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GARDENERS' CHRONICLE 



approximation uf the annual cost of upkeep involved by it, al- 

 though there arc very few professional landscapists who could 

 give any definite answer if questioned upon the point. 



The fundamental principle of an artistic garden is an open 

 lawn. It should be as large as conditions will allow. In a gen- 

 eral way all the center and interior of any landscape plan should 

 be open lawn, as it affords a natural setting for the plantings 

 of trees, shrubs, etc., which should be confined to the boundaries. 

 The house should be located towards one side, and drives and 

 walks must never cut through the middle of the grounds if a 

 pleasingly natural effect is to be preserved. 



Boundary plantings should be, if possible, so designed in out- 

 line as to obscure the boundary. This can be accomplished in the 

 larger places by means of bold bays and promontories, with per- 

 haps an island or two in the foreground uf these when there is 

 plenty of room. If a hedge, or fence, or wall is necessary — and 

 cither should be avoided if possible — the boundary plantings should 

 be so arranged that they are not seen from the garden. When 

 the property beyond the garden belongs to the same owner all 

 the protection from animals given by a hedge, etc., can be se- 

 cured by the use of the invisable protection known as the Ha-ha 

 ( a sunken fence not seen until one is actually standing over it ; 

 the word being derived from the old Anglo-Saxon word haga, 

 a yard or inclosure). When the use of the ha-ha is possible 

 some openings may be left in the boundary planting, or the plant- 

 ing may be in certain spots composed entirely of dwarf growing 

 subjects so as to afford an undisturbed view of the natural lands- 

 scape beyond, which by this means becomes part of and ap- 

 pears joined to the garden landscape, and if the latter is properly 

 designed it will be scarcely, if at all, possible to tell at a distance 

 where one ends and the other begins. In any case and in all 

 connections, boundary plantings should be so arranged that the 

 ultimate natural growth of the material used will be such as to 

 cause the sky-line to be of an undulating form. 



In connection with small places it is not always possible to 

 obtain the full effect of boundary plantings along the lines above 

 mentioned ; at the same time, however, the idea need not be en- 

 tirely lost sight of so that the outlook from the house can be 

 upon something more than a hedge and street. In any case, the 

 hedge assumes a position of greater importance in the small 

 garden than in the large, as in the latter it can be often eliminated 

 altogether. From the point of view of beauty as well as from 

 every other, I have never been able to understand the everlast- 

 ing use of privet for hedge purposes, as from an artistic stand- 

 point it does not have a single redeeming feature. The fact 

 that it is cheaply reproduced is a benefit not received by the 

 planter, and even if it were its cheapness is counterbalanced over 

 and over again in one season by the continual expense of its up- 

 keep. The use of this privet is the more inexplicable in the 

 face of the fact that there are so many other plants suitable for 

 hedge purposes both beautiful and hardy, which latter, privet is 

 not. 



For the northern half of the country there is no hedge plant 

 which from all points of view equals the Barberry (Brrbcris 

 Ihunhcrgii) . It has practically four distinct phases of beauty, 

 which, merg.ing into one another, gives it a beautiful character 

 all the year round. In the Spring it is the earliest shrub to put 

 forth its bright green foliage, which it dees several weeks be- 

 fore privet; this is followed by a mass of golden yellow dowers. 

 In the Autumn its leaves gradually assume a brilliant scarlet, 

 and when the leaves fall their place is taken by its bright red 

 berries, which remain on until after the y( ung leaves appear in 

 the Spring, these berries being especially effective in brightening" 

 up the garden during mid-Winter snows. This barberry is abso- 

 lutely hardy and the severest Winters have no power to harm it. 

 The upkeep of a barberry hedge costs practically nothing com- 

 pared with privet, as barberry requires no shearing and is in fact 

 spoiled by so doing. It can be kept within any required bounds 

 by cutting out old wood close to the ground, an operation which 

 is not requisite more frequently than once in three or four years. 



At their best, hedges must be looked upon as necessary evils, 

 adding nothing to a naturally artistic composition, but when 

 they are required as boundary protection it is surely better to 

 have something pleasing to look upon instead of that which is 

 commonplace and unbeautiful like privet, which its additional 

 feature of being kept sheared causes to introduce an element of 

 discord into any natural beauty. Whatever reasons or excuses 

 may be given for hedges on the outside of one's garden, it does 

 not appear possible to advance any for sticking them about on 

 the inside, and when these inside hedges arc privet too, then a 

 feature which is in any case bad is made ten times worse, espe- 

 cially in the face of the numerous beautiful flowering plants 

 suitable for the purpose. If a screen line of demarcation between 

 the ornamental grounds and the vegetable garden, for instance, 

 is considered necessary it can be of flowering shrubs arranged in 

 such a manner as to have the side towards the vegetable portion 

 straight and the other of varying widths so that it is not a 



hedge at all. Also a combination of the beautiful and the useful 

 can be obtained by using bush or pyramid apples and pears ; 

 quinces, too, can be used for the purpose. Gooseberries, cur- 

 rants, raspberries, blackberries, make good interior hedges and 

 certamly their use would afford more evidence of common sense 

 than wasting time and money upon such a useless thing as privet. 

