A Few Hints on Landscape Gardening 181 



enly origin," * or "silvery" foliage, they may have in their 

 well sounding names. 



It is by no means the fault of the nurserymen that their 

 nurseries abound in ailantuses and poplars while so many 

 of our fine forest trees are hardly to be found. The nursery- 

 men are bound to pursue their business so as to make it 

 profitable, and if people ignore oaks and ashes, and adore 

 poplars and ailantuses, nurserymen cannot be expected to 

 starve because the planting public generally are destitute 

 of taste. 



What the planting public need is to have their attention 

 called to the study of nature - - to be made to understand 

 that it is in our beautiful woodland slopes, with their undu- 

 lating outlines, our broad river meadows studded with single 

 trees and groups allowed to grow and expand quite in a 

 state of free and graceful development, our steep hills, 

 sprinkled with picturesque pines and firs, and our deep 

 valleys, dark with hemlocks and cedars, that the real lessons 

 in the beautiful and picturesque are to be taken, which will 

 lead us to the appreciation of the finest elements of beauty 

 in the embellishment of our country places - - instead of 

 this miserable rage for "trees of heaven" and other fash- 

 ionable tastes of the like nature. f There are, for example, 

 to be found along side of almost every sequestered lawn by 

 the roadside in the northern states, three trees that are 

 strikingly remarkable for beauty of foliage, growth or flower, 

 viz.: the tulip tree, the sassafras, and the pepperidge. The 

 first is, for stately elegance, almost unrivalled among forest 

 trees: the second, when planted in cultivated soil and 

 allowed a fair chance, is more beautiful in its diversified 

 laurel-like foliage than almost any foreign tree in our 

 pleasure grounds: and the last is not surpassed by the 

 orange or the bay in its glossy leaves, deep green as an 



The ailantus bears as one of its vernacular names the grandiloquent 

 title of "Tree of Heaven." -- F. A. W. 



t This cult for native materials, thus clearly announced by Mr. 

 Downing, was not always followed by him without deviation. At least 

 it came to have much more partisan support and much greater popular 

 acceptance among some of his successors. -- F. A. W. 



