The Native Landscape Reader

“A Few Hints on Landscape Gardening” (1851)

109 From The Horticulturist, November 1851, 490–91. aNdRew JacksoN dowNiNg a few hints on landscape Gardening (1851) November is, above all others, the treeplanting month over the wide Union. Accordingly , everyone who has a rood of land looks about him at this season to see what can be done to improve and embellish it. Some have bought new places where they have to build and create everything in the way of home scenery, and they, of course, will have their heads full of shade trees and fruit trees, ornamental shrubs and evergreens, lawns and walks, and will tax their imagination to the utmost to see in the future all the varied beauty which they mean to work out of the present blank fields that they have taken in hand. These look for the most rapid-growing and effective materials, with which to hide their nakedness, and spread something of the drapery of beauty over their premises, in the shortest possible time. Others have already a goodly stock of foliage and shade, but the trees have been planted without taste, and by thinning out somewhat here, making an opening there, and planting a little yonder, they hope to break up the stiff boundaries, and thus magically to convert awkward angles into graceful curves, and harmonious outlines. Whilst others, again, whose gardens and pleasure grounds have long had their earnest devotion, are busy turning over the catalogues of the nurseries in search of rare and curious trees and shrubs to add still more novelty and interest to their favorite lawns and walks. As the pleasure of creation may be supposed to be the highest pleasure, and as the creation of scenery in landscape gardening is the nearest approach to the matter that we can realize in a practical way, it is not difficult to see that November, dreary as it may seem to the cockneys who have rushed back to gas-lights and the paved streets of the city, is full of interest and even excitement to the real lover of the country. It is, however, one of the characteristics of the human mind to overlook that which is immediately about us, however admirable , and to attach the greatest importance to whatever is rare, and difficult to be obtained. A remarkable illustration of 110 thE nativE landsCaPE as a souRCE of insPiRation the truth of this, may be found in the ornamental gardening of this country, which is noted for the strongly marked features made in its artificial scenery by certain poorer sorts of foreign trees, as well as the almost total neglect of finer native materials , that are indigenous to the soil. We will undertake to say, for example, that almost one-half of all the deciduous trees that have been set in ornamental plantations for the last ten years, have been composed, for the most part, of two very indifferent foreign trees—the ailantus and the silver poplar. When we say indifferent, we do not mean to say that such trees as the ailantus and the silver poplar, are not valuable trees in their way—that is, that they are rapid growing, will thrive in all soils, and are transplanted with the greatest facility—suiting at once both the moneymaking grower and the ignorant planter; but we do say, that when such trees as the American elms, maples and oaks, can be raised with so little trouble—trees as full of grace, dignity, and beauty, as any that grow in any part of the world—trees, too, that go on gathering new beauty with age, instead of throwing up suckers that utterly spoil lawns, or that become, after the first few years, only a more intolerable nuisance every day—it is time to protest against the indiscriminate use of such sylvan materials —no matter how much of “heavenly origin ,” or “silvery” foliage, they may have in their well sounding names. It is by no means the fault of the nurserymen that their nurseries abound in ailantuses and poplars while so many of our fine forest trees are hardly to be found. The nurserymen are bound to pursue their business so as to make it profitable, and if people ignore oaks and ashes, and adore poplars and ailantuses, nurserymen cannot be expected to starve because the planting public generally are destitute of taste. What the planting public need is to have their attention called to the study of nature—to be made to understand that it is in our beautiful...