450 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



rarely do we see trees planted at sufficient distance 

 from each other, or from roads, or walks, or houses. One 

 plants a pine or Norway spmce three or four feet high 

 at about the same distance from the margin of a road. 

 There are many approaches that we know of bordered 

 by pines and Norway spruces, with the trees five or six 

 feet only from the border. When these trees get a few 

 years older they must be removed or trimmed up, and 

 if a pine only ten or twelve years old is to be trimmed 

 up sufficiently high to admit the passage of carriages 

 under it, it is very easy to see how little beauty is left. 

 If in planting avenues one would first plant stakes, 

 they would soon discover, that to employ pines, firs, 

 beeches, or, in fact, any tree proper for this purpose, 

 the trees should be set back at least twenty-five to forty 

 feet from the margin, so as to be in proper position 

 when fully grown. In order to prevent the meagre 

 appearance of clumps or masses, or avenues properly 

 planted for future results, there is no objection to closer 

 planting for immediate effect, care being taken that 

 the latter are cut down or removed from year to year, 

 before they crowd or injure the permanent trees. In this 

 way with judgment and taste, a place may have the 

 appearance of finish within a year or two ; the present 

 group and mass producing similar effects except less 

 light and shade, and covering the same ground as will 

 be produced in twenty or thirty years by the two or 

 three permanent trees, which, by that time are all that 

 will be permitted to remain. 



By this method of planting, which we recommend, 

 we have an opportunity which is impossible in the ordi- 

 nary way, of studying the character and habits of the 

 trees, which, later in the season, we propose to substi- 

 tute for our poles to learn how they group, how they 

 harmonize in habit, color, or growth, and we are thus 

 enabled to produce some of those charming artistic 

 effects by skillful combinations of color and habit, which 



