133 
PLANS OF RESIDENCES 
homes and home-grounds still more innumerable. It is, therefore, 
improbable that any one of the plans here presented for the 
reader’s study will precisely suit any one’s wants; but that their 
careful examination and comparison will be of service in planning 
houses and laying out lots of a somewhat similar character, we 
earnestly hope. We furnish them as a good musical professor 
does his instrumental studies, not to be used as show-pieces, but to 
be studied as steps and points-d'appuis for one’s own culture. 
In naming the selection of trees and shrubs for many of the 
smaller places, we have endeavored to be as careful in their selec¬ 
tion as if each place were an actual one, and our own;—leaning, 
however, in most cases, to that style of planting which will have 
the best permanent effect, rather than to an immediate but ephem¬ 
eral display; and fully conscious that a skillful gardener may 
name many other and quite different selections for the same 
places, that will be equally adapted to them; and that in carrying 
out such plans on the ground, the insufficiency of designs on so 
small a scale to present all the finishing small features that make 
up the beauty of a complete place, will be very evident. The 
choice of trees and shrubs for locations otherwise similar, must 
be influenced by a consideration of the climate. Many which do 
well near the sea-coast are not hardy on more elevated ground in 
the same latitude ; while others are healthy in the high lands that 
prove sickly in more southern and alluvial valleys. A selection for 
a lot near New York should not be altogether the same as for 
Saratoga or St. Pauls, Richmond or Louisville ; and for the Gulf 
States (except in the most elevated regions) it Avould be totally 
unsuited. Southward from the latitude of New York, each degree 
(except so far as the influence of latitude is counteracted by that of 
altitude) will enable the planter to grow some tree or shrub not 
safe to plant, under ordinary conditions, any further north. As the 
latitude and climate of New York city represent the average re¬ 
quirements of a greater population than any other, in this country, 
our selection for the places described in this chapter are generally 
suited to such a climate; and in planting, the reader must be 
directed by his own study as to what substitutions are necessary 
in latitudes north or south of it. 
