The sprouting of crocuses is another sure sign of Spring, bringing a sense of hope and optimism after a cold, harsh winter. Gardeners emerge in local neighborhoods patiently tending their plots until they erupt in color, resulting in dazzling displays for all to enjoy. Our public spaces provide an additional welcoming refuge of blooming flowers and shrubs, which invite us to stroll or sit and admire. Gardens never cease to inspire literary description and praise.

Flower garden, Thayer Estate, Lancaster, Mass.
Thayer Memorial Library, Lancaster

“Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity ; children love them ; tender, contented, ordinary people love them. They are the cottager’s treasure; and in the crowded town mark, as with a little fragment of rainbow, the windows of the little workers in whose heart rests the covenant of peace.” –John Ruskin.

“My garden is a veritable album, and as I wander over our place I find many a dear friend or happy hour commemorated in it.

Frick Gardens, Frick Estate, Pride’s Crossing, Beverly, Mass.
Beverly Public Library

This little clump of oxalis, naturalized so prettily in the woods, was gathered one lovely day when a merry party joined us in an expedition to the Profile Notch. That group of lady’s-slippers came from the woods of a dear friend in Vermont. Here are moss-roses from a magnificent rose-garden in Massachusetts, and there are seedlings from the home of Longfellow, or willows rooted from cuttings brought from the South by Frederick Law Olmsted. Hardly a flower-loving friend have I who has not left an autograph in plant, or shrub, or tree in my garden, and in like manner many a thrifty plant has left my borders for those of distant friends.” — The Garden of Autographs, by Mrs. Theodore Thomas (Rose Fay)

The Italian Garden

Italian Garden, Evans Estate, Beverly, Mass.
Beverly Public Library

“The old Italian garden was meant to to be lived in–a use to which, at least in America, the modern garden is seldom put.

The cult of the Italian garden has spread from England to America, and there is a general feeling that by placing a marble bench here and a sun-dial there, Italian “effects” may be achieved. The results produced, even where much money and thought have been expended, are not altogether satisfactory ; and some critics have thence inferred that the Italian garden is, so to speak,

Italian garden at Lynch Park, Beverly, Mass.
Beverly Public Library

untranslatable,that it cannot be adequately rendered in another landscape and another age.

It is, of course, an exaggeration to say that there are no flowers in Italian gardens; but, to enjoy and appreciate the Italian garden-craft, one must understand at the outset that it is almost independent of floriculture. The Italian garden does not exist for its flowers; such flowers as it contains exist for it.” –Edith Wharton, author and gardener.

“Before the first spade cleaves the earth, before the first stakes mark the course of a new path, before the first tree is cut or the first tree planted , the garden maker has decided to alter the landscape. The chief reason for the change is to make a place more beautiful, more productive, or in the usage of the eighteenth century, to ‘improve’ it. Inspired by pictures in the mind, the gardener seeks to make a fantasy become real.”So Fine a Prospect–by Alan Emmet.

Public Gardens

Floral Way, on the south shore of Lake Quannapowitt, Wakefield, Mass.
Beebe Memorial Library, Wakefield, Mass.

The public park/garden has been a vital part of the landscape, especially in urban areas, since the 19th century. The public garden provides an open air refuge for those whose residences do not afford them much, if any, outdoor space for recreation, peace and quiet.
“Every dooryard on Beacon Street is in bloom. Snowdrops, and crocuses and hyacinths! We look up and even the houses are putting forth flowers. Parlor windows, and many little glass nooks above the doorways, have become flower beds, from which cowslips and jonquils and narcissus and hosts of other blossoms fling their beauty into the hearts of the passers-by. But the Garden! flaming with reds and yellows and pinks; tulip-bed after tulip- bed ablaze in the sunshine.

Floral Way, Wakefield, Mass.
Beebe Memorial Library, Wakefield, Mass.

The very people seem to have turned into tulips, and go walking about in pink and yellow atmospheres. All sorts of people are there, beaming like angels in an earthly paradise. Talk about mere beauty having no moral influence! One needs only to see the happy faces of the spring crowd in the Garden to be convinced there is not a soul who gazes upon the glory of the tulips in the sunshine but is the better for it. Some of the faces may not be very beautiful, but all have taken on an illuminating tenderness of expression.” — The Poets’ New England by Helen Archibald Clarke