
verdure of vines of many kinds. It is twenty feet 
wide between the pillars, and forms an oval one 
hundred feet long and seventy wide, and when in 
full greenery is a lovely thing. It was called — 
indeed it is still termed in the South — a “ green 
gallery/' a word and thing of mediaeval days. 
