So FLORA AND SYLVA. 



THE GARDEN BEAUTIFUL. 



HOME LANDSCAPE AND HOME WOODS. 



(Continued from page 40.) 



I have shown in the first article reasons for the planting of evergreen woods : 

 for shelter, profit, use of poor lands, rapid growth, varied uses, and for their 

 beauty in the landscape. The man who does not love the woodland and the 

 tree will never make a really beautiful country place ; for the questions which 

 cluster round the house itself are as nothing compared with what we have to 

 face if we wish to get the best the ground may give us. We have now to think 

 of the chief question in planting, the choice of stately and first-rate trees ; kings 

 of the northern evergreen forest they should be. 



From many points of view, then, the planting of evergreen woods is an im- 

 portant one, and, from the number of merely new trees in lists, the question is 

 not always very simple. We have a few hardy evergreen trees which everybody 

 plants, but so many trees have been introduced, possessing good qualities in 

 their own country, that people are apt to plant things which can never become 

 in Britain timber trees of any value, however well they may look in nursery rows, 

 or isolated in the pleasure ground with perhaps a dozen loads of good loam 

 under each tree. The mountains of Europe give us the best trees for our islands, 

 needing no special soil or care, and with them thrive the trees of Northern Asia 

 and even Southern Europe and Asia Minor with its noble Cedars of Lebanon. 

 There is always a gain in having a tree from a like climate. If we go to 

 California and warm regions for our evergreens we may make mistakes, and 

 costly ones, as many find with the Wellingtonias. There are certainly fine trees 

 in the North Pacific region; but for the evergreen wood we ought to take the 

 hardiest trees only. 



But we have to steer clear of many pitfalls made for us by catalogues in 

 giving pompous Latin names to mere " states " or slight varieties of each tree; 

 of fine trees, not hardy save in favoured spots, as the Deodar and Sequoia ; of 

 false names like Retinospora ; of failures like Cryptomeria ; of trees starting 

 too early in the spring, owing to our open weather ; of weedy, poor trees like 

 the western Arbor-vitae, and to whole lists of poor varieties of such trees, 

 absolute rubbish from a woodland standpoint, and, indeed, little better for the 

 pleasure ground. The following are the best trees for the evergreen wood : — 



FOREST EVERGREENS FOR BRITAIN. 



The Corsican Tine. — The tallest Pine of Europe, even foliage, and, if one liked to do anything so 



reaching 160 feet high and over in Calabria and foolish, one could give Latin names to several 



its own country, Corsica, and of very rapid growth forms found in one wood. The Calabrian variety 



in our country, as I have raised woods of it in ten has been reckoned as a species by some, as it is a 



years. The tree shows much variety of habit and more vigorous tree, especially in poor soils. A lovely 



