“As you enter the garden gate, you find the fringe tree planted by Grand-pa. Passing down the walk, you find the crepe myrtle on either side. Along the border farther down, are lilac and syringa. At the far side of the middle plot, there is a smoke tree, and following the path down, you find lilac, crepe myrtle, mock orange, and along the back fence of the garden these same shrubs. “As you enter the gate on the left-hand side, is the calicanthus or Sweet Betsy. There are the fig bushes, the flowering almond, and many other shrubs. Around the tomb are the magnolias. “In the garden, the flowers were the June lily, lily-of-the-valley, single white and blue hyacinth, the red, the white and the pink peonies, blooming in succession as named. “The center beds were filled with the old fashioned sweet-williams, petunias, periwinkles, blue-bells, pinks, and other garden flowers. There were iris and jonquils, and, as we called them, golden candle-sticks. There was the coral honeysuckle, which hung in great clusters, on the right side of the formal plot. Among the roses, there was the old-fashioned little yellow rose, the hundred leaf pink rose, the moss rose, and the large white cabbage rose. There was the Japanese magnolia planted near the center, the rare cucumber magnolia, the very rare tree peony. Like all old gardens, in the corners were violets and blue bottles. Box trees marked the corners of the walks. There were several evergreens around the tomb and a bunch of hickory trees planted by Grand-pa. Now this is all that I can remember. Signed—Rachel Jackson Lawrence.” Sarah York Jackson, who spoke often of the Hermitage garden in letters to her sons, wrote Andrew Jackson, III, in the spring of 1852: “... all our early flowers are destroyed, also all the first plants of vegetables. You would be grieved to see our garden. We are making some few improvements in it this season, bricking around the beds, and have had a supply of fine roses. We have now about fifty varieties of roses, some very fine....” To this gracious, devoted woman was given the privilege of guarding Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage and its cherished garden through long, weary years of war, sorrow, poverty and neglect, until the hands of other women reached out to carry the responsibilities which Death alone caused her to relinquish. FOOTNOTES [1]The origin of the name of Jackson’s Hermitage estate is obscure. Thomas Hart Benton, in his _Thirty Years’ View_, Vol. I, page 736, says: “He ... lived on a superb estate of some thousand acres, twelve miles from Nashville, then hardly known by its subsequent famous name of the Hermitage—name chosen for its perfect accord with his feelings; for he had then actually withdrawn from the stage of public life....”