252 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 
and arbors of grape. Boxwood hedges as elsewhere. 
Consult convenience in planning any sort of garden: 
it will insure fidelity to the spirit and letter of the old 
time as nothing else can—for above all else the early 
garden makers here were practical, instinctively so. 
Their homes had to be productive, whatever the num¬ 
ber of the slaves and however well they prospered, for 
that was part of their prosperity. Hence it follows 
that whatever they planned, they had always an eye to 
the care that must follow—and to the ease with which 
that care might be insured. 
As illustrating the difference between the truly old 
gardens and those of even a few years later, the plan 
of Hampton, a Maryland estate, is given. While 
the house is of the eighteenth century, the gardens here 
were laid out later than the latest date which we have 
elected to admit as “old-fashioned”—although only a 
few years subsequent to it, after all. But they present 
an elaboration of detail quite unknown to anything of 
the earlier Colonial or immediate post-Colonial days; 
and are to be considered, therefore, mainly as illustrat¬ 
ing what to avoid, in planning to reconstruct an old- 
fashioned garden to-day. Wearying in detail they 
are—yet they lack in a marked degree the convenience 
which distinguishes Mount Vernon; and elaborate 
though the queer convolutions of boxwood are at the 
