PLANTING FOR LANDSCAPE EFFECT. 



FIG. 346. GROUP OF OAKS. 



vertically by workmen in various positions where planting was proposed, while he walked 

 about and examined them from every point of view. By imagining a tree or group of 

 trees the height of the poles, or one, two, three or four times their height, he was 

 enabled to judge the ultimate effect of planting species which would attain to ten, twenty, 

 thirty, or forty feet high, and so ensure that nothing would be out of scale from any 



point. It is hardly necessary to 

 point out that, unless some such 

 method is employed, trees may be 

 in scale from one point of view 

 which will appear quite out of 

 proportion from another. 



Suitability and scale having 

 very largely determined what we 

 shall plant, it now remains to 

 consider the disposition of the 

 plantations, their size and outline, 

 and the arrangement of the various 

 trees and undergrowths in each. 



As we approach the individual 

 task we shall almost invariably 

 find that there are three primary 

 considerations which will help to 

 determine the answers to all these 

 questions. These are, the need for shelter for the residence and flower gardens, the 

 disposition of existing trees which must be incorporated with the new work, and the 

 need for screening unsightly objects or giving privacy where the grounds are overlooked 

 from public places. If we add to these three primary considerations the rule for planting 

 which Repton so well enunciated 

 when he said that, to make a 

 garden successful, one should 

 "plant the hills and flood 

 the hollows," we shall probably 

 find that the question of the 

 disposition of the plantations is 

 very largely solved, and their extent 

 also within very narrow limits. 

 That to plant the higher ground 

 and leave the lower as open glades, 

 with or without water, is the right 

 thing to do is obvious for by so 

 doing we increase the apparent 

 differences of level and give our 

 trees added height. The value 

 of a vista down an open valley 

 between wooded banks is too well 

 appreciated and too often enforced 

 by the works of landscape painters to need more than mention, again showing that 

 this is right. The same course will determine the outline of the plantation, for, where 

 the hillside throws out a spur, the trees should come forward and emphasize it, and 

 where there is a bay of lower ground between two spurs, the trees should recede, thus 

 giving an easy flowing line to the plantation which cannot fail to be pleasing. 



Repton's 

 methods of 

 judging 

 scale. 



Disposition 

 of planta- 

 tions. 



FIG. 347. GROUP OF YOUNG OAKS. 



269 



