144 PLANS OF RESIDENCES 



the trees approach maturity they will have developed beauties that 

 crowded trees never show. 



PLATE III. 



Crowded and Open Grounds Compared, on a Cottage Lot of 'fifty 

 feet front. 



Here we have two lots 50 x 200 each. The plan and position 

 for a small cottage-house, and the walks, are the same on both. 

 The plan on the right is intended to show the common mode of 

 cluttering the yard so full of good things that, like an overloaded 

 table, it lessens the appetite it is intended to gratify. Let us pic- 

 ture Mr. and Mrs. A., master and mistress of the house, unskillful 

 but enthusiastic, engaged in their first plantings. The lot is a 

 bare one. Fruit trees are the first necessities ; places are therefore 

 found for four cherry, and five pear trees, without trespassing much 

 on the "front yard," which is sacred, in true American homes, 

 to floral and sylvan embellishments. It is to fill this ground 

 that our proprietors are now to make choice of trees and shrubs. 

 Mr. A. and wife are agreed that evergreens are indispensable, and 

 that the balsam fir and the Norway spruce are the prettiest of ever- 

 greens for "everybody plants them" Accordingly a couple of 

 Norway spruces flank the gate at a little distance inside, and a pair 

 of balsam firs (prettiest of trees as they emerge, fragrant, from the 

 nurserymen's bundles) are placed conspicuously not far from the 

 house-steps, on each side the main-walk. Mrs. A. suggests that 

 the weeping-willow is the most graceful of all trees. Who can 

 gainsay that ? Mr. A. does not, and in go two willows in the two 

 front corners of the yard. Then there's the mountain ash with a 

 " form as perfect as a top, and such showy clusters of red fruit," 

 suggests Mrs. A., " and everybody plants them." Of course this 

 tree is planted, one on each side of the yard, midway between the 

 walk and sides of the lot, in that open space above the willows. 

 Then the walk is bordered from the gate towards the house 

 with rose-bushes of all sorts, while lilacs, honeysuckles, spireas, 



