THE AMATEUR GARDEN 



every one's instinctive choice of way was the 

 contour paths. 



At the same time this has preserved, and even 

 enhanced, the place's wildness, especially the 

 wild flowers and the low-nesting birds. Some- 

 times a few yards of retaining-wall, never ce- 

 mented, always laid up dry and with a strong 

 inward batter, had to be put in to avoid smoth- 

 ering the roots of some great tree; for, as every- 

 body knows and nearly everybody forgets, roots, 

 like fishes, must have air. In one place, across 

 the filled head of a ravine, the wall, though 

 but a scant yard high, is fifty feet long, and 

 there is another place where there should be one 

 like it. In this work no tree was sacrificed save 

 one noble oak done to death by a youth who 

 knew but forgot that roots must have air. 



Not to make the work expensive it was pur- 

 sued slowly, through many successive seasons; 

 yet before even its easy, first half was done the 

 lawn was in under the grove on an apparently 

 natural, irregular crest line. Moreover the 

 grove was out on the lawn with an even more 

 natural haphazard bordering line; for another 



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