Last fall I passed another farm down in Iowa, whose owner had tried to make his place conspicuous by putting a concrete wall and gateway in front of his house, and making lavish use of white paint in decorating his buildings and grounds.  He succeeded, but I cannot help thinking that if he had put the money that useless concrete work cost into shrubbery and vines, it would have made his place twice as attractive.  I dislike pretentious adornments to the farm, especially where the rest of the place doesn’t measure up to them.  Like Senator Blaine, who, at the time the Queen Anne style of architecture became popular, on being asked why he did not have his old fashioned house Queen Anned, replied that he did not like to see a Queen Anne front and a Mary Anne back.

A farm home can be something better than a city park.  One of the beautiful things that I shall always remember about Berlin was a way they had of bordering their parks and the enclosures of public buildings.  They take tree-roses trimmed up to the height of a fence with a hemispherical head.  Then they plant them around the edge of their grounds a rod or two apart, festoon chains from the top of one rose stalk to the top of the next, and where the chain touches the ground midway between them, they plant a little ivy which climbs up and conceals the chain and gives the appearance of festoons of vines between the rose trees.  I thought them so lovely that when I married a nurseryman I thought I would persuade him to do something of that kind on our grounds, but he has convinced me that while that is all right for a city park, it would not be in good taste in a country place.  It would look too artificial.  The charm of a country place is its natural beauty.  For the same reason we do not have any trimmed evergreens or hedges on our place.  Moreover, the man who makes his living from the soil finds the upkeep of those decorations too pottering, and if he had money to hire it done he would rather put it into his automobile or into other improvements.

The natural beauty that can be set about the farm home will become it better.  Wild grape vines or woodbine draping the wire fences tempt the eye of the passer-by to linger, and they cost nothing.  Once planted, they are there for a life-time.  A walnut tree in a fence corner will grow to a fair size in ten years, in twenty it becomes a land-mark.  A catalpa of a hardy strain will do the same thing in about half the time in our part of the state.  Take an elder from your woods and plant it in an angle of your house, and it makes a luxurious growth that rivals the castor bean of the city park and does not need to be replaced the next spring.

It certainly pays to go in for some kind of horticultural adornments for the farm.  They are so easy and inexpensive to obtain and make such a happy difference to the farmer’s family and to all who pass his way.  When you have a specially prosperous year on the farm, save a little of the surplus for new trees or shrubs.