Excuse me if this letter turns out to be but a reiteration of reminders of various items on which I have verbally and, in successive previous letters, asked you to be studying this Summer, in order to make progress in planning a revision of details of the plantation on the borders of the Lower Approach Road. There is nothing that we are now so immediately anxious about at Biltmore as that these borders should more fully acquire the general aspect originally intended to be given them, and which is broadly suggested by saying that it is an aspect more nearly of sub-tropical luxuriance than would occur spontaneously at Biltmore, or than is now fully promised, or than has, as yet, been as fully provided for as it is possible that, in various minor particulars, it may be. The subject is one of so much interest that I may be pressing advice [932]

upon you more than is reasonable. But I am impressed with the reflection that just now, after the early growth of this present Summer has reached its limit, is a good time for further and more accurate study of ways and means to the end in question than it can have yet received, and that it is for you to make such study of it, in respect to detailed particulars, as can only be made on the ground by a trained horticulturist.

The term “sub-tropical luxuriance” is, of course, used only suggestively. The result desired is to be brought about largely by a profuse use of plants that simply, in certain respects, are calculated to produce a distant, broad, general resemblance to the landscape qualities of sub-tropical scenery: more so, at least, than we are accustomed to see, or than would be practicable with such slight contraction of opportunity as we should have, for example, about New York, or even Washington, but that will form compositions more nearly approaching in general landscape character such as are to be seen further South than any that are the result of spontaneous growth near Biltmore. Absolute luxuriance is mainly provided for by manure, but only here and there is much manure now wanted. The special effect aimed at is to be obtained chiefly by giving a preponderance to certain plants and by the exclusion of others. Still do not neglect what I have before said about manure at special [933]points. Much depends on the rapid luxuriant growth of some, and the suppression of other plants. Upon the very rich feeding of grape-vines, for example, on the upper hillside, grape-vines and other vines and creepers that have to grow eventually up the larger trees and to hang from them in the manner of the great climbers of a tropical forest.

Coincidently with, but subordinately to, the end so defined, a richer and more profuse display of bloom early in the Spring will be provided for, but this end is to be made wholly subordinate to that which has above been stated. The first of these two purposes is to be fully provided for whether or not the last can also be.

Bear in mind, on this point, that Mr. Vanderbilt and his guests nearly always miss the best of the bloom and that they will continue to do so. It is, therefore, the distant, lasting and constant semi-tropical effect of bodies of foliage that we must here and now have in view. Everything else must give way to what will make for this purpose. It is the result that will be constant through the year that we must care most for.

We should have to sacrifice too much of the existing forest, and with it too much of the landscape value of that of which we are sure, if we tried to do more than we are planning to do for this purpose. The result of our work would be wanting in character if we aimed at anything less. People coming from New York to Biltmore in the Winter or Spring must be made to feel that they are decidedly nearer the sun.

We must aim, then, to gain as much of sub-tropical general character of scenery as we can without a large sacrifice of existing elements of the woodland beauty of the Southern temperate region.

You have now been making experiments for several years by means of which we have been hoping that you would prove whatever is available for all details of this purpose. From this time on, therefore, we should be able to proceed with much more confidence as to details than we could earlier.

Looking critically upon what is now to be seen on the ground, and upon what is to be seen in your nursery, with reference to this general purpose, we wish you to make this general purpose your own to the fullest degree that, with careful study of your local experience down to this time, you can think practicable.

In going over the Lower Approach Road I have felt that, on its immediate borders, there is not now as much promise of luxuriance and profusion of vegetation as it is possible to establish in the situation, and that there is a great deal too much yet to be overcome that is raw, barren and rude, comparatively with the standard that we may not unreasonably have before us. There is too little that is permanent, that we might not find in the more Northern temperate regions. We are not gaining as much as possible from our little advantage of climate. That is to say, people coming from the North will not realize, from what we have yet prepared, that they are gaining as much advantage of climate as it is desirable that they should, and we ought to provide, with all the art we [934]can bring to bear upon the point, for the appearance of much more difference of climate than can be actually realized. This only makes it more important that we now move in the direction thus indicated to the last point that, after these three years of experience and study, we are justified in thinking that, by any skill we can, at best, make practicable. With the knowledge which you have been earning in these years, you should be able to gauge, with a close approach to accuracy, the limit of our resources for reaching the last possible point in this respect; the last point, that is to say, of semi-sub-tropicality.

Do not hesitate to transplant the old plants where, with this later acquired knowledge, you see opportunity to better accomplish what we want, and do not limit your calculation of effect in this respect to what can be gained quickly. Keep using a strongly cultivated, specially imaginative forecast of what is to be attained in the future by progress in growth. This question can be studied now much more closely than it could when we began the Biltmore work. We may hope that anything that has barely survived after recent transplanting in your low, bleak nursery will, with more mature growth, do better in the sheltered valley.

