STRUCTURES IN LANDSCAPE 223 



These last two considerations apply especially to roads designed for 

 fast pleasure traffic. 



The planting along the roadside can be made a considerable factor Planting and 

 in its beauty, — indeed, where there are no particular distant views, ^^""^^ 

 perhaps the greatest factor. The character of the planting will vary 

 with the surroundings, from the succession of private properties of the 

 suburbs and the trees and shrubs of the planting strip of a parkway 

 to the hedgerows and flowers and shrub-grown walls of the country- 

 side and the natural trees and undergrowth of the woods. In any case 

 the best design will probably be to seize upon the particular character 

 of each landscape unit through which the road passes, and develop 

 it to its best expression, as far as this is possible in a narrow strip along 

 the road, for itself alone or as a foreground to a more distant view. 

 Thus a sequence of different effects will be presented to any one passing 

 along the road. It should be remembered that the scenes presented 

 should be such that they may be grasped and enjoyed by a spectator 

 moving at some speed. 



Roads, if they are to be comfortable and pleasant to those who 

 travel upon them, must be shaded. In formal designs and on our streets 

 and ordinary country roads, a more or less consistent and equally- 

 spaced line of trees serves this purpose best. In a naturalistic design, 

 however, such a line of trees might well be an incongruous element in 

 the landscape, and plainly betray the road which it was planted to 

 conceal. In such cases, informal plantations of trees and shrubs may 

 be used, and the whole so designed that the road shall seem to have 

 been run through a fortunately preexisting series of groups of foliage, 

 rather than that the location of the foliage masses should seem to be 

 dependent on the road. The side of the planting next the road must 

 inevitably to some extent be parallel to the line of the road ; but the 

 sides of the planting masses away from the road should be related not 

 to the road, but to whatever open area may lie beyond and be bounded 

 by them. 



This necessary placing of planting near the road makes the road 

 all the more a line of demarcation between area and area, between 

 design unit and design unit in the composition. The location of the 

 road must be studied from this point of view also, then, for on its posi- 



