_Fountain at Yaddo, Saratoga, New York. Country-seat of Spencer Trask, Esq._ 455 _Avenue of White Pines at Wellesley, Massachusetts. Country-seat of Hollis H. Hunnewell, Esq._ 456 _Violets in Silver Double Coaster_ 461 _York and Lancaster Rose at Van Cortlandt Manor. Photographed by J. Horace McFarland_ facing 462 _Cinnamon Roses. Photographed by Mabel Osgood Wright_ 465 _Cottage Garden with Roses. Photographed by Mary F. C. Paschall_ facing 468 _Madame Plantier Rose. Photographed by Mabel Osgood Wright_ 474 _Sun-dial and Roses at Van Cortlandt Manor. Photographed by J. Horace McFarland_ facing 476 Old Time Gardens CHAPTER I COLONIAL GARDEN-MAKING "There is not a softer trait to be found in the character of those stern men than that they should have been sensible of these flower-roots clinging among the fibres of their rugged hearts, and felt the necessity of bringing them over sea, and making them hereditary in the new land." --_American Note-book_, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. After ten wearisome weeks of travel across an unknown sea, to an equally unknown world, the group of Puritan men and women who were the founders of Boston neared their Land of Promise; and their noble leader, John Winthrop, wrote in his Journal that "we had now fair Sunshine Weather and so pleasant a sweet Aire as did much refresh us, and there came a smell off the Shore like the Smell of a Garden." A _Smell of a Garden_ was the first welcome to our ancestors from their new home; and a pleasant and perfect emblem it was of the life that awaited them. They were not to become hunters and rovers, not to be eager to explore quickly the vast wilds beyond; they were to settle down in the most domestic of lives, as tillers of the soil, as makers of gardens. What must that sweet air from the land have been to the sea-weary Puritan women on shipboard, laden to them with its promise of a garden! for I doubt not every woman bore with her across seas some little package of seeds and bulbs from her English home garden, and perhaps a tiny slip or plant of some endeared flower; watered each day, I fear, with many tears, as well as from the surprisingly scant water supply which we know was on board that ship. And there also came flying to the _Arbella_ as to the Ark, a Dove--a bird of promise--and soon the ship came to anchor. "With hearts revived in conceit new Lands and Trees they spy, Scenting the Caedars and Sweet Fern from heat's reflection dry,"