448 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
planting and embellishing of the place, and may 'be 
thinned out from year to year as the trees crowd each 
other, or may be wanted for progressive improvement 
and separate planting, until as the place advances and 
the border becomes annually thinned for this purpose 
it is at last reduced simply to such a number of plants, 
(which must be suffered to remain), as are required to 
produce the effects and objects above described. 
During the first year or so, the proprietor may, at 
his leisure, study the planting of his place, without 
the loss of that time so precious to all good Americans, 
as his trees are already growing — not in their final 
place, but in his border nursery. To do this effectu- 
ally and properly he must employ a quantity of stakes 
or poles ten to twelve feet high, and by placing first 
a stake where he thinks a tree should be planted, 
and then several smaller stakes at such a distance 
around it as his books or his own knowledge may in- 
form him will be the extension of the tree when full 
grown. By carefully observing this collection of stakes 
from his point of view, which, as a general rule should 
be the principal room of the house, he will at once see 
whether it is in the right place, whether it is too near 
the road or walk, or will injure a view. When satisfied 
by many observations — and it would be well if made 
from many points of view, all, however, subservient to 
the principal point — that the centre stake is correctly 
placed, let him substitute for it a small stake eight or 
ten inches high, with the name of the tree to be planted 
there legibly written on it. In the Autumn or Spring, 
whichever may be the proper time for transplanting — 
let the hole be dug at leisure, properly and care- 
fully prepared, and let a tree be selected from the 
border nursery on a damp or rainy day, and as properly 
and carefully planted. Pursue this course with all the 
single trees, groups, and masses to be planted on the 
grounds, and if judiciously done the most complete 
