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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



December, 1905 



A Sequestered Walk among Tall Young Trees near the Mansion 



seems to lead that way by a short cut. Down this path are 

 stopping places in the shape of open platforms that are in 

 the nature of gateways, carrying classic roofs on columns, 

 whose Ionic capitals and drums are of terra cotta, covered 

 platforms fenced about with a simple Greek screenwork and 

 for the leisurely provided with a bench and a bit of sculpture 

 to look at. Thus does one part from that wilder and 

 more natural portion of a garden that Lord Verulam de- 

 mands as an offset to the primness of his day, and come, by 

 steps and degrees, to the more ordered and 

 formal precincts given up to the rose. On 

 the well shaved greensward are great dec- 

 orated pots of flowers and shrubs aligned 

 on both sides of the graveled path. It is 

 not until one has turned the corner, how- 

 ever, that one sees the terraces that over- 

 look the rose garden. Backed by a grove 

 of tall young poplars a pergola extends 

 from north to south its fluted Ionic col- 

 umns and open rafters clambered over by 

 crimson ramblers. Marble short flights of 

 stairs descend to a second terrace edged 

 with the same stone, broad pots standing 

 on the low piers to carry slender green 

 cones of cedars. Out of this coping wall 

 juts, in the center, a semicircular bay of 

 rough-faced stone with balustrade, a kind 

 of observation point from which one can 

 examine the beds of roses down below. On 

 the Greco-Roman table in this bay lies a 

 sun dial, carefully designed for the latitude 

 of " Yaddo," and one of the most perfect 

 of its kind. Draw up a Pompeian chair, 

 lean your elbow on the marble slab, inhale 

 the myriad perfumes from the roses, and, 

 taking no thought of time's finger on the 



dial in front of you, gaze off into the distance and try to 

 follow along the low horizon line the faint undulations of 

 the Green Mountains and the Hoosac Range. 



You will be sure to turn involuntarily at last to the 

 great pine tree, with its upward trending branches, that 

 tells in its structure so plainly of a vanished forest. Near 

 it, and against the belt of young woodland, is an exedra 

 shining white, which invites one, especially in the late 

 afternoon, to sit and listen to the sound of voices in the 

 last minstrel pine. 



With its pine and its pergola and its sun dial and its 

 roses, all this garden needs is a nightingale or two — 

 though the brown thrasher, hermit thrush and catbird 

 are pretty good substitutes. 



Certainly it is charming to move about these formal 

 walks where rare roses are carefully nursed against sup- 

 ports and shielded so far as possible from slug and bug, 

 from scorching and freezing. The white severe stair- 

 ways climb the green slopes, presided over, it may be, 

 by Mercury and Diana. The potted evergreens raise 

 their graceful spires above the coping stones, and, farther 

 back, the columns of the pergola gleam between the riot 

 of green and red of the climbing roses. Here, among the 

 standard plants, which are marshaled in formal squads 

 and platoons, in companies and regiments, thousands and 

 thousands of them properly pruned, trimmed, set up and 

 aligned, there lies a small fountain. The big fountain is 

 not in the rose garden at all, but forms the chief high- 

 light in the green map that lies before one's eyes when 

 standing on the terrace of the house. To reach it one 

 passes an ornamental gateway in the hedge that bounds 

 the rose garden to the north and finds oneself on the 

 big lawn that stretches up to the house without a break. 

 It is a small lake of a fountain, suitable for gold fish 

 and carp, set on the smooth grass and surrounded on two 

 sides at a respectful distance by young woodlands, which in 

 their turn conceal a brook of many pools and little falls and 

 nooks full of iris and wild swamp flowers, the outlet of 

 the string of four lakelets spoken of above. The group 

 in the big fountain is one of sleepy Naiads teased by a Cupid; 

 one has risen and stretches her arms lazily in the veil of drops 

 carried over her from the jets of water; the other is still 



An Arch of Massive Stones Connects Two of the Small Lakes 



