MY OWN ACRE 



of the things which interlock and unify a certain 

 garden and grove. 



The bringing of the grove out on the lawn and 

 the pushing of the lawn in under the grove was 

 one of the early tasks of my own acre. When 

 the house was built its lot and others backed up 

 to a hard, straight rear line where the old field 

 had halted at its fence and where the woods 

 began on ground that fell to the river at an angle 

 of from forty to fifty degrees. Here my gifted 

 friend and adviser gave me a precept got from 

 his earlier gifted friend and adviser, Frederick 

 Law Olmsted: that passing from any part of a 

 pleasure-ground to any part next it should be 

 entirely safe and easy or else impossible. By 

 the application of this maxim I brought my lawn 

 and grove together in one of the happiest of mar- 

 riages. For I proceeded, by filling with earth 

 (and furnace ashes), to carry the lawn in, prac- 

 tically level, beyond the old fence line and un- 

 der the chestnuts and pines sometimes six feet, 

 sometimes twelve, until the difiicult and unsafe 

 forty or fifty degrees of abrupt fall were changed 

 to an impassable sixty and seventy degrees, and 



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