FRONT DOORYARDS
"There are few of us who cannot remember a front yard garden which
seemed to us a very paradise in childhood. Whether the house was a
fine one and the enclosure spacious, or whether it was a small
house with only a narrow bit of ground in front, the yard was kept
with care, and was different from the rest of the land
altogether.... People do not know what they lose when they make way
with the reserve, the separateness, the sanctity, of the front yard
of their grandmothers. It is like writing down family secrets for
any one to read; it is like having everybody call you by your first
name, or sitting in any pew in church."
--_Country Byways_, SARAH ORNE JEWETT, 1881.
Old New England villages and small towns and well-kept New England farms
had universally a simple and pleasing form of garden called the front
yard or front dooryard. A few still may be seen in conservative
communities in the New England states and in New York or Pennsylvania. I
saw flourishing ones this summer in Gloucester, Marblehead, and Ipswich.
Even where the front yard was but a narrow strip of land before a tiny
cottage, it was carefully fenced in, with a gate that was kept rigidly
closed and latched. There seemed to be a law which shaped and bounded
the front yard; the side fences extended from the corners of the house
to the front fence on the edge of the road, and thus formed naturally
the guarded parallelogram. Often the fence around the front yard was the
only one on the farm; everywhere else were boundaries of great stone
walls; or if there were rail fences, the front yard fence was the only
painted one. I cannot doubt that the first gardens that our foremothers
had, which were wholly of flowering plants, were front yards, little
enclosures hard won from the forest.
[Illustration: The Flowering Almond under the Window.]
The word yard, not generally applied now to any enclosure of elegant
cultivation, comes from the same root as the word garden. Garth is
another derivative, and the word exists much disguised in orchard. In
the sixteenth century yard was used in formal literature instead of
garden; and later Burns writes of "Eden's bonnie yard, Where yeuthful
lovers first were pair'd."
This front yard was an English fashion derived from the forecourt so
strongly advised by Gervayse Markham (an interesting old English writer
on floriculture and husbandry), and found in front of many a yeoman's
house, and many a more pretentious house as well in Markham's day.
Forecourts were common in England until the middle of the eighteenth
century, and may still be seen. The forecourt gave privacy to the house
even when in the centre of a town. Its readoption is advised with
handsome dwellings in England, where ground-space is limited,--and why
not in America, too?
[Illustration: Peter's Wreath.]
The front yard was sacred to the best beloved, or at any rate the most
honored, garden flowers of the house mistress, and was preserved by its
fences from inroads of cattle, which then wandered at their will and
were not housed, or even enclosed at night. The flowers were often of
scant variety, but were those deemed the gentlefolk of the flower world.
There was a clump of Daffodils and of the Poet's Narcissus in early
spring, and stately Crown Imperial; usually, too, a few scarlet and
yellow single Tulips, and Grape Hyacinths. Later came Phlox in
abundance--the only native American plant,--Canterbury Bells, and ample
and glowing London Pride. Of course there were great plants of white and
blue Day Lilies, with their beautiful and decorative leaves, and purple
and yellow Flower de Luce. A few old-fashioned shrubs always were seen.
By inflexible law there must be a Lilac, which might be the aristocratic
Persian Lilac. A Syringa, a flowering Currant, or Strawberry bush made
sweet the front yard in spring, and sent wafts of fragrance into the
house-windows. Spindling, rusty Snowberry bushes were by the gate, and
Snowballs also, or our native Viburnums. Old as they seem, the Spiraeas
and Deutzias came to us in the nineteenth century from Japan; as did the
flowering Quinces and Cherries. The pink Flowering Almond dates back to
the oldest front yards (see page 39), and Peter's Wreath certainly seems
an old settler and is found now in many front yards that remain. The
lovely full-flowered shrub of Peter's Wreath, on page 41, which was
photographed for this book, was all that remained of a once-loved front
yard.
The glory of the front yard was the old-fashioned early red "Piny,"
cultivated since the days of Pliny. I hear people speaking of it with
contempt as a vulgar flower,--flaunting is the conventional derogatory
adjective,--but I glory in its flaunting. The modern varieties, of every
tint from white through flesh color, coral, pink, ruby color, salmon,
and even yellow, to deep red, are as beautiful as Roses. Some are
sweet-scented; and they have no thorns, and their foliage is ever
perfect, so I am sure the Rose is jealous.
