7. But the best arrangement of plants as to the shape and relative position of the masses will be unfinished and defective

unless their upper outlines, when fully grown, are properly calculated upon. From some point of view, whether nearer or more distant, the tops of almost every mass of plants will cut the horizon, and stand out against a back ground of mere sky. If nicely disposed, this sky outline will yield the most charming effects. But it may also be hard, or tame, and thus become disagreeable or utterly ineffective.

By a reference to Nature, especially in her older vegetable forms, a few large and comprehensive hints may soon be gathered on this point. In the horizontal outlines of forest groups, the greatest diversity, and yet the most pleasing roundness and interfusion of parts, is observable. Like the ground lines of shrubberies which I have just attempted to sketch, there will be a great number of bolder or lesser curves, united together to make up broader sweeps and more expansive variations. Occasionally a tree or shrub of some spiry or unusually upright character will spring out of the masses of round-headed vegetation, and give increased variety to the outline, without weakening the general smoothness of the effect; while the edges of the masses will be delightfully softened off and feathered down, so

as to unite by an easy and graceful line with the sweep of the ground in the glades between them.

It is something of this sort, in a humbler way, that is wanted in garden or home plantations. The sky line requires to be broken, but not in a hard or abrupt manner. Trees or shrubs should tower out, here and there, above the rest; but they must not be unsupported. (See figs. 132 and 133.) Their edges

should blend with other forms by the softest transition. Boldness, as well as easiness of change, will be highly effective. But it should be like the bold swell of a general curve, composed,

it may be, of several parts, but the outer of these gradually carrying down the line to the lower and humbler forms. Or, if the more spiry plants now and then find a place, as they may do most usefully, to give greater change and strength of character, they should not rise very much above the rest, and should

appear to belong to a group of the more spreading and clustering kinds, like the spire of a church peering out from amid a grove of ancient Elms.

On estates where there is sufficient variation of surface and extent of property to admit of the introduction of such a feature, a most happy effect may sometimes be produced by partially planting the summit and slope of an adjacent hill, (fig. 134,) so as to convey the idea of large woods, of which the parts seen

are but the straggling arms or off-shoots, lying behind and on the other face of the hill. And if treated with proper boldness and regard to diversity, such masses of wood, with their outlying specimen trees or bushes, will greatly enrich the hill, and relieve it from any tendency to undue roundness or tameness of outline. An excellent model for this treatment may often be seen in the delightfully picturesque and ragged patches of common Furze with which Nature sometimes clothes the faces of hills of a similar character; such masses nearly always presenting a remarkable freshness, freedom, and beauty of outline.

In planting a very hilly country, when the entire face of the hill is not clothed with trees, but only detached masses are used, it will be an excellent rule to make the greatest length of each plantation run up and down the hill, and not merely draw, as it were, a series of broader or narrower bands or bars across it. Nothing could be more unsatisfying, or tend more to diminish the apparent height of the hill than this system of arranging strips of plantation across its face. And any one who will take the trouble to observe the straggling groups of trees or bushes which sometimes seam the faces of mountains in the small

crevices or gullies which are formed by the action of water, and then get filled with soil enough to sustain the higher forms of vegetation, will see how happily this rule of longitudinal rather than horizontal masses is illustrated and enforced by Nature.

8. In respect to the disposal of flowers in gardens, if we include in that term all the simply herbaceous kinds that are not shrubby, or, at any rate, merely such additional low shrubs as are grown out of doors only in the summer, a considerable reformation in the prevailing practice seems demanded. Go where we will, into old or new places, it is seldom indeed that the beds or masses of shrubs on a lawn are not entirely surrounded with a strip of ground appropriated exclusively to the herbaceous tribes. The edges of groups are thus most defectively and tamely finished off; they have an exceedingly blank appearance in winter; the size of the lawn is materially diminished; and such borders can never, without a great deal of trouble, be very neatly kept. To compensate for all this, they impart a little additional gaiety during summer, which might, however, be readily attained in other ways.

The desirable plan would be, to dismiss all common herbaceous plants from the fronts of groups on the lawn, and to supply their place with small circular beds, or masses of other shapes, filled with flowers of one sort or one tribe, or with a mixture of different kinds, according to the size of the beds. In other parts, again, single specimens might be put, or two or three plants placed together so as to look like a good clustering specimen, of taller or dwarfer varieties that are worthy of being thus detached. And by these means, a sufficient amount of liveliness may be produced on a lawn, while the beds and single plants can be so arranged, in conformity with the suggestions before given for grouping and connecting objects on lawns, that, though they will last only during summer, they will then seem but a more elaborate carrying out of a consistent plan, while in winter, the garden will be complete without them, and they can, if very staring and conspicuous, on account of their emptiness, be readily turfed over till the summer returns. At any rate, a portion of them may be thus treated.

That flowers in small beds or masses, with occasional single specimens of them, (such as Dahlias, Fuchsias, two or three scarlet Pelargoniums planted so as to look like one, Petunias,

supported by a low fancy frame of wire, and many other things,) produce a finer and more artistic effect on a lawn, with the groups of shrubs reposing entirely on the grass, than by the old method of growing them in borders, any one who has seen the plan well adopted will, it is thought, immediately admit. Greater breadth and more variety are thus produced. And each tribe gets its appropriate treatment, without interference from the other; while all are exhibited to the highest advantage.

9. Not to banish the large class of herbaceous plants and bulbs which could not be thus brought together in beds, and many of which, more especially the spring-flowering species, are extremely interesting; I would grow them in the places usually assigned to them round all the masses of shrubs for the first four or five years after these were planted, and until they became fit to be surrounded wholly with turf, when the lower tribes might be consigned altogether to those back borders, which faced the side walks and were not seen from the lawn, or to such other parts of the pleasure grounds as did not come into view from the house, and of which the shrubbery walk will be an illustration.

It must be remembered, then, that shrubs which are but just planted and insufficiently established, will not bear turfing around for several years, without injury. They require air to their roots to start them freely. And any neglect of this circumstance, by turfing around them prematurely, will be productive of the very worst consequences, and has been known to retard (almost to stop) their growth for many years, or even to go very far towards destroying them altogether. But they need not have a broad border for this purpose, and anything beyond four or five feet will be both superfluous and ugly.

By keeping the commoner herbaceous plants in such private parts as have been named, they may be cultivated just as fitly as if they were in the more exposed places where they are now usually grown. And they can thus be allowed a breadth of border which will give them a much finer opportunity of developing themselves; only taking care that specimen shrubs are brought forward singly, or in groups here and there, along the border, to do away with all monotony, and produce a little more freshness and life.

10. Where a place is so small that there cannot be many single plants grown upon the lawn, to exhibit their full beauty