House 
Vol. XI 
and Garden 
APRIL, 1907 No. 4 
To Paint the Landscape O’er 
To Find a New and Subtle Charm in Tree and Shrub Celebrated 
in Song and Story, in Music and in Rhyme 
By MARIE von TSCHUDI 
A NY one who had passed along the Far Hills, 
New Jersey, highroad less than seven years 
ago, would have many a surprise in store for 
him were he to return now, provided he was a lover 
of Nature, keen to recognize her varied beauties and 
quick to appreciate her forms and colors, for has not 
the poet said: 
“ To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language.” 
About a ten minutes’ drive from the Far Hills 
railroad station is “Overleigh,” the country home of 
Mr. John M. Dillon and his family, lawyer, artist 
and a writer of no little prominence, he has devoted 
much of his time to the cultivation of his land. 
His place, laid out and designed by himself, offers 
eloquent testimony to his skill and taste. For from 
a small and in no way different farm from those 
originally surrounding it, he has converted this 
former sandy hill and indifferently cultivated slope 
into a picture of loveliness most interesting. Nothing 
now remains of the original house, and with the 
exception of a few old trees, no tree, shrub or flower 
has been allowed to remain or been chosen and 
placed without first considering its beauty and 
relative value to the whole effect. 1 he two hundred 
and fifty acres are not laid out with any attempt at 
formal landscape gardening as perhaps Solomon, 
in his day and generation understood it nor according 
to the strict rules of French and Italian formal styles, 
< $ ' 
“OVERLEIGH” FROM THE LAWN 
Copyright, 1901, hy The John C. Winston Co. 
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