Home landscape 169 



bery of the country, but also in long-established woods. 

 This knowledge is not only essential for good planting, 

 but also from an artistic point of view. Nor must it be 

 confined to one aspect only of even our few native trees. 

 Take the Oak : how mistaken any one might be as to its 

 planting who knew only one expression of its beauty ! 

 The Oaks in the country, south of London are quite dis- 

 tinct in aspect from those of Warwickshire. Yet the Oak, 

 set close in a Sussex wood, with many silvery columns 

 rising out of Primroses, is as beautiful as any of the fine 

 Oak growths of the Shakespeare country. And this is 

 but one example of the variation of habit of one tree, 

 showing the need for the study of trees in nature, and not 

 only in books. If we travel in mountainous lands where 

 Pines abound, we find that they grow close together, 

 that the * extinguisher ' is not their true form, and that 

 they shoot up into handsome stems, often over 100 feet 

 high without a branch. It is a delusion to suppose that 

 there is anything old or right about the common set out 

 mode of planting conifers, as most of them are recent 

 gains to our country. 



Iron fencing. Nothing tends to mar the beauty of 

 the foregrounds of landscape so much as the use of iron 

 fencing, a modern practice, and easily avoided in the 

 garden or near it. This is so important that a previous 

 chapter is given to it as regards woodland. All that 

 has been said of it there is equally true of the home 

 landscape or wherever we have to deal with fences. 



Dismal Avenues. The making of narrow airless 

 avenues was so common in the past that the landscape 

 in many places is marred and barred by avenues too 

 narrow and too close-set, the effect of which is to cut 

 off good views, and in wet or gloomy weather to give 



