[24:652]

My Dear Whittredge. A few months ago when your Village Improvement Society was getting under way and while it yet lacked the momentum of practical operations, I was asked in consultation with you to advise some of the ladies concerned about matters which they then had under consideration. After such review as I was able to make of the local circumstances the advise which I had occasion to offer turned out to be almost entirely as to what should not be done. Otherwise, at least, it was simple and common-place, running in well beaten paths. In truth it has since weighed a little upon my mind that, stopping at the point where our conference adjourned, some might have been disposed to ask “Our local circumstances being what they are, what need for this new machinery of improvement?

The local circumstances to which I refer are in part these: that plans for [24:649] places of resort other than the streets were under commercial control and management and might best remain so; that the village had been improving with extraordinary rapidity, that it was in many respects in advance of villages which have acquired some reputation from their improvements and under existing arrangements had every prospect of continuing in a healthy and soundly economical course of improvement.

What under these circumstances, it might have been questioned, is the sense of asking two hundred ladies to band themselves together under the name of the Village Improvement Society—ladies most of whom have moved into the village within a few years, who have had little training in village affairs and whose habits [24:653–660] and tastes have been largely formed under conditions wholly impracticable for the village? Why should such funds as may be available for village improvement be drawn into new channels liable to cross, disturb or weaken those through which so much has been accomplished? Why should it be desired to supersede or overflow agencies which have not only been so far working well themselves but which correspond with those through which some of the most charming villages in the country have come to be what they are.

No confession of faith that may have been subscribed; no phraseology of agreement that may have been adopted will fully answer questions like these [133]and if this leaves the smallest room for suspicion of insincerity, cant, or fustian attached to the Society it should be searched without mercy.

Taking this view of the case and asking what solid base does the Society stand upon, it has occurred to me that however local and spontaneous the forming of it may have appeared to be, it is to suggest that beneath all that is plainly visible there may be some deep roots of a growing public sentiment.

This being possible let us consider it under the name of the village sentiment.

What has it to do with improvement? This term has come to have with us a distinct commercial usage referring to a class of operations by which property in lands and buildings is supposed to improve in exchangeable value. Improvements, in this sense, are made by individual property owners, by societies of property owners and by communities through their political servants. None of these are moved by the village sentiment. To none are the village improvement societies allied: upon none are they dependent. They owe little to the suggestions or to the efforts of men active in business improvement. They have tended to overflow and disconcert village politics rather than otherwise. They have somewhat emphatically, as a rule, put commercial and political ideas of improvement out of view. They have been formed more by women than by men, their methods have been womanly methods and women of comparatively secluded domestic habits have been of more weight in their counsels than those accustomed to be forward in public activities. The leading members have in most cases been mothers of families and under their lead younger women, boys and girls have been drawn into active cooperation.

These considerations all favor the thought that the village sentiment is largely a social and domestic sentiment.

Not to compare it in importance but only as a further clue to its character, we may recall the fact that twice when forces acting malignly upon our national character, forces to which wealth, fashion, political customs, even ecclesiastical customs lent constant and most powerful aid; twice when these forces were apparently of more irresistible strength than ever before, a wide spread sentiment in resistance to them first began to make itself manifest through the springing up of local societies, mainly of unknown and modest people, largely in each case of women and much in the manner that village improvement societies are now forming.

In our rich, fashionable, respectable religious society there is nothing now sustained, fostered, encouraged as drunken conviviality once was; as the perpetuation and spread of slavery once was. There is no heat of sentiment apparent under the name of Village Improvement corresponding to that of the early temperance societies and the early anti-slavery societies. Nevertheless there may be moving in cooler and more moderate volume a sentiment of protest and a disposition to offer a united resistance to malign tendencies in our social and domestic national life which takes something of this historic form.

I should like to avoid trying to define what this tendency may be. The [134]great forces and counter-forces of civilization are seldom clearly definable. I have an idea of it and I will call that idea the townward idea insignificant of what I vaguely have in my mind as the term may be. Not only insignificant, I reflect, but misleading; nevertheless as a rude instrument for want of a better let me tentatively use it. Only as, in a public discourse, as you may possibly recollect, more than twelve years ago I used the same word in a manner to include the village idea as opposed to that of rural domestic life it must be understood that I mean such an intensification of townwardness as we have seen for example in the progress of the building {out} in respect to the shell of domestic life in New York. Let us consider what this has come to.

