Drooping Leucothoe
Drooping leucothoe or Leucothoe fontanesiana is a native shrub that can be found on the southern edge of the South Lawn. It has elliptical pointed leaves that also have rough edges. There are a few plants of this species located in this area. Drooping leucothoe has dense foliage that blocks out the area right behind it. It can also grow to cover quite a large area. Even though it covers a large area, it does not grow very tall. It is useful that it does not grow very tall, because being located along the southern edge of the property, it would cover an important feature of the Fairsted landscape if it was too tall. The southern edge of the property is characterized by many plants and dense foliage. Rather than having a spruce pole fence back there like the rest of the property, there is a short wall of rocks. The short wall of rocks allows for the property next door to be viewed. Olmsted often used a technique like this in his landscape designs, and he called it the “borrowed view”. This often included purposefully arranging plants or other parts of the landscape in order to allow a view of a neighboring area. In the case of Fairsted, Olmsted wanted there to be a view of the neighboring property, which at the time was owned by Isabella Stewart Gardner and was a wilderness prairie. Olmsted had many large trees growing along the southern edge of his property, but intentionally left trees out of the area where he wanted the borrowed view to exist. This all also makes drooping leucothoe a good choice for this area. It grows densely and wide, which covers the rock wall behind it, but does not cover up any of the borrowed view. In addition, due to the drooping nature of the branches, they cover the entire area of the plant, all of the way down to the ground.
