546 ScJcelVs Landscape-Gardening. 



When a locality is chosen for a garden, which has already 

 beautiful woods and groups of trees, and even single specimens, 

 they must, if possible, be retained, and united in the forms of 

 the new garden. In cases where a fine wood happens to be in 

 a spot that is totally inconsistent vvith all the forms of the new 

 garden, where it entirely shuts out fine views, or of itself forms 

 no attractive feature in the landscape, the question should be 

 asked. How can art find its way here without condemning the 

 whole wood to the axe? In the first case mentioned, art must 

 give a new outline to the wood by a partial removal, or addition 

 by planting ; in the second, attempts should be made by felling 

 badly grown trees and shrubs, and lopping off branches, to 

 obtain distant prospects, which would also be objects of surprise 

 and astonishment ; and, in the last case, a romantic outline 

 should be given to the wood by a new plantation here and there 

 round its edge. Unsightly shrubs or diseased trees ought 

 never to be spared. The course of roads and paths can only 

 be studied in nature herself, and it is only from her that the 

 landscape-gardener can learn how to make a road wind beauti- 

 fully and agreeably up a hill, and down again to the valley (but 

 more shall be said of this in another place). The artist should 

 never make a plan for a garden in a neighbourhood vvith which 

 he is not well acquainted, or which he has not seen ; or, if he 

 does so, he will commit faults for which he will never be for- 

 given. He should, also, not trust the execution of his plan to 

 men who do not understand the subject. There are many 

 places laid out from my plans which, in consequence of this 

 error, have not the least resemblance to the original, and which 

 I did not know again myself, and, alas ! was obliged to get 

 altered. The beauty of a natural garden depends as much on 

 the execution of the plan, as on the invention of the plan 

 itself. 



IX. On Staking out and Tracing on the Ground the Forms and Outlines of 

 the Natural Garden, ivith reference to Character, Effect, and Beauty. 



1. After the preceding knowledge of the locality has been 

 obtained, and sketches of it made when necessary, the land- 

 scape-gardener is now ready to draw and stake out on the spot 

 itself the actual outlines and forms which he had projected, and 

 to put the commencement of the work in operation. It is true, 

 that all the forms in nature cannot be mechanically delineated 

 and staked out, because they would be stiff, and have no 

 resemblance to nature; such, for example, as hills which de- 

 scend by degrees in gently waving lines, and unite unperceived 

 their convex forms with the concave formations of the valley; 

 these imperceptible lines of separation in both forms, this gentle 

 transition of the hill to the valley, cannot be defined by staking 



