102 TREES AND SHRUBS 



make a garden or piece of planted ground pictorial 

 and restful, and enable to serve as a becoming setting 

 to the brightly-coloured flowering plants that will 

 then show their proper value as jewels of the garden. 



In this restrained and sober use of trees, and 

 especially of Conifers, it is well to plant them of 

 several ages, the youngest to the outer edges of the 

 groups. If there is plenty of space it will be all the 

 better to plant the trees in hundreds rather than in 

 fifties, or in any case in spaces large enough to see 

 one whole picture of one good tree at a time. 

 Where such a planting was wisely made from forty 

 to sixty years ago how fine the effect is to-day, as 

 in the case of the grand growth of Douglas Firs at 

 Murthly. No one seeing so fine an example of the 

 use of one tree at a time could wish that the planta- 

 tion had been mixed, or could be otherwise than 

 deeply impressed with the desirability of the plan. 



One such large group can always be made to 

 merge into another by intergrouping at the edges, 

 beginning by an isolated tree of group B in the 

 further portion of group A, then a group of two or 

 three of B, until the process is reversed and the 

 group is all of B, with single ones of A giving place 

 to all B. There is no reason why the same principle 

 should not be used with two or three kinds of 

 combined grouping, but then it should be of trees 

 harmonious among themselves, as of Spruce and 

 Silver Fir, or of such things as represent the natural 

 mixture of indigenous growth. Thus the Yew, Box, 

 Viburnum, Dogwood, Privet, and Thorn of a wild 



