My Garden in Gloucester 
Cecilia Beaux 
Strictly speaking, I have no garden at all, just a triangular piece 
of wooded land, an acre and a half in extent, which Hes on the 
eastern shore of Gloucester Harbor. But there are two things for 
which I am very thankful: the land slopes down toward the sunset — 
toward Spain — over the Harbor, and the morning sun filters through 
thick branches on the east. 
From the highest point of a ledge of rocks that trends downward 
toward the harbor, the sea, not half a mile away, is visible through 
tupelo trees. In fact, at least half the triangle, on its broadest side, is 
a forest-primeval of tupelo, high blueberry, clethora, bay and ilex, 
often grown over by a thick entanglement of cat-briar, so that the 
paths that give its name to the place literally have green walls, clipped, 
often meeting overhead, but not concealing the firm, twisted, old, 
gray, interlacing boughs in which there are many nests hidden. In 
the early weeks of Spring, the chorus begins with one timid note, soon 
after, two, and continues until the sun is high. 
The boundary on the road is really the thick wood itself, but a 
woven wattle of cedar-posts and strips fortifies it impenetrably, 
except where a small gate between the two largest trees opens upon 
the path or "alley" that terminates at the low door of the small white 
house, which is invisible from the road. 
The path hardly seems to end under the trelUs of the eastern door, 
for another door on the west permits the eye a sudden vision of a 
schooner sail passing on the harbor against the purple western shore, 
and in August the evening sun shoots a beam straight through the 
house, like a gold needle, and one finds splashes of deep orange upon 
gray trunks and branches far in the wood. 
I have never planted anything in the wood but ferns, and as some 
of the ground is swampy they do extremely well and look particularly 
at home bending over the mossy stone edge of an oval pool in a little 
glade. In Autumn this pool is intensely black, and when I pay it a 
morning visit, I often find its glassy surface flecked with the scarlet 
and gold fallen leaves from the tupelos around it. 
A double loggia of whitewashed brick arches unites the house with 
the high ledge of rock, and through this loggia and an arched doorway, 
one can pass to the west; to a brick paved terrace; to a path leading 
down by lawn and cedar clumps to the harbor and beach; or by another 
rocky path to the, studio, which is white, like the house, and covered 
with vines. 
An upper terrace, reached by a flight of cement steps, lies along the 
top of the ledge, on a level with the second story and here, from the 
little tea-house loggia, at the far end of the terrace, one may look out 
