ON WOOD AND PLANTATIONS. 
75 
tiful trees and shrubs ; commoner native forest trees occupy- 
ing the more distant portions of the grounds.* 
Plantations in the Modern Style. In the Modern 
Style of Landscape Gardening, it is our aim, in plantations, 
to produce not only what is called natural beauty, but even 
higher and more striking beauty of expression, and of 
individual forms, than we see in nature ; to create variety, 
and intricacy, in the grounds of a residence, by various modes 
of arrangement ; to give a highly elegant, or polished air to 
places by introducing rare and foreign species ; and to conceal 
all defects of surface, disagreeable views, unsightly buildings, 
or other offensive objects. 
As uniformity, and grandeur of single effects, were the aim 
of the old style of arrangement, so variety, and harmony of 
the whole, are the results for which we labour in the mo- 
dern landscape. And, as the Avenue, or the straight line, is 
the leading form in the geometric arrangement of plantations, 
so let us enforce it upon our readers, the Group, is equally the 
key-note of the Modern style. The smallest place, having 
* Although we love planting, and avow that there are few greater pleasures 
than| to see a darling tree, of one’s own placing, every year stretching wider its 
feathery head of foliage, and covering with a darker shadow the soft turf beneath 
it, still, we will not let the ardent and inexperienced hunter after a location for a 
country residence, pass without a word of advice. This is, always to make consider- 
able sacrifice to get a place with some existing wood , or a few ready grown trees upon 
it ; especially near the site for the house. It is better to yield a little in the ex- 
tent of prospect, or in the direct proximity to a certain locality, than to pitch your 
tent in a plain, — desert-like in its bareness — on which your leafy sensibilities must 
suffer, for half a dozen years at least, before you can hope for any solace. It is 
doubtful whether there is not almost as much interest in studying from one’s 
window the curious ramifications, the variety of form, and the entire harmony, 
to be found in a fine old tree, as in gazing from a site where we have no 
interruption to a panorama of the whole horizon ; and we have generally found 
that no planters have so little courage and faith, as those who have commenced 
without the smallest group of large trees, as a nucleus for their plantations. 
