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In 1911 Miss Marion Roby Case gave her sister Louisa a stone wall for her birthday. Marion had the wall made to separate lawns and formal gardens on their property in Weston, Massachusetts, from their woods beyond. The wall, with its charmingly battlemented top, was 10 feet high and 6 feet thick in some stretches, and 200 feet long--a massive structure.
From 1909 to 1942, on the place in Weston, Marion ran Hillcrest Gardens, an experimental fruit and vegetable farm intended to "work up the scientific side of agriculture and provide summer employment and practical education for local youth."
In 1944 the Weston real estate passed by Marion's and Louisa's bequest to Harvard's Arnold Arboretum, which used the outpost as a nursery for trees and shrubs that would later be moved to headquarters in Jamaica Plain, and for display gardens of herbaceous plants to complement the collections at the arboretum proper. The Case Estates, at 135 Wellesley Street, are open today to the public free of charge from sunrise to sunset year round.
An early brochure given visitors described Louisa's birthday present as "the largest free-standing dry wall in New England." (A dry wall is made without mortar, but with plenty of ingenuity.) A later brochure described the wall as the "longest" such thing in New England. "These 'largest' and 'longest' designations may be factoids," says Peter del Tredici, director of living collections at the arboretum. (A factoid, says the Random House Dictionary, unabridged, is "something fictitious or unsubstantiated that is presented as fact, de- vised especially to gain publicity and accepted because of constant repetition." Author Norman Mailer '43 is said to have coined the word in 1973.) Perhaps readers expert in mighty walls will testify to the claims of this one.
Louisa's wall has always been a highlight of the Case Estates, and now more than ever. Seven years ago the arboretum, pinched financially, withdrew the three staff members caring for the Case Estates and replaced them with an outside contractor, who mows the grass at a cost of $40,000 a year. No one divides the daylilies. The arboretum has sold a 38-acre meadow to the town and four houses to citizens. Robert Cook '68, director of the arboretum, says he has no plans to sell the remaining 65 acres, and if he did sell, he would give the town first refusal and 18 months to act. Meantime, the place lies dormant, sees few visitors, and has an air of drowsy, slightly sad, abandonment. Go say hello to the wall.