New York has gained under our observation more than a thousand fold in wealth-producing power of steam and electricity, and, while we know that this gain is as yet one of means and forces rather than of actual product in improved human life, we know that in certain respects the gain has been great—perhaps ten, perhaps a hundred fold in certain forms of real property, as of churches, preachers; schools, teachers; in libraries, collections of art and of Science; in funds of charity and in funds of elevated entertainment. But what has been gained for domestic life—in wealth of home—as far as can be told by buildings? I will not take the tenement-house, nor that later development of it specially adapted to the temporary shelving of young couples under the name of the apartment house but that form of house “in a good neighborhood” that would be first offered to the father of a family able to pay a rent equal to half the salary of a college professor or double the average salary of rural clergymen and not disposed to pay more: It is not to be described so that it may be compared with a proper village house; it is almost as much like a ship or a mine, being but 15 feet wide (some only 12½) sixty, deep; sixty, long; with flight above flight of stair case to the number of six or seven; with no openings for light or air except at the stem and stern. Passing vehicles are liable at any moment to fill it with the din of a nail-mill; its outward prospect is limited by a high sombre wall, twenty yards away and this seen over dirty pavements. Can cultivation in art, can the utmost esthetic refinement ruling the utmost lavishness in decoration make such a thing as this congenial with domestic tastes? Is it not rather the fact that much display of ornament under such circumstances is apt to strike a healthy and unsophisticated taste as a little barbaric?

But to the children going out from these houses which are fair illustrations of townwardness if not of fully and generally established town character everywhere, what does the town offer for the cultivation of good domestic tastes, instincts and habits? Can a boy go out to school without seeing and hearing by the way much more that his mother would wish could be avoided than of what she would choose to come to him? Can a father be quite satisfied to let his daughter walk through the streets unattended? Can children look out the window without becoming familiar with forms of extravagant luxury in such contrast with extreme destitution, degradation and brutality as seldom fails to harden the heart and bring into contempt that perfectly sensible, logical and respectable principle [135]which was once well understood in America under the name of equality, though now seldom used but in extravagant caricature of that principle?

What then can village improvement be in distinction from the town-ward degradation of a village? It is the distinction of the idea of a village that we can associate with it, as we cannot with the idea of a town, the attribute of loveliness and homefulness. The terms lovely village, charming village do not come to us strangely.

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[24:662–63]

Is there not in the townward tendency of our habits, customs and manners; in our townward building, townward gardening, townward ideas of scenery, of beauty, of decoration, sentiments & morals, a danger threatening the rising generation adequate to account for a deep underworking impulse kindred to those forces which have twice saved our nation from wreck?

We may be able to recall, as Colonel Waring invites us to, the general aspect and character of Old Hadley, Deerfield or Farmington. If not we can hardly fail to have some picture in our minds of the villages of Mary Howitt, Miss Mitford, Mrs Gaskell {or Dickens} or Miss Thackery and if so we have ideas of a large class of graceful refining, wholesome, charming, humanizing, neighborly influences associated with the word village such as are wholly lost and wholly out of the question in towns as our towns are now being improved.

Let this distinctive quality be abstracted and add to the old village railroads, telegraphs, telephones, libraries, daily newspapers, public bakeries and laundries, macadamizing and concreting and all improved sanitary appliances; add what improvements you will like to the common, park, play and burying ground, and when it is done, the village will not be a whit more charming home like or neighborly. It will be less—Nay, you will have no village left. You will not even have a sub-urb, you will have only a small town. Add to and mix up with it all the contents of the finest garden and the largest conservatory in the world and you will only have got further & further away from the charming idea of a village.

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[24:723–24]

An echo of Col. Waring’s reflection is unavoidable: “The more we enjoy all that is excellent in the town the more we realize certain short-comings that would have been avoided under better social conditions.” What is called town imprvmt having come to this, what by distinction is village improvement?

Unquestionably there is much of old association with the word village that is far from pleasant—Narrow mindedness and bigotry, selfish insistence that all shall govern themselves by common theories of right and propriety; tyrannical social police; oriental submission to nuisances and habitual heathenish reference to Jupiter of the natural results of an indolent selfishness in public affairs. From all this the inconvenience and gloom of village life will sometimes have seemed [136]intolerable. But village improvement can no more mean an intensification of this inconvenience and gloom. It cannot {more} mean than an effort to turn a village into a town. Narrower and more compact, darker and more inconvenient houses, or the covering of spaces between houses with paving and flagging. The more a village has of all this the less of a village it is and it must be confessed that more abhorrent than the unimproved town, more abhorrent than the old village at its worst, is the mingling of the two in what the slang of the day calls a “one horse town”.

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[24:664–68]

What sort of improvement then is village improvement seen apart from town improvement? How is it to be set about? how secured? Who are to do the work, who is to employ them and how are they to be paid?

