180 Landscape Gardening 



pleasure, and as the creation of scenery in landscape gar- 

 dening is the nearest approach to the matter that \ve can 

 realize in a practical way, it is not difficult to see that 

 November, dreary as it may seem to I he cockneys who 

 have rushed back to gas-lights and the paved streets of the 

 city, is full of interest and even excitement to the real lover 

 of the country. 



It is, however, one of the characteristics of the human 

 mind to overlook that which is immediately about us, how- 

 ever admirable, and to attach the greatest importance to 

 whatever is rare, and difficult to be obtained. A remark- 

 able illustration of the truth of this, may be found in the 

 ornamental gardening of this country, which is noted for 

 the strongly marked features made in its artificial scenery 

 by certain poorer sorts of foreign trees, as well as the almost 

 total neglect of finer native materials, that are indigenous 

 to the soil. We will undertake to say, for example, that 

 almost one-half of all the deciduous trees that have been 

 set in ornamental plantations for the last ten years, have 

 been composed, for the most part, of two very indifferent 

 foreign trees -- the ailantus and the silver poplar.* When 

 we say indifferent, we do not mean to say that such trees as 

 the ailantus and the silver poplar, are not valuable trees in 

 their way - - that is, that they are rapid growing, will thrive 

 in all soils, and are transplanted with the greatest facility 



- suiting at once both the money-making grower and the 

 ignorant planter; but we do say, that when such trees as 

 the American elms, maples and oaks, can be raised with so 

 little trouble - - trees as full of grace, dignity, and beauty, 

 as any that grow in any part of the world - - trees, too, that 

 go on gathering new beauty with age, instead of throwing 

 up suckers that utterly spoil lawns, or that become, after 

 the first few years, only a more intolerable nuisance every 

 day- -it is time to protest against the indiscriminate use 

 of such sylvan materials -no matter how much of "heav- 



* This is remarkable testimony. The popularity of the ailanlus and 

 the silver poplar must have been short, for they cut a very unimportant 

 figure in modern tree plantations. --F. A. \V. 



