132 PLANS OF RESIDENCES 



homes and home-grounds still more innumerable. It is, therefore, 

 improbable that any one of the plans here presented for the 

 reader's study will precisely suit any one's wants ; but that their 

 careful examination and comparison will be of service in planning 

 houses and laying out lots of a somewhat similar character, we 

 earnestly hope. We furnish them as a good musical professor 

 does his instrumental studies, not to be used as show-pieces, but to 

 be studied as steps and points-d 1 appuis for one's own culture. 



In naming the selection of trees and shrubs for many of the 

 smaller places, we have endeavored to be as careful in their selec- 

 tion as if each place were an actual one, and our own ; leaning, 

 however, in most cases, to that style of planting which will have 

 the best permanent effect, rather than to an immediate but ephem- 

 eral display ; and fully conscious that a skillful gardener may 

 name many other and quite different selections for the same 

 places, that will be equally adapted to them ; and that in carrying 

 out such plans on the ground, the insufficiency of designs on so 

 small a scale to present all the finishing small features that make 

 up the beauty of a complete place, will be very evident. The 

 choice of trees and shrubs for locations otherwise similar, must 

 be influenced by a consideration of the climate. Many which do 

 well near the sea-coast are not hardy on more elevated ground in 

 the same latitude ; while others are healthy in the high lands that 

 prove sickly in more southern and alluvial valleys. A selection for 

 a lot near New York should not be altogether the same as for 

 Saratoga or St. Pauls, Richmond or Louisville ; and for the Gulf 

 States (except in the most elevated regions) it would be totally 

 unsuited. Southward from the latitude of New York, each degree 

 (except so far as the influence of latitude is counteracted by that of 

 altitude) will enable the planter to grow some tree or shrub not 

 safe to plant, under ordinary conditions, any further north. As the 

 latitude and climate of New York city represent the average re- 

 quirements of a greater population than any other, in this country, 

 our selection for the places described in this chapter are generally 

 suited to such a climate; and in planting, the reader must be 

 directed by his own study as to what substitutions are necessary 

 in latitudes north or south of it. 



