142 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 
to which he belonged holds the key. Some have be¬ 
lieved they could trace symbols of this fraternity in 
the design which the boxwood executes, in its two 
small reservations, allowing for the variation which 
its growth and lack of intelligent care over the 
hundred-year interval, might occasion; but others deny 
these claims. I do not know that anyone has under¬ 
taken to explain the broader lines of the place through 
this interpretation—nor indeed that it is possible so to 
explain them. The suggestion is interesting, however. 
The old flowers of the General’s time are of course 
long since gathered to their ancestors, for flower lives 
are not immortal by any means, any more than human. 
But trees and shrubs which Washington planted are 
still flourishing; oaks and buckeyes are there which 
have grown from acorns and “horse chestnuts” brought 
by him from the battlefields whereon he spent so many 
years as boy and man; ashes, poplars and indeed all 
the native trees are all about, for many of the finest 
were selected by him in his own forests and trans¬ 
planted to his mansion grounds. And Lafayette, who 
loved and revered Washington as only one great man 
can love another, greater, and was himself loved and 
revered by Washington in turn, brought to him from 
that other President’s garden at Monticello, a Ken¬ 
tucky coffee-tree and two hydrangea bushes, which he 
planted by the south wall of the flower garden. These 
