34 BUILDING SITES 



which a landscape artist will insist on, may seem like wholesale 

 slaughter to the owner. 



Trees which have grown up singly, or in groups of a few only, 

 exposed on all sides to the full glow of the sun and air, are worth 

 more than a whole catalogue of nursery stuff for immediate and 

 permanent adornment. It is surprising how little additional price 

 most purchasers are willing to pay for lots that are enriched by 

 such native trees, while they willingly expend ten times their cost 

 in the little beginnings of trees procured from nurseries. One fine- 

 spreading tree, of almost any native variety, is of inestimable value 

 in home adornment. Few exotic trees are so beautiful as our 

 finest natives, and nothing that we can plant will so well repay the 

 most lavish enrichment of the soil to promote its growth as one of 

 these trees " to the manor born." In locating a house with ref- 

 erence to fine trees already growing, it is much better to have them 

 behind, or overhanging the sides, than to have them in front; the 

 object being to make them a setting, or frame- work, for the house ; 

 to have the house embowered in them, rather than shut out behind 

 them. 



Let us now consider some different forms of ground surfaces. 



FIG. i. 



Ground which rises from the street, so that where it meets the 

 house it is about on a level with the top of an ordinary fence at the 

 street line, is a good form of surface. This rise should not, how- 

 ever, be on a plane from the street boundary to the dwelling. The 

 lawn, and whatever is planted, will show to much better advantage 

 if the rise takes the form of the arc of a circle, as shown in Fig. i, 

 section A, on which the front steps of the house are indicated at a, 

 the front fence at , and the street sidewalk at c. 



Or, for increasing the apparent extent of the ground, the curve 



