38 Landscape Gardening 



The same defect rendered probably a little more manifest 

 from the superior beauty and variety of the ground line will 

 be apparent in fig. 8, which exhibits a belt traversing an 

 undulating surface. And the mode of remedying the evil is 

 partially indicated in fig. 9, where the trees are thrown into 

 masses on the slopes and summits of the swells in the ground, 

 the hollow being left unclothed for the purpose of marking 

 the full extent of its depression. 



5. Bad Fences. — ^ Any description of high fence that con- 

 fines a place too much is as faulty in all essential respects as a 

 belt of trees, and in some particulars even more so. It has a 

 harsher, more forbidding, and exclusive appearance, and its 

 upper line will necessarily be stiffer. It gives an unkindly 

 and inhospitable expression to a place. Besides, high close 

 fences keep out air even more than trees, and also produce, 

 for a given distance, a more complete shade. They should 

 never be employed unless they are really indispensable, and 

 then they ought to have the hardness of their lines relieved 

 by trees and shrubs inside, or with ivy or other climbers 

 scrambling irregularly over them. Those sides of a garden 

 where shelter is required must, however, be excepted from the 

 rule, though it will generally be found that trees are a much 

 better screen for gardens than a wall, provided there be 

 breadth enough to admit of a sufficiently dense plantation. 



6. Over-exposure. — There is an opposite extreme to that 

 just described, into which some persons are apt to fall by 

 rendering their gardens too exposed. Examples might be 

 found in which from a love of display or a disposition to give 

 others the benefit of whatever enjoyment happens to be 

 possessed, every inch of the garden is bared to public gaze. 

 There is thus no quiet, no retirement, and scarcely any 

 of the pleasure arising from the ownership of property. 

 A lady or gentleman fond of gardening cannot engage in any 



