October, 1912 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
223 
just behind the stone wall to the left of my roadside garden 
rose a single white pine, bifurcated near the ground as pines so 
often are when they stand alone, and extending wide lateral 
branches. One of these branches hung over the wall like the 
binding line of a Japanese design, and beneath it, two miles dis¬ 
tant across a corn field and the green-spired expanse of a young 
hemlock wood, rose the solid battlement of Monument Mountain, 
proud with its banners of autumn, perfectly framed by the pine 
above and the wide garden of roadside asters below. The corn 
was stacked in the fore- 
ground field and 
orange pumpkins 
glowed against the 
brown soil. The odor 
of autumn was in the 
air, the smell of fallen 
leaves and garnered 
corn. I put my pipe in 
mv pocket and sat 
down on the wall. 
Presumably, by the 
time I had looked and 
sniffed my fill, my fat 
friends in their motor, 
who were “seeing the 
Berkshires,” had pass¬ 
ed under the crags of 
Monument, where the 
paper mills huddle, and 
were tearing along be¬ 
side the trolley track on 
their way to Great Bar¬ 
rington and lunch. It 
was little enough of the 
true Berkshires they 
had seen, or ever would 
see—the true charm of 
our hills and valleys 
lying in these lovely 
pictures which every¬ 
where abound, under 
the limb of a pi n e, 
down the vista of a 
country road, between 
the shaggy trunks of 
the sugar maples, or 
across green meadows 
to the silvery willows 
and the winding river ; 
pictures which are only 
to be had, however, for 
a little searching and 
experiment, and sa¬ 
vored at leisure and in 
quiet. Of the roadside gardens they could know less than noth¬ 
ing, for these fairest jewels of old New England lie too close un¬ 
der their rushing wheels, and demand beside for their savoring a 
certain meekness and delicafv of spirit, a child-like content to 
roam slowly in small spaces and find beauty and happiness in the 
common things of the wayside. One of the greatest of American 
artists, and one of the gentlest and sweetest of men, has planted 
the roadside before his house with goldenrod, though formal 
terraces and marble gates and all exotic blooms were at his com¬ 
mand. I like to read a symbol of his greatness in those careless 
drifts of gold, and in the sturdy apple trees which stand beyond 
them up the slope to his spacious dwelling. 
Indeed, there is many a symbol to be found, and many a lesson 
read, in our American roadside gardens, alike for the elevation 
of our spirit and the improvement of our garden craft. One of 
the quaintest of misconceptions in our gardening is the too fre¬ 
quent attempt to reproduce a Japanese effect on an estate in Long 
Island or Westchester or New England. The first principle of 
Japanese gardening, underlying even its religious formalism, is 
the principle of landscape reproduction. The Japanese garden, 
though it be made in a pie plate, must reproduce a native land¬ 
scape of Japan. The Japanese art of dwarfing trees, of course, is 
an outcome of necessity, 
to maintain the propor¬ 
tions of Nature. Such 
flowers, even, as are 
found in the Japanese 
garden are there not for 
their own sakes, but be¬ 
cause they belong to the 
landscape. The true 
Japanese garden in 
America, t h e n, would 
contain no pergolas and 
moon bridg'es and stone 
lanterns and wistaria. It 
would much more prop¬ 
erly contain a bit of old 
road winding between 
gray walls fringed with 
clematis and asters into 
the shadow of the pines 
or the emerald shimmer 
of the birch woods. Over 
its water feature would 
hang the purple of wild 
grapes; and water lilies,, 
not lotos, would nod on 
the ripples. The “tea 
house’’ would be a 
square, mouse - gray¬ 
dwelling, reproduced to 
scale, with great central 
chimney and lean-to roof 
behind, the type which 
all of us associate with; 
our fairest and most 
characteristic country- 
landscapes. Against the 
weathered clapboards of 
this house the holly¬ 
hocks would nod, and in 
spring its gray would be 
exquisite amid the burst¬ 
ing pink of the orchard. 
Such would be the 
true Japanese garden in 
America. Does one exist? Our architects, at the instigation of 
our “captains of industry,” go gleefully forth and crown a New 
England hilltop with an Italian villa, planting Lombardy pop¬ 
lars where oak and pine and maple grew, to say nothing of the 
stately elm. They go into a tract of woods, hew out an opening,, 
and erect a French Renaissance chateau of imported marble, 
with bayr trees on the terraces, lotos in the fountain pool, and 
rare, exotic blooms in a thousand formal beds where marble- 
statues stand and seem ashamed of their nakedness. To me, at 
least, such estates and gardens are the Twentieth Century equiva¬ 
lent of the French-roofed houses with a tower at one corner and 
great lawns sloping up broken by a huge ugly bed of canna and 
an iron deer, which were the acme of taste in our mid-Victorian 
Not a few Nature lovers have planted the wild asters and the golden rod beyond their 
fences and made an effect incomparable with the flat look of shaven lawn or doc¬ 
tored hedge 
