February, 1912 
Yellow day lilies acquired from a tumble- 
down house bordered the long path 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
Four cedar posts and bean poles were the 
basis of the picturesque pergola entrance 
25 
At the foot of the terrace phlox and larkspur 
grew in careless profusion 
the back, where it adjoins the road, lies several feet below the 
street level. At the other end the lot runs off into a field, which 
is itself a beautiful garden in summer, knee-deep in grasses and 
wild flowers. On either side extends the peach orchard, of 
which our own trees are a part. In the orchard also, grow 
grasses and wild flowers of all kinds, from the earliest violets to 
the golden rod and Michaelmas daisies that defy the frost. We 
felt that we must discover for our own garden a treatment which 
should in no way clash with the beauty of the natural garden 
surrounding us. There must be, we felt, no artificiality, no 
straining for effect, nothing to mark with a sharp dividing line 
the place where cultivation ceased and the wild growth began. 
We wanted our garden to be a beautiful whole, but we wanted 
it just as much to be an integral part of a beautiful landscape. 
Our house was built with its back to the street, so that the 
front porch might command a wonderful view of rolling country. 
We decided to do very little planting at the front of the house. 
Our eyes, we felt, would always be so busy with that lovely dis¬ 
tant landscape that there would be few glances to spare for a 
foreground, no matter what flowers grew there. Our real gar¬ 
den must go at the back of the house where we could appreciate it. 
We were very busy all through INIarch, discussing, arguing, 
frequently disagreeing, in our efforts to work our plans. We 
felt well repaid for this trouble, however, when the actual work 
began, for the plans on paper proved invaluable. We approached 
our garden-making with a definite idea of what the place as a 
whole was to look like, and I am sure the results are much better 
than if our beds had been dug and our planting done more or less 
haphazard. Of course there were many changes in the plans. 
As we worked, one thing would suggest another, and we find 
now that things have been done that we didn’t intend to do, and 
things left undone that we did intend to do. Still, these were 
only details, and the original plan as a whole has been adhered to. 
The first real work was the setting out of the privet hedge, 
which was done the first week in April. We had bought 325 two- 
year-old plants, and the Amateur Gardener planted them eight 
inches apart, to form a hedge on each side of the path as far as 
the kitchen door. There were enough plants left to extend along 
the outside of the path as far as the front porch. The plants 
(Continued on page 49) 
Two railroad ties as 
tl 
between rough field stone led 
level of the garden 
The petunia seedlings proved wonderfully prolific and lent a rich color 
to the beds with their purplish bloom 
