234 



HORTICULTURE 



August 17, 190T 1 



THE LANDSCAPE GARDENER AND 

 HIS FIELD. 



When Mr. Howard read his essay on 

 "The Picturesque in Landscape Gar- 

 dening" the writer was as interested 

 a listener as perhaps any member of 

 the Boston Gardeners' and Florists' 

 Club. 



When pressed in the debate to 

 explain why it was that an artist did 

 not paint a perfect landscape Mr. 

 Howard's defence of the artist's view 

 of the picturesque in imperfect objects 

 was that such objects were more im- 

 pressive, distinct, and more character- 

 istic and for that reason more artistic. 

 I believe it to be almost impossible 

 for a man working in practice to pick 

 out in a nursery those shrubs and trees 

 which are superior in the above men- 

 tioned qualities, and it must be ad- 

 mitted by any practical gardener that 

 these high-sounding definitions in 

 practice do not and cannot mean any- 

 thing to him. In my opinion Mr. 

 Howard's arguments on and his defini- 

 tions of the picturesque in a landscape 

 are. to quote his own views on carpet 

 bedding "baker's confectionery", not 

 home-made goods, and "they cannot", 

 to use his words again, "be taken 

 seriously." The writer has read dili- 

 gently through several books, essays, 

 journals and pamphlets, both Ameri- 

 can and European, for the last ten 

 months in order to assure himself as 

 to what was really understood among 

 landscape gardeners by "picturesque", 

 yet in all the theories and definitions 

 given 1 do not find that they have 

 come to any definite undterstanding. 

 To what confusion oratory will lead, 

 when used improperly — which is es- 

 pecially the case when you talk to a 

 practical man about the theory of the 

 object under discussion — will be un- 

 derstood, when we find Mr. Howard 

 saying that he entertains opposite 

 views from Downing about the beauti- 

 ful and picturesque, and then bor- 

 rowing from the same author the same 

 example to illustrate to his hearers 

 the meaning of picturesque, which 

 Downing used 50 years ago for the 

 same purpose. 



Mr. Howard then proceeds to say, 

 that we should study good painters 

 and learn from them. Let me quote 

 from much-read authors on this sub- 

 ject, in order to show, that Mr. 

 Howard's argument that, whatever 

 looks well in a picture would do so in 

 a natural landscape, is not conclusive; 

 Says Tuckermann (Gardens of the 

 Renaissance) : "At that time (the time 

 of the renaissance in Italy) the land- 

 scape painters got their subjects for 

 pictures in the gardens of the noble- 

 man, although on the other hand, they 

 again influenced landscape gardening, 

 and at no time can the landscape gar- 

 dener get along without the artist 

 work of painting." Claude de Lor- 

 rain and Pourrin got their motives of 

 their historic pictures out of parks in 

 and around Rome. 



Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer (Art 

 out of doors) says the landscape 

 painter creates his effects by colors, 

 the sculptor by plastic forms, but the 

 landscape gardener must necessarily 

 work with both color and plastic form. 

 Downing said he could not detect 

 any visible relation of landscape 

 gardening to landscape painting, and 

 other authors In landscape gardening 

 do not mention the landscape painter 

 at all. Mr. Howard's essay says: The 



thing is to know your material (by 

 name, or by having grown them and 

 so having got familiar with them?) 

 and then arrange and cast out and 

 add, just as a painter does in compos- 

 ing a great canvas "The plant's ob- 

 ject is firstly and mainly its own life." 

 These are the words of another 

 authority in landscape gardening and 

 written to us to warn us away from 

 any mechanical use of the plants in 

 any way or form. But there is a 

 iundamental difference between dead 

 colors to be used at liberty on the 

 point of a painter's brush and a living 

 shrub or tree in the hands of a land- 

 scape gardener. In nature a plant's 

 fiist object is its own life and not its 

 relative value as a color in the land- 

 scape picture, and the landscape gar- 

 dener cannot transfer his object in un- 

 limited manner absolutely subject to 

 his own wishes. 



Let me narrate something of a re- 

 cent trip to Newport. I spent some 

 hours looking at tlie residences and 

 gardens along the cliff-walk, and while 

 there got an idea of what a landscape 

 "set" in nature like streaks of paint 

 in a picture would probably look like. 

 A landscape gardener was "i:rutting in" 

 a new formal garden on a place not 

 far from Vanderbilt's marble palace. 

 He used considerable box hedges, 

 conifers and rhododendrons, etc. Every 

 bit of the hedge came from an out- 

 side nursery, jyst abou/ as high and 

 thick as it was ever in Ended to be; 

 piece after piece, box, evergreen, 

 rhododendrons, etc., like mason's walls 

 or carpenter work was "put in",, and 

 there was your landscape. Yes, there 

 it was, and there will be your land- 

 scape picture garden, but will it swing 

 In the wind, bend in the rain, spread in 

 the sunshine, in one word will or does 

 it live? It does, it will not! because 

 it gives only a "setting" to the house, 

 and that's what it was "put in" there 

 for. 