Mainly the women are to do the work; they are to employ their children and their domestic servants; they are to be paid in the health and pleasure each obtains in her own share of the work and the most important part of the work is the carrying of the best spirit and method of ordinary house decoration and house-keeping a little outside the house door. How this is to be done I may partly show later but here I assert, knowing that every one well informed on the subject, will at once confirm my assertion that it has been precisely in this way that the greater part of the work has been done which has ever made villages attractive; which has ever made then an improvement on the least attractive of towns.

I urge the more distinctly & emphatically that this must be considered the central idea of village improvement, and that the impulse and purpose to realize this idea must be the cornerstone of the Village Improvement Society, because as I have shown in my review of the circumstances, there is not any such work pressing to be done in your village as it is reported has been first taken up and accomplished with a hurrah in some other villages. There is nothing there that should distract attention from it and we may be sure that in the long run it will in every village be the most important improvement work. It is modest, quiet, home-work as precisely congenial to every gentlewoman living under proper village conditions as any of those forms of decorative art that have lately come in vogue and which unfortunately have so far, also, become matters of fashion and fanaticism, of quackery and cant as to provoke the persecution of ridicule and buffoonery. Because this {has been} so it is best to keep in mind what lies at the bottom of it.

At the bottom of all good decorative art there is unquestionably a close, tender and loving appreciation of the beauty which in one form or another Nature is everywhere ready to offer us. Beauty such as poor women, even women who earn their living by hard manual labor have often seen to secure under a cottage window, directed by no purpose but their own enjoyment. Their own enjoyment directly in the beauty obtained and their own enjoyment in the pleasure given by this beauty to their households and their neighbors.

[137]

May it not possibly be of as much value to a boy or a girl to have been brought up in familiarity with such unambitious and frugal village decorations; to be familiar with them and with the simple processes by which they are attained, as to have lived in houses replete with forms of beauty selected by others, with however much art selected, idealized, combined and represented?

Let us have both in our village life if we can but let us not imagine that to have been richly educated in the beauty indoors of household art is a greatly more fortunate thing than to have had the beauty of outdoor household nature for our daily bread.

The nurture of proper village tastes and habits, in reasonable independence of modern town fashions, and the cultivation of original study and skill in out of door household art {is desirable}, first in its own membership and then through the influence and mainly the unconscious influence of its membership upon the entire community. Can you doubt that if a tenth as much study as is given to fashion plates, to the literature of indoor art, to choice and means in respect to furniture and dress could be drawn to the improvement of the little ground and the portion of the street lying before each woman’s house there would in a few years be an improvement of the village to be honorably proud of?

The duty of my profession is that of reconciling landscape enjoyment with domestic and social enjoyment. The restrictions fixed by the compactness of building and the thronging of crowds in large towns are as uncongenial to it as the domestic and social hardships of the wilderness. It is habitually as much interested in men as in nature as much in nature as in men.

There is a touching testimony of the truth of this assertion which as it has other and more important bearings on the subject of village improvement, I should like to recall.

Humphry Repton, the first man to bear the title of landscape gardener, was an English gentleman of good birth, parts and breeding whose scholarly accomplishments made him a welcome guest at all times in many noble and even in princely houses. He not only designed and directed more great works in his profession than any who have followed him in it but he remains to this day the most voluminous and the most scientific writer upon it in our language. The last words of his last book were dictated during temporary respites from the spasms of a very painful illness rapidly bringing his long and honored life to a close, and were, in part, as follows: “I will now conclude with the most interesting subject I have ever known; it is the view from the humble cottage to which for more than thirty years, I have anxiously retreated from the pomp of palaces, the elegancies of fashion or the allurements of dissipation: it stood originally within five yards of a broad part of the high road; xxxx. I obtained leave to remove the paling twenty yards further from the windows and by this appropriation of twenty five yards of garden I have obtained a frame to my landscape; the frame is composed of flowering shrubs and evergreens [meaning broadleafed evergreen shrubs, not coniferous trees]; beyond which are seen the cheerful village, the high road, and that constant moving scene, which I would not exchange for any of the [138]lonely parks that I have improved for others. Some of their proprietors, on viewing the scene I have described, have questioned my taste; but my answer has been that in improving places for others, I must consult their inclinations; at Hare Street, I follow my own.”

Revering the memory of this master and communing, in some degree with the spirit which prompted these last sacred words of his, I have been led to review those special local circumstances of your Society to which I have referred, with results some of which I wish to submit to you; to you rather than directly to the Society, because my knowledge of the circumstances is so meagre compared with yours and because I shall be led to briefly touch matters of art in which your judgment is much more to be valued than mine.

