Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1870 [PAGE 274]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

258

The trees on such a lot should be of the smaller and more beautiful sorts— conical evergreens, the mountain ash, the cherry, and dwarf pear, unless nature has already provided some towering oaks or elms under which the cottage may seem as if nestling for shelter. A vase filled with flowers, a piece or two of statuary, with one or two rustic seats, may be added, and even a small arbor at one side is allowable, but every object should be of the smaller size that by comparison the space itself may seem of greater extent. But avoid all little artificial mounds imitating hills and mountains. A bit of rock work, as far as practicable from the house, half covered with ferns and trailing plants, or a small terraced mound, supporting successive banks of flowers, may be allowed; but to mimic the Alps on a ten-rod patch is worse than child's play. 5. Concealment of every offensive feature will complete the picture. Trellises, or screens made of evergreens or shrubbery, may be used to shut out from view the wood-yard and outhouses, and even a blank or unpleasant aspect of the house may be half hidden by some climbing vine, or a bush skillfully placed. How much more attractive all this than the little, bare, box-like cottages, squat close behind the front fence, with a stiff, straight walk from gate to door, dividing the little domain into two ; and the two inevitable evergreens planted one each side ©f the walk, and close to the door steps, looking like a pair of monstrous green goggles on the face. The small ground thus split and loaded seems smaller than it really is. Remove the two evergreens from the center to the sides of the lot, and then the eye in turning from one to the other, would take unconscious measurements of the intermediate space, and make the ground seem even more extended than it really is.

THE SUBURBAN VILLA AND FARMER'S GROUNDS.

The suburban villa with four or five acres may be regarded as representing what the farmer's house lot, embracing his gardens, orchards, yards, and barn inclosures may contain. In discussing this branch of landscape gardening, I shall, therefore, bring into view all the principles of the art required by the common farmer. I will suppose the house already built, and will not discuss its architecture. I will suppose the site already chosen, and not attempt to discuss this choice, except to deprecate the folly of the farmer who, having hundred of acres, plants his house close by a dusty highway, with a total neglect of the many commanding, convenient and healthful situations which he has at command, near the center of his farm. To make the discussion at once more interesting and instructive, I will illustrate my points by this plan of a villa, which lies not far from here, and embraces between four and five acres. [The speaker hung before his audience a large drawing of the grounds he wished to describe. As we have failed to procure an engraved copy, the re-