Making One Acre Look Like Ten - By wilhelm Miller, 



New 

 York 



A GARDEN THAT SHOWS HOW ANY AMATEUR MAY SHUT OUT THE COMMONPLACE WORLD, 

 BRING IN THE BEST OF THE DISTANT LANDSCAPE, AND CREATE A LITTLE PARADISE AT HOME 



WOULD you like to see an acre garden 

 that looks like ten acres?" inquired 

 the veteran Amos Perry, of Enfield, 

 England. 



" Yes-sir-ee ! " I replied, "for we Amer- 

 icans are full of pretence, you know. If 

 there is any scheme by which we can ap- 

 pear richer or more cultivated than we are 

 I want to know it. " 



My guide looked at me out of the corner 

 of his eye. "I suspect you are joking," 

 he said. "Anyhow, there is no pretence 

 about this. These people 

 are willing to bring the 

 best of the distant land- 

 scape into their daily lives 

 but they would scorn 

 trying to make their 

 place seem larger than 

 it really is. " 



So saying, he drove me 

 to Arlington, Chase Rid- 

 ings, Enfield, the home of 

 Mr. and Mrs. L. Frampton 

 Paine. I shall never for- 

 get the wonders packed 

 into that small space — a 

 house, garage, vegetables, 

 fruit, croquet ground, 

 pond, bog garden, hardy 

 borders, several rock gar- 

 dens, a miniature land- 

 scape, and even a bit of 

 meadow — all on an acre 

 and a half. Subtracting 

 house and meadow there 

 is about an acre of gar- 

 den, and when you remem- 

 ber that an acre is less 

 than 210 feet square, so 

 great a variety hardly 

 seems possible. The only 

 way to understand it is to 

 study the diagram on this 

 page, from which it will 

 appear that there is even 

 richer variety than I have 

 said. And the wonder 

 grows when you realize 

 that one man has done 

 it all in seven years — a 

 busy broker who has had 

 the assistance of a gar- 

 dener about three days a 

 week. Also we must not 

 forget the services of Mrs. Paine who styles 

 herself "chief weeder. " Fancy a Wall 

 Street broker doing as much work in a 

 garden as this! 



I would not have any one copy this, or 

 any other garden for no two gardens should 

 be like. The important thing is to grasp 

 the principles of design and apply them to 

 your own problem. The first principle 

 that every American should learn from 

 the Paine garden is that such beauty 



and variety can never be had if we con- 

 tinue our thoughtless custom of placing 

 a house in the middle of a lot and far back 

 from the street. The only way to get 

 room enough for a garden on a smail lot 

 is to place the house at the side and near 

 the street line. This may be objectionable 

 on a crowded, dusty thoroughfare, but there 

 can be no valid objection to it on a quiet 

 side street. 



The second principle is the desirability 

 of shutting out the commonplace world. 



The English- 

 es Si H& &&<&$§) man applies 

 ^ . Rajbfe tnis principle 



even to the 

 fruit yard; you 

 can see from 

 the diagram 

 how Mr. and 

 Mrs. Paine 

 have shut off 

 the street view 

 by means of 

 trees and 

 hedge, leading 

 a miniature 

 lawn in front 

 which is edged 

 by flowers. 

 The English- 

 man does not 



h with rotes' ~ I '(fiSr, 



Clipped hedge o+ pnvet 



The lay-out of the plot. The figures correspond with the numbers of the accompanying 

 illustrations. The arrows indicate the direction of the view 



want to see the grocer's wagon go by; he 

 does not like city sights, sounds and 

 dust. His idea of home is a little 

 isolated kingdom in which peace and 

 beauty and greenery and flowers abound. 

 He likes a small house and a big 

 garden. His house is his castle and 

 his garden is his outdoor living-room. 

 Both are private. And therefore he plants 

 all around his place a belt of trees and tall 

 shrubs such as you see in Fig. 2. For 



206 



he wants to shut out every unsightly and 

 commonplace object and produce an atmos- 

 phere that is full of poetry and sentiment. 

 How very different from the American 

 way of leaving the front yard open to the 

 public, and exposing even the back yard 

 to the public gaze! I do not ask every 

 American to put a wall around his front 

 yard, but if every American had a high 

 wall around his back yard I believe that 

 home life would be the better for it. 

 The third principle which I want you 

 to get from the Paine garden is bringing 

 in the off scape. It is dangerous to allow 

 any break in your shelter belt, because 

 some one may put a pig sty there, but 

 wherever it is safe to do so you should 

 try to bring into your daily life the most 

 beautiful objects in the distance. It 

 pays to scour the neighborhood for a 

 church spire, ivy-mantled tower, lone 

 pine, bit of water, or serene old farmhouse, 

 even if they can be seen only from a single 

 window or a remote nook in the garden. 

 Fig. 2 shows how beautifully Mr. and Mrs. 

 Paine have brought into their garden a 

 glimpse of the real country, with its fields, 

 meadows, woods and gentle hills. The 

 artistic thing to do is to frame such vistas 

 with trees. And in a small garden broad, 

 panoramic vistas are not appropriate. It 

 is better to make many little pictures. 

 The big picture is not 

 lost, for you cannot escape 

 it when you go away from 

 home. But home is on a 

 small scale; the garden 

 looks better through dia- 

 mond panes than big 

 squares; and the land- 

 scape is more alluring 

 when glimpsed through 

 trees or beneath a vine- 

 clad arbor than when seen 

 in toto. The sweeping 

 view does not have your 

 personality in it; the 

 glimpses do, and they 

 are full of home feeling. 

 The fourth principle 

 which every one can get 

 from the Paine place 

 and apply to his own is 

 that the garden ought to 

 be an outdoor living-room 

 — not a place for show. Too many 

 American gardens are comprehended at 

 a glance — mere checkerboards with- 

 out height or sky line. The Paines 

 have at least five outdoor living-rooms, 

 each of which is hidden from the 

 other by a hedge, or wall of shrubbery, so 

 that one's appetite for each successive 

 feature is quickened by contrast with the 

 preceding. The first outdoor Living-room 

 is the grassy space behind the house which 