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Apart from social advantages, not here to be weighed, the only meritorious distinctions that I have heard claimed for Summit as a village is that of healthfulness. {Common experience is said} to testify that a greater and more invigorating change of air is recognizable in coming to it from New York than at any intermediate point. Residence in it is claimed to be a protection against and a remedy for the various forms of indisposition and depressed vitality attributed to malarial poisoning, so common and oppressive in New York and most of its suburbs. Finally it is alledged to be extraordinarily exempt from influences such as are found elsewhere to develop or aggravate weaknesses of the lungs and air passages.

If the most desert and dreary place to be found within a hundred miles of New York offered decided advantages over all others in the respects thus claimed for Summit it would be a sufficient reason for the settlement upon it of a much larger suburban colony than has yet been anywhere formed. This not because of its value alone to invalids but to all aiming to assure themselves of the highest use of their faculties and the most uninterrupted domestic happiness. Natural advantages in these respects would outweigh all others and yet when in addition to them wealth had done all that could be asked of it in the way of building, paving and sewering and in supplying water and gas, schools and churches, theatres and libraries, hotels and shops, fountains and gardens, the village would still be by comparison with hundreds of others have a dreary aspect. To find and supply a means of making it cheerful, attractive and charming as a village would then be a work of beneficence. And a successful result would be the more satisfactory because the difficulties existing in the natural desert conditions would have compelled the use of extraordinary methods giving the village an interesting distinctness of character, which being associated with its sanitary advantages would become a subject of pride and felicitation.

Summit is far from being a desert and dreary place and yet apart from evidence not yet to be accepted as of scientific fullness, the credibility of its claim of healthfulness over many other villages appears to rest mainly on the [139]alledged fact that its soil and subsoil are unusually free, open, inadhesive and wholesomely aerated. But if this is true it is probably true also that the soil and climate is less favorable to many plants, (not by any means to all) than the soil and climate of many other villages thus brought to their disadvantage in comparison with Summit. It is to be presumed, for instance, and my observation tended to confirm the presumption, that the grasses which may, in these other places, be found to make the finest, cleanest and closest turf, are apt to grow more sparsely and spindlingly; to be more readily supplanted by weeds; to sooner “run out” and in general to appear less attractive. Especially is this to be presumed as to these grasses on all rough ground, hillocks and rapidly declining surfaces, such as are not infrequent in the natural topography of Summit. It is to be presumed also of certain trees that they will grow less luxuriantly, will have weaker constitutions, be more open to attacks of insects and diseases and appear less attractively

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If, then, discrimination is needed in applying good general advice for the improvement of villages to the special case with which your association is concerned, it is probably on account of the conditions of soil & climate to which reference has thus been made. If Summit is to have a village beauty of its own it will probably come through the tact exercised by its people to make a merit of that which would be a misfortune if they were clumsily bent on following fashions set by others or on competing with others in courses which they can only enter heavily handicapped.

The question then is, what quality of village beauty is more particularly out of your natural line and what can you aim at with confidence of an easier success than can be generally looked for?

Before we ask for anything else in the general aspect of a village we require for our pleasure in it that it shall not have a dirty or untidy and slovenly aspect. If it has, no amount of fine building and flower gardening scattered through it, will make it attractive to us. Nothing tells against a village in this respect like patches of raw earth, nor is the case helped, rather it is made worse, if there is an appearance of a thin, spotty, dwindling, dying or dead vegetation upon them.

If then in Summit it is at all more than usually difficult to establish and maintain thick, close fine and fresh turf through the summer attempts to have it will be wisely limited to ground of favorable surface and to areas upon which more than usually through preparation to secure thrift and more than usual continuous care to maintain it can be afforded. The fashion of formal earth terraces dressed with turf will, for example, be particularly out of place in Summit, as will all short sharp slopes such as are elsewhere often made in the grading of roads or house sites.

It is as bad housewifery for a lady to present a slovenly slope of turf to [140]the view of her visitors as ragged curtains, dirty windows or broken chairs. And if a clear, fresh and unimpaired aspect is ever requisite in turf about a house it is when the heat and drought of the summer are otherwise most oppressive.

Where in a public road a side walk is to be carried for the sake of economy at some little distance above or below the line of the wheel-way the same consideration will lead to the avoidance in Summit of an abrupt transition between the two levels. The slope should be never steeper than one in four: rarely if ever than one in six. It will be much better for the general rural effect of the village that turf gutters should be used wherever practicable and with the light grades of the roads and their open subsoil they will be nearly every where practicable but, wherever used, it is indispensable to a permanent tidy appearance that they should be broad and shallow and that the grass should not be allowed to grow long in them. Ditch like gutters and steep banks though but a few inches high cannot be long kept by turf from crumbling and getting clogged and littered with dust and rubbish. If smooth, broad and shallow they may be dressed with turf and the turf may be cheaply kept short. Kept short it may also be kept clean with a broom almost as easily as a carpet more easily than a door mat. Kept close and clean it will not appear untidy even if it loses greenness and positive beauty in a dry time.

