176 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 



house fifty-five — its shorter dimension may have been 

 on the building line, though I doubt it, for this would 

 have made it extend beyond the house towards the 

 back; but even this is thirty-five feet — then the barn, 

 carriage-house, tool-house, poultry-house and all the 

 rest. 



Remember that Penn especially stipulated that all 

 should be uniform and not "a. scu" from the house; 

 and the description mentions particularly that the 

 offices were "arranged alongside on the front line of 

 it." In this wonderful expanse there was only one 

 break — the space occupied by the court — and here the 

 row of English redheart cherry trees continued the 

 line, and gave continuity to a group which must have 

 conveyed a sense of comfort and rest and home quite 

 without parallel. 



Which of all these is the best? Each must answer 

 for himself. Designing a garden to-day along any 

 one of these five lines is a simple enough task, once the 

 selection is made. That selection, as I have tried to 

 show, is the crucial thing; and altogether a personal 

 matter. Some of the considerations which might in- 

 fluence it, outside of personal taste — indeed, which 

 should influence it, regardless of personal taste — are, 

 first of all, the system of buildings to be erected, or al- 

 ready erected. I speak of them as a system because 

 that is what they were in old times, distinctly; and in 



