110 SUBURBAN GARDENS 
and maintained, if its greatest and best possi- 
bilities are to be realized. 
But this hardly means that there shall not 
be a single tree; rather it means that often 
there shall be no more than a single tree — 
and that there shall never be many trees on 
the typical suburban place. For if there are 
many there can be nothing else. Trees are 
exacting both above and below ground — as 
becomes their importance and dignity — and 
the lesser growth must wait on them and keep 
its distance, with few exceptions. Which is 
another proof, if another were needed, of the 
folly of attempting to plan a small place in the 
landscape style. For the things which, like 
trees, are essentially of the landscape, and es- 
sential to a landscape garden cannot, in close 
quarters, take the place in perspective which 
should be theirs. They will always over- 
shadow, on a small place — literally as well 
as figuratively — the entire conception, if an at- 
tempt is made to introduce them in numbers 
and in a natural arrangement. 
It is not trees in the aggregate and in their 
sublime forest aspect therefore that we may 
consider here; but trees as individuals and in 
the closest domestic relation. So the first 
question naturally will have to do with that 
