ON FORMING AND TREATING HOME PLANTATIONS. 
81 
summit of a bold distant hill or range of hills, when there are good specimen trees 
and small groups in the foreground, and larger irregular masses in the middle distance, is 
one of the noblest things in English scenery. 
A very common circumstance in the country around an English mansion is for the 
ground to fall away immediately in its neighbourhood into some valley, often threaded by 
a river or stream, from which again the land rises into a range of low hills ; these, in some 
instances, constituting the horizon of the proprietor, or, in others, merely forming a middle 
distance, with higher hills far beyond. Such an arrangement of the surface affords the 
best possible opportunities for planting it effectively, as nothing sets off single trees and 
groups so much as being situated on the slope of a hill, where they can be viewed across a 
valley from an opposite and slightly lower elevation ; while the low hills in the middle 
distance give the means of so arranging groups of plantation as to shut out all disagreeable 
distant objects, introduce beautiful remote views most favourably, and produce an excellent 
sky outline. 
And yet how rarely is such a middle distance treated at all appropriately! It is most 
generally found clothed with a long and scarcely varied line of plantation, completely 
bounding the view from the mansion, or broken into but very partially, and at very distant 
intervals, the intermediate masses being left to form their outlines, both upper and lower, 
in the tamest and most monotonous manner. Indeed, this line of hills, thus clothed, has 
all the sameness, the exclusiveness, and the deformity of what has been very properly 
termed a belt. 
Belts of plantation, unless where absolutely indispensable, are in the highest degree 
opposed to the true principles of landscape beauty; and a case can hardly be conceived in 
which there is positively no part of the scenery around an estate which could be looked 
upon with pleasure, and which must, consequently, all be shut out. And where a domain 
is so circumscribed, that a plantation is really necessary round a great part of its boundary, 
this plantation should be made as changing and irregular as possible, as well — in the way 
before suggested — by planting in it trees and shrubs of very varying heights and habits, as 
by giving a somewhat freer play to its outline, and carrying its salient points out by groups 
of specimen trees placed on the grass. 
The true principle on which all home plantations should be formed, where the extent 
of the place and the nature of the outlying country will admit of it, is that of throwing 
them into masses or groups, varying in size from a few trees to a quarter or half an acre, 
or even, when sufficiently far from the house, of a full acre, with an outline that shall be 
pleasing from all sides, but particularly towards the mansion. The word masses best 
expresses the meaning intended to be conveyed in reference to the larger plantations, 
because it indicates denseness and breadth, in contradistinction to the nanwness, 
thinness, and length, which have been before repudiated. 
In mentioning groups it may be remarked, that this phrase applies to assemblages of 
from three to twelve, or more, trees, very irregularly placed, and finished off, in particular 
parts, with single specimens, so as to connect them with other and more scattered 
specimens, and with the larger masses. In disposing of these groups and single trees 
about a park or large lawn, one of the chief objects is to give connection to the 
whole. They should not stand about like so many isolated spots, of greater or less 
breadth, but be so nicely arranged that, without at all shaping themselves into lines, or 
too much breaking up the broad sunny glades of grass, or giving the appearance of artificial 
connection, they may yet insensibly unite with each other. This beautiful result — the 
last perfection in landscape gardening — cannot well be accomplished in the park without 
the use of low thorns and other bushes, Junipers, Yews, Hollies, and even masses of Furze, 
Broom, &c. 
That groups of trees may produce particular and marked effects, and that plantations 
or masses also may be alike varied, in addition to that diversity of form and tint Which 
may be obtained by an ordinary or special mixtures of sorts, it is a good plan to plant a 
number of trees of one kind together, here and there. This gives greater roundness and 
symmetry to certain groups, or parts of a plantation, and likewise yields striking results in 
