LANDSCAPE GARDENING 



LANDSCAPE GARDENING 1785 



Broad landscapes vary greatly in impressiveness and 

 beauty from different viewpoints, even within a limited 

 area, and the first problem of officials representing 

 public ownership, or a private owner, before arranging 

 with engineer or architect for detailed structural plans, 

 is to choose with his landscape adviser the finest of the 



2074. Good plant forms for the free style of design. Page 1781. 



various available and accessible viewpoints. This 

 would involve a study of the far distance, the middle 

 distance, the foreground and the nearby foliage frame, 

 of each of the sites that can be arranged conveniently 

 to meet the needs of the public or the owner. In such 

 study it may be often developed that the property pur- 

 chases should include distant single trees, groups of 

 trees, or forests and fields that may be quite separate 

 from the main property and be held because they are 

 essential elements in the beauty of the outlook. 



Another landscape of distinction would be a woodland 

 glade walled in by splendid old trees, each one a 

 patriarch with a ripened beauty and dignity that age 

 only can give, the forest floor covered with an exquisite 

 carpet of such evergreen trailing plants* as hnnea, 

 wintergreen, bearberry, ferns and mosses, all having a 

 refinement of detail that comes only with years of 

 natural selection and adaptation to such special con- 

 ditions. 



In the development of such a forest retreat, foliage- 

 and branch-framed pictures would be opened up into 

 the woods or to fields or distant sky-lines beyond by 

 carefully studied tree and branch removals. The beauty 

 of adjacent woodland detail, such as a shrub or herb 

 group in which one variety predominates, would be 

 enhanced by the removal of other plants that inter- 

 fere with a foliage and stem, floral or fruit composition 

 already having or promising to have marked distinc- 

 tion. In other places the varieties elsewhere removed 

 would predominate and be the ones retained and 

 fostered. 



Such notable broad landscapes or woodland passages 

 will be seen by the owners and observers from the 

 buildings or grounds of a resort or from a home about 

 which would be the gardens and fields of utility and 

 beauty that are needed to sustain and give pleasure 

 to many persons. 



The time will also come when persons of advanced 

 taste will have then- collection of living landscapes with 

 simple retreats from which they and then* friends can 

 enjoy each scene. The automobile now makes it 

 feasible to have such possessions in widely separated 

 locations, and the cost of acquiring and maintaining 

 such living pictures need be no greater than is often 

 devoted to painted pictures. 



Already nation and cities are beginning to preserve 

 and acquire fine scenery in public reservations, and 



choice holdings of individuals will be devised to cities 

 or to the nation as paintings and sculptures now are. 

 This work of the landscape designer wherein it is 

 deemed more important to preserve and develop natural 

 beauty than to destroy it and substitute artificial 

 beauty, applies as well to the little home ground upon 



which natural beauty exists as to great estates 



or to great landscapes. 



Landscape gardening. 



Landscape gardening or gardening, the Eng- 

 lish term for the profession, now and in the 

 period when such classics as Wheatley'a 

 "Observations on Modern Gardening," Price's 

 "On the Picturesque" and the works of Rep ton 

 and Gilpin were produced, is a term that 

 may properly be applied to such distinctly 

 horticultural phases of the profession as may 

 be treated in detail in an horticultural cyclo- 

 pedia. The term may well have special appli- 

 cation to landscapes that must be largely or 

 wholly artificial, in which the planting is 

 chiefly the product of horticultural establish- 

 ments. Such landscapes are represented by 

 the average small park and the intimate 

 home outlooks of lawns and gardens, rather 

 than by the wild woods, the fields and the 

 wide views. 



If the landscape be only a single window out- 

 look in a city block against bare walls with just one 

 opening in which appears a graceful tree or vine branch, 

 silhouetted against the sky, the artist will so arrange 

 plants and vines about his window-frame as to shut out 

 the bare walls and make the sky and the branch the 

 central attraction of his picture. Here may be gained as 

 much pleasure from hourly changes in the sky back- 

 ground, seasonal changes in the foliage, and from the 

 occasional bird or butterfly visitor, as many a rich man 

 gains from his galleries of paintings and acres of gardens. 

 For suitable selection of vines in shade or in sun to 

 execute the artist's ideals for the frame about a win- 

 dow-opening and for the flowering plants to be used in 

 association with the vines, one would look to the local 

 florists' establishments. 



The main subdivisions of the average house-lot are 

 usually lawns, garden, laundry and service-yard and 

 house and service entrance walks, or if the lot is large 

 enough, these walks may be roads. (Fig. 2081.) The 

 lawn and the garden should by preference be on the 

 sunny side and directly associated with and entered 

 from the home living side of the house. The service or 

 utility entrance passages and compartments are usu- 

 ally placed on the shady side. It was once regarded 

 as essential that the living-room be on the street side 

 of the lot and the service-rooms at the back of the lot, 

 regardless of exposures or outlook. It is now regarded 

 as the best practice to give the living-rooms the most 

 attractive exposures and outlooks regardless of the 

 street, and to place service-rooms and yards next to 

 the street, or at the side of the lot when this arrange- 



2075. The open center in a small rear lot. Pages 1779, 1781. 



