The subject to-night is a very pretentious one, for no one would expect boys and girls to be landscape gardeners.  But many boys and girls have excellent taste and taste is the foundation stone of landscape gardening.  This work has often been likened to the painting of a picture.  Your art-work teacher has doubtless told you that a good picture should have a point of chief interest, and the rest of the points simply go to make more beautiful the central idea, or to form a fine setting for it.  Look at that picture over Miriam’s head.  See that lone pine, the beautiful curve of the hillside, the scrub undergrowth about the tree, the bit of sky beyond!  As soon as one looks at that picture one’s eye rests on the pine, and the other features seem to appear afterward.

“So in landscape gardening there must be in the gardener’s mind a picture of what he desires the whole to be when he completes his work.  Take, for example, your school grounds.  You did a bit of landscape work there, although we never called it that before.  The little schoolhouse itself was our centre of interest.  How could we fix up the grounds so that the little building should have a really attractive setting?  That, I believe, was the thought in each of your heads, although no one of you ever put this into words.

“Notice now with me the good points about that work, and from this study we shall be able to work out a little theory of landscape gardening.

“First there is a good extent of lawn about the building, the path to the door is slightly curved and pleasingly so, a fine little maple stands out rather interestingly on the side lawn, the flower garden has a good mass effect, the screen of poplar trees at the back acts as a stately rear guard, and the vines over the outbuilding hide what was once a blemish.

“Let us go back to the lawn.  A good extent of open lawn space is always beautiful.  It is restful.  It adds a feeling of space to even small grounds.  So we might generalize and say that it is well to keep open lawn spaces.  If one covers his lawn space with many trees, with little flower beds here and there, the general effect is choppy and fussy.  It is a bit like an over-dressed person.  One’s grounds lose all individuality thus treated.  A single tree or a small group is not a bad arrangement on the lawn.  Do not centre the tree or trees.  Let them drop a bit into the background.  Make a pleasing side feature of them.  In choosing trees one must keep in mind a number of things.  You should not choose an overpowering tree; the tree should be one of good shape, with something interesting about its bark, leaves, flowers or fruit.  While the poplar is a rapid grower, it sheds its leaves early and so is left standing, bare and ugly, before the fall is old.  Mind you, there are places where a row or double row of Lombardy poplars is very effective.  But I think you’ll agree with me that one lone poplar is not.  The catalpa is quite lovely by itself.  Its leaves are broad, its flowers attractive, the seed pods which cling to the tree until away into the winter, add a bit of picturesqueness.  The bright berries of the ash, the brilliant foliage of the sugar maple, the blossoms of the tulip tree, the bark of the white birch, and the leaves of the copper beech—­all these are beauty points to consider.