NOTES ON LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



anccs, make extenuations; their knowledge of the constitution of nature is also limited — 

 thus the painter has less to fear. Nature, herself, whose judgment the landscape garde- 

 ner dares, judges his works according to the strictest letter of her law. Hence, if it be ab- 

 surd for any mere amateur to paint his own pictures, under the impression that they would 

 be perfect specimens of the art, it were decidedly more so in the case of one who deemed 

 himself capable of laying out extensive grounds in the most peifect style of art, and 

 consequently of obtaining as much pleasure from his garden as it might be capable of af- 

 fording. 



These gentlemen are at fault. They mar their own enjoyments. But they are not en- 

 tirely to blame. There are so-called landscape gardeners, with whom everything must be 

 this, or it is not natural — that, or it is not beautiful. Whatever stands in the way of this 

 or that, must come down, must be torn away. Jliis tree, that may have stood " a thou- 

 sand years the battle and the breeze," must at last fall; that " mountain must be remov- 

 ed, and cast into the sea." Everything must be levelled for the grade of their imagina- 

 tion, which cannot turn to the right or to the left, fi-om the object before it. Few propri- 

 etors can stand this ordeal. Few could have the nerve of a Hamilton or a Lton, who 

 could desire and effect the death of a Qii:rciis potcrophylla — the only known specimen 

 in the world — for the poor equivalent of one more view of a bend of the beautiful Schuyl- 

 kill — or of those who prefer tlie one or two year old silver maples, planted with mathe- 

 matical precision by rule and square, in Penn Square, Philadelphia, to the noble trees that 

 originally flourished there. 



Landscape gardening, to be pleasing, must be accommodating. Nature herself, is so. 

 In the plains she will give the Oak, the Beech, the Birch, a giant height and strength; on 

 the hill sides and elevations she checks their luxuriance — while on the mountain summits 

 she reduces them to the rank of mere bushes. The}^ therefore, who f(>llow the " natural 

 stj'le," may learn from this, that its results depend on tlieir application of natural laws, 

 rather than on any abstract formulas of lines or circles. Mankind generally run into ex- 

 tremes. Landscape gardening confirms this truth. The old system of squaring all walks, 

 carrying them at right lines and angles, shearing and clipping every tree, and making 

 everything so exactly correspondent, was so very absurd, that in the revulsion of ideas 

 that followed its reformation, a line in any way, became an unpardonable offence against 

 the new creed. And it is so to this day. Let it be the work of our generation to make 

 extremes meet. Nature is not all lines or all circles. It is a beautiful mixture of both. 

 The sun, earth, and celestial bodies are round, the dew-drops are round; the rivers and 

 streams bend, and wind, and curve; the eye, the head, the limb.s — all show forth in many 

 a modification, cylindrical, bending, and sinuous forms. But yet these are intimately con- 

 nected with straight lines. The bold, determined looking cui-ves which the branches of an 

 old Tulip Poplar present, are beautiful; but the effect is considerably heightened by the 

 tall and arrow-like straightness of the trunk which supports then); and gaze in admira- 

 tion as we may, on the rounded symmetr}', and curved proportions of some beautiful spe- 

 cimen of human kind, we cannot f nget the linear lines, or longitudinal dimensions, that 

 give relief, strength, and body to all the rest. Indeed, there is often beauty in a straight 

 line, a beauty which nature frequently employs and glories in. It is her symbol of utili- 

 tij — it is the philosophy which she employs to show why she is beautiful. The idea of 

 utility is always pleasing — it is diffused throughout all nature; the laiulscape gardener 

 ought never to lose sight of this. Utility is the basis on whicJi all ornament in nature rests. 

 Whatever in art cannot be shown to be useful, is therefore nothing but extravagance 

 perfectly straight line in gardening is useful; though cntiiely unadorned, would be 



