6o Hints on Landscape Gardening 



woods for the trees." The great art in laying out 

 a park consists in making use of comparatively 

 few objects in such a way that a great variety of 

 different pictures result, in which the recurrent 

 elements are not recognized or at least produce 

 novel and surprising effects. The double illustra- 

 tion on' Plate II shows the result which was 

 brought about by the removal of about twenty 

 old limes which stood in front of the castle. 



It is far more important to select, for trees to 

 be transplanted, the kind of soil which suits them, 

 or to procure it artificially if it is not natur- 

 ally available, and above all, never to transplant 

 them to worse ground than they previously occu- 

 pied. It is really amusing how ignorant most 

 planters are in this matter, and how they place 

 various species of trees quite haphazard, without 

 suspecting, much less taking any trouble to dis- 

 cover, how various are the mixtures of soil which 

 ■ each plant particularly requires. The most ordi- 

 nary agriculturist is quite aware of this with re- 

 gard to his fruit trees, and observes it daily ; the 

 ornamental tree planter, at the most, knows so- 

 called "good soil," that is, heavy loam and sand. 

 On this matter I must be content to draw the 

 attention of the reader to its importance, as a ne- 

 cessarily long disquisition would take me too far 

 beyond my prescribed limits. Sterile soils can be 

 made to produce, without great expense, luxuriant 

 growth of all kinds of trees which can bear the 

 climate provided one has a proper compost of 

 mixed peat, sand, loam, and in addition manure 