Where banks, declivities or steep slopes of considerable extent cannot be avoided or have already been formed and cannot well be reformed to gentleness, tolerable turf may probably be maintained upon them by an annual reinvigoration of their roots by means of copious top-dressing by careful compression of the surface with rollers or otherwise, by thorough hand-weeding, by the repair every spring of all breaks and by close mowings at frequent intervals; as often perhaps as once a week, during the season of rapid growth. It will still be desirable to frequently drench the soil and wash the plants with water and if this is impossible to often sweep off the dust from the surface. With all care turf cannot probably be kept of satisfactory fineness, closeness and evenness in such situations under trees, because their roots will insist on the lion’s share of what food and moisture comes within their reach. Except in the streets where nothing else is available, it will be better as a general rule not to attempt to dress such places with turf. Strips of it may be laid criss-cross upon them as a temporary precaution against washing sliding and crumbling but the aim should be to cover them by plants better adapted to the situation than the grasses.

Though these cautions may not be generally needed there are sure to be a good many places which will never be kept neat and green with turf and more upon which a fairly satisfactory effect can be obtained with much less cost and trouble if something else is aimed at than a door yard of the common type—a body of turf more or less cut up, dotted and decorated with walks, flower beds, and scattered trees & plants.

So accustomed are we to this type, however, that to many there will seem to be no alternative but a grove, wood or thicket such as will destroy all ground verdure, and leave no view open toward or from the house.

[141]

I will consider a case, then, as difficult as any likely to be found in Summit, asking what can be done to avoid the forlorn result pretty sure to follow the common practice, without interfering with any desirable prospect.

Suppose that before and adjoining a new cottage there is a space thirty feet or more across occupied by a ridge or knoll of gravel, cobble-stones and boulders, partly natural, partly resulting from the excavation of the cellar. Any little poor soil in it is covered, scattered and unavailable. To work it into an ordinary door-yard lawn the soil of the bordering ground must first be lifted and stored, the ridge must then be graded down till graceful slopes have been obtained over the entire surface of the intended improvement; the larger stones upon it must be buried, the stored soil returned and as much more brought from some outside source as will supply a depth of from one to two feet over all the space intended to be turfed or planted. (That will be 40 New York city dirt cart loads). A heavy dressing of manure must next be worked in; there must be the slow and risky process of growing turf from seed, sowing, raking, rolling, weeding and then always after is mowing eight or ten times a year and other, attentions. Nothing less than this will secure a tolerable result. After all the May Chafer may any year come and make havoc with it.

Asking what else can be done it is to be considered that it is not an uncommon thing to see a plant of ivy thirty or forty feet long or an orange or oleander tree which nearly fills a window, the roots of which are confined within a tub holding much less than a wheel barrow load of soil and occupying less superficial space than can be covered with a handkerchief. The same amount of good soil filled into a hole in the gravel will sustain a Virginia creeper that may grow in five months to closely cover twenty square feet of the raw dirt of the door-yard. Using a series of holes or a continuous trench encircling the space in question and planting creepers two or three feet apart, the entire ground may be clothed with a beautiful living mantle within two years, probably in less than one. To hasten a satisfactory result temporarily, annual vines may be grown at points nearer the center from seed, little pockets of soil to sustain their roots being provided. Or they may have been brought forward during the spring in the house in pots, and the pots set in the gravel when the season is sufficiently advanced. There are half a dozen strong woody vines and creepers of other sorts that may be used instead of the Virginia, or that may be combined with it. The best in most cases is the commonest of the Japanese honeysuckles, (Lonicera brachypoda) as it has a delicious bloom, is perfectly hardy, stands drought heroically and holds its verdure with a good color even longer than grass in fact in sheltered places is essentially evergreen. There are however a great many more delicate perennial plants which by a like planting at intervals will just as effectually carpet the spaces as the Virginia creeper and honeysuckle; not with the smoothness neatness and smugness of fine, well kept closely mowed and rolled turf but, taking the summer through, a great deal more agreeably than turf of ordinary quality. Once well-started many plants available for this purpose will require much less care than turf: they [142]may fare not at all badly if left wholly to themselves for a year or two at a time. If a considerable variety is used the worst to be apprehended is that some will smother or root out others a result not perhaps to be deplored because it will prove what plants are best suited with the soil and situation and afterwards to be depended on to at least keep the place neat and green. Among plants thus available may be mentioned the common periwinkle (Vinca minor) St John’s Wort, Soap wort, Money wort and such violets as are probably running wild in Summit woods. All these grow, spread and propagate themselves in poor thin soils and hold green through severe droughts. They are beautiful both when in and when out of bloom and with very little trouble they may be made to nicely cover ground where good turf is out of question. Doubtless a little study in the neighborhood will discover others at least equally suitable for the purpose. A mere heap of pebbles can at the worst be made verdant by sprinkling a little poor sandy soil in the crevices and planting sedums, either of the coarser sorts, generally known in the country as House leeks or some of the numerous more delicate varieties now sold by the florists. These may cost too much to be freely used at first but if a few plants are once started and given a fair chance they will rapidly multiply and spread.

