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LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
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 ol 
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, un- 
sightly buildings, or other offensive objects. 
As uniformity, and grandeur of single effects, were the 
aim of the old style of arrangement, so variety and har- 
mony of the whole are the results for which we labor in 
the modern 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 only three trees, may have these pleasingly 
connected in a group ; and the largest and finest park — the 
Blenheim or Chatsworth, of seven miles square, is only 
composed of a succession of groups, becoming masses, 
thickets, woods. If a demesne with the most beautiful 
surface and views has been for some time stiffly and 
locality, than to pitcn your tent in a plain, — desert-like in its bareness — on 
which your leafy sensibilities must suffer for half a dozen vears 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, tne 
variety of form, and the entire harmony, to be found in a fine old tree, as *p 
gazing from a site where we have no interruption to a panorama of tne whole 
horizon ; and we have generally found tha 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. 
