. The art of beautifying suburban home grounds of small extent. Illustrated by upward of two hundred plates and engravings of plans for residences and their grounds, of trees and shrubs, and garden embellishments; with descriptions of the beautiful and hardy trees and shrubs grown in the United States. Landscape gardening; Trees. Beauty of Form.—Next to the beauty that comes from vigor of growth, or the glow of high health, is beauty of form. On this matter tastes differ widely. To artists it seems a vulgar unculti- vated taste to prefer a solid pumpkin-headed tree, to one of more irregular ou
. The art of beautifying suburban home grounds of small extent. Illustrated by upward of two hundred plates and engravings of plans for residences and their grounds, of trees and shrubs, and garden embellishments; with descriptions of the beautiful and hardy trees and shrubs grown in the United States. Landscape gardening; Trees. Beauty of Form.—Next to the beauty that comes from vigor of growth, or the glow of high health, is beauty of form. On this matter tastes differ widely. To artists it seems a vulgar unculti- vated taste to prefer a solid pumpkin-headed tree, to one of more irregular outline ; but preference is so often expressed for trees of such forms that it may be imprudent to speak disrespectfully of it. Such trees certainly possess the first element of beauty of form, viz., symmetry; but it is symmetry without variety. They may also have the beauty of thrift and good color. An apple tree from fifteen to twenty years old has this quality of head as shown in Fig. 59. As it grows old, however, its form changes materially, so that its outline is quite irregular and spirited —broader, nobler, and more domestic in expres- sion—as will be seen by comparing Fig. 56 with Fig- 59- Young sugar maples have similar forms slightly elon- gated, as shown by Fig. 60, though with age they break into out- lines less monotonous, as shown by Fig. 61, and their shadows have more character. The same may be said of the horse-chestnuts. The hicko- ries and the white oak, assume more varied outlines while young, without losing that balance of parts which constitutes symmetry. Sugar maples aie always symmetric in every stage of their growth; but their early symmetry is insipid, like that of the human face when unexceptionable in features, but devoid of ex- pression ; or rather like that of the doll-face, which can hardly be said to have either features ^'°- ^'• or expression, but only beauty of color, the semblance of health, and features faintly sug- gested. The change
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectlandscapegardening
