62 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



imate theft. Make every attractive object visible from your windows. Cut 

 out the trees that hide them, or if they stand out bare and unadorned, plant 

 trees which partially conceal them. In other words frame them and hang 

 them as pictures in your garden. The green sward will form the bottom of 

 the frame, the sky the top, the trees the sides. Never lay open the whole of 

 a scene or it will look bare. Moreover, we always enjoy an object the most 

 when we have but little of it. We always deceive ourselves with the fancy 

 that a half hidden object is larger and finer than it really is. This whole 

 matter is a simple one: it consists simply in the selection of our objects and 

 then in planting or cutting out trees. To be sure our trees must correspond 

 to the objects beyond them. If the object is a low and round-topped hill, 

 plant round-headed trees ; if it is aspire mix in a few — a very few — Lombar- 

 dy poplars. A weeping willow is in taste by a brook or pond, but it is out of 

 place near an ordinary building. Lombardy poplars, the most ill-used of 

 all trees, are to be recommended for a distant hill, or in very small numbers 

 near a high and long building or about a church with a spire, but they are 

 out of place in most yards, especially when planted in abundance. If our 

 premises are not large enough to allow the planting of tiees, we can use 

 shrubs in a similar manner. 



If we would expose glimpses of attractive objects, we must hide unat- 

 tractive ones. If Smith's barn stands in front of your window, plant trees 

 or vines to hide the most undesirable parts of it. If it stands squarely 

 across the road from you, and if your house is near the highway, persuade 

 him either to move it, or to paint it, and move his barnyard behind it. 



The value of trees is seldom fully appreciated. Much of the common 

 estimation concerning them is nothing more than sentiment. There are two 

 common extremes of sentiment which are always opposed to rural beauty. 

 The one extreme has to do with the immediate neighborhood of the resi- 

 dence, the other with more distant views of landscape. 



It is certainly a common fault with country homes where any attempt is 

 made toward ornament, that too many trees and bushes are allowed to grow. 

 It is perfectly proper, indeed highly necessary, that in the first days and 

 years of ornamenting a barren home, one should plant thickly of a variety 

 of trees and shrubs. There should be small groups of spruces and decidu- 

 ous trees of the rapid growing sorts, which will soon afford shelter and pri- 

 vacy. But it is none the less important that those clumps should be thinned 

 just as fast as the individual trees begin to crowd each other. To be sure, 

 one loves the trees which he has planted and nourished, but it must be borne 

 in mind that sentiment should never stand in the way of beauty and utility. 

 I do not like the hackneyed advice which urges us to plant ornamental trees 

 at such distances as will be proper for them to occupy twenty years hence. 

 Such advice is discouraging; we must live in large part for the pressing 

 present. Moreover, twenty years hence is but a point of time, and it does 

 not pay to forego the pleasure of nineteen years in order to enjoy the perfec- 

 tion of the twentieth. 



What I always recommend to owners of unadorned places, is to plant 

 thickly; get an immediate effect. And immediately thereupon I urge the 

 injunction, strongly underlined, do not neglect to thin out as soon as the trees 

 tegin to crowd. One symmetrical and vigorous tree is worth three one-sided, 

 stunted ones. Clumps of trees soon grow into tangled thickets, the delight 

 of mosquitos, moulds, and vermin. They shut out sun and health, and shut 

 one in from enchanting glimpses of distant views. The attractive clump 



