CHAPTER II 



FRONT DOORYARDS 



" There are few of us who cannot remember a front yard garden 

 which seemed to us a very paradise in childhood. Whether the 

 house was a fine one and the enclosure spacious, or whether it was a 

 small house with only a narrow bit of ground in front, the yard was 

 kept with care, and was different from the rest of the land altogether. 

 . . . People do not know what they lose when they make way 

 with the reserve, the separateness, the sanctity, of the front yard 

 of their grandmothers. It is like writing down family secrets for any 

 one to read ; it is like having everybody call you by your first name, 

 or sitting in any pew in church." 



Country Byways, SARAH ORNE JEWETT, 1881. 



LD New England villages and 

 small towns and well-kept New 

 England farms had universally 

 a simple and pleasing form of 

 garden called the front yard or 

 front dooryard. A few still 

 may be seen in conservative 

 communities in the New England states and in 

 New York or Pennsylvania. I saw flourishing 

 ones this summer in Gloucester, Marblehead, and 

 Ipswich. Even where the front yard was but a 

 narrow strip of land before a tiny cottage, it was 

 carefully fenced in, with a gate that was kept rigidly 

 closed and latched. There seemed to be a law 



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