Devon (England) -- Social life and customs; Wreyland (England)
Whately declares that every ‘landskip’ is composed of ground, wood,
water, rocks and buildings. In a garden “every species of architecture
may be admitted, from the Grecian down to the Chinese”; but in a wider
prospect there should be “no Grecian temples, no Turkish mosques, no
Egyptian obelisks or pyramids,” though there may be “the semblance of an
ancient British monument,” pp. 119, 120, ed. 1770. As for its
construction, “the materials might be brick, or even timber plaistered
over, if stone could not easily be procured: whatever they were, the
fallacy would not be discernible.” It tempts me to construct a
lath-and-plaster Stonehenge here.
On one point I agree with him, p. 159, “a chearful look-out from the
windows is all that the proprietor desires: he is more sensible to the
charms of the greater prospects, if he sees them only occasionally, and
they do not become insipid by being familiar.” Nor is it prudent to rely
too much upon a distant view. In a flat country you plant a belt of
trees around your house and don’t care what your neighbours do: you are
monarch of all you survey. But in a hilly country, such as this, you are
at your neighbours’ mercy, unless you have a very large estate. Some
neighbour may quite spoil your view by starting building or cutting
timber or opening a mine a mile or two away. And you cannot plant him
out. If you plant a tree to hide an eyesore, it hides it only from one
point of view, and from other points it hides things you may wish to
see.
Clipped hedges of yew and cypress look well almost anywhere, but best
near dark green trees, cedar, pine, or fir. Evergreens are always better
by themselves away from trees that shed their leaves, unless such trees
are masked. I think the younger Pliny was right in growing ivy on his
plane trees, and letting it run out along the branches and reach across
from tree to tree, _Epistolæ_, V. 6. 32. He liked the dark green of the
ivy with his bay trees and his clipped box bushes below, although he
knew the ivy would ultimately kill the planes.
Planes were then the fashionable trees, as they gave the pleasantest
shade. They were not introduced into Italy until about 400 B.C., and
were not easily grown. The elder Pliny says that there were people who
watered theirs with wine, _Historia naturalis_, XII. 4 (8). I never went
as far as that with any tree, nor did my grandfather, although my
grandmother always made a point of watering the myrtle with cold tea. No
doubt, all plants have their appropriate food. I sometimes get the
parings off the hoofs when a horse is being shod, and then I give my
olive trees a feed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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