Another plant which may be used with capital effect to spread over poor dry ground in lieu of turf is the common prostrate Juniper. There are other evergreen (coniferous) plants of the same habit, the European Tamarisk-leafed juniper, for example, which would probably grow well with you but that which is best of all under favorable conditions, the Canadian yew or ground hemlock, though native of some parts of New Jersey, would need more moisture and shade. Each of the plants I have mentioned will grow much better in the shadow of trees and upon ground fringed by the roots of trees than turf or than most of the common lawn shrubs.

I have spoken of the common type of village door yard, meaning that which seems to have been of late generally admired and held in view in most of the advice given in the books. These, I think, aim to realize within narrow limits and under special restrictions of convenience, something of the beauty of the lawn and pleasure ground proper to a villa or country seat of many acres adapted to families of great wealth and a large retinue of servants. I don’t mean to advise against this but I cannot neglect to point out that the chief value in landscape composition of a lawn or of an open glade of turf in a park or in park-like scenery is generally considered by those who have studied the subject scientifically, to lie in the relief to the eye which is found in the contrast of its simple expanse of smooth unbroken verdure with the adjoining masses of fluttering leafage and broken lights and shadows. It is therefore said to supply more particularly the quality of repose. But if the space of unbroken turf among trees and bushes is not of a certain breadth, it does not have this effect.

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Rather by separating the foliage into distinct masses and parting them it becomes an element of disturbance. I doubt whether a small door yard in which everything centers on a lawn, even under favorable conditions of soil and exposure, is apt to be as pleasing as a door yard of the old fashioned kind which has been first shaped and graded so as to appear from the street as a simple table or pedestal for the house to stand upon, then crossed by one or two walks leading with directness though not necessarily in a perfectly straight course from point to point as would best serve purposes of convenience and in which at last decoration has been introduced as if an after-thought of all this, being made to fit and adorn the skeleton plan thus laid down, beds being formed for example in lines parallel with the walks, bordered with box edgings and set with flowering plants favorites of the women and children of the house, arranged and cultivated entirely by their willing hands with little thought if any of contrasts or harmonies of form or color. I find unstudied compositions under these circumstances seldom disagreeable and believe that plants suitable to be used at all under these circumstances are most unlikely to be very badly misarrayed except by a poor artist trying to go beyond her means. Along the fence, at the corners or other architecturally emphatic points of these yards there would generally be certain small trees as mountain ash and laburnum, refined and lady-like in aspect, and certain blooming and fragrant bushes as lilac and honeysuckle snow drop and rose of Sharon, which though originally set out formally had soon stretched out their shoots and branches freely, picturesquely and girl like. Patches of thin grass that were, probably, poor considered as turf but with such scattering undergrowths of lily of the valley, pansies, periwinkle, stone crop and daffodils all running wild, that its meagreness was not unpleasant. I must say that when I come upon an old door yard of this class, with a neat picket fence set upon a low, mossy retaining wall, especially if there is a stoop before the door half veiled by woodbine and prairie roses, tubs of oleander and pots of geraniums set out for the summer, I think it very inviting and respectable. If the later style of door yard is generally less so in spite of the vast advance made in horticultural materials again I question if it is not because more has been attempted than could be done with a sure hand.

I make these confessions not with a view to urging a recurrence to the old style but only that there may be less fear of a bad result if walks and plantings are so arranged as to leave less ground in turf than has of late become customary; the main precept I would urge being that there should be no more turf than is likely to obtain continuously for years {with} what would generally be thought lavish care. It should also be studiously so arranged as to be little crossed, broken or dotted by walks, single shrubs or trees, beds of flowers or other bits and spots of intended decorations. It will thus have more of the characteristic value of turf in the general composition of the place, and will be better, more effectually and more cheaply mown, rolled, and watered or [144]swept. Small bits of turf, narrow points and gores, mounds and ramps should be studiously avoided, as likely to be weak, poor and expensive.

