xviii INTRODUCTION. 



be pursued with reasonable satisfaction which will secure 

 good mass effects and a fair consideration for the character- 

 istics of individual specimens. There will be the open 

 centre of lawn grass and the border plantation of mixed 

 trees and shrubs and herbaceous plants with a moderately 

 diversified sky-line. Outlying specimens of choice trees and 

 shrubs will vary the outline of the masses here and there, 

 and perhaps stand alone at a few points without shrubs. 

 Excessive cribbing and confining will bo prevented by 

 planting the trees forty to fifty feet apart, and the shrubs 

 eight to ten feet apart, with small ones two to four feet 

 apart. A simple negative rule for the arrangement of 

 trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants is to never plant them 

 in a continuous straight line, but in groups with curving 

 boundaries and placed on the specially prepared crests of 

 swelling spots or portions of the lawn. Trees and shrubs 

 thus placed are favorably exhibited and enabled to show 

 their peculiar beauties better than on a flat surface. 



There are a few simple things pertaining to landscape 

 gardening, such as irregular sky-lines and border lines of 

 shrub and tree groups, open lawn centres, and boundary 

 plantations, attention to which will be likely to secure a 

 pleasing effect, even though one foregoes any attempt to 

 realize the higher and more subtle features of the art. An- 

 other way to simplify and, to my mind, greatly improve the 

 arrangement of trees and shrubs is to group a lot of one 

 kind of plants together, a hundred Spircea opulifolia here, 

 fifty Spircea Thunbergii there, and so on. It is a large and 

 specially effective method of treatment, and really easy of 

 accomplishment. 



