250 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, January 24, 18G0. 
planting lies in understanding the proper quantities of 
the secondary colours, so to speak, or blues, purples, and 
pinks. Scarlets and whites used to spoil every plan or 
garden of which a plan is yet in existence, previous to 
the birth of The Cottage Gardener, in which the male 
portion of our artists first found their best masculine 
efforts set at naught and derision. 
Eepton, as interpreted by the inimitable Loudon, had 
taught the true principle, or rules for planting all trees and 
bushes, so as to give out, as it were, the best effect to a 
cultivated eye, according to our British ideas of beauty 
in art. But as far as planting goes on that principle, 
Eepton and Loudon might just as well not yet have been 
born ; for in no garden I have ever seen, or saw a plan of, 
are their rules for planting carried out from end to end. 
Many of our gardeners understand Eepton’s rules just as 
well as he did, and many more of them could now plant 
better than he and his interpreter ; but they never have 
the chance. I mean that such gardeners novel’, or but 
very seldom indeed, have the opportunity of planting 
places of sufficient extent to exhibit the effects of artistic 
planting. It is only a bit here, a morsel there, and a 
flea-bite everywhere, in which artistic planting can be 
seen in England. How it is now done in Ireland and 
Scotland, we have little of learning that I know of. But, 
assuredly, there is not a public or a private garden which 
can be seen from a railroad, within fifty miles of London, 
in which the dullest and the very commonest-place plant¬ 
ing may not be seen in some part or other of the grounds. 
Even places which have been once planted as near per¬ 
fection as the conditions would allow, are seen after a few 
years to be altogether below criticism, which may seem 
a paradox to many, but is as clear as crystal to those 1 
who know the rules and regulations of planting, and as 
self-evident. It is in the nature of things, of the things 
planted I mean, that it should be so in a great many 
instances. 
A rich man or woman who had other fish to fry in his 
or her younger days, buys an estate without one particle 
of the necessary amount of country knowledge, ; or of 
country life, to enable him or her to give directions to 
plant any mortal thing as it should be done. But having 
plenty of money and a fair share of ambition, he or she 
shall not be led by the nose by a set of rapscallions 
calling themselves landscape gardeners, of which scape 
they know as much as the pot does of the kettle, and 
argue their points on the same principle of comparison of 
colour. No : each of them will engage the services of an 
acknowledged landscape gardener of eminence and skill, 
as not only the best but also the cheapest in the long run. 
The landscape gardener finds the old house, or mansion, 
buried in an overgrown thicket of trees and shrubs of all 
shapes and sizes ; not a breath of air can one get in that 
old house, or mansion, until the grounds about it are 
opened up in “ views,” thinned of trees, relieved here by 
cutting away all the underwood, and deepened there by 
more planting. The very old stag-headed trees he leaves 
on purpose to stamp the antiquity of the place; as, the 
older the more prized in the peerage. His roads, drives, 
walks, and avenues through the park are all accounted 
for by the nature of the grounds, or these ancient plant¬ 
ings ; and his new plantings have express reference to the 
lines of his amended ways ; and from every point or turn 
in the road, or avenue, a new assortment of the forms of 
trees, or a new combination, as we say, is sure to attract j 
the skilful eye of the stranger, which alone can appreciate 
the art of the master mind. Everything is done and 
finished in some style or other, according to the rules 
bearing on that particular style, as far as they could be 
borne out under the disadvantages in which the place was 
found. With this finish is also finished the foundation 
of that which will inevitably destroy the effect so pro¬ 
duced ; and with that finish also will begin a new agency, 
which will help and hurry on the obliterations which 
leave all the gardens, within a certain distance of Lon¬ 
don, as if no landscape gardener had ever put a foot on 
our island. 
The foundation that is to ruin the effect of artistic 
planting is in the nursery, and seems there innocent as 
the babes in the wood ; and so it is, and might continue 
to be. But a wet or a dry nurse is sure and certain to 
cause mischief—bad training and ill habits in a wood, 
plantation, grove, dingle, or shrubbery; and the wet or 
the dry nurses are they who thus efface the spirit of this 
age from the aged face of the next generation of plant¬ 
ings. No rich or poor man who had any eye for trees, 
for shrubs, and for their effect on his place, was ever yet 
content to have them planted at such distances apart as 
would show them to his heir in his days as they appeared 
to himself in his mind’s eye while he was planting them. 
The landscape gardener falls in with the mind of the 
age ; “ he fills up ” the ground, or puts in “ nurses ” to 
hide the way through the planting, and to “ nurse ” and 
shelter finer trees which are to give the effects he intends 
when they come to full size and show themselves, and 
by that time all traces of the nursing helps are gone, or 
supposed rather to be cleared away ; but that has never 
been the case altogether in any one garden with which 
I am acquainted. No : the nurses, or extra trees put 
in to fill up the ground or nurse the plantation, are 
allowed to have a share in it for life ; their habit or their 
way of growth may be quite the reverse of that which 
is intended by the planter. But in truth, by the time 
the growth is at maturity to give the sought-for effect, 
the whole design is completely altered, and no evidence 
of a master hand or head remains; yet there is plenty 
there and to spare, and not too thick, and the whole was 
done and designed by an eminent landscape gardener. 
All this was suggested by reading Mr. Bailey’s excel¬ 
lent article on planting at page 239. I agree with all he 
says about Mr. Milner’s planting at the Crystal Palace; 
all who understand the subject will also agree with him 
that Mr. Milner has proved’ himself there to be an artist 
of first-rate judgment and taste, but Mr. Milner has left 
before the evidence of his skill could be apparent to the 
great mass of our people ; and unless the next gardener 
at the Crystal Palace, like Mr. Eyles, is able to enter 
into the spirit of the planter, the grouping of trees and 
shrubs all over the grounds will in a few years defeat the 
aims of the planter, and be as good a specimen of the 
inextricable confusion of kinds as can be met with within 
the range of my observations. 
To plant in the first instance only such trees and shrubs 
as were meant to remain permanently would have left 
the garden, in the eyes of those not versed in the design, 
a thin, cold, unsheltered scene ; and so it is, and would be 
everywhere at the first planting. Our ideas of comfort 
require that all our first new plantings should be clothed, 
as it were, at once ; some to fill up for comfort’s sake, or 
for the looks of the thing; and some others to form a 
screen and shelter, which would help the permanent kinds 
to grow faster and with less risk to suffer from exposure 
—to be nurses, in fact. But if the nurses at the Crystal 
Palace are allowed to usurp the privileges of the rest of 
the planting—of the permanent kinds, the effect will be 
as in other and less conspicuous places—that is, the effect 
which Mr. Milner could see in his mind’s eye when he 
was planting will be subverted, and no man will be able 
to read what that effect could be from the jumble before 
him. And it is the same all over the country and king¬ 
dom. A Eepton may suggest, a Loudon digest, a Milner 
design, plant, water, and screen; but who will do the 
thinning which will bring out the fair fruit and fame of 
these eminent men—who indeed ? But that is the rub, 
and the very point at which all our plans and planting 
turn from effect to vulgar lumpishness, like planting 
flower-beds without regard to colour or the value of one 
colour over another, or like the volunteer corps without 
drilling—a fine race, noble fellows, good-looking indi¬ 
vidually, well fed, well clad, and well to do ; plant them 