I am as fond of the Peony as are the Chinese, among whom it is flower
queen. It is by them regarded as an aristocratic flower; and in old New
England towns fine Peony plants in an old garden are a pretty good
indication of the residence of what Dr. Holmes called New England
Brahmins. In Salem and Portsmouth are old "Pinys" that have a hundred
blossoms at a time--a glorious sight. A Japanese name is
"Flower-of-prosperity"; another name, "Plant-of-twenty-days," because
its glories last during that period of time.
[Illustration: Peonies in a Salem Garden.]
Rhododendrons are to the modern garden what the Peony was in the
old-fashioned flower border; and I am glad the modern flower cannot
drive the old one out. They are equally varied in coloring, but the
Peony is a much hardier plant, and I like it far better. It has no
blights, no bugs, no diseases, no running out, no funguses; it
doesn't have to be covered in winter, and it will bloom in the shade. No
old-time or modern garden is to me fully furnished without Peonies; see
how fair they are in this Salem garden. I would grow them in some corner
of the garden for their splendid healthy foliage if they hadn't a
blossom. The _Paeonia tenuifolia_ in particular has exquisite feathery
foliage. The great Tree Peony, which came from China, grows eight feet
or more in height, and is a triumph of the flower world; but it was not
known to the oldest front yards. Some of the Tree Peonies have finely
displayed leafage of a curious and very gratifying tint of green. Miss
Jekyll, with her usual felicity, compares its blue cast with pinkish
shading to the vari-colored metal alloys of the Japanese bronze
workers--a striking comparison. The single Peonies of recent years are
of great beauty, and will soon be esteemed here as in China.
Not the least of the Peony's charms is its exceeding trimness and
cleanliness. The plants always look like a well-dressed, well-shod,
well-gloved girl of birth, breeding, and of equal good taste and good
health; a girl who can swim, and skate, and ride, and play golf. Every
inch has a well-set, neat, cared-for look which the shape and growth of
the plant keeps from seeming artificial or finicky. See the white Peony
on page 44; is it not a seemly, comely thing, as well as a beautiful
one?
No flower can be set in our garden of more distinct antiquity than the
Peony; the Greeks believed it to be of divine origin. A green arbor of
the fourteenth century in England is described as set around with
Gillyflower, Tansy, Gromwell, and "Pyonys powdered ay betwene"--just as
I like to see Peonies set to this day, "powdered" everywhere between all
the other flowers of the border.
[Illustration: White Peonies.]
I am pleased to note of the common flowers of the New England front
yard, that they are no new things; they are nearly all Elizabethan of
date--many are older still. Lord Bacon in his essay on gardens names
many of them, Crocus, Tulip, Hyacinth, Daffodil, Flower de Luce, double
Peony, Lilac, Lily of the Valley.
A favorite flower was the yellow garden Lily, the Lemon Lily,
_Hemerocallis_, when it could be kept from spreading. Often its
unbounded luxuriance exiled it from the front yard to the kitchen
dooryard as befell the clump shown facing page 48. Its pretty
old-fashioned name was Liricon-fancy, given, I am told, in England to
the Lily of the Valley. I know no more satisfying sight than a good bank
of these Lemon Lilies in full flower. Below Flatbush there used to be a
driveway leading to an old Dutch house, set at regular intervals with
great clumps of Lemon Lilies, and their full bloom made them glorious.
Their power of satisfactory adaptation in our modern formal garden is
happily shown facing page 76, in the lovely garden of Charles E. Mather,
Esq., in Haverford, Pennsylvania.
The time of fullest inflorescence of the nineteenth century front yard
was when Phlox and Tiger Lilies bloomed; but the pinkish-orange colors
of the latter (the oddest reds of any flower tints) blended most vilely
and rampantly with the crimson-purple of the Phlox; and when London
Pride joined with its glowing scarlet, the front yard fairly ached.
Nevertheless, an adaptation of that front yard bloom can be most
effective in a garden border, when white Phlox only is planted, and the
Tiger Lily or cultivated stalks of our wild nodding Lily rise above the
white trusses of bloom. These wild Lilies grow very luxuriantly in the
garden, often towering above our heads and forming great candelabra
bearing two score or more blooms. It is no easy task to secure their
deep-rooted rhizomes in the meadow. I know a young man who won his
sweetheart by the patience and assiduity with which he dug for her all
one broiling morning to secure for her the coveted Lily roots, and
collapsed with mild sunstroke at the finish. Her gratitude and remorse
were equal factors in his favor.
