The Naturalistic Arrangement of a City Property 
TRANSPORTING THE FOREST WILDERNESS INTO THE HEART OF A CITY—HOW PATHS SOLVED THE 
PROBLEM OF AN UNUSUAL SHAPED LOT—AN EFFECTIVE TREATMENT OF SHRUBS TO MAINTAIN 
PRIVACY — ALLING S. DE FOREST, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 
Elsa Reii m a n n 
V ISUALIZE a lot with 130' frontage and 500' depth, 
facing the principal residential streets of a city, and you 
grasp the interesting problem that confronted the landscape archi¬ 
tect who would transport thither a forest wilderness. 
Flower borders flank either side of the walk to the front door 
and edge the entire width of the terrace in front of the house, 
making a bright, cheerful approach and enlivening the otherwise 
simple front lawn. 
Back of the house is a wonderful south lawn, tree, shrub and 
flower-girdled. At its northern end stands the house in the deep 
shadow of a great spreading hickory tree; at the southern end 
a rustic lawn house is half hidden in the shrubbery. Between 
lies this long, delightful, sunny grass space, well-kept and well- 
ordered, as is fitting in the immediate vicinity of the house. 
Behind it the narcissus lawn, which is much smaller in area, more 
closely confined and wilder in appearance. Narcissus are natu¬ 
ralized in the grass, and because the lawn cannot be mown until 
after the leaves have died down, it is a less well-kept space. 
Tucked away in one corner beside the narcissus lawn is the wild 
garden. 
South lawn, narcissus lawn and wild garden are separated one 
Quite the most formal touch in this intimately informal garden is the shrubbery- 
bordered brick path leading around to the rear of the house 
from another by shrubbery and tree enclosures, but are con¬ 
nected by curving paths. In order to develop a path of pleasing, 
easy flowing curves, appropriate in an informal design, consider¬ 
able space is needed. When such curves are attempted on small 
properties they all too often become meaningless and ugly wrig¬ 
gles. The path starts at the house and winds along the side of 
the south lawn. A branch path swings in a wide curve to the 
lawn house and the main path continues in a diagonal across the 
property to a gate at the southwest corner. This path affords 
an easy short cut from the house to a street on which the car 
line is located. It gives a pleasant opportunity for the use of the 
property in arranging it to accommodate this daily travel. A 
grass path with stepping-stones branches off the main walk, com¬ 
pletes the circuit around the narcissus lawn and makes an extra 
loop around the wild garden. 
On one side of the south lawn are the drive, service court and 
garage. They have been put there to be near the kitchen and 
out of the way and out of the view of living-room windows and 
the porches. This seems such a logical arrangement that it is 
difficult to understand the possibility of any other, and yet, in 
the scheme arranged by the architect of the house before the 
Although practically isolated by trees and shrubbery, the south lawn, wild garden 
and narcissus lawn are effectually tied together by winding paths 
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