Front yard

“ In the front yard is what is known all over town as the 'big tree,' a silver maple, at least twice as tall as the house. It is so broad that its shade falls over the whole front of the place. In the back is an orchard of old apple trees, and trellises of big blue grapes. On one side is a broad lawn, at the back of which is one of the good old-fashioned flower gardens that does one good to look at. ”

“ The grass of the lawn is equally foul, and every thing of dirt and rubbish is collected under the windows in front. The gardens behind are in the same execrable state: gravel-walks over-run with moss and weeds; flower beds ornamented with statues of leaden Floras, painted Mercurys, and Dians with milk-pails. Every yard almost salutes you with some similar absurdity. The hedges are shaped into peacocks, and not unfrequently into ladies and gentlemen dancing a minuet. ”

“ You enter by the big archway into a big open yard, the centre part of which is a wide-spreading dung-hill and reservoir. All round the yard are sheds and stables enclosing it, and facing you at the back the low, long white house, with steps leading up to the front door, which opens into the kitchen. ”

“ It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments, acorn-tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up to the very edge of the swamp, then (though it may not be the best place for a dry cellar) , so that there be no access on that side to citizens. Front-yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way. ”

“ These may all bloom better than ever in the new beds that are cut in the turf; but with the side fences that used to come from the corners of the house to the front fence, other barriers, as I have said here over and over, have been taken away, and the old-fashioned village life is becoming extinct. 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. ”

“ The summer house should be placed in the side yard, or in the rear in a spot where trees lend it a background. If its use is that of a resting spot for your mother, she certainly would not wish it right out on the front lawn. If the house is for children to play in, then again it is not for the front of the house. An appropriate place is near the garden where it makes a cool place to rest after labour, a spot from which to view the beauties of the garden, and a charming place to serve afternoon tea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A screen, or belt of privet, or low evergreens may be planted in a circular form from the front right-hand corner of the dwelling, to the corresponding corner of the rear offices, enclosing a clothes drying yard, and cutting them off from too sightly an exposure from the lawn in front. The opposite end of the house, which may be termed its business front, may open to the every-day approach to the house, and be treated as convenience may determine. ”

“ No attempt has been made to grade the yard, and the only evidence of care is a gravel walk outlined by bricks set edgewise, which leads from the front porch to the brink of the hill, where it stops short. ”

“ What dignity and repose an ample, well kept house-yard gives to even a plain, modest house! The effect of the mistake of locating the house too close to the highway is often accentuated by locating the barns on the other side and immediately upon the highway, and in front of the house. ”

“ Much can be done to make even the one-room schoolhouse attractive and hygienic. With almost no expense, the grounds can be set with shade trees, shrubs, and perennial flowering plants. The yard can be made into a lawn in front, and into an athletic ground at the sides or the rear. ”

“ This yard should be large enough in front for all to occupy in common for recreation and sport, and planted with oaks, elms, maples, and other shady trees, tastefully arranged in groups and around the sides. ”

“ Jack laughed. “I’m sure they wouldn’t find me if I lived here! But Anne and I only have a yard in a city block. The front steps from the door go right down to the sidewalk, and there’s a little patch of grass in front of the basement windows, with an area-way going to the back kitchen. ”

“ It was a common experience for us to be led by an unkept path and through a patch of weeds or across an ungrassed dooryard full of rubbish, in order to reach a so-called garden which had never spoken a civil word to the house nor got one from it. Now, the understanding is that every part of the premises, every outdoor thing on the premises—path, fence, truck-patch, stable, stable-yard, hen-yard, tennis or croquet-court—everything is either a part of the garden or is so reasonably related to it that from whatever point one views the place he beholds a single satisfactory picture. ”

“ For when you ascend gradually, past the Bon Marché, and come to the hill-top, you leave for awhile the shops and the continuous, conjoined houses, and arrive, past the transitional stage of semi-detachedness, at the wholly blest condition of splendid isolation in the rear of fences and carriage entrances, with gentility-balls on the gate-posts, a circular lawn in front of the house, skirted by its gravel drive, and perhaps even a stone dog on either side of the doorway! ”

“ This narrow band of grass followed the carriage-road up to the lodge-gate.
Around the paved yard in the rear stood the coach-house, stables, kitchen, laundry, scullery, larder, and other offices, and still farther to the rear of the house, behind the yard, were the flower and kitchen gardens. To the rear of all, surrounding all, and binding all in like suffocating bondage, was the Park of gnarled oaks and rank lush undergrowth and slimy soil. ”

“ The yard may vary in size, but it must be of soil, clothed upon with grass, with a bush or a tree in it, a garden, and some animal, even if the tree has to grow in the garden and the animal has to be kept in the tree, as with one of my neighbors, who is forced to keep his bees in his single weeping willow, his yard not being large enough for his house and his hive. ”

“ The outbuildings are well-arranged and of the most substantial construction, and the yard immediately around the house is inclosed with a fence, while outside of this there extends for half a mile on one side a most luxuriant grass-pasture. ”

“ One comes sometimes abruptly on a picture which seems bewilderingly un-American, of a precipice wall covered with bird-cage cottages, the little, paling-walled yard of one jutting out in a line with the chimney-tops of the next one below, and so on down to the street at the base of the hill. ”

“ Nowhere does the grass spring up so industriously as in this homely yard, along the base of the stone wall and in the sheltered nooks of the buildings, and especially around the southern door-step—a locality which seems particularly favorable to its growth, for it is already tall enough to bend over and wave in the wind. ”

