170 



NEW ENGLAND FAllMER. 



April 



absurd, but not a whit more so than the keeping of 

 his hens. 



The fact is, Mr. Editor, hens require attention, 

 Uke everything else, and properly provided for, are 

 one of the most profitable and convenient sources 

 of comfort and luxury that a family can possess, 

 be they rich or poor. No family should be without 

 them. They eat the remnants of the table, (barring 

 the salt,) and a young hen will lay 200 eggs per 

 year, with the trouble only of feeding her, and 

 picking them (the eggs) up. n. 



For the New England Farmer. 



LAIIDSCAPE GARDENING. 



The primal object in the arrangement of roads, 

 paths and trees connected with a dwelling, is con- 

 venience ; the second is beauty, both from the 

 house and from the public street. To unite and 

 harmonize the two is the olyect of landscape gar- 

 dening. 



Cultivated taste, more generally, I think, dis- 

 cards straight lines ; but they are frequently very 

 convenient, almost indispensable, and can be made 

 to offer contrast and beauty to the eye, where cir- 

 cles and irregular diagrams are at the same time 

 visible. Take an acre or a half-acre lot ; it is gen- 

 erally a parallelogram. The public road runs at a 

 right angle, and so with each other do all the 

 boundaries. In this garden to be laid out, the 

 owner desires fruit trees ; and it is convenient and 

 good policy to plant them in a line with the boun- 

 daries — reserving, perhaps, the front line for orna- 

 mental trees. For convenience in getting at these 

 fruit trees, it would be well to run a Avalk in a line 

 with them. Then, again, fruit trees are wanted in 

 the central portion of the garden, and they should 

 be so set as to admit of the plow — which cannot be 

 imless set in a line, with walks to reach them at 

 right angles. Having done this, a few subordinate 

 alleys, with graceful curves, can be struck out, 

 with mounds and fancy-shaped flower-beds here 

 and there, to break the stiffness of straight lines in- 

 troduced for convenience. These embellishments 

 r-^adily suggest themselves where the lot is uneven, 

 or where the out-buildings break in upon the geo- 

 metrical arrangements. 



The moi-e uneven and undulating a lot, the bet- 

 ter; as natural inequalities can be made greatly to 

 subserve the purpose of ornament, though difficult 

 to work up. A lot, also, in which the least num- 

 ber of sides are seen at once, is preferable for the 

 game purpose, as its dimensions will not be readily 

 perceived, and as its broken surface may be dressed 

 up in a style entirely original. One acre lots are 

 rare, however, in which they cannot all, or nearly 

 all, be seen at once ; shrubbery, in such cases, 

 should be made to hide them. My ov,-n garden, in 

 this respect, is entirely out of rule, as at no one 

 corner can you see another, and in no position can 

 you see but two. 



Although straightness in the order of trees and 

 avenues in a garden, should not, in my opinion, be 

 entirely discarded, as they seem to be in a diagram 

 in the monthly Farmer (vol. VI., p. 209,) as also in 

 the Annual Register for 1855, 1 am far from ad- 

 vocating that painful and rigid exactness of ar- 

 rangement, in correspondences in trees, flower-beds, 

 mounds, &c., as has formerly obtained fil tsn^Jscape 

 gardening. Laying the ornamental portion of a 



garden out in parallelograms, balancing everything 

 with studied exactness — making one half reflect 

 the other — appears formal, stiff and unnatural, and 

 instead of dressing nature up with blending art, is 

 greatly at war with her. 



Macaulay, the historian, in a criticism upon the 

 "correct" school of Poetry, gives an illustration 

 which is humorously in point as relates to the cor- 

 rect or exact style of landscape. "The correct- 

 ness," says he, "which the last century prized so 

 much, resembled the correctness of those jnctures 

 of the garden of Eden, which we see in old Bibles 

 — an exact square, enclosed by the rivers Pison, 

 Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates, each with a con- 

 venient bridge in the centre — rectangular beds of 

 flowers — a long canal neatly bricked and railed in 

 — the tree of knowledge, clipped like one of the 

 limes behind the Tuilleries, standing in the centre 

 of the grand alley — the snake twined around it — 

 the man on the right hand, the woman on the left, 

 and the beasts drawn up in exact circle round them 

 In one sense the picture is correct enough ; that is 

 to say, the squares are correct ; the circles are cor- 

 rect; the man and woman are in a most correct 

 line with the tree; and the snake forms a mos* 

 correct spiral." 



The modern idea is, that ornamental trees or 

 shrubbery planted for effect, should be so irregu- 

 larly placed, or grouped together, as to impress the 

 belief that they were planted by nature, and only 

 dressed up or circumvented by art. As a general 

 rule, on a broad lawn it seems correct. Yet I 

 think many of its advocates go too far, and sacri- 

 fice too much to their unerring goddess, Nature — 

 as they fancy her — when they deny the propriety 

 of ever "matching trees," or planting in pairs. Cor- 

 rect taste, under certain circumstances, seems to 

 require it. If an individual at the entrance of his 

 carriage avenue from the street, should plant two 

 elms of equal size, one on each side, and should 

 place them in line with the highway, what should 

 we think of one of the "naturalists," who, stop- 

 ping to criticise the work, should exclaim — "Too 

 much art — no nature — stiff and awkward !" And 

 what should we think if the proprietor had ])Ianted 

 one large elm and one small one, or an elm and an 

 ailanthus, so that they need not reflect each other ? 

 Should we not think it nearly as absurd as if one 

 gate-post were larger than the other, and of a dif- 

 ferent color ? And so in an avenue leading to the 

 dwelling ; would not the trees appear finer plant- 

 ed uniformly, of equal size, alike on each side, or 

 matched in pairs opposite, rather than all mixed 

 up in defiance of law or symmetry ? Science that 

 would answer negatively must have run mad, and 

 would beautify a man by giving him a wooden leg 

 instead of his sound one. 



Truth generally falls between extremes, no less 

 in landscape gardening than in all the other af- 

 fairs of life. Hence eclecticism should be encour- 

 aged. Straight lines and right angles, it is true, 

 are unnatural ; but they certainly are not in all 

 places disagreeable. Acute points and right angles, 

 judiciously interspersed with curves, circles, ovals, 

 and irregular diagrams, produce by their variety a 

 happy effect. No decision, however, has ever been 

 had — and never will be — of what perfect landscape 

 gardening is. It is a matter of taste, which even 

 gradually changes in the same mind ; and although 

 cultivated tastes may approximate each other in 

 their preferences, one would uproot ?. few trees and 



