66 Plantins^ Villa Residences. 



Art. II. On Laying out and Planting Villa Residences. 

 By R. B. L. 



It has been acknowledged by all who are practically ac- 

 quainted with landscape gardening, that it is mnch more 

 difficult to attain the objects in view in small gardens than 

 in large ones. This was acknowledged by the celebrated 

 Repton, who essentially failed in many of his minor efforts 

 to improve on what already existed, and who — ^like many of 

 his modern imitators — illustrated the truth of the fact, that 

 "alterations are not always improvements." Any one who 

 has studied the country and villa residences in Europe, and 

 carefully noted in his mind the effects produced by the va- 

 rious methods of planting and laying out grounds, will have 

 much more confidence of success in laying out and planting 

 a place one hundred acres in extent than one of two or three 

 acres. The difficulty in the case of small places arises from 

 the multiplicity of requirements and results to be produced, 

 without adequate means or extent to produce them in. 



One grand mistake of the writers of books on modern 

 landscape gardening is their method of illustration. Their 

 logic smacks too much of Claude, Poussin, or Salvator Rosa, 

 and their expensiv^ely illustrated volumes are, as far as real 

 utility is concerned, little better than so many neat fancy 

 pictures. They give you views of places in their unim- 

 proved state, and views of the same after they have been 

 improved, — wood cuts of places as they are, and correspond- 

 ing ones of the same places as the would-be Claudes and 

 Poussins would make them. On one page we have, what 

 the authors are pleased to term, Harmony and Unity ; on 

 another, Discordance and Incongruity, represented by a few 

 random scratches, which mean neither one thing nor an- 

 other. 



By saying that we have not, among the multitudes of such 

 wood cuts, seen one that will not bear absurdity stamped 

 upon its face, we must not be understood to undervalue the 

 fine arts, or the rules and principles which in landscape gar- 



