PARK AND CEMETERY 
105 
IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATIONS 
CONDUCTED BY 
MRS. FRANCES COPLEY SEAVEY. 
— 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF SMALL HOME GROUNDS. 
(Paper read by Mrs. Frances Copley Seavey at the Buffalo Con- 
vention of the American Park and Outdoor Art Association.) 
Much has been said and more has been written of 
the various phases of landscape planting, but, after all, 
the nucleus of the whole matter, the really important 
part of outdoor art, is that home grounds shall be 
pictures. If each 1 householder in this broad land 
would convert his or her home plot into something that 
a painter would willingly transfer to canvas, we should 
live and move in picture galleries, outdoor art organ- 
izations might go out of commission, and the problem 
of leaving the world more beautiful than we found it 
would be solved. 
The earnest and enthusiastic Secretary of this As- 
sociation has given me to understand that during the 
next fifteen minutes I am to make a distinct and last- 
ing impression on your minds. From my point of 
view this looks like a proposition of fairly respectable 
dimensions, and I should quail before the undertak- 
ing, were it not that the nature of the impression is 
definitely outlined, that its character appeals to- me, 
and that I know it must appeal quite as strongly to 
you. 
Every American citizen loves his family and every 
American citizen loves his home. Therein lies our na- 
tional salvation. The homes are the units, and the 
whole cannot be greater than its parts. If the highest 
standards are maintained in the homes, the United 
States will retain her present prosperity, power and 
prestige. To maintain those standards it is essential 
that a high plane of life shall prevail in the homes 
of the masses. Nothing is more directly conducive to 
that end than the perpetuation of that passionate love 
of home which characterizes the bulk of the popula- 
tion ; and nothing tends to more directly foster that 
love than making hornles attractive — attractive in at- 
mosphere and attractive to the eye. Boys and girls 
are so largely influenced by the environment of child- 
hood that the appearance of the interior and of the 
exterior of every home, no matter how humble, is a 
matter of paramount importance to the individual, to 
the family, to the community, to the state, and to the 
nation. 
To crystallize generalities into concrete form we will 
assume that average American home grounds approxi- 
mate a frontage of from fifty to sixty feet. What are 
the possibilities for beauty on this comparatively re- 
stricted space? They are undeniably sufficient to ena- 
ble the occupants of every such home to create a pic- 
ture. 
Composition is the fundamental necessity in a land- 
scape painting ; it is no less essential in making an act- 
ual landscape. In the latter case, however, this pre- 
liminary work is called design, and on the excellence of 
the design, or plan, depends the perfection of the fin- 
ished picture. The basic elements of such design as 
applied to small home grounds have been formulated 
by Prof. Bailey as the “open center and massed sides.” 
That is, the dwelling is the central idea, and the plant- 
ing should be designed to form its foreground, its 
background, its frame and its setting. The “open cen- 
ter" is represented by the foreground of greensward, 
the lawn, which should be cut up as little as possible 
by walks ; a driveway within such narrow confines is 
a misfortune ! The background and frame consist of 
masses of foliage and must be consistently and con- 
tinuously considered and treated as masses of foliage. 
The individual plants that enter into their composition 
are, from the smallest to the largest, to be chosen for 
their fitness as factors in producing the desired effect 
of the whole. 
When you go home strong in the determination to 
dig up everything on the place and set it somewhere 
else as a part of the frame of your particular picture 
of home and comfort, don’t touch a thing until you 
have thought out or secured a planting scheme exactly 
fitted to your requirements. With your plan clearly in 
mind, and possibly sketched on paper for reference 
purposes, place no tree, shrub, vine or plant except 
as it aids in the development of your scheme. On a 
lot fifty or sixty feet in width there will be a distinct 
reason for every feature of the planting. At some 
points the mass of boundary vegetation must be dense, 
wide and high to shut off unpleasant scenes or objects, 
to serve as a windbreak, or to insure seclusion ; at 
others it must be low to open up pleasing views. This 
irregularity of sky line and of the width of the border 
plantations also add greatlv to their intrinsic beauty. 
It may be that you will find it expedient to create fea- 
tures of interest to be seen from certain windows or 
porches ; it is probable that you will build a growing 
screen to shield the drying ground, the poultry yard, 
and various outbuildings, and perhaps another to shel- 
ter the approach to the rear door from the view of 
those who frequent the open-air lounging place where 
the hammock swings invitingly and the steamer chair 
extends comforting arms. You will want shade trees, 
especially in the rear, where they will also serve as the 
background for the house ; by the steps and in other 
angles next to the building, attractive shrubs must be 
grouped and, springing from them, vines on the walls. 
These plantations form what I have distinguished as 
the “setting” for the house itself. Their effect is to 
wed the dwelling to its site and prevent the inconse- 
quent, casual air of its having been accidently dropped 
and forgotten — like a stray box in the park. 
