DEVIL MAKE A THIRD  includes many descriptions of neighborhood landscaping in Aven (fictional town modeled on Dothan). 

#1. from page 31 (Buck is about to make his first big business deal with his future father-in-law) He closed his lips tightly, remembering, and trying not to remember, as he faced around to the big white house up the precise gravel walkway that parted two squares of green lawn. "No time to drag around,' he muttered, and took two steps again, staring in a puzzled frown at the lawn. "More and more folks here lettin' grass grow in their yards." He shrugged slightly. "Mother wouldn't have it."

#2. from page 188-189 (circa 1906 description of the 1897 standpipe reservoir still standing across from the depot in Dixie) They walked in silence for a moment, Buck looking from bottom to top and then back down along the tall straight-up-and-down standpipe reservoir. It still shone with newness and the small triangular plot of ground was bare again although it had been sodded with St. Augustine grass.

"Ain't as bulky as New York's," Buck said abruptly, "but man for man it'll hold as much as any in the world."

#3.  from page 326:  She would have had the sanded yard swept until nothing showed but the short slanting scratches that followed the stroke of a homemade yard broom.

#4. from page 335: His eyes had seen it for years, rain-washed and rutted, so that hardly a stalk of dog fennel would fight its way up though old buggy axles, tin cans, jars and bottles half full of brackish water, and his mind had only said, "That lot ought to be cleaned up."

#5. from page 347:  They saw instead the slow picture of high-piled cotton wagons grinding slowly down limbs whose weight dragged them down into tired arcs. And they saw the now even alignment of the homes on each side of the streets as new builders took sight of their neighbors' fronts before they laid foundations for their own. And the flowers- azaleas blazing a dusty reddish orange against the white of a low fence, forsynthia hedges throwing bright yellow bells up in challenge to the sun, Cape jessamine shrubs dotting green lawns and mellowing the night, a pansy-bordered walkway dancing with velvet browns and purples and yellows, dogwood trees and redbuds teasing with white and pink petals the salty southwest wind.

"Hey, Lord, they're puttin. silk stockin's on a reg'lar whore of a town."

#6. from page 369: "This town has meant a lot to me- it's been my friend and it's been my good companion. It's given me more than a man deserves, and in giving it, it's come a long way. All the way from a cold-water spring in a grove of poplars to paved streets and a power plant. It's come to fine homes and flowers brought in from Mobile- azaleas to bring something besides work to all of us. I hope this opera house will do the same thing the flowers did for us- make us forget for a while that we're building a town and then remember stronger that we are growing with it, and be thankful to the town. I'm grateful to Aven because it took me along for the ride."

#7. [not pertaining to residential landscaping but to suburban Dothan] from page 197: "Give me a shot quick," he said, "I think I swallowed some of that rain."

"Phew!" he said, looking back up at Buck. "I can't do worth a cuss with her. Jeff, he can sit still and look picked on and get what he wants. It looked like I kept her riled up so I came on down."

"Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves," Hearn said, suddenly, without smiling. "That's what she kept saying."

His mind suddenly was back to the first night he had spent in Aven, a night when the fear had found him alone. That fear- part of the fight between man and cotton, or man and land, or man and grass. Bermuda grass, lacing a foot deep into the richest soil, holding it against the heavy washing rains and fattening the topsoil for the day when a man would need it. Bermuda grass, friendly at first, then a part of the fight, dirt banker for the man, then making him earn it, making him go in there with a steel beam and a bull-tongue scooter and a mule that was willing to burn itself out alongside of a man. He shuddered, then looked back up at Hearn.
 "Shirtsleeves," he said, softly,"in three generations."

"She says it looks like we're fixin' to do it in one."