The garden as it stands today is just about as it was in the days when it bloomed and blossomed under Rachel’s tender care, except that the flowering shrubs and bushes have now attained the size and beauty gained only with the passing of the years. But it was not in any such condition as this that the Ladies’ Hermitage Association found it when they took charge. During the wartime occupation of the premises by the guard of Federal troops the garden was almost obliterated. Being fenced in and convenient to the house, it appealed to the cavalrymen as an ideal corral for their horses, and it was so used during the three years the Federal troops remained on the grounds. It is easy to imagine the damage done—and it is also easy to imagine Old Hickory’s devastating wrath if he had known that his government’s troops were so heedlessly desecrating Rachel’s flower garden. After the war but little was done to repair the damage done by the soldiers’ horses. The fence was restored, and this kept out wandering stock and permitted the hardy shrubs to grow again; but the paths were overgrown with weeds, washed by the recurring rains, and in 1889 little trace of the old walkways remained except for the marginal brick borders. (These bricks, by the way, were especially designed and made for the purpose, being longer and thicker than ordinary bricks and also beveled at the top. They were manufactured on the place when the bricks were burned for the building of the big house, the depression in the ground where the clay was dug out for all the bricks being still visible in the extreme northwestern corner of the big wooded lot directly across the road from the front entrance to the Hermitage.) In spite of the discouraging aspect of affairs in the garden when the ladies took over the property, however, the work of restoring it to its original beauty was valiantly attacked, and one of their very first activities was to engage a man to clear away the weeds and blackberry bushes and the volunteer elms and hickories, rebuild the paths and restore the garden to some semblance of its former appearance. The work of restoration has been carefully done, with a full appreciation of the importance of retaining the spirit and form of the original design and planting. A competent garden authority was retained to plan the work in later years, and there has been no effort to modernize or improve the garden—only a faithful determination to repair the ravages of time and present it to the visitor today just as it was when the General and Rachel were alive and wandered up and down its broad paths in admiration of its beauty. The focal point of interest in the garden, of course, is the tomb in the southeast corner. When his beloved Rachel died in December, 1828, just on the eve of their departure for his first Presidential inauguration, the old General laid her away in the corner of the garden and, heavy-hearted, started off for Washington alone.