Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth. Earle Alice Morse

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СКАЧАТЬ is a shaded walk in this garden which is a thing of solace and content to all who tread its pathway; a bit is shown opposite this page, overhung with shrubs of Lilac, Syringa, Strawberry Bush, Flowering Currant, all the old treelike things, so fair-flowered and sweet-scented in spring, so heavy-leaved and cool-shadowing in midsummer: what pleasure would there be in this shaded walk if this garden were separated from the street only by stone curbing or a low rail? And there is an old sun-dial too in this enclosed garden! I fear the street imps of a crowded city would quickly destroy the old monitor were it in an open garden; and they would make sad havoc, too, of the Roses and Larkspurs (page 65) so tenderly reared by the two sisters who together loved and cared for this "garden enclosed." Great trees are at the edges of this garden, and the line of tall shrubs is carried out by the lavish vines and Roses on fences and walls. Within all this border of greenery glow the clustered gems of rare and beautiful flowers, till the whole garden seems like some rich jewel set purposely to be worn in honor over the city's heart – a clustered jewel, not one to be displayed carelessly and heedlessly.

      Salem houses and gardens are like Salem people. Salem houses present to you a serene and dignified front, gracious yet reserved, not thrusting forward their choicest treasures to the eyes of passing strangers; but behind the walls of the houses, enclosed from public view, lie cherished gardens, full of the beauty of life. Such, in their kind, are Salem folk.

      I know no more speaking, though silent, criticism than those old Salem gardens afford upon the modern fashion in American towns of pulling down walls and fences, removing the boundaries of lawns, and living in full view of every passer-by, in a public grassy park. It is pleasant, I suppose, for the passer-by; but homes are not made for passers-by. Old Salem gardens lie behind the house, out of sight – you have to hunt for them. They are terraced down if they stretch to the water-side; they are enclosed with hedges, and set behind high vine-covered fences, and low out-buildings; and planted around with great trees: thus they give to each family that secluded centring of family life which is the very essence and being of a home. I sat through a June afternoon in a Salem garden whose gate is within a stone's throw of a great theatre, but a few hundred feet from lines of electric cars and a busy street of trade, scarce farther from lines of active steam cars, and with a great power house for a close neighbor. Yet we were as secluded, as embowered in vines and trees, with beehives and rabbit hutches and chicken coops for happy children at the garden's end, as truly in beautiful privacy, as if in the midst of a hundred acres. Could the sense of sound be as sheltered by the enclosing walls as the sense of sight, such a garden were a city paradise.

      There is scant regularity in shape in Salem gardens; there is no search for exact dimensions. Little narrow strips of flower beds run down from the main garden in any direction or at any angle where the fortunate owner can buy a few feet of land. Salem gardens do not change with the whims of fancy, either in the shape or the planting. A few new flowers find place there, such as the Anemone Japonica and the Japanese shrubs; for they are akin in flower sentiment, and consort well with the old inhabitants. There are many choice flowers and fruits in these gardens. In the garden of the Manning homestead (opposite page 112) grows a flourishing Fig tree, and other rare fruits; for fifty years ago this garden was known as the Pomological Garden. It is fitting it should be the home of two Robert Mannings – both well-known names in the history of horticulture in Massachusetts.

      The homely back yard of an old house will often possess a trim and blooming flower border cutting off the close approach of the vegetable beds (see opposite page 66). These back yards, with the covered Grape arbors, the old pumps, and bricked paths, are cheerful, wholesome places, generally of spotless cleanliness and weedless flower beds. I know one such back yard where the pump was the first one set in the town, and children were taken there from a distance to see the wondrous sight. Why are all the old appliances for raising water so pleasing? A well-sweep is of course picturesque, with its long swinging pole, and you seem to feel the refreshment and purity of the water when you see it brought up from such a distance; and an old roofed well with bucket, such as this one still in use at Bishop Berkeley's Rhode Island home is ever a homelike and companionable object. But a pump is really an awkward-looking piece of mechanism, and hasn't a vestige of beauty in its lines; yet it has something satisfying about it; it may be its domesticity, its homeliness, its simplicity. We have gained infinitely in comfort in our perfect water systems and lavish water of to-day, but we have lost the gratification of the senses which came from the sight and sound of freshly drawn or running water. Much of the delight in a fountain comes, not only from the beauty of its setting and the graceful shape of its jets, but simply from the sight of the water.

