“UNDER HIS OWN 
VINE AND FIG TREE” 
LEWIS EDWIN THEISS 
The Productive Plant as a Landscape Feature. How to Make Your Home 
Plot Help Supply Material Needs While Also Gratifying Aesthetic Feeling 
AN Apple tree in bloom less lovely than a Catalpa? 
Fan a Blue Spruce excel a Japanese Plum for artistic 
Ww' e ff ec t? Does a Privet hedge compare in attractiveness 
WflOsI with a row of Currant bushes hung heavy with 
crimson fruit? 
Well then, why, when we set about beautifying our home 
plots, exclude these and similarly useful trees, shrubs, or plants 
from the list of available decorative landscape material, as 
has in the past been all too commonly done! Plant material of 
definite utility value not only can but should, I believe, be 
employed by the home builder because — outside the pence-and- 
pocket book considerations which in these days of decreased 
food production and high living costs make it a simple act of 
wisdom — it is in the last analysis actually better landscaping. 
It is better landscaping because a more complete expression 
of the essential spirit of home, and landscaping, to be good. 
must first of all further and reflect the meaning of the object 
which it frames. “Every man under his own vine and fig tree” 
— the ideal setting rooted in the far past and persisting through 
the centuries by virtue of its fundamental truth. 
An appeal for the use of productive plants in home planting 
might be based wholly on the ground of economy, and I believe 
that the economic conditions that lie immediately ahead of us 
will drive future home makers to the extensive planting of pro- 
ductive trees and shrubs; for at the rate the countryside is being 
depleted of workers there will soon be too few food raisers to 
supply the nation’s needs. A school girl very happily defined 
thrift as the management of one’s possessions so that they con- 
stantly increase in value. I believe in thrift. I believe that as 
a matter of thrift and common sense we ought to make every- 
thing we have productive, in one way or another, materially, 
aesthetically, or both if possible. 
FEATURING THE USEFUL IN THE PLANTING SCHEME 
The Hickory and the Apple as twin ornaments wisely retained by the owner when he set about beautifying his 
home plot. The light arbor of rough boughs seems quite in keeping with the simple rusticity of the scene 
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