1784 LANDSCAPE GARDENING 



LANDSCAPE GARDENING 



gruous incidents and by additions that will give greater 

 harmony and unity. 



The principles of design in this art of landscape- 

 making are very similar to those of the landscape 

 Eainters who can produce on canvas phases of natural 

 eauty with such skill as to give great pleasure to the 

 eye, and sometimes a stimulus to the imagination that 

 is the gift of genius alone. Every student and lover of 

 the living landscapes should study the pictures of the 

 Barbizon School and of such artists as Hobbema, 

 Claude Lorraine, Turner, Fragonard, Corot, Constable, 

 Inness, Church, and Wyant. Church and other painters 

 have chosen for their subjects passages in the wholly 

 artificial landscapes of New York Central Park that 

 was designed and constructed by the senior Frederick 

 Law Olmsted, who was the great master of the artists 

 who design living landscapes. 



While there is as yet no accepted distinction between 

 the landscape works of those who practise under the 

 different titles referred to, the names suggest a dis- 

 tinction that may be helpful in outlining various 

 phases of professional work. 



Landscape architecture. 



Landscape architecture, the French term for the 

 profession, could be properly applied to the designs 

 that formalize landscape in a large way, as did Le 

 Notre's at Versailles, or to big formal gardens of today 

 filled with architectural structures or architectural and 

 sculptural bric-a-brac wherein foliage and flowers serve 

 only to relieve the rigidity and severity of such immo- 

 bile forms. 



The term landscape architect was first applied by 



2073. A boundary stream and walk. Page 1780. 



the New York City Central Park Commission on Feb- 

 ruary 20, 1862, to their advisers, Frederick Law Olm- 

 sted and Calvert Vaux, and was retained by Mr. Olm- 

 sted in his later practice and adopted by a majority 

 of his successors, notwithstanding the fact that the 

 dominant spirit of American work is essentially infor- 

 mal. By informal in landscape gardening is meant 

 naturalistic design in which irregular massing of the 

 landscape elements predominates. By formal is meant 

 design depending on a more exact symmetry. 



There is a spectacular impressiveness in big formalized 

 landscapes and gardens that is sure to elicit the brief 

 admiration of the multitude. There may also be a 

 beauty in proportion, a justness in scale, and a refine- 

 ment of detail that will satisfy the discriminating critic, 

 and give pleasure even to those whose greatest satisfac- 

 tion comes from the greater variety and intricacy of 



informal and natural beauty. There are situations in 

 which the formal treatment is undoubtedly best. 



In formal design the land is forced to fit the plan; 

 in informal design the plan is made to fit the land. 



When there is abundant means properly to construct 

 and maintain large formal layouts, they may with 

 propriety be introduced in public parks and private 

 show estates, especially in direct association with great 

 buildings and their formal entrances and courts. 



At the other extreme of formal design are the old- 

 fashioned gardens with box-edged walks symmetrically 

 arranged in a pattern that gives convenient access to 

 beds. 



Another distinctly informal garden type, the Jap- 

 anese garden, is referred to here because it is so arti- 

 ficial in design and in construction. These gardens are 

 conventionalized miniature landscapes. They may 

 include miniature mountains with ancient, wind-swept, 

 stunted trees, cliffs, ledges, turf, and water, or the 

 imitation of water made in sand, edged or crossed by 

 suitably placed stones. Very distinctly do these gar- 

 dens appeal to the imagination. There is also a special 

 sentimental significance given to the form and arrange- 

 ment of such garden features as lanterns, seats, groups 

 of stones and plants, similar to the significance of 

 flower-stem and fruit arrangements in Japanese homes 

 made to convey expressions of sentiment, courtesy and 

 compliment to guests and friends. While we cannot 

 reproduce a genuine Japanese garden with our materials, 

 we may make our gardens appeal more to the imagina- 

 tion in expressing certain types of our own landscapes, 

 and more to sentiment in establishing a recognized 

 significance for the incidental structures therein. 



A garden, formal or in- 

 formal, in which especially 

 favorable conditions are es- 

 tablished for the growth of 

 fine garden flowers, should 

 have a place in grounds 

 where the surpassing in- 

 terest is not given by some 

 natural feature. It is desir- 

 able that such gardens be 

 entered so directly from a 

 home as to become outdoor 

 compartments of it. 



The design of small 

 house grounds, small shut- 

 in estates, and public 

 grounds will fluctuate in 

 style from period to period 

 between the bondage of 

 the rigidly formal to the 

 freedom of informality. 

 Nature's modeling of the 

 surface in broad land- 

 scapes can never be greatly 

 modified except by the 

 introduction of artificial 



bodies of water, and by the arrangement of masses of 

 foliage, of fields and of habitations as seen from 

 selected viewpoints. 



Landscape design. 



Landscape design, a term as yet adopted by few prac- 

 titioners, could properly be applied to the development 

 of the broad landscapes and passages of natural beauty. 

 Such beauty can be modified and enhanced but can 

 rarely be reproduced by man or his money within a 

 short time limit, as can be the lawn and the garden. 



In the selection, development and refinement of 

 broad landscape beauty, there would be little of the 

 formality that has been mentioned as especially appro- 

 priate to the term landscape architecture, little of the 

 new construction and exotic planting to be referred to 

 later under landscape gardening. 