The Tiger Lily is usually thought upon as a truly old-fashioned flower,
a veritable antique; it is a favorite of artists to place as an
accessory in their colonial gardens, and of authors for their
flower-beds of Revolutionary days, but it was not known either in formal
garden or front yard, until after "the days when we lived under the
King." The bulbs were first brought to England from Eastern Asia in 1804
by Captain Kirkpatrick of the East India Company's Service, and shared
with the Japan Lily the honor of being the first Eastern Lilies
introduced into European gardens. A few years ago an old gentleman, Mr.
Isaac Pitman, who was then about eighty-five years of age, told me that
he recalled distinctly when Tiger Lilies first appeared in our gardens,
and where he first saw them growing in Boston. So instead of being an
old-time flower, or even an old-comer from the Orient, it is one of the
novelties of this century. How readily has it made itself at home, and
even wandered wild down our roadsides!
The two simple colors of Phlox of the old-time front yard, white and
crimson-purple, are now augmented by tints of salmon, vermilion, and
rose. I recall with special pleasure the profuse garden decoration at
East Hampton, Long Island, of a pure cherry-colored Phlox, generally a
doubtful color to me, but there so associated with the white blooms of
various other plants, and backed by a high hedge covered solidly with
blossoming Honeysuckle, that it was wonderfully successful.
To other members of the Phlox family, all natives of our own continent,
the old front yard owed much; the Moss Pink sometimes crowded out both
Grass and its companion the Periwinkle; it is still found in our
gardens, and bountifully also in our fields; either in white or pink, it
is one of the satisfactions of spring, and its cheerful little blossom
is of wonderful use in many waste places. An old-fashioned bloom, the
low-growing _Phlox amoena_, with its queerly fuzzy leaves and bright
crimson blossoms, was among the most distinctly old-fashioned flowers of
the front yard. It was tolerated rather than cultivated, as was its
companion, the Arabis or Rock Cress--both crowding, monopolizing
creatures. I remember well how they spread over the beds and up the
grass banks in my mother's garden, how sternly they were uprooted, in
spite of the pretty name of the Arabis--"Snow in Summer."
Sometimes the front yard path had edgings of sweet single or lightly
double white or tinted Pinks, which were not deemed as choice as Box
edgings. Frequently large Box plants clipped into simple and natural
shapes stood at the side of the doorstep, usually in the home of the
well-to-do. A great shell might be on either side of the door-sill, if
there chanced to be seafaring men-folk who lived or visited under the
roof-tree. Annuals were few in number; sturdy old perennial plants of
many years' growth were the most honored dwellers in the front yard,
true representatives of old families. The Roses were few and poor, for
there was usually some great tree just without the gate, an Elm or
Larch, whose shadow fell far too near and heavily for the health of
Roses. Sometimes there was a prickly semidouble yellow Rose, called by
us a Scotch Rose, a Sweet Brier, or a rusty-flowered white Rose,
similar, though inferior, to the Madame Plantier. A new fashion of
trellises appeared in the front yard about sixty years ago, and crimson
Boursault Roses climbed up them as if by magic.
One marked characteristic of the front yard was its lack of weeds; few
sprung up, none came to seed-time; the enclosure was small, and it was a
mark of good breeding to care for it well. Sometimes, however, the earth
was covered closely under shrubs and plants with the cheerful little
Ladies' Delights, and they blossomed in the chinks of the bricked path
and under the Box edges. Ambrosia, too, grew everywhere, but these were
welcome--they were not weeds.
Our old New England houses were suited in color and outline to their
front yards as to our landscape. Lowell has given in verse a good
description of the kind of New England house that always had a front
dooryard of flowers.
[Illustration: Yellow Day Lilies.]
"On a grass-green swell
That towards the south with sweet concessions fell,
It dwelt retired, and half had grown to be
As aboriginal as rock or tree.
It nestled close to earth, and seemed to brood
O'er homely thoughts in a half-conscious mood.
If paint it e'er had known, it knew no more
Than yellow lichens spattered thickly o'er
That soft lead gray, less dark beneath the eaves,
Which the slow brush of wind and weather leaves.
The ample roof sloped backward to the ground
And vassal lean-tos gathered thickly round,
Patched on, as sire or son had felt the need.
But the great chimney was the central thought.
* * * * *
It rose broad-shouldered, kindly, debonair,
Its warm breath whitening in the autumn air."
