26 THE LITTLE GARDEN 



These are energetic words; it may well be that partly to them 

 is due the fact that, since they were pubUshed eight years ago, 

 there is not only a decided improvement in taste. in the larger 

 gardens of good amateurs, but also a slight tendency toward 

 more privacy, even on the part of those same real-estate men 

 whose doings our author deplores. A mark of this change lies in 

 the plan often adopted now in suburbs where groups of houses 

 are built on a semi-private street, — called a court, — with en- 

 trance gates (usually horrors, these gates). Here is a Uttle move 

 toward what we all desire. I often wonder how long it will be be- 

 fore the smaller householder in America will begin to imderstand 

 the necessity for the beauty of privacy in his own grounds and 

 gardens. If we might have, in our towns and suburbs, a garden 

 missionary or friendly visitor, I would have him say as he en- 

 tered the first backyard, "See — the first thing needed here is a 

 screen of foliage. Do you wish to see those outbuildings or that 

 bam? Is there anything interesting in the view of your neigh- 

 bors' linen hung out to dry? Plant tall shrubbery against that 

 fence at once. If there is no fence, make one, if only of chicken- 

 wire, to keep out other people's Hving things and to keep in your 



9y 



own. 



The use of structural green in small gardens is very Uttle un- 

 derstood as yet; it is, to my way of thinking, the first thing to 

 impress upon the owner of a small place in a town. 



Granted, then, that the place should be enclosed: of what 

 material shall such enclosure be? Where a property is large 

 enough, trees make the most durable, the most suitable, and the 

 most magnificent boundary. Deciduous and non-deciduous trees, 

 in great groups, with their branches, Uke the beech, say, sweep- 

 ing the very ground. And beyond those trees, a wall of good pro- 

 portions and suitable stone or brick. But trees take room; there- 

 fore, for the small place less exacting subjects must be found. 



