Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set ForthEarle, Alice Morse
History
Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth
Earle, Alice Morse
Gardens; Landscape gardening
This list is certainly a pleasing one. It gives opportunity for flower
borders of varied growth and rich color. There is a quality of some
minds which may be termed historical imagination. It is the power of
shaping from a few simple words or details of the faraway past, an ample
picture, full of light and life, of which these meagre details are but a
framework. Having this list of the names of these sturdy old annuals and
perennials, what do you perceive besides the printed words? I see that
the old mid-century garden where these seeds found a home was a cheerful
place from earliest spring to autumn; that it had many bulbs, and
thereafter a constant succession of warm blooms till the Coxcombs,
Marigolds, Colchicums and Chrysanthemums yielded to New England's
frosts. I know that the garden had beehives and that the bees were
loved; for when they sallied out of their straw bee-skepes, these happy
bees found their favorite blossoms planted to welcome them: Cerinthe,
dropping with honey; Cacalia, a sister flower; Lupine, Larkspur, Sweet
Marjoram, and Thyme--I can taste the Thyme-scented classic honey from
that garden! There was variety of foliage as well as bloom, the dovelike
Lavender, the glaucous Horned Poppy, the glistening Iceplants, the dusty
Rose Campion.
[Illustration: Old Garden at Duck Cove Farm in Narragansett.]
Stately plants grew from the little seed-packets; Hollyhocks, Valerian,
Canterbury Bells, Tree Primroses looked down on the low-growing herbs of
the border; and there were vines of Convolvulus and Honeysuckle. It was
a garden overhung by clouds of perfume from Thyme, Lavender, Sweet Peas,
Pleasant-eyed Pink, and Stock. The garden's mistress looked well after
her household; ample store of savory pot herbs grow among the finer
blossoms.
It was a garden for children to play in. I can see them; little boys
with their hair tied in queues, in knee breeches and flapped coats like
their stately fathers, running races down the garden path, as did the
Van Cortlandt children; and demure little girls in caps and sacques and
aprons, sitting in cubby houses under the Lilac bushes. I know what
flowers they played with and how they played, for they were my
great-grandmothers and grandfathers, and they played exactly what I did,
and sang what I did when I was a child in a garden. And suddenly my
picture expands, as a glow of patriotic interest thrills me in the
thought that in this garden were sheltered and amused the boys of one
hundred and forty years ago, who became the heroes of our American
Revolution; and the girls who were Daughters of Liberty, who spun and
wove and knit for their soldiers, and drank heroically their miserable
Liberty tea. I fear the garden faded when bitter war scourged the land,
when the women turned from their flower beds to the plough and the
field, since their brothers and husbands were on the frontier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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