244 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Objects 



Marking 

 Points of 

 Interest in the 

 Garden 

 Composition 



parison with the flower beds, and a narrow walk in the midst of a 

 reasonably broad scheme is very likely to produce the effect estheti- 

 cally of splitting the design into two distinct halves. It is usually bet- 

 ter therefore to place a panel of some width symmetrically on the axis, 

 — pool or turf area or low flower bed, — and to have the paths run 

 symmetrically around it as borders, being properly proportioned to it 

 for that purpose. (See again Plate 30.) For further intricacy of 

 design and greater definiteness of outline, the paths may be curbed with 

 a stone or brick edging, the flower beds bordered with a line of par- 

 ticularly formal-growing plants. Farther away from the open center 

 of the scheme may be other paths running between beds of higher 

 planting. 



The different main areas in a garden design may be characterized 

 not only by differences of surface treatment but also by differences of 

 level. The center panel may be sunk and there may be raised paths 

 around the outer portions of the garden near the boundary. These 

 differences of elevation must not be so great as to make in effect several 

 areas out of what is intended to be one. The permissible difference of 

 elevation is of course partly a matter of its proportion to the size of 

 the whole garden and to the separate units, but in any case it can sel- 

 dom be so great that a person standing at the lower level is unable to 

 see the surface of the level above. In larger designs sunk panels are 

 sometimes used even of greater depth than this, where the area so 

 sunk often contains and enframes perhaps a fountain or other inter- 

 esting object which can thus best be looked at and which, set at its 

 lower level, does not interrupt a long view from end to end of the 

 garden. 



Just what the total pattern will be in which the designer arranges 

 his various ground-covering materials ought to depend on the condi- 

 tions of the particular garden and in the work of a good designer would 

 seldom be twice alike.* 



Besides the larger structures in the design of a garden, like per- 

 golas, shelters, or the facades of other buildings, there are also many 

 objects of less size, but each attracting interest in its own way and so 



* For a discussion of the individual elements of the floor pattern, — pools, flower 

 beds, paths, and so on, — see the sections devoted to these in Chapters IX and X. 



