104 VARIETY IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 



thorns all of whose low-spreading boughs have been cut away; 

 better, far better to have laid the axe to the root of this tree than 

 to have maimed, disfigured it for life; the maples, the basswoods, 

 the elms which on many a village street in the Middle West 

 have been planted fifteen feet apart, and left to that fate so 

 easily imagined by those who know and love a tree. 



In Art Out of Doors we are warned against four trees as being 

 difficult to use with good effect in grounds either large or small. 

 These are the Lombardy poplar, the white birch, the copper 

 beech, and the weeping willow. These Mrs. Van Rensselaer 

 pronounces eccentric trees, dangerous to use in plantings where 

 quiet harmony is the aim. It is now twenty years since this 

 opinion was printed; and of the four difficult trees we may say 

 that all but the poplar have lost vogue. Few to-day plant the 

 weeping- willow, fewer still the birch and the copper beech. 

 The poplar is another story. This land bristles with them. The 

 idea of the pictorial effect of the Lombardy poplar has taken 

 hold of the gardening populace, and it is beside or in the garden 

 of almost every new house of the twentieth century. It has its 

 defects, especially with regard to the ubiquitous root system; 

 but its narrow upright form, its charming gray-green hue, give 

 it a certain fitness for use beside the rather coquettish type of 

 small white house which we see building to-day; there is some- 

 thing French in the feeling of many of these houses, and above 

 all trees of course is this poplar a French tree. For screens, too, 

 it is invaluable; though one must admit that it is seldom so 

 used as to melt into trees near it as it should. Not often is there 

 room to use it in its foreign fashion in great ranks along roads 

 or avenues, except perhaps on such estates as that of Castle 

 Hill, Ipswich, Massachusetts, where this is managed with fine 

 effect. The old Carolina poplar in October is a tree of silver, 

 rising as ours do back of pines, the clear white branches soaring 



