Starting with a viewpoint commanding the foothills and Adirondacks beyond, the garden worked itself out as a long central path, flanked by poplar 
trees, hardy borders and strips of lawn 
A Garden in the Foothills of the Adirondacks 
by Mary Llewellyn Gibson 
Photographs by the Author 
W HEN I decided to evolve a 
garden I was so well im¬ 
bued with William Morris’s sense of 
art from my winter’s reading that I 
selected a field from which the view 
of the hills, on and on, to the Adiron¬ 
dacks seemed to fulfil what he felt 
to be a situation for a garden. To 
him a garden was not a shut-in place 
but a retreat, from which as one 
looked abroad the vista gave prom¬ 
ises and thoughts suggestive of hope, 
ever reaching on beyond. That ap¬ 
pealed to me, so at this viewpoint I 
built my seat, a large rustic affair 
with projecting screens of cedar 
posts about seven feet high. As a 
background I transplanted four very 
large bushes of pink honeysuckle 
from the woods. 
From that my plan grew. I de¬ 
cided to make a straight path down 
the center a distance of one hundred 
and eighty feet, with a lawn on either 
side about ten feet wide and a hedge 
as an outside line. The hedge ques¬ 
tion was most puzzling, as in perspec¬ 
tive any ordinary hedge plant at such 
a distance, at least the size I could 
afford to buy, looked about the size 
of a geranium. Being an American, 
of course I had to have an immedi¬ 
ate effect, so I decided on trees—- 
Carolina poplars. They grow so 
rapidly, and then the summer wind 
when it gently blows their willing 
leaves has always been to me such a 
delightful sound. I put them in, the 
following spring, fifty on a side, 
about three feet apart. 
Rustic arches helped the vista down the long path, and an 
edging of field stones bounded the hardy border and 
kept the garden from washing out 
The garden is a tree-bordered rectangle 25 x 180 ft. 
A bird table is the center of interest near the sheltered 
seat at the viewpoint 
I knew unusual difficulties con¬ 
fronted me, as this potato patch 
that I had chosen was composed of 
clay soil and I could have no water 
supply. I prepared my borders, 
which were seventy feet long on 
each side, by digging down three 
feet and filling in with compost. 
As simplicity, I felt, must guide me 
in all I did, I decided it would be 
effective to edge the borders with 
field stones, which I proceeded to 
collect, selecting the most irregular 
shapes. They not only made an 
edging but kept the spring rains 
from washing away the hill. 
I could see as my garden grew 
that I must break that long plain 
look to the path. I built three dif¬ 
ferent arches of rustic cedar over 
the path, and at the end where I 
put the seat I built a bird table and 
planted trumpet vine around it. On 
this I keep a pan of water, which 
seems to attract the birds particu¬ 
larly well in our country. The beds 
around the bird table are filled in 
with clove pinks and white phlox. 
In spite of the rustic arches the path 
still lacked something to me. It 
was too symmetrical for an in¬ 
formal garden—it had no atmos¬ 
phere. It was not until I saw one 
day in front of a hardware store, 
an English crate for dishes, a big 
affair of slender branches with the 
bark on, that I saw fences and 
backgrounds galore. I immediate¬ 
ly bargained for that one at fifty 
(Continued on page 333) 
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