Camden Gardens 
Among the flowering evergreens found in 
most Southern gardens is the gardenia, popu¬ 
larly known as the Cape jasmine, and the 
Camellia Japonica. The gardenia grows in 
great round or conical bushes and is always 
highly ornamental either singly or as a hedge. 
When used as a hedge the effect produced 
is quite unique, as each bush retains in jux¬ 
taposition to the other its conical form. To 
obtain the best effect in hedge work the 
bushes, which grow rapidly, should be placed 
about five feet apart. If the soil is light, 
alluvial and sandy, and the climate mild, the 
young plants will thrive prodigiously. In 
some sections of the South the cultivation 
of the gardenia is so simple that every 
negro hut has a great cone-shaped bush as a 
single sentinel at the gate, full grown, lux¬ 
uriant, spreading its polished leaves in the 
sunlight, blooming riotously in excess of 
fecundity, filling the air with cloying sweet¬ 
ness, the mere presence of such munificence, 
beauty and fragrance satirizing the gaunt, 
bare indigence of man. In the alluvial low 
country every other farmhouse facing the 
road has hedges of gardenia bordering either 
side of the front walk of white sand, their 
straight lines invariably giving a touch of 
pleasing finality to what would otherwise be 
a very indefinite, commonplace effect. 
The Camellia Japonica is also cone-shaped, 
but is of taller growth than the gardenia. 
It, too, could be used most advantageously 
in formal gardening. The finest specimens 
of it in the South are found in the old gar¬ 
dens on the banks of the Ashley River near 
Charleston. At Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, the 
most celebrated of all Southern gardens, there 
are six acres of camellias—red, white and mot¬ 
tled—growing in long rows, scentless and 
cold, but exquisite to behold. The old gar¬ 
dens of Middleton Place, on the Ashley, now 
almost wholly obliterated,were laid out by Mi- 
chaux, the celebrated French landscape gar¬ 
dener,who spent some time in America prior to 
the Revolution, and enriched botanical litera¬ 
ture with a scholarly work on American trees. 
One of the flowering shrubs planted by him 
at Middleton Place was a Camellia Japonica , 
which grew to be a most remarkable speci¬ 
men and was at one time listed as a botani¬ 
cal wonder. It was over twenty feet high, 
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