162 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



The masses of trees are easily broken into groups that have imme- 

 diately the effect of old plantations, and all the minor details of 

 shrubbery, walks, and flower and fruit gardens, fall gracefully and 

 becomingly into their proper positions. Sheltered and screened, 

 and brought into harmony with the landscape, these finishing touches 

 serve in turn to enhance the beauty and value of the original trees 

 themselves. 



We by no means wish to deter those who have an abundance 

 of means, taste, enthusiasm and patience, from undertaking the 

 creation of entire new sceneiy in their country residences. There 

 are few sources of satisfaction more genuine and lasting than that 

 of walking through extensive groves and plantations, all reared by 

 one's own hands to look on a landscape which one has transformed 

 into leafy hills and wood-embowered slopes. We scarcely remem- 

 ber more real delight evinced by any youthful devotee of our favor- 

 ite art, in all the fervor of his first enthusiasm, than has been ex- 

 pressed to us by one of our venerable ex-Presidents, now in a ripe 

 old age, when showing us, at various times, fine old forest trees, 

 oaks, hickories, etc., which have been watched by him in their en- 

 tire cycle of development, from the naked seeds deposited in the 

 soil by his own hands, to their now furrowed trunks and umbra- 

 geous heads ! 



But it must be confessed, that it is throwing away a large part of 

 one's life and that too, more especially, when the cup of country 

 pleasures is not brought to the lips till one's meridian is well nigh 

 past to take the whole business of making a landscape from the 

 invisible carbon and oxygen waiting in soil and atmosphere, to be 

 turned by the slow alchemy of ten or twenty summers' growth into 

 groves of weeping elms, and groups of overshadowing oaks ! 



Those, therefore, who wish to start with the advantage of a good 

 patrimony from nature, will prefer to examine what mother Earth 

 has to offer them in her choicest nooks, before they determine on 

 taking hold of some meagre scene, where the woodman's axe and 

 the ploughman's furrow have long ago obliterated all the original 

 beauty of the landscape. If a place cannot be found well wooded, 

 perhaps a fringe of wood or a background of forest foliage can be 

 taken advantage of. These will give shelter, and serve as a ground- 



