PLANTING DESIGN 165 



effect. In some instances the designer is obliged to make his composi- 

 tions in terms of these characters and their resultant effects, since he 

 is unable accurately to predict the shapes to which the plants he uses 

 will attain. 



The character of an individual plant is the result of two factors : Individual 



its species, — what we mi^ht call its inheritance, its racial tendency ■^(^"' 



,1 . . .r . , . . " Character 



to assume certam typical characteristics 11 it succeeds in growing at 



all, — and its environment, — the soil and moisture conditions, the 



climate and air conditions, the wind, sun, and exposure. Its character 



is the summation of all its characteristics, — the expression in the plant's 



form of all the forces subject to which it has grown, both those of its 



own cell-changes and those of its external surroundings. (See Plates 



7, 12, 20, 25, 31, and 35.) 



Plants from the same environment often are in some ways similar Character and 

 in appearance. In some cases, this is very obvious, for instance, the Environment 

 heavy and stunted form, the small amount of evaporating surface 

 found in many desert plants, or the flat floating leaves of many varieties 

 of water plants. Plants found originally in the same environment 

 are likely to go well together as elements in planting design, sometimes 

 because of this similarity of form, always for the practical reason that 

 their similar original environment has made them require similar cultural 

 conditions, and also for the associational reason that we are accustomed 

 to seeing these plants together in their native haunts. 



If we intend to enhance, suggest, or reproduce the character of some Relation of 

 native piece of landscape, we shall naturally tend to confine ourselves •^'''"' Char- 

 in our planting to native plant materials, both for horticultural reasons Landscape 

 and for reasons of association, as has been said. If however we are Character 

 concerned only with the compositional relations in our design, there is 

 no sufficient reason why we should confine our effects to those which 

 can be produced with native materials alone, when we have at hand a 

 much wider range of effects, through the use of plant material originating 

 elsewhere but still congruous and perfectly hardy at the place of our 

 design. 



On a Cape Cod seashore, bayberry, sweet fern, bearberry, red cedar, 

 dwarf wild rose, and beach goldenrod are native, hardy, and good in 

 combination, but Norway pine, Japanese barberry, Ramanas rose, 



