mous hanging gardens of
Babylon were made for a woman. Bacon says: "A garden is the purest of
human pleasures, it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man."
A garden was certainly the greatest refreshment to the spirits of a
woman in the early colonial days, and the purest of her pleasures--too
often her only pleasure.

Quickly, in tender memory of her fair English home, the homesick
goodwife, trying to create a semblance of the birthplace she still
loved, planted the seeds and roots of homely English flowers and herbs
that grew and blossomed under bleak New England skies, and on rocky New
England shores, as sturdily and cheerfully as they had sprung up and
bloomed by the green hedgerows and door-sides in the home beyond the
sea.

In the year 1638, and again in 1663, an English gentleman named John
Josselyn came to New England. He published, in 1672, an account of
these two visits. He was a man of polite reading and of culture, and as
was the high fashion for gentlemen of his day, had a taste for gardening
and botany. He made interesting lists of plants which he noted in
America under these heads:--

"1. Such plants as are common with us in England.

"2. Such plants as are proper to the country.

"3. Such plants as are proper to the country and have no names.

"4. Such plants as have sprung up since the English planted and
kept cattle in New England.

"5. Such Garden-Herbs among us as do thrive there and of such as do
not."

This last division is the one that specially interests us, since it is
the earliest and the fullest account of the gardens of our forefathers,
after they had tamed the rugged shores of the New World, and made them
obey the rule of English husbandry. They had "good store of garden
vegetables and herbs; lettuce, sorrel, parsley, mallows, chevril,
burnet, summer savory, winter savory, thyme, sage, carrots, parsnips,
beets, radishes, purslain, beans"; "cabbidge growing exceeding well;
pease of all sorts and the best in the world; sparagus thrives
exceedingly, musk mellons, cucumbers, and pompions." For grains there
were wheat, rye, barley, and oats. There were other garden herbs and
garden flowers: spearmint, pennyroyal, ground-ivy, coriander, dill,
tansy; "feverfew prospereth exceedingly; white sattin groweth pretty
well, and so doth lavender-cotton; gillyflowers will continue two years;
horse-leek prospereth notably; hollyhocks; comferie with white