What I find most plainly wanting in this Ram Branch district, at present, is a more conspicuous and more consistent profusion of the smaller and more refined smooth-leaved evergreens. With reference to these, especially such of these as are less easily obtained otherwise, you have constantly, from the first, been urged to push your propagations. I mean that we need more especially a profusion of this class of low, smooth-leaved evergreen plants near the edges of the road and down upon the shores of the brook. That is to say, upon ground that one looks down upon when passing in carriages along the road. The shores of the brook so looked closely down upon are yet nearly everywhere of a much more coarse, crude and commonplace character than we have meant them to be. Use every resource and all the ingenuity that you can to refine and enrich the low vegetation, by which the edge of the water in the brook will be covered. Nearly every foot of the water’s edge needs to be verdantly covered more perfectly, and to be more delicately covered verdantly, than it is. A larger amount and a greater variety of low delicate vegetation is needed, also, close upon the roadside as well as on the banks of the brook, room being made for it. All the foreground surface needs to be better covered and with a greater variety of low foreground plants; with Ivy, for instance, and other evergreen creepers of the more delicate sorts. You can judge much better than when we began what will succeed in accomplishing what is needed in these respects. The knowledge which, meantime, you have been gaining in the nursery should be of value for the purpose. I should say, without going into further detail, that the immediate foreground from the road is to be improved by liberal additions, sometimes substitutions, for instance, of Abelia rupestris; Mahonia aquifolia prostrata, and, possibly, in some cases, with some of the lower growing Mountain Rhododendrons, if there are any that can yet be hoped to succeed, and with the [935]smaller sorts of Kalmias, etc. An increased breadth of low evergreen planting is plainly needed on the borders of the road, and some things now planted there are to be taken out to make place for this lower creeping foliage. I mean there needs to be a greater breadth here and there of Ivy and the smaller Japanese sorts of evergreen Euonymus, and a choice of all those things, more particularly, that Mr Boynton was to collect for you, and which you were to develop and give trial to in the nursery, especially with a view to gaining a greater variety for this particular purpose. All these low evergreens growing close upon the ground are needed to be planted profusely in front of the larger ones, screening the lower parts of the larger ones, or making them apparently sit on cushions and platforms of low plots of foliage.

Some things now on the ground must be set back to make places for these smaller-growing plants, and, occasionally, some of the larger must be removed entirely in order to increase the breadth of those of low growth. It is a question for you to determine whether some of the larger Rhododendrons, especially some of those which have suffered in transplanting, making them stemmy and thin in foliage, should not be given up, so as to make the foreground broader, more varied, richer and more luxuriant in detail, than it otherwise will ever come to be. Bear in mind that you have to make good foreground places, also, for the finer flowering budded Rhododendrons that you have been propagating and bringing forward in the nursery, and this must be done by excision and setting back some of those that now occupy the ground.

Do not hesitate to act boldly and improve on these suggestions, where you see occasion, always having regard more to the spirit than to the letter of them. You are more likely to be over-cautious than over-bold in all this work. The revisions required were all, in a tentative and nebulous way, intended to be made from the first, as the result of experience and the enlargement of our safe resources should make them expedient. I feel sure that after this experience we can run to much greater refinements than we could at first.

I am extremely anxious to have all this work thoroughly well done this year. If Mr. McNamee hesitates to supply all that is wanted for it, let us know and I will write to him. It is not very costly work; the whole of it. But, at any rate, now is the time to more thoroughly study possible details of the undertaking in all the respects that I have indicated. This study must be pursued on the ground. It is not office work. It is wholly a study of particular local conditions, and is to take form in staking, labeling and other preparations this summer. To carry our instructions on this subject further than we have would only embarrass and restrict such study as we now want you to make. See that all this study is made well in advance of the time for action. Let us know if anything is lacking that we can supply or which we can help you to get through Mr. McNamee or otherwise. So far as I can judge, everything that you need for the best possible revisionary and amendatory work of detail is in your hands, except, possibly, what may be wanted in the way of manures. Recall what we have before said [936]on this point, especially as to the heavy feeding (if possible, with dead live stock) of grapevines, and consider whether at various local points topdressing stimulants, to be applied late next Fall, are not desirable.

In going over the Approach Road we always feel that it still manifests the result of trying to get more planting done during a short planting season than it has been practicable to have perfectly well done, with a force no better trained than that which, at the time, it was necessary to use, and with no more varied and copious nursery resources than we could then command. Neither condition now obtains and, a year hence, there can be no reason why we had not this year made sure, as far as it is possible to make sure of it by planting operations, of a perfect realization, a few years later, of our ideals in all the Ram Branch valley.

Yours Truly