Colonial Homes and Their Furnishings

by Mary Harrod Northend

OLD-TIME GARDENS

There was a restful charm and dignity surrounding the garden of olden times that is lacking in the formal ones of to-day. This effect was gained partly from the prim box borders and the straight, central path, and partly from the stateliness of the old-fashioned flowers. Gardens formed a distinctive feature in the colonists' home grounds, from the time of their landing on unknown soil. At first they were very small, and consisted mostly of wild flowers and plants that had been brought from their homes in England and Holland. The early settlers brought with them to this new land a deep love for floriculture, and the earliest garden plots filled with flowering plants, though rude in construction, saved the house mother many a heartache, reminding her as they did of the beautiful gardens in the motherland left behind.

We find in the earliest records of the new settlers allusions to flowers, and Reverend Francis Higginson speaks of the wild flowers which he saw blossoming near the shore. He considered them of enough importance to record in his diary on June 24, 1629, writing "that wild flowers of yellow coloring resembling Gilliflowers were seen near the shore as they sighted land, and that as they came closer they saw many of these flowers scattered here and there, some of the plots being from nine to ten feet in size."

Four of the men who went ashore on the twenty-seventh of that month found on the headlands of Cape Cod single wild roses. Later on he tells again of the number of plants found growing, giving their names. These facts have enabled people in later years to locate the same flowers growing near the same places as when they were first discovered.

Governor Bradford also considered the flowers of importance, and in his historical account of the Colonies of New England, he tells us that "here grow many fine flowers, among them the fair lily and the fragrant rose."

On Governors Island in Boston Harbor were rich vineyards and orchards, as well as many varieties of flowers. Governor Winthrop, inserting a clause in the grant, said that vineyards and orchards should be planted here; that this was complied with is shown from the fact that the rent in 1634 was paid with a hogshead of wine.

Following the growth of colonist gardens, we find that John Josslyn arrived in Boston four years later, in 1638, and that soon after his arrival he visited his brother's plantation in Black Point, Maine. He made a careful list of plants that he found here, each one of which he carefully described and sent in part to England, and it is interesting to note that in those days, the colonists in the spring gathered hepaticas, bloodroot, and numerous other wild flowers.

His description of the pitcher plant is graphic: "Hollow leaved lavender is a plant that grows in the marshes, overgrown with moss, with one straight stalk about the bigness of an oat straw. It is better than a cubic high, and upon the top is found one single fantastic flower. The leaves grow close to the root in shape like a tankard, hollow, tight, and always full of water." The whole plant, so he says, comes into perfection about the middle of August, and has leaves and stalks as red as blood, while the flower is yellow.

Mr. Josslyn also speaks of the fact that shrubs and flowers brought from England and Holland by the Puritans as early as 1626 were the nucleus of old-fashioned gardens, and that woadwaxen, now a pest covering acres of ground and showing during the time of blossoming a brilliant yellow, was kept in pots by Governor Endicott, while the oxeye daisy and whiteweed were grown on Governor Endicott's Danvers farm.

He also tells us of the gardens with "their pleasant, familiar flowers, lavender, hollyhocks, and satin." "We call this herbe in Norfolke sattin," says Gerard, "and among our women, it is called honestie and gillyflowers, which meant pinks as well, and dear English roses and eglantine."