158 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



and six inches apart, and indeed if he wished his bounding line to appear 

 at all rigidly straight, he would be obliged to clip his box bushes so that 

 the unit of the texture of his border would be changed from that of the 

 individual bush to the smaller-scale unit of the individual leaf. That 

 is, in any planting mass which is to tell as a unified shape, the texture 

 must not be so coarse in relation to the size of the mass as to tell as 

 subordinate shapes breaking up the perception of the main shape in- 

 tended in the design. 



The considerations of texture in planting design derive additional 

 importance from the fact that whereas the size and form of a plant can 

 be predicted only in a general way, and will be dependent on local condi- 

 tions and accidents of wind and weather, the texture of a plant of any 

 given kind is practically a definite and predictable thing, and planned 

 effects in plant textures are therefore fairly sure of realization. A 

 plantation may be unified by being composed throughout of plants of 

 similar texture. Also one planted area may be differentiated from an- 

 other by a difference in texture of its component plants. A projecting 

 point in a plantation, a free-standing mass, may be strengthened by 

 being composed of plants of dense and heavy texture. A bay in a 

 plantation may be to some extent subordinated, or a plantation may 

 within certain limits be given a certain additional effect of distance, 

 by being composed of plants of a fine and soft texture of foliage. If it is 

 desirable to make one plant mass stand out distinctly from a back- 

 ground of other plants, this may be done by a difference in texture be- 

 tween free-standing mass and background according to the circum- 

 stances of the case, for example, a sharp-cut heavy-textured evergreen 

 against a misty background of willows, or a clump of delicate yellow 

 birch backed by a pine wood. In a similar way a bed in a garden may be 

 unified and diversified by a judicious choice of the textures which can 

 be produced by the herbaceous plants in it. The corners of a bed may 

 be strengthened by the heavy leaves of the showy stonecrop or the 

 plantain-lily ; the center of the bed may be effectively filled by the 

 solid and lasting green of peonies ; along the side of the bed the deli- 

 cate misty flower of gypsophila might be paneled with clumps of iris, 

 and even without the color of the flowers such a bed might be satis- 

 factory in design from the effect of its texture alone. 