 When an evergreen hedge or screen is desired, material for the 

 purpose in the north can be found among the hardy conifers, in 

 the south there are in addition many evergreen flowering shrubs 

 which can be used. 



What is called "tying the house to the ground" is accomplished 

 by plantings close to the foundation. This, being under close and 

 continual observation, should be composed in an harmonious and 

 natural manner of the choicest subjects, avoiding all stiffness 

 and formality. 



Terraces should be shunned as introducing an element of dis- 

 cord. There is nothing artistic in a terrace, and the common 

 idea that a terrace adds to tUle beauty of home surroundings is 

 utterly false. When the house is built upon a hillside a terrace 

 may be necessary, but making a terrace upon level, or practically 

 level, ground is an anachronism destroying the harmony which 

 should always exist in a work of true landscape art. otherwise 

 it cannot be true. 



Trees must always be an element to be considered in com- 

 posing a landscape, as they form the framework of other plant- 

 ing, and unless they are felicitously selected happily placed and 

 well grown, the whole composition falls to pieces. The smaller 

 the place, the greater the care necessary in making a selection 

 and in avoiding planting too many. When only a few can be 

 used, these few should afford the most prolonged and maximum 

 amount of beauty possible. Upon the smaller places and near 

 the house upon a place of any size, the Norway and Silver Maples 

 should be entirely eliminated from consideration. They are each 

 commonplace and for ornamental purposes they stand among 

 deciduous trees in the same category as the common privet does 

 among shrubs. 



Some trees around a house are necessary and desirable for 

 the purpose of affording shade, but it is unfortunately a com- 

 mon practice to over-indulge in the craving for shade trees, and 

 there are many houses too much shadowed and shut in by them, 

 and numerous gardens are cramped and crowded by three times 

 as many trees as the place ought to support ; such places would 

 be greatly improved by the use of the ax. 



In woodland planting it is possible to create a landscape satisfy- 

 ing to the most artistically fastidious taste by trees alone, and 

 all extensive landscape compositions should include a number of 

 specimen trees so placed as to show their individual good quali- 

 ties, and above all so planted and grown as to possess these 

 good qualities in the maximum degree. Nothing mars a land- 

 scape to a greater extent and is more inartistic than an unthrifty, 

 scrubby, starved tree, shrub, or other plant. 



Eliminating from our minds the two maples above mentioned, 

 trees suitable for the soil, climate and position can be selected 

 from among the many others. Trees vary in their most dis- 

 tinctive features, as examples, some, like the Horse Chestnut and 

 Calalj^a sj'cciosa. have their flowering features more pronounced 

 than others ; the Scarlet Oak and Sugar Maple are most con- 

 spicuous towards the end of the year by reason of the brilliant 

 autumn coloring of their foliage; Lindens in the flowering sea- 

 son cause their neighborhood to lie pervaded by a delicious per- 

 fume : oddity combined with prettiness is afforded by the Gingko ; 

 coniferous plantings are brightentd bv the White Birch, and so on. 



An idea connected with trees for ornamental and shade pur- 

 poses which appears worth mentioning, and which I have adopted 

 with success in connection with small places where room is very 

 limited, is to use fruit trees, apples, pears and cherries, for these 

 purposes. Nothing is more beautiful than fruit trees in full 

 bloom; all other things being equal, they grow as quickly as any 

 other trees, and quicker than some ; they afford all the shade 

 required from a tree, and sooner or later there is a harvest of 

 fruit to gather. 



Monstrosities, like the usually planted artificial form of Catalpa 

 biingci. and deformed horticultural specimens like the Weeping 

 Mulberry, should never be planted. There is no more unequiv- 

 ocal testimony to the general poverty of good taste in garden- 

 ing than the constantly recurring sight of such-like monstrosities 

 in the gardens of people whose houses are, in most cases, fur- 

 nished inside with taste and propriety. It is not much evi- 

 dence of good taste when prominent firms of landscape architects 

 include these things in their planting plans. 



A person must be very peculiarly constituted who does not 

 care for flow'ers, and generally speaking, apart from sentimental 

 reasons, the flowers which 'are most valued are those which 

 are grown in one's own garden. Of all the things made by man 

 for his pleasure a flower garden has the least business to be 

 ugly or stereotyped ; and yet we find in a very large number of 

 country places, large and small, flower beds of pattern plans. 



