162 HOW TO PLAN THE HOME GROUNDS 



the tree growth when it is encouraged to droop down to 

 meet the low shrubs and long grass of the meadow. It 

 is on the edges of these woodlands bordering on mead- 

 ows that one finds the most charming parklike effects, 

 the true ideal type of pastoral designs, where Nature has 

 been just enough influenced by the hand of man to give 

 her the human interest that should be associated with all 

 attempts of the landscape gardener. A bit of an old 

 fence, a log, a ditch, gives a living sentiment to the pict- 

 ure, of which one feels the need in any park or home 

 grounds. Pure, unadulterated Nature is all very well 

 for mere sentiment, but an old lane, with its cows and 

 sheep-dog, and hedgerow of dogwood, pepperidge, and 

 liquid amber, and wild clematis, clematis virginica, will 

 satisfy the spirit more days in the year than any Rocky 

 Mountain glade, if we could reach it, where the foot of 

 white man has never trod. 



In order to explain better the bearing of these remarks, 

 the writer desires to call attention to the attempts that 

 are often made to imitate Nature by planting thick, 

 tangled masses of native plants, so that, every way one 

 looks, one is attracted by broad stretches of trees and 

 shrubs that for a moment seem to have sprung up spon- 

 taneously where they grow. We gaze at these tangled 

 masses of trees and vines, and are, for a moment, de- 

 lighted at what we believe to be veritable Nature ; but 

 unfortunately, we are always bound, sooner or later, to 

 be undeceived, and then, under the influence of the dis- 

 appointment of deceit, we begin to look about us, and 

 then to find that it is, after all, but a bit of theatri- 

 cal effect imposed on the general landscape, with which 

 it does not in reality harmonize, and with which no 

 human hand can make it harmonize, because the remain- 



