Don't Let This Happen to You!

It is not an uncommon spectacle to see a country house built at a lavish expenditure, and in a very ornate style, but placed in the midst of grounds badly laid out and wretchedly kept. The proprietor has exhausted all his forced stock of enthusiasm, and spent all his surplus capital upon his villa, in his architectural fever, and his grounds are doomed to suffer the succeeding ague of indifference and neglect. A wise man, when he plans a country residence, will so apportion his means that his house may not be out of keeping with his grounds. The same style, the same feeling, should pervade both, and be reflected from one to the other.

A.J.Downing, Hints to Persons About Building in the Country, 1847