By Fletcher Steele 
Landscape Architect, Massachusetts 
Section along the line A B shown on the general plan (blueprint on facing page, looking from the southeast boundary) 
The Landscaping of 
Peridot 
AN IMAGINARY LAYOUT PROPOSITION WHICH 
TYPIFYS THE KINDS OF SERVICE THAT THE 
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 
RENDERS— HOW HE GOES TO 
E VERY time I saw Littlefield last 
Winter, he was growling about the 
evils of city life; so I was not sur- 
prised to get the following letter. 
Dear Russell: 
We have bought some land in Chestnut Hill and 
intend to build at once. You have bored me so 
often about people waiting till after their house is 
built before they call in a landscape architect, that 
I write without delay. Come out with us Monday 
to look over the ground. 
Jared Hoar will be the architect. He will be 
out of town for a month, but we want you to work 
up a plan right away. 
Sincerely, 
Harrison Littlefield. 
I found that the lot included about two 
and a quarter acres of ground on a hillside, 
falling about twenty-four feet from east 
to west corners — a rectangle with the 
north corner cut out. 
An old lane with bordering stone wall 
and tall trees crossed the place at right 
angles with the street. Two large elms 
stood near the northeast boundary. East- 
ward there was a broad view over a pleasant 
valley, broken by an ugly mansard roof 
house in the foreground. In all other direc- 
tions the place was hemmed in by unsightly 
stables and houses. 
“Isn’t it splendid?” exclaimed Meriam, 
Littlefield’s handsome wife, looking out 
over the valley, with the enthusiasm of those 
who have just bought land. “ Did Harrison 
tell you how we found it? We were out 
walking and I lost my ring there by the 
wall. We sat down to look for it and soon 
decided to stay here always. So we’re 
going to call it, ‘Peridot’ for the old 
green stone it was so lucky to lose.” 
I thought that original and pretty. 
Then getting down to business I asked, 
“Is it to be a summer place?” 
“Not on your life,” answered Harri- 
son who speaks American fluently, 
“Winter too. You won’t find me caged 
up in town again.” 
Meriam had figured out their require- 
ments, and I soon had the following list: 
Sunny house, suitable for entertain- 
ing, with hall, “which you look through 
to the garden”; large drawing-room; 
dining-room and outdoor dining terrace; 
breakfast room; bookroom, “where I 
can put Harrison when he gets too 
abominable”; place for the small child- 
ren to play; tennis court; flower garden 
“with a pergola, — I think they’re 
sweet”; kitchen and cut flower garden; 
liberal service quarters, including a 
garage. 
There was a split in opinion about 
locating the garage. Meriam wanted it put 
in some distant corner as a “horrid, noisy, 
dirty place,” but Harrison would not hear 
of that. 
“It’s got to be near the house where I can 
get at it, if it goes in the middle of your 
flower beds. If you think I’m going to 
stumble all over this hill on cold, rainy 
nights after I put the car up, you’ve got 
another think coming.” 
The battle waxed until I insisted that it 
was up to the landscape architect to satisfy 
them both, somehow. 
“Haveyou fixeduponany definite amount 
to spend?” I asked. Littlefield said no. 
He wanted everything done “right,” but 
without extravagance. Meriam thought 
it curious that I then wanted to know how 
many outdoor men they expected to keep. 
But it was easy to show how unwise it would 
be to build gardens, etc., elaborate enough to 
need four men’s time, if they only wanted to 
keep one. Harrison finally decided on two, 
saying that he would rather pay out more 
Ttenn Screen m ShST Corner. 
Planting PIan afte:r. Sknrcw. 
on construction to begin with if it would 
reduce the permanent maintenance cost. 
While talking we wandered about and I 
took frequent notes of the topography, ex- 
posures, vegetation and outlook. 
“Just what do you do next in making 
the design?” Meriam has lively curiosity. 
“The next thing is to get an accurate 
survey. I shall have an engineer out here 
to make a map of the boundaries, topogra- 
phy and exact location of the trees, the good 
and bad outlooks and the soil conditions. 
Then I can start in to make an intelligent 
plan for development.” 
“ How will you and Jared work together? ” 
“Well, it’s a pity that he won’t be back 
this month. He ought to have been with 
us on the grounds to-day. It is always 
better to cooperate with the architect from 
the first, but I understand his work as 
we’ve done several things together. Since 
you want my preliminary plan for the 
grounds before he can get back, I shall 
rough out a floor plan for the house, on 
which the layout of the grounds usually 
depends. Later, he and I will go over the 
whole problem to work out the details.” 
A fortnight later I spent an evening with 
the Littlefields going over the proposed 
plans. The big library table was cleared of 
magazines and the blueprint spread out 
with a book on each corner to hold it flat, 
while we all leaned over it to examine and 
explain. 
“My, but it looks fancy,” was Meriam’s 
first observation. She looked rather 
pleased, but Harrison was non-com- 
mittal. “Tell us what it’s all about,” 
she said. “I’m sure I never could guess. 
Where is the street?” 
I showed her the street crossing the 
lower part of the plan; the stone wall, 
represented by a line of irregular shapes 
at right angles to the street, across the 
middle of the lot; the tennis court at 
the top of the hill, and the lowest place 
at the east corner (the upper left hand 
corner of the plan, when the page is 
turned so as to get the reading natur- 
ally), near where the mansard roof 
house broke into the valley view. 
Meantime Littlefield had been study- 
ing the layout and broke forth: 
“I’ll be jiggered, Russell. The way 
you’ve got it here, the house doesn’t 
face the street at all. It’s end on to 
the street, and kitchen end at that. 
What d’you think of that? ” disgustedly, 
“Kitchen on the street where every- 
body can see it instead of around be- 
hind somewhere out of sight.” 
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Detail planting plan for screen of trees to hide an adjoining house. 
Many such details as this will be necessary for the completed planting 
plans and are capable of infinite variation according to circumstances 
12 