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I do not think it has ever been very well defined in words, but without here attempting to define it, I may urge any to whom it shall happen to come as an inspiration not to shrink from following it because it has not been definitely recommended and is not the fashion. Fortunately it is no more a matter to be ordered or controlled by fashion than the writing or the painting of a poem. I believe that it is possible to give a poetic quality to a village door yard. I hold it conceivable that every door yard in a village shall be as a verse in a poem and that the village shall be that poem in full. I tried some years ago to illustrate what I mean by this saying and to show how such an idea is realizable in a paper on Landscape Gardening which was printed in Johnsons Cyclopedia.

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[24:696–701]

This policy prevailing as to lawns or turf, there are two dangers remaining in the outside housekeeping of the village. The accomplished inside housekeeper will understand them if I characterize one as that of a bare, stingy unfurnished aspect, as of a matted room with paper curtains, a centre and pier table and rows of straight backed chairs; the other as that of fussiness as of the same room after it has been over stocked with incongruous additions to its furniture and tricked out with a bushel or two of dollar-store brick a brac.

Both evils are likely to be escaped if it shall be aimed to form groups and masses of foliage in all those parts of house grounds near the street which are not likely to be well kept in turf and flowering plants, or, where open views are wanted to be carpeted by ground plants or creepers. (I will show what I mean by groups and masses of foliage and that it is nothing impracticable for the unlearned, a little later.) Having shown that a large part of a door yard, however poor its soil, may be made presentable with much less expense than would be necessary to obtain decent results in the prevalent fashion, I must say that whatever is to be done in the way of higher foliage than that I have been suggesting for the poor ground, should be done with more liberality of outlay than is common. First the soil to be planted in should be well-prepared as all the books will be found to advise. Less expense will be necessary for this purpose, however, than in hungry ground is necessary to secure first rate turf. Next it is advisable to get well-prepared trees and bushes from a nursery. Well prepared trees are such as have been at least twice transplanted since they sprang from the seed, and have had their heads trimmed back. This makes them compact in form and enables them to bear further transplanting (chiefly because of more fibrous roots) without a serious constitutional shock, or check or disinvigoration. They will be planted closer than is often recommended, [145]vigor of growth should be afterwards sustained by annual top-dressings and a thin, scattered straggling and feeble habit of foliage guarded against by frequent pinching of the growing shoots or occasional shortening in of them with the knife or scissors.

It will probably be practicable in the next severe drought to make a list of trees and shrubs which have been little affected by it and which, being in all other respects found suitable, may be wisely suggested by the Association for general planting in the village.

To have much value however recommendations for this purpose should not be made without examination of the apparent vigor and promise of various sorts of trees when somewhat advanced in life. It will probably be found that most of the European and Californian pines and spruces, for example, show signs of feebleness and decrepitude when but from fifteen to twenty five years old while at the same age our own white spruce is still in the vigor of youth. The American White and Red Pines, the beauty of which is unsurpassed, will be as full of life, as healthy and in all respects as beautiful in Summit soils as in any. This will be true also I presume of any birches that can be found, of the Hop hornbeam, of the Staghorn Sumac as well as of the smaller sumacs, that called copalina looking as fresh and happy upon a dry ridge in August as most shrubs by a brookside in June.

Now let it be remembered first that it requires much less care and expense to avoid an appearance of poverty and thriftlessness with trees and shrubs than with grass. Second that it is much easier and less costly to provide what is necessary to secure health and continuous vigor in small trees than in large. Third, that it is unfavorable to the health of families as well as to village neatness to have large growing trees like the American elm or Sugar Maple tulip or Balsam poplar standing in front of any house which is within fifty feet of the street. Lastly let it be borne in mind, on the laying out and planting of door yards of moderate extent, that there are few plants—almost none of those commonly used for display—that flourish under the shade, in the drip or among the roots of trees, and that trees have to be planted as infants but with a view to ultimate great expansion of both root and branch.

