This is a somewhat deceptive photo of perhaps one the most important features of the place. From its purchase in 1872 Julie began planting trees in front of the house, between it and the then sleepy road. She added to the already extant group of two Sugar maples and two Norways, with a grouping of Norway spruces, and a line of maples along the road. By the 1880’s a commentator noted that it was going to become a ‘lovely grove’ in front of the property. Such natural landscaping, while all the rage in the cities where the first great landscape parks were being created, was unusual in an area dominated by open fields, charcoal wood lots, and the picturesque but rigid lines of sugar maples along hedgerows. Over the century this grove has gradually been bulked up with more trees. And more distance. And, of course, size: many of the trees are between 70 and 90 feet in height. The maple in the foreground was orginally planted on the road edge. Mercifully, when the state highway was created in the 1930’s, it was moved away from the house. It is actually visible in this photo, at the center back. The road, like the house, runs north-south; this photo was taken looking directly northeast.
Today, this area, 500 feet long and between 40 to 100 feet wide, acts and looks like a piece of undisturbed forest. Over time, some of the native wildflowers have recolonized it: starflower, trillium, canadian lily-of-the-valley, wood aster, princess-pine, etc. Many of these have had help in first getting established, but are now genuine colonies. However, it is aggressively managed: both in the removable of undesirable plants and the planting of new trees and shrubs to continue to block the road, to add to the wooded nature, and to ensure that in another century it might still look like a forest.
Acair Fearann 