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."
The plantain has a history full of romance; its old Northern names—Wegetritt in German, Weegbree in Dutch, Viebred in Danish, and Weybred in Old English, all indicating its presence in the much-trodden paths of man—were not lost in its new home, nor were its characteristics overlooked by the nature-noting and plant-knowing red man. It was called by the Indian "the Englishman's foot," says Josselyn, and by Kalm also, a later traveller in 1740; "for they say where an Englishman trod, there grew a plantain in each footstep." Not less closely did such old garden weeds as motherwort, groundsel, chickweed, and wild mustard cling to the white man. They are old colonists, brought over by the first settlers, and still thrive and triumph in every kitchen garden and back yard in the land. Mullein and nettle, henbane and wormwood, all are English emigrants.
The Puritans were not the only flower-lovers in the new land. The Pennsylvania Quakers and Mennonites were quick to plant gardens. Pastorius encouraged all the Germantown settlers to raise flowers as well as fruit. Whittier says of him in his Pennsylvania Pilgrim:—
"The flowers his boyhood knew
Smiled at his door, the same in form and hue,
And on his vines the Rhenish clusters grew."
It gives one a pleasant notion of the old Quaker, George Fox, to read his bequest by will of a tract of land near Philadelphia "for a playground for the children of the town to play on and for a garden to plant with physical plants, for lads and lassies to know simples, and learn to make oils and ointments."
Among Pennsylvanians the art of gardening reached the highest point. The landscape gardening was a reproduction of the best in England. Our modern country places cannot equal in this respect the colonial country seats near Philadelphia. Woodlands and Bush Hill, the homes of the Hamiltons, Cliveden, of Chief Justice Chew, Fair Hill, Belmont, the estate of Judge Peters, were splendid examples. An ecstatic account of the glories and wonders of some of them was written just after the Revolution by a visitor who fully understood their treasures, the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, the clergyman, statesman, and botanist.
In Newport, Rhode Island, where flowers ever seem to thrive with extraordinary luxuriance, there were handsome gardens in the eighteenth century. A description of Mr. Bowler's garden during the Revolution reads thus:—
"It contains four acres and has a grand aisle in the middle. Near the middle is an oval surrounded with espaliers of fruit-trees, in the centre of which is a pedestal, on which is an armillary sphere with an equatorial dial. On one side of the front is a hot-house containing orange-trees, some ripe, some green, some blooms, and various other fruit-trees of the exotic kind and curious flowers. At the lower end of the aisle is a large summer-house, a long square containing three rooms, the middle paved with marble and hung with landscapes. On the right is a large private library adorned with curious carvings. There are espaliers of fruit-trees at each end of the garden and curious flowering shrubs. The room on the left is beautifully designed for music and contains a spinnet. But the whole garden discovered the desolations of war."
In the Southern colonies men of wealth soon had beautiful gardens. In an early account of South Carolina, written in 1682, we find:—