248 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



a garden as an adjunct to a home. In America also it 

 is not uncommon for rich men to build for themselves 

 a large house in an uncleared forest, and to clear the 

 forest only so far as to make it a park in which the 

 house stands. A small portion round the house would 

 be kept as a lawn, but this does not constitute a 

 garden. Trees by themselves will not make a garden, 

 but a garden lacks more than half its proper beauty 

 if without trees ; and so I propose to talk of trees, what 

 are and what are not suitable for gardens. 



I should lay it down as a strict rule never to plant 

 English forest trees in a garden. If they are there 

 already, there may be good reasons for keeping some 

 of them, but in a garden of limited extent (and it is of 

 such I am speaking) it seems a waste to plant trees 

 which can be had in perfection in the woods and 

 hedgerows outside of the garden, to the exclusion of 

 the many fine exotic trees which can only be grown in 

 gardens. And even in retaining British forest trees 

 that may be on the ground, I think nothing can be said 

 for them unless they are of some special excellence. 

 There is perhaps no grander deciduous tree than the 

 English oak, when it has past its first manhood and is 

 bordering on old age, and it does seem cruel to cut it 

 down. Yet it takes up too much room when in its 

 full grandeur, especially in certain soils. In some soils 



