Planting an Inheritance: Life on a Pennsylvania Farm

Lacking inherited wealth, Edwin and Mimi Peeples invested their energy in an abandoned farmhouse and its fields and woods to create a different kind of wealth: mature plantings of box and yew, magnificent specimen trees, unusual ornamentals. There were natural treasures on their grounds, too, so they husbanded the wildflowers and fragrant herbs, the native berries and volunteer fruits, the precious hardwood and aromatic trees. "The fortunate thing about a farm," Peeples writes, "is that whatever wild plant you have at all, you generally have by the acre." Now surrounded by subdivisions, the landscape is at risk, but Peeples will not sell out. What could any man buy worth more than a bequest of beauty?