August 17, 1876. J 



JOUENAL OF HOBTIOULTUEE AND COTTAGE GABDENEB. 



149 



many reasons for this. Not only is it a matter of general 

 experience that timber, whether in large or small quantities, is 

 remunerative from its applicability to building and repairs, but 

 our soils and climate, we find, may be sensibly improved by 

 judicious planting. By this we may shut out the importunate 

 blast, by this screen off the burning sunshine. The effect of 

 suoh shelter is to double the value of inferior tracts ; and this 

 both because the influence of woodlands softens the tempera- 

 ture and conciliates the fertilising rain, and also because trees 

 enrich the soil by deposits of vegetable matter, and by their 

 roots open up the land to the action of air and water. Not 

 often, perhaps, is the impulse to plant traceable to such solid 

 and scientific causes : it ia mostly due to the sense of delight 

 and administration which an owner of land — be his paradise a 

 few acres or half a shire, it is all the same — experiences in 

 having a hand and a voice in the laying-out of his demesne ; 

 in visiting and revisiting his copses and nurseries ; in watching 

 his trees and shrubs wax in grace and stature, till they become 

 to him a living interest, and he notes their habits as fondly as 

 those of his children. So fruitful and attractive iB the practical 

 study of the subject, that it is a wonder we have suffered our 

 neighbours across the Channel to be beforehand in the institu- 

 tion of colleges of arboriculture ; unless, indeed, it be that, as 

 we observed in the outset, in England every man is in e/se or 

 in posse his own planter, and it is a rare exception to find a 

 proprietor who would devolve on a Nesfield or Capability 

 Brown the experiments in landscape gardening which make up 

 half the charm of the country gentleman's existence. Indeed, 

 there are few fields in which the errors of inexperience may be 

 retrieved more easily than in tree-planting ; for though it may 

 often occur that a single tree or a group proves a mistake in a 

 given situation, it is exceptionally rare to find cause of regret 

 in judicious thinning, or timely removal to another site. 



So many excellent treatises on the planting of trees and 

 shrubs have issued of late years from the English press, and 

 Mr. Laslett's recent volume on " Timber and Timber TreeB " 

 deals so exhaustively with the commercial and economical 

 aspect of the subject, that for details we might well leave the 

 field to the weighty authorities named at the head of the 

 present paper. * It is beyond the scope of a review to linger upon 

 cautions when and how to plant, or to supply the reasons why, 

 in a stiff soil, the holes into which young trees are to be in- 

 serted should exceed the average 2 feet square and 18 inches in 

 depth. Yet it may not be labour wholly lost to set down in 

 what follows a few results of blended book-lore and observa- 

 tion, and to gather up from the romance and the realities, the 

 accomplishments as well as the possibilities of arboriculture, 

 persuasives to the deeper study and practice of it by every 

 grade of landowners. 



Amongst this fortunate class — fortunate, let us hope, in spite 

 of the tendency of the unlanded classes to cast on the soil aa 

 many national burdenB as the agricultural worm will bear with- 

 out turning — those are most to be felicitated who find park 

 and forest ready to their hand, and who have not so muoh to 

 project fresh plantation of undulation and upland aa to study 

 the art of judiciously thinning, and to ascertain by what hardy 

 native or well-recommended foreigner to replace some giant of 

 the chase which the wind has prostrated. Yet even such have 

 a deep interest in the experiments of acclimatation, and rare 

 opportunities of adding novel grace to the native charm of 

 their ancestral homes, there being this satisfaction in such in- 

 troductions, that the old tree- tenants never regard new comers 

 as interlopers ; but Elm and Lime, Oak and Ash, Larch and 

 Scotch Fir, evince the friendliest of spirits in harmonising with 

 Cypress and Juniper, Deodar and Cryptomeria, the bright 

 green Abies Douglasii, with its pale glaucous under side, and 

 the pyramidic form and darker foliage of the spreading Wel- 

 lingtonia or Sequoia. To the founder of an estate, the planner 

 of the leafy shelters that are to protect, adorn, and ventilate 

 his rising mansion, there is a more arduous field ; one, how- 

 ever, in which (given thought and patience, with a grain or 

 two of taste and an eye for landscape) he cannot easily go 

 astray. 



