162 
ON PLANTING ISOLATED TREES. 
teristic or held in greater esteem, we would introduce glades of lawn, and plant 
thereon, at adequate distances, with the greatest possible irregularity, and using, 
likewise, the most extensive variety of valuable sorts, — including as many scarce ones 
as could be procured, — detached specimens of exotic trees. An arboretum of the most 
.interesting description would thus be secured ; one of the true principles of planting 
— selection — would be followed ; and each tree, as it advanced, would display its 
proper character, and grow additionally ornamental every year. 
For planting singly by the side of streams or lakes, no trees are so singularly 
fitted as the Weeping Willow and the Alder. The last is, from an inexplicable 
cause, unaccountably neglected as a water-side tree in many of our English counties ; 
though when its trunk inclines over the banks, and its branches depend into the 
limpid element, few trees are more picturesque. With regard to the Weeping 
Willow, the most elegant of trees, the lively green of whose foliage is among the 
first to denote the dawning spring, and the last in the train of the receding autumn, 
we could name more than one princely garden, celebrated for the magnificence of its 
lakes and river, to which not a solitary plant is admitted. The Birch, also, that 
queen of the woods, so much depreciated by many who have been accustomed to 
it in its wild state, but so gracefully beautiful, both when decked in its summer 
leaves, and when clothed in the more transient dress of the winter’s rime, is only 
inferior to the Weeping Willow for adorning the marge of a stream. 
Were we to enumerate all the trees that will bear isolation on a lawn or in a 
park, we should have to compile a catalogue for the purpose. It must suffice to say, 
that none of the trees at present cultivated in this country, whether indigenous or 
exotic, would be omitted from the list. There are a few kinds, of which the Scotch 
and Silver Firs, the Larch, Yew, &c., are examples, which are too often thought to 
be fit only for plantations, or for placing on hills, for general shrubberies of which 
concealment is the object, and for woods. But if proprietors and planters could once 
see the effect of this sort of trees on lawns, with their lower branches sweeping the 
earth, and all the rest making a graceful curve downwards, and then again upwards 
towards the extremities, they would be convinced that though the Cedar surpasses 
them in majesty, it hardly excels them in sterling beauty. 
Of trees common in England, there is only one which is not well adapted for 
solitary show ; and this is the Lombardy Poplar. Undoubtedly, it is in itself a 
noble object, when wholly unencumbered; but it is when towering above an ordinary 
plantation, and its spire-like summit standing out clearly among lower and rounder- 
headed trees, that it impresses the beholder with its beauty, and with an appre- 
ciation of the taste of the planter who placed it there. Elms and other trees 
sometimes exhibit a lack of symmetry when in an isolated state ; though this is 
entirely owing to their being overrun with shrubs or nursling plants while in an 
early stage of their growth. And we shall conclude with urging the necessity of 
keeping trees intended for specimens as perfectly free from all encumbrance from the 
moment of their being transplanted, as they are after having stood for half a century 
the pride of the estate. 
