United States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775
This last division is the one that specially interests us, since it is
the earliest and the fullest account of the gardens of our forefathers,
after they had tamed the rugged shores of the New World, and made them
obey the rule of English husbandry. They had "good store of garden
vegetables and herbs; lettuce, sorrel, parsley, mallows, chevril,
burnet, summer savory, winter savory, thyme, sage, carrots, parsnips,
beets, radishes, purslain, beans"; "cabbidge growing exceeding well;
pease of all sorts and the best in the world; sparagus thrives
exceedingly, musk mellons, cucumbers, and pompions." For grains there
were wheat, rye, barley, and oats. There were other garden herbs and
garden flowers: spearmint, pennyroyal, ground-ivy, coriander, dill,
tansy; "feverfew prospereth exceedingly; white sattin groweth pretty
well, and so doth lavender-cotton; gillyflowers will continue two years;
horse-leek prospereth notably; hollyhocks; comferie with white flowers;
clary lasts but one summer; sweet-bryer or eglantine; celandine but
slowly; blood-wort but sorrily, but patience and English roses very
pleasantly."
Patience and English roses very pleasantly in truth must have shown
their fair English faces to English women in the strange land. Dearly
loved had these brier-roses or dog-roses been in England, where, says
the old herbalist, Gerard, "children with delight make chains and pretty
gewgawes of the fruit; and cookes and gentlewomen make tarts and
suchlike dishes for pleasure thereof." Hollyhocks, feverfew, and
gillyflowers must have made a sunshine in the shady places in the new
home. Many of these garden herbs are now common weeds or roadside
blossoms. Celandine, even a century ago, was "common by fences and among
rubbish." Tansy and elecampane grow everywhere. Sweet-brier is at home
in New England pastures and roadsides. Spearmint edges our brooks.
Ground-ivy is a naturalized citizen. It is easy to note that the
flowers and herbs beloved in gardens and medicinal waters and kitchens
"at home" were the ones transplanted here. "Clary-water" was a favorite
tonic of Englishmen of that day.
The list of "such plants as have sprung up since the English planted"
should be of interest to every one who has any sense of the sentiment of
association, or interest in laws of succession. The Spanish proverb
says:--
"More in the garden grows
Than the gardener sows."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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