Home landscape 165 



or any other purpose, to change existing surfaces, special 

 care should be taken to avoid this earthing up of tree 

 stems, which not only hides one of their finest features, 

 but is often fatal to certain kinds of trees. 



Overplanting of rampant Evergreens. Many places 

 suffer from thoughtless planting of trees in the wrong 

 place as to kind and stature, and ugly overgrowths of 

 all-devouring evergreens, like the Pontic Rhododendron, 

 Common Cherry Laurel, Privets, and other nursery rub- 

 bish. Few seem to see how much their home landscape 

 is shut out and their pleasure gardens made dismal, and, 

 indeed, sometimes almost uninhabitable, in this way. 

 To those in any doubt about it, the following words by 

 one of the best planters, the late James McNab of the 

 Botanic Garden at Edinburgh, may give courage to 

 think and in due time to act. It is, however, difficult to 

 express in words the harm done to the home landscape 

 by stupid planting abandoned to its own redundance. 

 Apart from these sources of evil, there is the hopeless 

 human one of the man who will not allow a tree to be cut 

 down, no matter how ill placed or how much air or beau- 

 tiful view it shuts out. This too common type is often 

 quite proud of its doings, and is not to be dealt with by 

 the axe ; it suffers from blindness in not seeing only one 

 side of a very serious artistic question. It is a common 

 thing for even the finest groups and best trees about a 

 country house not to be rightly or well seen, owing to 

 unmeaning trees and coarse shrubs being massed about 

 the house itself, sometimes even to the exclusion of light 

 from the living rooms as well as the landscape beauty of 

 the surrounding country. 



When grounds are first planted the trees are small, and 

 the views so extensive that the possibility of these being 



