October 12, 1907 



HORTICULTURE 



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LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



Read before the Congress of Horticulture, 

 Jamestown Exposition, Norfolk, Va., 

 September 23, 1907, by John C. Olmsted, 

 Brookline, Mass. 



{Continued from pngr 454) 



The Florist's Place and Limitations in 

 Landscape Work. 



Horticulture is the art of the culti- 

 vation ot garden plants as distin- 

 guished from farm crops. Those hor- 

 ticulturists who raise or sell plants 

 for their beauty are florists. Most 

 florists advise as to or direct the use 

 of ornamental plants. Many florists 

 also branch out into the practice of 

 landscape gardening because their 

 technical knowledge enables them to 

 do so well enough to satisfy those who 

 employ them. Similarly druggists sell 

 drugs without prescriptions of physi- 

 cians, dealers sell spectacles without 

 prescriptions of professional oculists. 



-Vevertheless all who can afford it 

 should get advice on matters of land- 

 scape design from the best available 

 professional landscape gardener, just 

 as they should get advice as to mat- 

 ters of health from a competent phy- 

 sician. Florists should therefore 

 avoid competing with competent land- 

 scape gardeners. 



This principle of specialization of 

 knowledge and its application to hu- 

 man affairs is well known to florists, 

 but for one reason or another they do 

 and will continue to practice land- 

 scape gardening and it must be ac- 

 knowledged that to a certain extent 

 and under certain circumstances they 

 are justified in doing so. 



The direction in which the work of 

 florists in the field of landscape gar- 

 dening is usually most open to criti- 

 cism is in its esthetic qualities. 



The mind of the florist is usually 

 occupied either by practical details 

 or is considering the beauty of par- 

 ticular flowers or plants. This tends 

 to unfit him as a landscape designer. 

 If he is to practise landscape garden- 

 ing, he should subordinate beauty of 

 plants to the beauty of the composi- 

 tion or design as a whole. In doing 

 so he cannot succeed unless he studies 

 first the requirements of the case, the 

 utilization of its opportunities for 

 landscape beauty, its financial limita- 

 tions and so on. Then he must form 

 in his mind, or on paper, a general 

 plan or solution of the problem em- 

 bodying such qualities as fitness, har- 

 mony, contrast, simplicity or intricacy, 

 proportion, relation of masses, colors 

 and so on. 



But even if he refrains from design- 

 ing landscape the florist should be an 

 artist. 



Faculties that Must Be Cultivated. 



The very existence of florists de- 

 pends upon the public demand for 

 beautiful flowers and garden plants. 

 If the florist is to succeed in the es- 

 thetic side of his business he must be 

 endowed with certain esthetic facul- 

 ties and cultivate them to the point 

 of efficiency. A mere love of flowers 

 is not sufficient, any more than an ear 

 for music would indicate the existence 

 of the qualities required for a success- 

 ful musician. There must be the 

 power to observe and study, to 

 imagine combination and modifications 

 of things seen or learned of, to men- 

 tally test them by various standards 

 and rules and by the known effects of 

 similar things that have been or can 

 be seen. There must be the critical 

 faculty, the weighing of advantages 

 and disadvantages, the power to curb 

 impulses and first impressions until 

 reason has passed judgment. Percep- 

 tion, selection, memory, imagination, 

 reason, application, patience and 

 above all will power are some of the 

 more important qualities required for 

 a successful designing florist. All 

 these faculties gain by experience and 

 training and by a favorable environ- 

 ment. 



The visual memory must be stored 

 with beautiful things. Nature is a 

 great storehouse of beautiful things, 

 as well as of ugly things, so a lad 

 should be brought up in a beautiful 

 bit of country rather than amid long 

 blocks of plain brick houses. But 

 there is much in nature that is beau- 

 tiful that cannot be used in the flor- 

 ist's work. Lichens and toad stools, 

 for instance, include varieties having 

 beautiful colors, yet they are not used 

 in carpet bedding owing to practical 

 difficulties. Therefore the visual 

 memory is stored by visiting gardens 

 and exhibitions and by studying illus- 

 trations, horticultural books and trade 

 catalogues. 



The selective faculty is trained by 

 determining what is worth remember- 

 ing. We must put some things in the 

 front row of the memory, so to speak, 

 where they can be availed of instan- 

 taneously. Other things are set be- 

 hind and labeled by some bit of de- 

 tail, a leaf or a bit of color or a word 

 or a taste or a smell or by name. For 

 very many things that may be useful 

 the memory must refer back to the 

 cyclopedia, an indexed periodical, a 

 scrap book, so and so's catalogue, and 

 so on. 



The visual memory is trained by 

 repetition, by close application forced 

 by the will power. It is aided by as- 



sociation with other sensations, by 

 the sentiments, by novelty, by super- 

 lative characteristics and so on. 



The imagination is based on mem- 

 ory. We can imagine nothing that has 

 not come into our minds through the 

 senses or that is not due to some com- 

 bination ot ideas previously so gained. 

 Hence the importance of storing the 

 memory with things worth remember- 

 ing. The imagination must be guided 

 by reason and will power to be useful, 

 but it must be exercised and develop- 

 ed mainly in youth, even by the aid of 

 beautiful things that are not useful. 

 The imagination is stimulated by beau- 

 tiful things to imagine other beautiful 

 combinations and modifications. An' 

 ancient necklace or a decorated book 

 cover, seen in a museum of art, may 

 excite the imagination many years 

 after in the designing ot flower decora- 

 tion. That may be both a pleasant 

 and a useful training of the young 

 florist's imagination, but the study of 

 veined marble, or cloud effects or a 

 specimen of marine alga might be 

 pleasant but probably useless to the 

 florist. 



Value of a Scientific Training. 



The reasoning faculty may be train- 

 ed in various ways but may best be 

 trained by the study of cause and ef- 

 fect in the natural sciences dealing 

 with the materials to be handled or 

 controlled by the florist. If he learns 

 scientifically why certain color com- 

 binations are pleasing and certain 

 others displeasing he can act as the 

 result of reasoning when the time 

 comes instead of trusting to his own 

 sensations or to what people may say 

 or to tradition. If he has studied 

 agricultural chemistry and plant phy- 

 siology and meteorology he may some- 

 times avoid mistakes which others 

 fall into through the misapplication 

 of traditional wise saws, which often 

 for the sake of brevity or of a catch- 

 ing rhyme convey a half truth or even 

 a falsehood. 



The training of other /acuities need" 

 not be enlarged upon. The inference- 

 to be drawn is that if the florist is tO' 

 have such an education as will fit him 

 to produce beautiful floral decoration 

 and to make his vocation compare in 

 esthetic standing with that of the ar- 

 chitect and the artist mural decorator 

 and (let no offense be taken) with 

 the landscape architect, he should cul- 

 tivate his creative esthetic faculties 

 at least as thoroughly and by much 

 the same means of art schools, muse- 

 ums, reading, converse with artists, 

 travel and observation and by the so- 

 lution ot many problems of artistic 

 design. 



