The Emily Dickinson, located on Main Street in Amherst, is the birthplace and life-long home of the poet and her family. Born in 1830, Emily Dickinson is believed to have written most of her work from her upstairs bedroom. Beginning in the 1850s, Emily's father, Edward Dickinson, began transforming the Federal style home into a mid 19th century gentleman's farm, complete with a livestock barn, orchard, vegetable and flower garden. To provide separation for his family from the busy thoroughfare of Main Street, he constructed a picket-style wooden fence along property edge, and backed it with a 6' high hemlock hedge. By the mid 20th century the property had changed ownership and maintenance of the hedge had ceased. The hemlocks grew into mature trees, and fence deteriorated and was subsequently removed.

In 2008, the Emily Dickinson Museum hired Martha Lyon Landscape Architecture, LLC to prepare the drawings and specifications for reconstruction of the hedge and fence. Using remnant fence pieces and historic photographs, MLLA prepared a reconstruction design, including the original fence color, determined through paint analysis to be an herbal shade of green. Reconstruction took place during the spring and summer of 2009, and as a result, the Homestead is now the highly visible property it was during Emily Dickinson's life. Concurrent with the hedge and fence project was the development of a Cultural Landscape Report for the property, completed by MLLA in early 2010.