2, 8 THE ADVANTAGES OF PLANTING IN GROUPS 



woods, drc. With regard to flourish — although, the horse chestuut 

 and the gean are the only full or large sized forest trees that produce 

 showy blossoms, there are of smaller trees the Pavias, and other allies 

 of the former ; while, belonging to the same natural order as the 

 latter, there are others of the cherry tribe, hawthorns, services, moun- 

 tain ashes, mespiluses, almonds, and the wild forms of the apple, 

 pear, and plum. In other families there are the Scotch and English 

 laburnums, robinias, lilacs, elders, ice., which, together with rhodo- 

 dendrons, azaleas, weigelias, and other flowering shrubs too numer 

 ous to mention, are admirably adapted, when grouped according to 

 their colours, for decorating the margin as well as the interior of 

 our woodlands. And on prominent rocky snabs, natural sites for 

 the rowan, the gean, and the sloe-thorn, the snowy whiteness of the 

 last two displayed before the earliest leafage of spring, is ever the 

 admiration of all beholders. Of distinct habited trees, drooping or 

 weeping kinds, which only attain to little above their original height, 

 are very serviceable for shutting out lower and near at hand un- 

 sightly objects, without impeding the views of more distant and 

 important scenery. In such a case, weepers being comparatively few, 

 a judicious mixture of kinds becomes necessary in order to obviate 

 disagreeable monotony and uniformity This suggests a procedure 

 that is too generally neglected in opening up views that have become 

 interrupted or shut out by the overgrowth of injudiciously planted 

 trees, viz., that of grafting some of these with weepers at requisite 

 heights, particularly ashes and elms, which are the most easily ope- 

 rated upon : and the more general adoption of this practice would 

 be the means of retaining many a fine stem or bole, where their pre- 

 sence is ornamental as well as needful. Among upright, pyramidal, 

 and conical formed trees, we have the Lombardy ptoplar as the most 

 important, from the great height to which it attains, as well as from 

 the remarkably fastigiate upright habit of its growth, characteristics 

 which render it highly suitable for certain localities, but most in- 

 congruous in others. Thus, when neither too thickly nor over 

 widely grouped at the ends of a bridge, viaduct, or high-level topped 

 embankment, those horizontal lines are, as it were, balanced and 

 supported by the perpendicular lines of the poplars, and the latter 

 have a singularly important landscape effect when seen rising from 

 among ordinary plantations over these horizontal surfaces, as well as 

 over flattish topped ranges of buildings, while, among or rising 

 behind groups of roundish headed trees, their occasional presence 

 has a very pleasing effect On higher, drier, and more exposed 



