We all enjoyed our visit to you very much, and while I have The Rocks freshly and pleasantly in mind, I will set down a few suggestions, intending to write again after we get the map that George was to prepare of the entrance situation.

It is to be kept constantly in mind that you cannot give The Rocks any notable degree of the distinguishing beauty either of parks or gardens, of lawns or meadows, such as is commonly had in view in the preparation of country places. You cannot set great umbrageous trees anywhere near the house. That is to say, after waiting a life time for the development of such trees they would deprive you of distant views of greater value than the trees themselves would have.

The local genius is one of wild picturesqueness, rather small in scale. Roads, walks, seats and other means of convenience cannot be introduced upon the grounds near the house without restricting its capabilities in this respect. Your aim should be to lessen this capability no more than is necessary for convenience and to make compensation for such injury to it as convenience requires by introducing conditions of picturesqueness in addition to those provided by nature. The house and other constructions required [837]

by convenience will have displaced or obscured, or at least made relatively less conspicuous the original characteristic rugged features of the place. You should aim to more than make good what is thus lost by adding, as a first step to a satisfactory result, numerous rocks, placing them where they may appear to have been placed naturally as they would drop out of floating glaciers, and having been so placed, to have given occasion for the course of roads or paths or stairs that you are to make winding about and between them. Rocks of comparatively small size may generally be used for this purpose; such, for example, as may be moved on a stone boat. The transplanting of these will not be very expensive; two or three may often be brought on a boat at once; and two men well equipped with bars, blocks, rollers and smaller stones to make bases, will rapidly adjust the larger. I should think that you would most readily find such of the small rocks as will thus be required, in old stone walls, from which they can be removed and other stones of tamer and less picturesque quality put in their place. But there are scores of suitable small stones on the ground that we examined together, and even a score of them will help the place greatly and make it better justify the name you have given it.

So place these rocks that they will appear bold and salient; generally above the existing surface, either basing them on the flat existing rocks, or giving them an underpinning of uninteresting stones which may be afterwards hidden by soil to be heaped about them.

Good-sized stones of picturesque form will, I think, be desirably set [838]

[839]flanking the entrance stairway and along the base of the present grassy slope of the bank on which the house stands. The more the house is made to appear as if resting upon a natural body of rocks with interstices of soil and a backing or capping of soil in which bushes and creepers are growing, the more successful will the work be. All the ground near the house not covered by rocks and not needed for walks, roads, or other requirements of convenience, should be occupied by bushes, vines or creepers growing in deep soil, and these should be so placed or trained as to partially drape and obscure, not hide, the rocks. Leaf mold gathered in the woods and well enriched with dung and bone-dust should be placed under and along the base of the rocks. Your farmer will not want to spare dung enough from the farm for this purpose, and you will probably do well to add some of the manufactured manures, Bowker’s, for instance. The cost of liberally fertilizing all the soil near the house by supplementing what dung you can get from the farm-yard with Bowker’s will not be great.

Where roads or walks are bordered by walls, or by a close succession of rocks, make liberal arrangements for the rooting of plants by which the rocks will be partially covered. In some cases, as in that of a wall on the border of the approach road, a trench two feet deep and wide, filled with good soil and manure will be desirable. In this prepared soil set vines, creepers, wild roses, blackberries and different sorts of Rubus, sweet fern, ferns and any small bushes that can be collected in the vicinity, with an occasional azalea, wild currant, gooseberry, aromatic sumach, St. John’s wort or whortleberry.

I am inclined to think that if you should recur to the project of the arboretum, as I originally had it in mind, and if it were well carried out, you would find the result in a few years very interesting and gratifying. I suspect that when I formerly advised you to engage in this work, I under-estimated the difficulty that you would have in developing the plan in detail and carrying it out. If you should be disposed to recur to it you had better make sure that the plants are well taken care of in the nursery for a year or two, and let us plan the scheme more carefully in detail. For this purpose we should have a map of the Mile Walk with a rough sketch of the topography for three or four yards on each side of it.

With grateful regards to Mrs Glessner,

I am Very Truly Yours