450 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
rarely do we see trees planted at sufficient distance 
from each other, or from roads, or walks, or houses. One 
plants a pine or Norway spruce three or four feet high 
at about the same distance from the margin of a road. 
There are many approaches that we know of bordered 
by pines and Norway spruces, with the trees five or six 
feet only from the border. When these trees get a few 
years older they must be removed or trimmed up, and 
if a pine only ten or twelve years old is to be trimmed 
up sufficiently high to admit the passage of carriages 
under it, it is very easy to see how little beauty is left. 
If in planting avenues one would first plant stakes, 
they would soon discover, that to employ pines, firs, 
beeches, or, in fact, any tree proper for this purpose, 
the trees should be set back at least twenty-five to forty 
feet from the margin, so as to be in proper position 
when fully grown. In order to prevent the meagre 
appearance of clumps or masses, or avenues properly 
planted for future results, there is no objection to closer 
planting for immediate effect, care being taken that 
the latter are cut down or removed from year to year, 
before they crowd or injure the permanent trees. In this 
way with judgment and taste, a place may have the 
appearance of finish within a year or two ; the present 
group and mass producing similar effects except less 
light and shade, and covering the same ground as will 
be produced in twenty or thirty years by the two or 
three permanent trees, which, by that time are all that 
will be permitted to remain. 
By this method of planting, -which we recommend, 
we have an opportunity which is impossible in the ordi- 
nary w*ay, of studying the character and habits of the 
trees, which, later in the season, we propose to substi- 
tute for our poles — to , learn how they group, how they 
harmonize in habit, color, or growth, and we are thus 
enabled to produce some of those charming artistic 
effects by skillful combinations of color and habit, which 
