THE SMALL PLACE 



is separated from the meadows by a white fence. 

 On the other side of the house, the ground sloped 

 off abruptly in an irregular double tilt that gave 

 the house an unfortunate and unstable look. Part 

 way down the slope a low retaining wall buttressed 

 the ground. Such an awkward slope would not 

 have appealed to the uninitiated as a good garden 

 site but to one interested in the nice readjustments 

 of grades such tilted contours are full of possibili- 

 ties. It was on or rather into this bank that 

 the garden was built in the fall of 1914. 



The garden consists of two parts, a grass terrace 

 and below it a series of small flower-lined com- 

 partments. The old retaining wall forms one 

 boundary of the grass terrace. To conform with 

 the grade it decreases gradually toward the south 

 end and the terrace has a gentle downward slope 

 in the same direction. To establish its grade it 

 was necessary to cut away several feet of the slope. 

 To conform with this new condition, the wall was 

 underpinned, two feet at some places, eight feet at 

 others. The old wall, built many years ago of rough 

 stone with mortar of a brownish tone, is so fine a 

 piece of work that matching up the stone, copy- 

 ing the laying of the courses, and imitating the 



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