No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 307 



double deutzias form a magnificent collection wherewith almost im- 

 pentrable screens can be planted answering almost as good a purpose 

 in small grounds as conifers. 



The two forms of tree or bush-grow' th conifers and many-stemmed 

 shrubs lie at the very foundation of all landscape work, and you 

 might as well try to- have a law-n without grass, as a model artistic 

 place without very free use of these materials. They are beautiful 

 in themselves; they shut out unsightly objects; they separate the 

 ornamental grounds from the fields around them; they form back- 

 grounds for herbaceous and annual flower-beds — in short, they give 

 a character that single-stemmed, trimmed-up trees cannot. They 

 are not only a frame but a part of the beautiful picture you are try- 

 ing to make about your home. 



ABOUT THE ARRANGING. 



I have now come to a most diflScult part of my work, which is to 

 show, without a steriopticon, the disposition of trees and shrubs in 

 carrying out the rules previously laid down; but perhaps I can give 

 you a simple illustration going to show that the most artistic forms 

 of planting are also the most economical and satisfactory in the long 

 run. 



Take a bit of paper and make four rows of four dots each, just as if 

 you were making a plan for an orchard of 16 trees, the dots being in 

 squares. Let these 16 dots represent 16 trees which exactly fill your 

 front yard, the front of the house standing between the two middle 

 trees in the fourth row. Let your dots be one inch apart. Now 

 rub out the four middle dots and place one in each corner half an 

 inch from the corner tree. You will at once see that by the simple 

 re-arrangement of four trees in sixteen, you have made nearly your 

 entire lawn free of trees. Your law^n is open to the sun and rain. 

 It is an unbroken mass of green in summer and an equally uninter- 

 rupted plain of snow in winter. 



As the sun circles around, the shadows come and go, first on one 

 side and then on the other, a constant change from morning until 

 night in place of the monotonous shadow that clings all day to the 

 common cluttered dooryard. It costs no more to plant the trees in 

 the new way than the old, but you are a constant gainer as the years 

 go by. You can run a lawn mower, a scythe, or even a horse-mower 

 unobstructed; you can see out and passersby can see in; you have 

 changed from the stiff and stilted methods of the orchardist and 

 vegetable gardener to those of nature and the artist. Ever after, if 

 you have used suitable material, the God of Nature will add new 

 beauties to your work year by year until your home has a character 

 peculiarly its own. 



Although this is but a crude and rudimentary attempt to plant a 



