And we ought to
retain the invincible green of cedars, junipers and box, cypress,
laurel, hemlock spruce and cloaking ivy, darkling amid and above these,
receiving from and giving to them a cheer which neither could have in
their frostbound Eden without mutual contrast.
[Illustration: "The sleeping beauty of the garden's unlost configuration
... keeping a winter's share of its feminine grace and softness."
This picture was taken in the first flush of spring. The trees in
blossom are the wild Japanese cherry.]
Eden! If I so recklessly ignore latitude as to borrow the name of the
first gardener's garden for such a shivering garden as this it is
because I see this one in a dream of hope--a diffident, interrogating
hope--really to behold, some day, this dream-garden of Northern winters
as I have never with actual open eyes found one kept by any merely
well-to-do American citizen. If I describe it I must preface with all
the disclaimers of a self-conscious amateur whose most venturesome
argument goes no farther than "Why not?" yet whom the evergreen gardens
of New Orleans revisited in January impel to protest against every
needless submission to the tyrannies of frost and of a gardening art--or
non-art, a submission which only in the outdoor embellishment of the
home takes winter supinely, abjectly.
This garden of a hope's dream covers but three ordinary town lots.
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