136 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Plains : 

 Typical Forms 

 and Effects 



Bodies of 

 Water, and 

 their Effects 



viewpoint, so much the more will be the effect of the depth of the 

 valley. 



Plains are usually the result geologically of the deposition of fine 

 material by water. Sometimes the material has been deposited by 

 the slackening current of a stream, but often it has been laid down on 

 the bottom of a former sea or lake. The minor variations of the sur- 

 face are partly the natural results of variations in the depositing cur- 

 rents of water and in the character of the material deposited, but usually 

 they are rather the result of subsequent erosion. Plains are almost 

 never perfectly level, but without losing their essential flatness, it is 

 quite possible for them to have noticeable minor undulations which, 

 under various effects of light and shade, may break the main surface 

 pictorially into sharply segregated units of endless variety. 



If a plain be small enough so that its boundary of hills or foliage is 

 visible as a surrounding wall, the form of the plain will depend largely 

 on the outlines given it by this boundary. If our attention rests upon 

 this form, we may think of the composition before us as an enframed 

 area of a certain shape ; but our attention may pass entirely over the 

 plain, and we may think of the composition as a wall of foliage or hills 

 seen across a level foreground. The dominance of the plain or of its 

 enframement in a given composition will naturally depend on the 

 relative amount of attention attracted by the form and character of 

 the enframement and by the character of the plain in its texture of 

 grass and flowers, its subordinate play of surface, and its recognizable 

 form inside of its boundaries. Some plains are so large that their actual 

 limits may be beyond the distant horizon. The first effect of such a 

 plain upon the observer is that of vastness like the effect of the open 

 sea, — of infinity like that of the star-lit sky, — an effect which is pro- 

 duced in its completeness by no other forms in nature.* 



Just as with plains, as we have said, so with the sea and with great 

 lakes, the effect on the observer is less that of form than of infinity. 

 Bodies of water with visible boundaries, however, like plains so bounded, 

 will depend, for the attention which they attract to their surface, upon 

 the total form of this surface given by their boundaries and upon the 

 variety and interest of the surface itself. 



* Cf. Chapter V, p. 64. 



