202 Xaubscape Hrcbitecture 



them left standing. These are visible now from 

 all points, by the removal of some eighty others. 

 One is often struck by the fact in such cases that 

 'One cannot see the woods for the trees.' The 

 great art in laying out a park consists in making use 

 of comparatively few objects in such a way that a 

 great variety of different pictures result, in which the 

 recurrent elements are not recognized, or at least 

 produce novel and surprising effects. " ^ 



A tree: a live organism, a unit in the landscape 

 scheme of the park, country place, or garden; a unit 

 that may live six months or a hundred years, working 

 out its own peculiar nature and office in the service 

 of the general artistic life that should inform every 

 scheme of landscape gardening. It is a living, individ- 

 ual member of the whole conception, differing entirely 

 from the blocks of wood or stone in the architectural 

 design of a building. It is not only a life, but in- 

 numerable lives within its life to the very core of its 

 being. It is for this reason that a tree or a flower may 

 readily take on apparently something of the person- 

 ality of a human being. The birch becomes the 

 dainty, delicate, airy, graceful lady of the woods, the 

 oak a monarch among his subjects. 



Where is the line that can be taken to mark the 

 separation of the life of the plant from that of man and 

 define its essential difference? At what point of de- 

 velopment does personality come into being in the 



' Hints on Landscape Gardening, Prince Piickler. 



