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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



March, 19 13 



The lily pond is one of the most carefully designed features in the garden here described 



The Story of My Garden 



By T. F. Spangler 



HEN the pioneers from New England in 

 the first decade of the nineteenth century 

 settled in Ohio, on the Muskingum River, 

 and founded the village of Putnam, named 

 for the famous Revolutionary soldier, Gen- 

 eral Israel Putnam, their new settlement 



clustered beneath the sheltering wooded hills 

 and stretched along the banks of that pic- 

 turesque stream. The town, later the city, of 

 Zanesville, on the opposite bank of the river 

 gradually grew until reaching across the stream 

 it absorbed the old village of Putnam, and with 

 its manufacturing plants, warehouses and rail- 

 roads, occupied the once beautiful river sides 

 until only one stretch of the river bank on the 

 south of Putnam side remained unoccupied and 

 unused except to become a common dumping 

 ground. This low land, a hundred and fifty 

 feet wide lay some twenty-five feet below the 

 avenue, and the annual freshets of the river 

 covered the debris with a charitable mantle of 

 sand. The title to this land belonged to 

 citizens, whose homes across the avenue faced 

 the river, but they gave little heed to their 



possessions on the river side of the avenue, and only retained 

 the title to prevent obstructions to their outlook. This 

 condition continued until the writer chanced to purchase a 

 residence property on this avenue which carried with its title 

 a portion of this river front. Later was conceived the idea 

 of filling in this low ground and of constructing a garden 

 thereon. The excavations for the foundations 

 of new business houses, public buildings and 

 churches, just across the river, which buildings 

 at that time were rapidly replacing old struc- 

 tures, furnished a first-class material for filling 

 the low ground. Two convenient bridges over 

 the river made cartage an easy matter. This 

 dumping and filling continued for a space 

 of more than ten years, until over sixty- 

 five thousand loads of earth, stone and gravel, 

 averaging a cubic yard each, had filled the 

 former low places, including other purchases 

 of adjoining river side until leading to the 

 writer's acquiring a handsome plateau of land 

 of an average width of one-hundred and forty 

 feet, or nearly two acres, extending five hundred 

 and ten feet along the river. This frontage 

 Sundial was next well protected from the annual 



