House and Garden 
PLAN OF THE ESTATE 
of Mt. Desert, with its great amount of damp¬ 
ness and sun, a garden was developed that has 
shown itself worthy of much approval, more 
than could have been anticipated in its first 
summer. The photographs, from which the 
illustrations were made, were taken in the 
second summer and will serve to show how 
much has been accomplished. 
To plan an interesting setting for an exist¬ 
ing house, which had no charm of its own save 
the fact that it was placed upon the top of the 
highest point of ground at Bar Harbor with 
an unsurpassed view of sea and mountains, 
but with no trees in the immediate vicinity 
of the house; this was the problem. It 
should be pointed out, as a detail of peculiar 
interest, that the trees shown near the house 
in the plan were transplanted from the nearby 
hills which are heavily wooded with a rich 
growth of graceful, hardy pines and spruces. 
The transportation of some of them seemed 
to our urban sense worthy of photographs, 
although the Maine lumbermen who moved 
these trees considered it only one more of 
the whims of the city people. Those which 
are shown in the illustrations are some of the 
smaller trees that were brought to the site 
on sledges; one of the largest of the trees 
moved was about fifty feet in height and was 
carried over a mile on big hard-pine timbers 
on rollers, as a house is moved. These were 
all transplanted with a frozen “ball” of 
earth about the roots to protect them, and the 
biggest tree weighed between thirty-five and 
forty tons. 
After a careful study of the situation it 
was seen that the best solution of this garden 
problem lay in a picturesque treatment, 
trying as far as possible to keep the forms 
used symmetrical. The forecourt was the 
first thing decided upon and was indeed forced 
by the topography; for the drop from this 
to the two roadways was, in the one case, 
about fifteen feet in a distance of one hundred 
to Norman Road, and in the other, about forty- 
live feet in a distance of three hundred feet to 
Highbrook Road, which is the main entrance 
to the estate as one drives up from the town. 
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