Sarah Orne Jewett, in the plaint of _A Mournful Villager_, has drawn a
beautiful and sympathetic picture of these front yards, and she deplores
their passing. I mourn them as I do every fenced-in or hedged-in garden
enclosure. The sanctity and reserve of these front yards of our
grandmothers was somewhat emblematic of woman's life of that day: it was
restricted, and narrowed to a small outlook and monotonous likeness to
her neighbor's; but it was a life easily satisfied with small pleasures,
and it was comely and sheltered and carefully kept, and pleasant to the
home household; and these were no mean things.
The front yard was never a garden of pleasure; children could not play
in these precious little enclosed plots, and never could pick the
flowers--front yard and flowers were both too much respected. Only
formal visitors entered therein, visitors who opened the gate and closed
it carefully behind them, and knocked slowly with the brass knocker, and
were ushered in through the ceremonious front door and the little
ill-contrived entry, to the stiff fore-room or parlor. The parson and
his wife entered that portal, and sometimes a solemn would-be
sweetheart, or the guests at a tea party. It can be seen that every one
who had enough social dignity to have a front door and a parlor, and
visitors thereto, also desired a front yard with flowers as the external
token of that honored standing. It was like owning a pew in church; you
could be a Christian without having a pew, but not a respected one.
Sometimes when there was a "vendue" in the house, reckless folk opened
the front gate, and even tied it back. I attended one where the
auctioneer boldly set the articles out through the windows under the
Lilac bushes and even on the precious front yard plants. A vendue and a
funeral were the only gatherings in country communities when the entire
neighborhood came freely to an old homestead, when all were at liberty
to enter the front dooryard. At the sad time when a funeral took place
in the house, the front gate was fastened widely open, and solemn
men-neighbors, in Sunday garments, stood rather uncomfortably and
awkwardly around the front yard as the women passed into the house of
mourning and were seated within. When the sad services began, the men
too entered and stood stiffly by the door. Then through the front door,
down the mossy path of the front yard, and through the open front gate
was borne the master, the mistress, and then their children, and
children's children. All are gone from our sight, many from our memory,
and often too from our ken, while the Lilacs and Peonies and Flowers de
Luce still blossom and flourish with perennial youth, and still claim us
as friends.
At the side of the house or by the kitchen door would be seen many
thrifty blooms: poles of Scarlet Runners, beds of Portulacas and
Petunias, rows of Pinks, bunches of Marigolds, level expanses of Sweet
Williams, banks of cheerful Nasturtiums, tangles of Morning-glories and
long rows of stately Hollyhocks, which were much admired, but were
seldom seen in the front yard, which was too shaded for them. Weeds grew
here at the kitchen door in a rank profusion which was hard to conquer;
but here the winter's Fuchsias or Geraniums stood in flower pots in the
sunlight, and the tubs of Oleanders and Agapanthus Lilies.
The flowers of the front yard seemed to bear a more formal, a "company"
aspect; conventionality rigidly bound them. Bachelor's Buttons might
grow there by accident, but Marigolds never were tolerated,--they were
pot herbs. Sunflowers were not even permitted in the flower beds at the
side of the house unless these stretched down to the vegetable beds.
Outside the front yard would be a rioting and cheerful growth of pink
Bouncing Bet, or of purple Honesty, and tall straggling plants of a
certain small flowered, ragged Campanula, and a white Mallow with
flannelly leaves which, doubtless, aspired to inhabit the sacred bounds
of the front yard (and probably dwelt there originally), and often were
gladly permitted to grow in side gardens or kitchen dooryards, but which
were regarded as interloping weeds by the guardians of the front yard,
and sternly exiled. Sometimes a bed of these orange-tawny Day Lilies
which had once been warmly welcomed from the Orient, and now were not
wanted anywhere by any one, kept company with the Bouncing Bet, and
stretched cheerfully down the roadside.
[Illustration: Orange Day Lilies.]
When the fences disappeared with the night rambles of the cows, the
front yards gradually changed character; the tender blooms vanished,
but the tall shrubs and the Peonies and Flower de Luce sturdily grew and
blossomed, save where that dreary destroyer of a garden crept in--the
desire for a lawn. The result was then a meagre expanse of poorly kept
grass, with no variety, color, or change,--neither lawn nor front yard.
It is ever a pleasure to me when driving in a village street or a
country road to find one of these front yards still enclosed, or even to
note in front of many houses the traces of a past front yard still
plainly visible in the flourishing old-fashioned plants of many years'
growth.