Landscape Gardening 



By Arthur S. Brooks. 



"Take thy plastic spade, it is thy pencil — 

 Take the trees and flowers, they are thy colors." 



There are comparatively few professions in this Hfe 

 that at their best demand a more complete knowledge, a 

 riper experience and a deeper sympathy with nature than 

 landscape gardening. 



All give it credit for being the oldest, but few rank it 

 as one" of the highest types of art. ^ "That is art which 

 attempts to create organized beauty," says an old axiom, 

 and there is certainly a good deal of "organized beauty" 

 in a well ordered garden. 



There is no gainsaying that landscape gardening is 

 one of the fine arts. 



In matters artistic nothing is absolute, everything is 

 relative; so we must be artists at heart if we wish to 

 properly plant our garden and give it that touch of har- 

 mony and restfulness which is only secured after having 

 appreciated those things for ourselves. 



I am afraid that some who have to do with the more 

 practical side of getting a garden laid out will want me 

 to deal with the numerous features that go to shaping 

 a garden and be submerged in the removal of tons of 

 earth, blasting rocks, carting stones, building material, 

 greenhouses in sections and loads of manure and trees 

 and then out of chaos gradually working to light, guided 

 by bits of oily paper called plans. It would be quite pos- 

 sible to write very interestingly on these lines. 



For our present purpose, however, it is our plan to 

 consider some of the basic principles of the art and later 

 to touch upon some of the more practical details that I 

 have found helpful. 



A satirical critic, who once overheard a remark maile 

 by a landscape gardener, that he had been wonderfully 

 helped in his work by the accidental developments and 

 unlocked for groupings, said, landscape gardening was 

 an art that relied upon accident for effect. While on the 

 whole I disagree with our critic, very often it comes 

 about that we have secured a fine grouping or happy 

 combination more by chance than by deliberation. 



Yet everyone who aspires to lay out a garden should 

 believe in a properly prepared plan, if the result is to be 

 harmonious and balanced. 



The landscape gardener, or, as he is sometimes termed, 

 the landscape architect and more recently the landscape 

 engineer, should be a man of wide experience, one who 

 can realize the main component parts of a large land- 

 scape and fit them accordingly to private needs. The 

 name landscape architect or engineer gives tis a clue as 

 to why American gardens are sometimes so grotesque 

 and present such examples of discord. I am afraid that 

 sometimes the landscape architect or engineer is em- 

 ployed instead of the gardener. 



.Starting without a prepared plan, many bright and 

 original men have fallen short of the ideal becatise they 

 have gone along the haphazard lines our critic makes 

 fun of and had to keep altering and remodeling to suit 

 every new condition that sprung up till in the end they 

 were discouraged. 



Men of ideas always bring them to the one who can 

 make the most of them, and that is the man of system. 

 No amount of detail will ever make a garden. It is one 

 of the marks of the feminine mind to get a lot of talk 

 about colors, and the birds and the pattern of the garden 

 gate and the hosts of other little things, without which 

 you cannot have a garden comi)lete, but thev often 



ignore the design proper. Detail we must have, but 

 more so the grand conception whereon to raise the struc- 

 ture and embellishments. 



Look for a moment at those old renaissance gardens 

 and see the orderly features they conceived. They planned 

 their designs whole, not piecemeal as we do. 



Some, no doubt, will cast a slighting look at the ex- 

 amples of those old famous gardens, those of the Tuileries 

 and Versailles for example, where the interpretation of 

 the renaissance is too stately and heavy for the ordinary 

 human. Their schemes are too vast to understand, yet 

 one cannot but be impressed with the classic grandeur of 

 their vistas. 



I would beg a little indulgence at this point and ask 

 for toleration of these designs, although they seem ob- 

 solete to the modern mind. Those old designers were 

 learned in what it takes most moderns half a lifetime to 

 find out, namely, how to express by suggestions the 

 essentials of their thoughts. 



We too often lose the essentials by a mass of finely 

 wrought detail, and then, later, finding our work lacks 

 eft'ect, try to reach it by a series of impressions which 

 are after all grotesque and ridiculous. 



Every man is trying to do what is right in his own 

 eyes, and such is the seed bed, from whence all these 

 vagaries and other startling surprises come. But order 

 and discipline always come out on top, and after all our 

 extravagance and novelties produce in the end the long- 

 ing desire for the renaissance order and sanity. We need 

 a renaissance in art to strike our gardens here and strike 

 them bard. Then and only then can we truly develop a 

 national style of gardening, for as more order and system 

 prevails we can understand each other better and feel 

 bound by some common purpose. 



One thing we should single out and adhere to is to 

 plant more American trees in place of the European 

 varieties. The climate here is dift'erent from that of 

 Europe and we cannot hope to get similar effects by just 

 using European material. Spring shotild be the time 

 of flowering trees and shrubs, and we should plant ac- 

 cordingly. Summer is naturally and best a time of 

 greenness, when we can appreciate green as at no other 

 time. Autumn is naturally again the time of color, when 

 truly gorgeous effects are easily secured by native ma- 

 terial. Winter can be brightened with berried plants 

 and shrubs with highly colored twigs planted in mass. 



I do not mean, however, that this should be held to 

 unfeelingly, for we have many flowering shrubs that 

 are at their best during the summer months and to 

 banish them just to get the green effect would be to 

 lose much good material, but what I do mean, is not to 

 lose by too varied a planting the general effect of spring 

 bloom, summer foliage and autumn coloring. By such 

 means only can we secure any real appreciation of this 

 natural division of the seasons. Do not plant too many 

 shrubs and trees with highly colored foliage for summer 

 effects and so lose the effect of autumn coloring when it 

 comes. I do not mean to dogmatize but to lay down a 

 general idea of planting which will produce a much more 

 happy and natural effect. 



A small garden amply staffed and thoroughly prepared 

 is much better than a larger estate less equipped and 

 laid out. 



Hear what an American authority has said about the 

 English gardens: "It is characteristic of the English- 

 man, that, enumerating the things which require con- 



