OUR GRANDMOTHER’S GARDENS 
tall dahlias and the fire of the dying leaves. It was 
early in 1800 that Robert Witherspoon brought his 
bride home to the simple white house and great garden, 
telling her she was lovelier than any flower it grew. 
And ever since the garden has been cherished and en¬ 
joyed. 
But all the southern grandmothers did not live on 
estates. There were town dwellers there, as in the 
North. Perhaps Charleston has retained the gardens 
they made in their original perfection more surely than 
any other of the old cities, those high-walled gardens 
of ante-bellum days, whose builders were full of the 
traditions of seventeenth-century England and France, 
when gardens grew divine. 
There is, for instance, the Miles Brewerton House, 
with its walled garden. The house is a fine type of 
the early Georgian with brick-arched loggias overlook¬ 
ing the space of flowers, that stretches north and south. 
Down the center goes a wide pathway, overarched by 
an arbor completely covered with the twining branches 
of one gigantic climbing rose. The flower beds extend 
on either side, brick-edged and bordered with sweet 
violets and other small and fragrant plants. Close to 
the house the oleanders and acacias bloom and crowd, 
and vines are all about, clambering over porches and 
walls and trees. So secluded it is that the wild song¬ 
birds come here to nest, careless of the city close 
around. 
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