154 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Classes of 

 Tree Forms 

 and their 

 Uses in 

 Design 



and to a less degree with shrubs, their greater interest lies in their 

 flower, and they are more often planted in masses where their indi- 

 vidual shape is of little account. We shall discuss therefore the shapes 

 of trees only, but whatever we discover about them can be applied, in a 

 general way, as well to shrubs and herbaceous plants. 



In their main outline — in the case of deciduous trees particularly 

 when this outline is filled in by foliage — the shapes of trees may be 

 thought of in certain classes, which are perhaps more worth discussion 

 than others for us because they are more common in this country or 

 because they have more definite use in design. 



There are those trees which are low, rounded, crouching, broad at 

 the base, and which tend to form an undulation rather than an object 

 in the distance; and those which, while round-headed, stand high, 

 perhaps on a considerable trunk, and arrest the attention as separate 

 objects through the break that their upstanding forms make with the 

 skyline. Some of these rounded trees, like the horse-chestnut before 

 it reaches old age, carry their branches close together, well covered 

 with leaves, no branch protruding far beyond its fellows, so that the 

 whole tree presents a fairly even surface with little interest of detail of 

 foliage mass and little play of light and shade. Such trees may be used 

 in formal rows or where a single heavy free-standing specimen is desired, 

 or to give a greater density and solidity to a projecting point of a group 

 of other trees. Most of the rounded trees have more variation in the 

 subordinate forms caused by their branch arrangement. They may 

 be less strikingly individual, but they blend better with other members 

 of a tree group, and they have a more sustained interest in their play of 

 light and shade and texture. 



Some trees are conical in shape. They draw the eye not only 

 through their mass but through the convergence of the attention op 

 their pointed top which, as it were, contains the essence of the expression 

 of the whole tree. Some trees with a vertical trunk, but horizontal 

 branches, form a broad-based cone, composed of rhythmic repeats 

 of similar branch masses, a characteristic particularly exemplified by 

 the Rocky Mountain blue spruce. Such a tree, on account of this sub- 

 ordinate formality of its branch arrangement, as well as on account of 

 its definite conical shape, has a distinct and striking individuality. 



