A FENCE IN CHARACTER WITH THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE 
The material and design of the dwelling are of prime importance in determining the type of enclosing wall to be used and this is equally true when 
selecting plants for a hedge, particularly in the smaller gardens whose boundaries lie near. Home of Mr. Clarence Dillon at Rye, New York 
WALLS AND HEDGES 
TO FRAME THE GARDEN 
ARTHUR W. COLTON 
Creating Sequestered Spots on Even the Smallest Place—Walls as 
an Architectural Feature—Some Half-dozen Happy Hedge Plants 
Editor’s Note. With a naturally philosophical tilt of mind, Mr. Colton gives always something 
more stimulating than mere surface facts and the thoughtful reader who missed his “The House that 
Was Built for a Garden” and the series on “Decorative Ironwork,” written in collaboration with Mrs. 
Colton, will find it worth while to turn back to previous issues in which these articles appeared. 
PJP^VERY enclosing fence, or wall, or hedge, has two func- 
tions. It shuts out the outsiders and keeps together 
jfW j the group within. It defends against intrusion and 
HHSHS emphasizes the unity of whatever it encloses. On the 
one side it keeps the cow out of the garden, and on the other it 
frames the garden. By reason of its outward facing guardian¬ 
ship, the inhabitant feels safe; by reason of its inward facing 
intimacy, he feels sequestered. 
The history of enclosures epitomizes a large part of human, 
or at least of social history. Early enclosure is all practical— 
to keep out the wild beast and keep in the tame, or to mark the 
line of possession between the mine and the not mine. Its first 
value is probably physical defense; but as soon as a claim to 
land, or the use of land, has arisen, there arises the “landmark'’ 
to announce the claim and denote its limits. “Cursed be he 
who removeth his neighbor’s landmarks” is a statement of old 
Syrian land law in the emphatic style of Israel, an unsubstantial 
barrier of imprecation. It seems that people staked claims— 
they used stones for that purpose in Arabia Petra—and other 
people jumped them. The claims usually centred around 
water rights. 
The stone walls of New Elngland rose largely in solution of the 
problem of what to do with the stones in fields that seemed to 
have more stones than soil in their composition. The zigzag 
fences meant that timber was plentiful and nails scarce. The 
early settlers in a forested country sometimes fence their fields 
with the uprooted stumps. Those weird, but scarcely beautiful 
stump fences can still be seen in northeastern and some western 
states, their scrawny roots in petrified gesticulation. The 
hedgerows of southern England mean that stones long ago 
ceased to be a problem in that time-mellowed land, and timber 
ceased to be plentiful, whereas shrubs grow thickly there be¬ 
cause of the wet mild air from the Gulf Stream. Woven wire 
fences come inevitably in an age of iron and machinery; and be¬ 
fore one has decided that they are inevitably and by nature 
unprofitable to beauty, it may be profitable to plant vines along 
79 