For all these reasons the Association should aim to encourage in Summit door yard plantings of shrubs and small-growing trees rather than those which are more common and popular. There are a considerable number of trees to be had which in the soil and climate of Summit when of mature age will have grown to no greater height than ordinary apple-trees, or to less than a quarter that often attained by the more common shade trees. I will name several which by an unobjectionable use of the knife at least, will not in fifty years grow above the house tops. Most of them are of very delicate and refined character, particularly appropriate to the cottage door yard of gentlewomen. The distinction between a small tree and a shrub is that the one grows bushily from the ground, the other is lifted on a trunk. By pruning trees can be made shrubs; shrubs, trees. As there are many wooded plants classed as shrubs that [146]grow naturally as tall as the trees referred to and others smaller down to the size of diminutive herbs it is simply a matter of selection and arrangement to obtain any form and mass of foliage before and about a house that within reasonable limits may be desired. For example, there are a number of closely-related shrubs to be found in your Summit Gardens known as Meadow Sweets of which some kinds, need grow not more than two and others not more than three feet high. They are abundant and beautiful bloomers and their foliage is light and elegant quality, appearing almost lace-like when they border standard bushes. There are other shrubs known to all which grow a little taller such as the flowering currants and {…}; again, others which push above these as the Persian lilac, others of yet higher growth as the Chinese or common lilacs, the tops of which are well above the lower branches of small trees like the mountain ash, Red bud, Shadblow and Dog wood. By planting members of these several grades one before the other at distances calculated with reference to the ordinary full growths of each a mass of foliage may be formed which the eye can {…} {penetrate} rising from the ground to a height of twenty feet or more. I have named but half a dozen well known species which can be used in this way. Varying their order masses of foliage may be obtained of many different forms and with parts in different relations as to colour and texture.

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[24:708–13]

There are and, as the village grows out, there always must be spaces by the roadside not occupied by door yards and not to be improved by any such means as have been suggested. They are generally grassy but during much of the year have a dilapidated, ragged and dirty appearance because grass is thin weak, scattered starved and choked. The land being held on speculation for building sites the owners have little personal interest to improve it and cannot afford to expend much if anything upon it from regard to the general interest of the village. The association may, however, properly suggest and may aid in and cooperate toward some inexpensive improvements.

It will probably cost very little to obtain and set or plant enough cuttings, of small plants of poplar, willow, sumac or white birch growing in the neighborhood to make some improvement in the worst places of this class. A more effectual and yet inexpensive expedient will be to adapt the skeleton of an old fence or build a new one; fix a trellis upon it, form pockets of good soil at frequent intervals as before advised, plant vines and creepers, and take care to have them so grown, spread and trimmed as to make a complete screen or verdant curtain. Well done, the effect at a little distance hardly differs from that of a very nice hedge. I have never seen a more beautiful fence than one made in this way, and, as the constructed part of post, rails and trellis is to be wholly covered, serving only as a scaffolding or skeleton, it is of little consequence how rudely nor of what readily to be picked up materials it is made. The commonest [147]farm fencing post and rails will answer, and two rails will be enough. Or short cedar stakes such as farmers use for bean or hop poles will serve, these being driven into the ground and lighter poles carried between them by a lashing of annealed wire for rails. For trellis work lathes may be used tacked to the rails with shingle nails at spaces somewhat wider than are usual in common back door screens. I suppose a piece of coarse strong twine seine such as boys and girls can easily be taught to make would do very well, if thrown evenly over the top rail and pinned to the ground on each side. If the twine rots away after a year or two the desired effect will not be impaired for the vines will then be strong enough to run alone and hold one another in place. And so if a post or rail occasionally gives way it will not always need to be replaced. I have grown the Wisteria vine in the form of sturdy bushes as strong and self supporting as quince trees. Much the best form of trellis however will be one of wire. Machine made zinc-washed iron wire netting suitable for the purpose may be bought at from $2 to $3 the running rod. It is sold in rolls like cloth, for poultry yard fences.

Of course hedges will answer the purpose, if well made, even better but it will take longer to grow them and the extreme rarity of a well-made hedge testifies how hard it will be to obtain one. People are impatient of the slow and laborious processes advised in the books for hedge making but my experience testifies that the usual directions are less stringent than is desirable. So much is in print on the subject that I need only advise in respect to hedges that none should be attempted in Summit on a line upon which trees are remotely liable to encroach. A hedge must be well and evenly lighted on both sides, and must not be interfered with in its feeding to avoid growing ragged and shabby.

There will be a question of the necessary height of living fences whether trellis-grown or self-supporting, for screening off shabby roadsides? If a height otherwise thought to involve too much cost and delay is supposed to be necessary to the purpose, it may be well to consider that more can be accomplished by a low screen of fresh foliage than may at first thought be presupposed. The effect of a strongly marked foreground in weakening the impression upon the mental vision of objects seen over it at a little distance is very considerable, and a field of poor herbage which would affect us disagreeably if it came to our feet and its nearer parts were looked down upon and seen in distinctions of detail is not unpleasing at a distance when its detail merges in broader qualities of form and tint. When the detail consists of gravel, grass or stubble with slender weeds of a general tone less vivacious and effective than the nearer object beyond which they are seen no broad belt of actual obscuration is necessary to accomplish the desired purpose. A fence of unplaned boards four feet high if it can be kept in neat condition will allow a general impression of village neatness to be sustained when its absence or a dilapidated and defaced fence in its place will make a decided discord.