or
agricultural experiments. The vegetable garden was south of the Bowling
Green and separated from it by a brick wall. Here utility was lord and a
great profusion of products was raised for the table. Washington took an
interest in its management and I have found an entry in his diary
recording the day that green peas were available for the first time that
year. Evidently he was fond of them.

The bent of our Farmer's mind was to the practical, yet he took pride in
the appearance of his estate. "I shall begrudge no reasonable expense
that will contribute to the improvement and neatness of my farms," he
wrote one of his managers, "for nothing pleases me better than to see
them in good order, and everything trim, handsome, and thriving about
them; nor nothing hurts me more than to find them otherwise."

Live hedges tend to make a place look well and it was probably this and
his passion for trees that caused Washington to go in extensively for
hedges about his farms. They took the place of wooden fences and saved
trees and also grew more trees and bushes. His ordinary course in
building a fence was to have a trench dug on each side of the line and
the dirt thrown toward the center. Upon the ridge thus formed he built a
post and rail fence and along it planted cedars, locusts, pines, briars
or thorn bushes to discourage cattle and other stock. The trenches not
only increased the efficiency of the fence but also served as ditches.
In many places they are still discernible. The lines of the hedges are
also often marked in many places by trees which, though few or none can
be the originals, are descended from the roots or seeds of those trees.
Cedar and locust trees are particularly noticeable.

[Illustration: First page of the Diary for 1760]

In 1794 our Farmer had five thousand white thorn sent from England for
hedge purposes, but they arrived late in the spring and few survived and
even these did not thrive very well. Another time he sent from
Philadelphia two bushels of honey locust seed to be planted in his
nursery. These are only instances of his activities in this direction.

Much of what he undertook as a planter of trees failed for one reason or
another, most of all because he attended to the business of his country
at the expense of his own, but much that he attempted succeeded and
enough still remains to enable us to realize that by his efforts he made
his estate attractive. He was no Barbarian or Philistine.