“ The large forest trees, always grand, graceful, and appropriate, would become such a house, throwing a protecting air around and over its quiet, unpretending roof. Vines, or climbing roses, might throw their delicate spray around the columns of the modest veranda, and a varied selection of familiar shrubbery and ornamental plants checker the immediate front and sides of the house looking out upon the lawn; through which a spacious walk, or 126 carriage-way should wind, from the high road, or chief approach. ”

“ Through this fence I caught glimpses of the green turf and scattered shrubs of a yard which had once sloped away to the avenues on either side, and, more interesting still, those three windows whose high-drawn shades offered such a vivid contrast to the rest of the house. ”

“ In the foreground an oval lawn, carefully kept (for I was frequently employed to weed the daisies out) : it is ringed with gravelled path, then squared box borders, then flower-beds, behind which on one side rises a thick belt of fir-trees, and on the other lie the farmyards, over a dividing wall. From the little green gate in the roadway fence (lined with a clipped hedge) one views the old dwelling at the top of the lawn; long and low, its walls a mat of ivy, pierced with latticed casements, opening outward, and a front door under a little porch ”

“ Behind you is a timber yard, sending forth its strawberry-pine perfume. There is always some attractions in a timber yard. Whether you will or not it fascinates you; you enter for a moment, and stroll about through the little alleys between the stacks, as numerous and complicated as the twistings and turnings of a maze. You imagine yourself once more a boy playing at hide-and-seek, and revel in the hot sunshine that is pouring down upon you and bringing out the perfume of the wood. ”

“ Two men in a bombing machine can destroy at a single blow the ammunition which, if it had reached the front, might have [181] swept out a regiment.
That is why so much thought and genius has been expended upon the bombing plane. The day bomber becomes the right arm of the infantry, flying low over the lines, attacking troops and striking terror to the heart of the enemy as the huge Allied tanks did when they first started on their irresistible slow walk across trenches, troops, buildings and every manner of obstruction. ”

“ By the roadside, through the meadows, on the farm, at the cottage door, and in your own yard those dear, familiar little friends, the clover-blossoms, come to greet you. Even in city parks you may find them, and always they are ready and glad to help you have a good time. ”

“ The site is obviously well chosen on a good soil, rather elevated, and at a sufficient distance from the low grounds near the river for [129] the advantage of a healthy air: the streets are of spacious width crossing each other at right angles, and lined with Lombardy poplars: the houses, which at leisure are to be replaced by others of more durable materials, are at present log cottages of a pleasing picturesque plan, and very neatly thatched; to each is attached a garden, a yard, a shed, and out-house for the cow and other purposes, the whole having an air of great comfort. ”

“ In a remote corner of the yard, a small party of sedate, business-like individuals are rolling up the fleeces upon a couple of small sloping platforms, and handing them over the wall to others who are building them upon carts, to be carried to the storing-house. ”

“ Selecting the quiet yard of a summer cottage, a deserted-looking place not yet opened for the season, in which to study the ways of the birds in peace, I was often disturbed by a negro passing across the lawn, taking no heed of fences, for there's no sort of a fence in that country that they will not pass over as if it were not there. ”

“ Some of our doings, judged from the vantage point of the knoll, are very inconsistent. The spot occupied by the drying yard is the most suitable place for the new strawberry bed, and is in a direct line between the fence gap, where my fragrant things are to be, and the Rose Garden. Several of the walks that have been laid out according to the plan, when seen from this height, curve around nothing and reach nowhere. We shall presently satisfy their empty embraces with shrubs and locate various other conspicuous objects at the terminals. ”

“ From where the pleasant little party sat, they could look over the fence into the big yard belonging to the Pease place. “Your folks,” said Mrs. Adams to her next door neighbors, “are going to have a right smart lot of cherries. ”

“ Next to the great, came the near great: a row of pleasant cottages, each one with its little garden separated from its neighbor’s by neat whitewashed palings. After these, they approached a cottage set in a large yard and isolated as much as if it were in the country. It was well back from the street and instead of the white palings [169] of its neighbors, it boasted a box hedge about five feet high and at least three feet broad. Generations of close clipping had made this hedge as solid as a brick wall. The yard enclosed was laid out as a formal garden with box labyrinth and winding paths. ”

“ In a dark angle of a yard, behind a woodshed cluttered and foul, there is a pool of stinking black water out of which you can fish rotten burlap and odds and ends of the social history of all the houses. The curious children have turned pale green, like sprouts in a cellar, and their arms are thin as pipestems. ”

“ A single petunia plant against a background of foliage is worth a dozen similar plants in the center of the lawn.... The open-centered yard may be a picture; the promiscuously planted yard may be a nursery or a forest. A little color scattered in here and there puts a finish to the picture. A dash of color gives spirit and character to the brook or pond, to the ledge of rocks, to the old stump, or to the pile of rubbish." The flower garden, if there is one, should be at one side of the residence or at the rear, "for it is not allowable to spoil a good lawn even with flowers." ”

“ I know nothing more suggestive of persistence and of sad sentiment than the view often seen in forlorn city enclosures, as you drive past, or rush by in an electric car, of an aged bush of Box, or a few feet of old Box hedge growing in the beaten earth of a squalid back yard, surrounded by dirty tenement houses. Once a fair garden there grew ”

“ The dwellings in these villages are always of a single story in height, and their roofs are covered with thatch or red tiles. Each house stands in a yard, or 'campong,' by itself, and is enclosed by a hedge sufficiently thick and high to keep out all intruding cows or other animals. ”

“ The place was either plunged in gloom or gayety. The old gardener who kept house by himself in the cottage at the back of the yard had things much his own way by far the greater part of the time.
Dr. Block and his wife lived next door to the Nethertons, and he and his wife, who were so absurd as to be very happy in each other's company, had the benefit of the beautiful yard. ”