76 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



PLANTATIONS IN THE MODERN STYLE. In the Modern 

 Style of Landscape Gardening, it is our aim, in plantations, 

 to produce not only what is called natural beauty, but 

 even higher and more striking beauty of expression, and ot 

 individual forms, than we see in nature ; to create variety 

 and intricacy in the grounds of a residence by various 

 modes of arrangement ; to give a highly elegant or polished 

 air to places by introducing rare and foreign species ; and 

 to conceal all defects of surface, disagreeable views, un- 

 sightly buildings, or other offensive objects. 



As uniformity, and grandeur of single effects, were the 

 aim of the old style of arrangement, so variety and har- 

 mony of the whole are the results for which we labor in 

 the modern landscape. And as the Avenue, or the straight 

 line, is the leading form in the geometric arrangement of 

 plantations, so let us enforce it upon our readers, the GROUP 

 is equally the key-note of the Modern style. The smallest 

 place, having only three trees, may have these pleasingly 

 connected in a group ; and the largest and finest park the 

 Blenheim or Chatsworth, of seven miles square, is only 

 composed of a succession of groups, becoming masses, 

 thickets, woods. If a demesne with the most beautiful 

 surface and views has been for some time stiffly and 



locality, than to pitcn your tent in a plain, desert-like in its bareness on 

 which your leafy sensibilities must suffer for half a dozen vears at least, before 

 you can hope for any solace. It is doubtful whether there is not almost as 

 much interest in studying from one's window the curious ramifications, tne 

 variety of form, and the entire harmony, to be found in a fine old tree, as -P 

 gazing from a site where we have no interruption to a panorama of tne whole 

 horizon ; and we have generally found tha no planters have so little courage 

 and faith, as those who have commenced without the smallest group of large 

 trees, as a nucleus for their plantations. 



