A far better method of planting waste land, where enclosures are not permitted, has been adopted with great success in Norfolk, by my much valued friend the late Robert Marsham, Esq., of Stratton. Instead of firs surrounded by a mud bank, he placed deciduous trees of every kind, but especially birch, intermixed with thorns, crabs, and old hollies, cutting off their heads and all their branches about eight feet from the ground: these are planted in a puddle and the earth laid round their roots in small hillocks, which prevent the cattle from standing very near to rub them; and thus I have seen groups of trees which looked like bare poles the first year, in a very short time become beautiful ornaments to a dreary waste. This sketch [fig. 60] shews the difference between the sort of clump so often seen on a common, and that mode of planting stumps of trees and thorns recommended in the foregoing page; the appearance at first is not very promising, but in a few years they will become such irregular groups and natural thickets as are here represented [fig. 61], while the formal clump of firs will for ever remain an artificial object.
