[Illustration: "Back of the building-line the fences ... generally more
than head-high ... are sure to be draped."]
[Illustration: " ... from the autumn side of Christmas to the summer
side of Easter."
In any garden as fair as this there should be some place to sit down.
This deficiency is one of the commonest faults in American gardening.]
Now while the time of year in which these conditions are visible
heightens their lovely wonder, their practical value to Northern
home-lovers is not the marvel and delight of something inimitable but
their inspiring suggestion of what may be done with ordinary Northern
home grounds, to the end that the floral pageantry of the Southern
January may be fully rivalled by the glory of the Northern June.
For of course the Flora of the North, who in the winter of long white
nights puts off all her jewelry and nearly all her robes and "lies down
to pleasant dreams," is the blonde sister of, and equal heiress with,
this darker one who, in undivested greenery and flowered trappings,
persists in open-air revelry through all the months from the autumn side
of Christmas to the summer side of Easter. Wherefore it seems to me the
Northern householder's first step should be to lay hold upon this New
Orleans idea in gardening--which is merely by adoption a New Orleans
idea, while through and through, except where now and then its votaries
stoop to folly, it is by book a Northern voice, the garden gospel of
Frederick Law Olmsted.
Pages:
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146