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THE "ILLINOIS WAY" OF BEAUTIFYING THE FARM 



7. What We See Too Often in Illinois 



A wooden building covered with meaningless ornamentation and gaudy paints, and with- 

 out a single tree or shrub to make it look at home. To fit the country, a house should be 

 long and low; this is tall and narrow a total misfit. Country houses should not be built 

 on city models. (This citified sham and firetrap cost over $5,000.) 



grant white flowers. Georgia is renowned for her houses in 

 the Greek style, which are genuinely adapted to a hot climate 

 by reason of their "galleries," or second-story porches, where 

 the family can enjoy every passing breeze and feast their eyes 

 upon the grandest subtropical tree in the world, Magnolia 

 grandiflora. Connecticut has many a clapboarded farmhouse, 

 shaded by white oaks that were here when the first white man 

 came, while on the lawn may be a rhododendron or mountain 

 laurel, planted by the great-grandfather of the present owner. 

 (See Fig. i.) In Pennsylvania you can often tell what county 

 you are in by a single glance out of the car-window. If you see 

 everywhere massive farmhouses of local stone, laid up in Ger- 

 mantown style, it is a fair wager that you are in Bucks, Chester, 

 or Delaware County. (See Fig. 6.) If your eye meets ancient 

 brick houses, with porches extending the full length of each 

 house, a diamond-shaped stone bearing the date of its erec- 

 tion (see Fig. 5), and odd little projections on the slate roof, 

 to keep the snow from falling off in great chunks that may 

 bury a person, it is a safe guess that you are in Lancaster or 

 some adjacent county. The great variety of majestic oaks 

 that have brooded for a century or more over these venerable 

 houses proclaim that eastern Pennsylvania is a paradise for 

 trees designed by Nature to last through the centuries. Even 



8. What We Want to See Oftener in Illinois 



A genuine farmhouse, built of permanent native materials, and surrounded by perma- 

 nent native plants nothing rare, costly, or foreign. Adapted to the climate, soil, labor 

 conditions, family, and landscape. Cost $4,000. (Home of Joseph E. Wing, the well-known 

 agricultural expert and writer, at Mechanicsburg, Ohio.) 



in the new state of Oregon, the up-to-date apple-growers of 

 Hood River are laying the foundations of a state style of 

 architecture and gardening, with their low houses, screened 

 porches, and paths lined with great double garden roses bloom- 

 ing in a profusion that is impossible in the East. Every state 

 will eventually have its own style of farm architecture and 

 gardening. Nothing can stop it, and we can profit by build- 

 ing and planting in the style that will become dominant as 

 the centuries roll by. 



THE "ILLINOIS WAY" OF FARM ARCHITECTURE 

 AND GARDENING 



What we want is an "Illinois way" of farm architecture and 

 gardening, and already we have some splendid examples of the 

 "real thing." (See the cover, which shows the Magnus place at 

 Winnetka, designed by Robert C. Spencer, landscape by 

 Jens Jensen.) This house is built on horizontal lines, to repeat 

 the great horizontal lines of land, woods, crops, and clouds, 

 which are the peculiar glory of the prairie. The hawthorn at 

 the right is planted for the same purpose. Over 95 per cent of 

 the plants are permanent and native to Cook County. This is 

 the work of a new and virile school of western art, which 



9. The "Illinois Way" of Sheltering Crops 



Windbreak of red cedar in a nursery of seedling trees at Dundee, III. Efficient after 

 twenty years, none of the lower branches being gone. (Red cedar is unpopular in fruit- 

 growing regions because the cedar apples may transmit a disease to fruits.) 



10. The "Illinois Way" of Sheltering Stock 



Windbreak of arborvitK at Crystal Lake, 111. Cattle can be fattened quicker and at 

 less cost when protected from winter winds than on unprotected farms. "Arborvitae is the 

 best windbreak for Illinois," says a veteran nurseryman," and will last one hundred years." 



