308 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
September, 1912 
The entrance front of ““Meadow Court,”’ 
the beautiful country home of Mrs. Charles S. 
Guthrie, at New London, Connecticut 
‘Meadow Court” 
By Henry Stuyvesant Savage 
moq\| HERE are few country homes in America 
more attractively situated than ‘‘Meadow 
Court,” the property of Mrs. Charles S. 
Guthrie, at New London, Connecticut, of 
which Mr. William Emerson, of Boston, 
was the architect. 
The house faces Long Island Sound, commanding a 
superb view, and one approaches the shore by a path and 
a roadway that lead through a meadow of some six acres. 
In the center of this is a beautiful natural lily-pond, which 
is starred with fragrant 
water-lilies throughout their 
season. Everywhere blooms 
an abundance of wild flow- 
ers, and from the time of the 
Wild Roses of June to the 
Asters and Golden-rod of 
late Autumn, this meadow, 
which suggested to the own- 
er a name for the estate, is a 
riot of lovely color, a superb 
garden of Nature’s own 
planting rivaling the man- 
made gardens elsewhere on 
the estate. 
‘Meadow Court” has its 
own strip of beach, and dock, 
boathouse and _ bathhouse, 
reached by the wilderness 
The ivy-framed arches of the porch at Meadow Court 
walk referred to above. Indeed, American home-builders 
are coming more and more to realize that when Nature 
has been generous in her gifts of landscape features, ponds, 
trees, vines, shrubs, rocks, wild flowers (even though they 
may be but distant echos of the forest primeval), the 
ground of an estate will be far more attractive if planned 
and laid out in accord with these natural features instead of 
being sacrificed to formal arrangements, ingenious though 
these latter may be. Happily, ‘Meadow Court’ has pre- 
served to the land that surrounds it all the delightful fea- 
tures that makes a tramp 
through the woods an in- 
comparable pleasure. The 
house itself occupies the cen- 
ter of the estate, and the flat 
area through which it is ap- 
proached by the drive from 
the roadway is beautifully 
laid out with velvety lawns, 
hardy borders, Rose gar- 
dens, and beds of beautiful 
blooming plants, many of 
which, as danger of frost ap- 
pears, are removed to the 
spacious greenhouses. 
The greenhouses of 
‘‘Meadow Court” are one 
of the most interesting ad- 
juncts to the estate, reached 