      Sometimes a graceful and picturesque growth of vines will beautify gate posts, a fence, or a kitchen doorway in a wonderfully artistic and pleasing fashion. On page 70 is shown the sheltered doorway of the kitchen of a fine old stone farm-house called, from its hedges of Osage Orange, "The Hedges." It stands in the village of New Hope, County Bucks, Pennsylvania. In 1718 the tract of which this farm of over two hundred acres is but a portion was deeded by the Penns to their kinsman, the direct ancestor of the present owner, John Schofield Williams, Esq. This is but one of the scores of examples I know where the same estate has been owned in one family for nearly two centuries, sometimes even for two hundred and fifty years; and in several cases where the deed from the Indian sachem to the first colonist is the only deed there has ever been, the estate having never changed ownership save by direct bequest. I have three such cases among my own kinsfolk.

      Another form of garden and mode of planting which was in vogue in the "early thirties" is shown facing page 92. This pillared house and the stiff garden are excellent types; they are at Napanock, County Ulster, New York. Such a house and grounds indicated the possession of considerable wealth when they were built and laid out, for both were costly. The semicircular driveway swept up to the front door, dividing off Box-edged parterres like those of the day of Queen Anne. These parterres were sparsely filled, the sunnier beds being set with Spring bulbs; and there were always the yellow Day Lilies somewhere in the flower beds, and the white and blue Day Lilies, the common Funkias. Formal urns were usually found in the parterres and sometimes a great cone or ball of clipped Box. These gardens had some universal details, they always had great Snowball bushes, and Syringas, and usually white Roses, chiefly Madame Plantiers; the piazza trellises had old climbing Roses, the Queen of the Prairie or Boursault Roses. These gardens are often densely overshadowed with great evergreen trees grown from the crowded planting of seventy years ago; none are cut down, and if one dies its trunk still stands, entwined with Woodbine. I don't know that we would lay out and plant just such a garden to-day, any more than we would build exactly such a house; but I love to see both, types of the refinement of their day, and I deplore any changes. An old Southern house of allied form is shown on page 72, and its garden facing page 70, – Greenwood, in Thomasville, Georgia; but of course this garden has far more lavish and rich bloom. The decoration of this house is most interesting – a conventionalized Magnolia, and the garden is surrounded with splendid Magnolias and Crape Myrtles. The border edgings in this garden are lines of bricks set overlapping in a curious manner. They serve to keep the beds firmly in place, and the bricks are covered over with an inner edging of thrifty Violets. Curious tubs and boxes for plants are made of bricks set solidly in mortar. The garden is glorious with Roses, which seem to consort so well with Magnolias and Violets.

      I love a Dutch garden, "circummured" with brick. By a Dutch garden, I mean a small garden, oblong or square, sunk about three or four feet in a lawn – so that when surrounded by brick walls they seem about two feet high when viewed outside, but are five feet or more high from within the garden. There are brick or stone steps in the middle of each of the four walls by which to descend to the garden, which may be all planted with flowers, but preferably should have set borders of flowers with a grass-plot in the centre. On either side of the steps should be brick posts surmounted by Dutch pots with plants, or by balls of stone. Planted with bulbs, these gardens in their flowering time are, as old Parkinson said, a "perfect fielde of delite." We have very pretty Dutch gardens, so called, in America, but their chief claim to being Dutch is that they are set with bulbs, and have Delft or other earthen pots or boxes for formal plants or shrubs.

      Sunken gardens should be laid out under the supervision of an intelligent СКАЧАТЬ