0>ntrary to Mr. Howard I come to 

 the conclusion that landscape picture 

 gardening would lead up to that arti- 

 hcial French style of gardening which 

 nad so^ great an influence after the 

 renaissance, ahd is manifested in the 

 gardens of Versailles, with its carpet 

 beds and stage-like "coulisse" scenery. 

 In order to get pictures in the land- 

 scape trees and shrubs were at that 

 period used like stage sceneries, one 

 behind the other, to give settings to 

 elaborate fountains, statues, etc., 

 while the front part was made elegant 

 by the famous carpet style flower bed. 

 Of course, today, instead of statues 

 and fountains there would be more 

 natural objects, say a big rocky bank 

 with a flowing stream or lake that is 

 to get a "setting", but that would not 

 make any material difference in re- 

 gard to the effect of such landscape 

 work in the foreground. In my opin- 

 ion it is only the old French manner 

 of "staging landscapes" in a new dis- 

 guise. 



Now what we practical gardeners 

 want, if any, is such rules and sug- 

 gestions about landscape gardening, as 

 have become classical, for only when 

 men have become absolute masters of 

 an art or science, can they safely de- 

 part from established methods. There- 

 fore, instead of trying to interest us 

 in probable future fields in landscape 

 gardening, where wild scenery and 

 other values will be taken into con- 



sideration, it is, I believe, much more 

 to the point at present that we devote 

 ourselves to established principles and 

 modes of planting and grading. Lee 

 us learn what has been done in land- 

 scape gardening. 



Not every practical gardener who is 

 devoting his spare time and money to 

 become more efficient in landscape gar- 

 dening can become an Olmsted, and, 

 for that reason, instead of speculating 

 on the picturesque and beautiful in the 

 practice of the future, let us stay 

 among our familiar garden scenery 

 and get light on questions like the 

 following few: 



Foliage versus flowers in shrubs and 

 trees; that is, is the value of a tree 

 or shrub to be judged by its compara- 

 tively short flower-crop or by its 

 foliage and wood effect all the year 

 around? For instance, is it or is it 

 not bad taste to plant Hydrangea pani- 

 culata in a position where its "coarse 

 appearance" (vide Parsons: How to 

 improve the home-grounds) will be in 

 evidence moat of the time, while its 

 nevertheless magnificent flowering 

 beauty lasts only two months? 



Banking versus plain, flat grouping: 

 that is, should we plant an herbace- 

 ous border or flower bed with the 

 small plants strictly in front and the 

 taller ones in the back, with ground, 

 middle and sky-line in regular succes- 

 sion from front to back, or shall we 

 plant just as many high objects in 

 front as in the middle or nearly as 

 many, and have low ground lines run- 

 ning back behind Higher front groups? 

 Both are recommended by authors on 

 landscape gardening. (Samuel Par- 

 sons, Jr., the American author, versus 

 Charles H. Y. Smith, the old English 

 author;. 



Massing colors versus mixing inter- 

 mediate green with it; that is, shall 

 we attempt to make effect with, for 

 instance, a white and a red color as 

 contrast directly or shall we have a 

 green foliage space fill in and amongst 

 the other two colors? In nature in 

 very few instances we find no green. 



We should learn something more 

 definitely as to mixing varieties or 

 massing one or two; w nether it is bad 

 taste to plant a tropical bed along 

 Canadian hemlocks, and if so, why so; 

 whether it is bad taste to plant a 

 border of ornamental evergreens under 

 the shade of a row of horse chest- 

 nuts, if there is not a ghost of chance 

 that they may have grown so naturally 

 (vide gardens in Newport's mosi 

 fashionable parts), and if so, why so; 

 or shall we "thin out" so as to en- 

 able us to look through and partly 

 see the sky and other objects behind 

 or shall we present a solid bulk of 

 foliage massive, showing lightness and 

 grace of outlines only, and if so why? 

 I believe such questions as these 

 which come up in our work repeatedly 

 would, when definitely and rightly an- 

 swered and explained, help us more to- 

 wards an understanding of landscape 

 gardening as an art, than trying to 

 operate with theories of unity, delicacy 

 and whatever else we find proclaimed 

 as qualities necessary to a beautiful 

 landscape. That may lead us to un- 

 derstand these rules of ait. We want 

 first, classical knowledge of what has 

 been done, and secondly, solutions of ' 

 questions which lie intermediate be- 

 tween mere horticultural knowledge 

 and strict rules of art. 



G. BLEICKEN. 



