The drawing gave the garden a gate on its northern side. Everyone remembered a continuous wall. When the gardener's niece, Sol, asked about it, relatives said he often drew improvements he never made.
A photograph in the parish newsletter showed two posts beneath climbing plants. There had been an entrance, narrow enough for one person, before the wall was extended. Sol found a letter asking the neighbor to leave it open for a woman who could no longer manage the longer route around.
The woman's grandson remembered the shortcut. After her death, the families agreed to close it because the ground became uneven. The gardener kept drawing the gate in later sketches, perhaps from habit, perhaps because his idea of the garden included the person who used it.
Sol labeled the drawing with the evidence for both the gate and its closure. She did not mark the later sketch wrong. It was not a current survey. On paper, an entrance could remain part of a place after the physical opening disappeared, provided the viewer knew which sort of map they were holding.