166 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Chinese privet would be equally hardy in the same place, though all of 

 them are foreign to this country. If however we desired to emphasize 

 the Cape Cod character of our piece of design, we should use only 

 native plants, producing a composition perhaps less decorative but more 

 congruous with its surroundings in association. 



Within reasonable limits the character of a scene may be enhanced 

 by an exaggeration of the appropriate character in the vegetation. The 

 summit of a low hill, for instance, may be made more effective by en- 

 couraging upon it the growth of those plants only which grow naturally 

 upon high places and perhaps upon places higher than that in question. 

 An artificial naturalistic pool will hardly produce its full effect unless 

 growing in it and upon its shores are plants which naturally haunt wet 

 places, and which bring to the mind of the observer natural pools which 

 he has seen elsewhere. A design in which rocks or ledges are used in a 

 naturalistic way is not likely to be successful unless among the rocks 

 are made to grow such plants as in nature frequent rocky places, though 

 smaller plants perhaps might be used to increase the apparent size of 

 the ledge, or more delicate plants to enhance by contrast the effect of a 

 projecting bowlder. 



"Expression" We feel the total effect of a tree as being the expression of a character, 



And Character a } mO st of a personality, in a similar way to that in which we feel an effect 

 of character in a large landscape, but often more powerfully in the case 

 of a tree, since the tree is more simply organized and more readily 

 personified. The sturdy oak, the weeping willow, the mournful 

 cypress, are the ordinary examples of this personified effect in trees, 

 arid they may properly be used in landscape compositions for this 

 effect. There is certainly something in the darkness and the rigidity 

 of the cypress that suggests dignified sorrow ; there is something in the 

 ruggedness of a white oak, something in the uncompromising horizon- 

 tality of its branches, that suggests strength ; there is something in 

 the drooping attitude of a weeping willow that suggests the posture of 

 a person bowed in grief. 



Association and Apart from all this, there is the matter of association. These trees 



Symbolism have been associated in our minds with these effects so frequently in 



literature, that it is hardly possible for us to think of the cypress without 



thinking of it as the "funereal" cypress. In fact, these and other trees 