As a rule, his home, whether it is large or limited, will 

 have a southern aspect ; and in either case there will be more 

 or less need to plant out the north. Where it is a question of 

 park or parklike grounds, it is well to do this with a thick and 

 dark massing of trees, so as to give an impression of depth to 

 the northern boundary line, and to make the mansion stand 

 out effectively from itB background of dark-hued Conifers and 

 of denser deciduous species. The actual depth of Buch a 

 wooded background is of less consequence than the apparent ; 



but it adds vastly to the aspect of the demesne to have its 

 northern boundary indefinite, and disguise or deception herein 

 is perfectly admissible. The books recommend that Buch a 

 plantation should be continued with wings of a bold sweep to 

 east and west ; and thiB may be correct in principle. But it 

 may be doubted whether such a continuation would avoid the 

 risk of over-formality, as well as of seeming severity, sugges- 

 tive of a prison house or lunatic asylum, or one of those 

 gloomy and isolated chateaux which would have exercised the 

 fertile imagination of the horror-loving Mrs. Badoliffe. Shelter 

 from the east, as, indeed, from the west, is desirable in due 

 measure ; but there may be excess of shelter no less than 

 defect ; and we believe that a practised eye will insist upon 

 these particular barriers being broken and partial. A system 

 of belts or groups, some more or some less distant, would have 

 the desired effect ; and if, perchance, on either side the frontier 

 ground is a rising one, it is only to plant it with Larch or 

 Sootch Fir to secure a perennial source of pleasure and profit. 

 For the rest, the principle to follow is simple eye-service. If 

 there is an unsightly feature to hide in the foreground it may 

 be hidden by a well-plotted clump ; if over another part of it 

 the green sward stretches in a too unbroken range, or is diver- 

 sified only by an ineffective hillock, it needs but to congregate 

 there a few graceful trees, and you have the nucleus of a thing 

 of beauty which will win upon the eye as it becomes developed 

 by growth and years. In moderation, too, single trees should 

 diversify the foreground : it is the best chance of rearing 

 specimens that may hereafter be a glory of the district or 

 county. An Oak, a Spanish Chestnut, a Wyeh Elm, thua ex- 

 patiating in the liberty and range of the open ground, are 

 worth turning aBide to contemplate, and are bo deemed by 

 others than the poet or the sentimentalist. More than once 

 have we seen a Larch, which, because it had enjoyed this 

 freedom and never suffered the loss of its lateral branches 

 through the proximity of other trees, has developed a grace 

 and beauty second to none of the choicest Conifers in a habit 

 of pendulous branches clothing its stem from head to foot. 



One other speoial call for the planter is to the lake-side or 

 stream-bank. To these he may add a new attraction, giving 

 reduplication (so to speak) to the one by the trees which 

 interrupt the uniformity of its expanse, and oanopying the 

 other with subjects of weeping oharacter and habit, arranged 

 judiciously. Judiciously, we say : because the eye may tire of 

 Weeping Ashes and Kilmarnock Willows ; and while the mean 

 between bareness and unbroken shelter is undoubtedly the 

 thing to aim at, there is less risk of having to practise repent- 

 ance after thinning the leafy guardians of a lake border than 

 for any like exercise of the woodman's axe. Of course there 

 are Bpecial trees for the waterside, as also for islands and other 

 aquatic positions ; but of the specialities of arboriculture, the 

 likes and dislikes, aptitudes and inaptitudes of this or that 

 hardwood or softwood timber tree we shall have to speak 

 presently. What is more pertinent to this stage of our survey 

 is the remark that what has been laid down as to parks and 

 large grounds applies mutatis mutandis to smaller home- 

 environs. The narrower the limits, the less field for multipli- 

 cation of groups and clumps : but the shrubbery, the belt or 

 border, which shuts out the oversight of unavoidable neigh- 

 bours ; the single specimens of curious tree or shrub, evergreen 

 or deciduous ; the study in these of harmony and contrast of 

 form and colour ; the avoidance also of undue encroachment 

 on the green sward, and undue contiguity to the dwelling — 

 these will be the pleasing solicitudes of the rural qr suburban 

 proprietor, whose area is more limited, but whose pursuit of 

 arboriculture may be as intelligent and enthusiastic as that 

 of the owner of a " dukery." With the former it is possible to 

 refer to the records of the birth and growth of every tree in 

 the garden. All are as children or congeners to their owner. 

 Of the broad Oaks in the chases of Clumber or Belvoir, who is 

 to say whether the planter may not have been — long, long ago — 



" that bird, which instead of wings 

 Hath a spirit within him, that soars and springs — " 



that most indefatigable of Oak planters, in his busy trade of 

 transporting and burying acorns — the squirrel ? Most of all, 

 however, does the limited owner require to be on his guard 

 against planting too near his house. A bright green or a gold- 

 spangled dwarf is a pretty object beneath your west windows, 

 or even those to the south-east, if there is tolerable shelter ; 

 but these dwarfs are apt to outgrow their early conditions, and 

 without timely removal come to such dimensions that if they do 

 not interfere with the chimney smoke, or clog the atmosphere 

 which it is the office of trees to keep in a state fit for breath- 



