SEASHORE GARDENING AND PLANTING, 



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no matter how ill-placed or how much air or beautiful view it shuts out. This 

 too common type is often quite proud of its doings, and is not to be dealt 

 with by the axe ; it suffers from blindness in not seeing only one side of a very 

 serious artistic question. It is a common thing for even the finest groups 

 and best trees about a country house not to be rightly or well seen, owing to 

 unmeaning trees and coarse shrubs being massed about the house itself, some- 

 times even to the exclusion of light from the living rooms as well as landscape 

 beauty, so easy to enjoy in many parts of our islands. 



When grounds are first planted the trees are known to me, on a somewhat rising ground about 



small, and the views so extensive that the possibi- half a mile from the sea, but shut out from it by 



lity of these being ultimately shut out is never large trees and a thicket of evergreen shrubs, where 



taken into consideration. As time rolls on, many by the removal of some of the under branches of 



houses become buried amongst a dense forest of the large and widespreading trees, the clearing or 



trees, and few of the original views are visible, un- thinning out of a few of the evergreens, beautiful 



less one ascends to some eminence. Such shut-up views of Inchkeith and the Firth of Forth have been 



places coming into the market are frequently undis- obtained from the principal windows. At another 



posed of for a length of time, owing to their close large mansion, the removal of an oak tree in front 



and damp nature, the owner never for a moment of the drawing-room windows has opened up on 



thinking that such closeness can be easily cured, one side a rich expanse of country, with hills and 



Some often secure such places, and immediately wooded glens, before scarcely visible except through 



commence a reformation ; the charm worked by the a network of branches, and that only during the 



woodman's axe, with the aid of the artist or landscape- leafless months. On another property, the breaking 



gardener, is often marvellous, and, at a trifling ex- through belts of Spruce has been the means of 



pense, in certain cases the nature of the thinnings varying and improving the foreground landscape, be- 



paying for the improvements. The stem-pruning ot sides bringing into view a range of hills and wooded 



a few of the large trees often produces a pleasing banks. Although these remarks refer to views from 



effect] in giving us views between the stems and houses, they apply also to the wooded banks of 



beneath the spreading branches. The removal of rivers, extensive woods, and wooded glens quite 



trees altogether, and the stem-pruning and branching remote from dwellings. The eye, when once prac- 



of others, give views without in the least degree tised to such landscape effects, will find on many 



injuring the health of the trees. There is a mansion properties numerous spots for such openings. 



SEASHORE GARDENING AND PLANTING. 

 I have often seen articles in the papers on plants and trees that grow well near 

 the sea, as if it were difficult in our islands to grow plants there. My question 

 would rather be : What cannot we grow by the sea ? when I think of all the 

 lovely things I have seen in our island gardens, from Caerhaes in Cornwall, to 

 Castlewellan in the north of Ireland. Island gardeners and planters should love 

 the sea, as clearly some of them do, or we should never have such lovely places 

 as Mount Ussher, Tregothnan, and many gardens along the shores and estuaries 

 of Cornwall and Devon. It is a common error to suppose that these beautiful 

 effects by the sea are only to be had in the South ; because we have the striking 

 instance of Lord Annesley's work in the North of Ireland, who has, perhaps, 

 the best collection of all. 



There is no doubt success is to a great extent a question of shelter, and 

 one may often secure that near the sea as anywhere else, in sheltered hollows 

 near and behind hills lying against the prevailing winds. Certainly if we do 



