1786 LANDSCAPE GARDENING 



LANDSCAPE GARDENING 



ment gives the advantage to either living-grounds or 

 -rooms. Such service compartments may be screened 

 from the public gaze by lattices covered with vines or 

 shrub plantations. Examples of such exceptional but 

 sensible layouts are shown in Fig. 2082. 



From lots surrounded by houses and back yards are 

 likely to be one or more outlooks that are similar to and 

 can be treated like the narrow window outlook referred 

 to above. When views are to be seen from several 

 positions in house and grounds and at various heights, 

 the arrangement of the boundary foliage-frame as well 

 as the planting about the house, gardens and yards 

 becomes more complicated. Such planting will include 

 small trees, shrubs, vines and herbs chosen because the 

 heights, breadths and outlines at maturity will occupy 

 the designated position without unfairly encroaching 

 upon lawns, gardens, passages or light openings of 

 buildings. When one considers that such large trees as 

 maples, elms, beech, and ash spread at maturity 40 to 

 80 feet, it is obvious that they should not be used freely 

 on small lots or parks. Often a single tree shuts out all 

 the view, and to secure outlooks without cutting it 

 down, it becomes necessary to make framed-in open- 

 ings at different heights by the careful removal of 

 branches and twigs. 



In parks or estates measured by acres instead of 

 square feet, the control of outlook, the arrangement, for 

 inter-communication, concourses, recreation, garden 

 and landscape compartments, are made with similar 

 purposes in view and with similar material as is the 

 case in the design and construction of smaller private 

 grounds. 



In the large open areas, elevations and distances are 

 usually on the scale that permits the use of large tree 

 borders in place of shrubs and small tree borders, as 

 well as the creation of larger landscape units by so dis- 

 guising boundaries and buildings beyond as to give a 

 visual ownership to a great landscape. This was done 

 in a notable way by Olmsted from the Overlook and 

 from Hagbourne Hill in Franklin Park, Boston. 



The plant materials. 



In choosing and arranging planting for all this work 

 in landscape, the adaptability of plants to soil and 

 climate, the hardiness, freedom from disease and insect 

 pests, would be considered before the brilliancy or 

 peculiarity of flowers, foliage or fruit. Horticultural 

 varieties and forms would usually be added to enrich 

 the detail, not to make the masses of landscape planta- 

 tions. Plantations are more effective and usually less 

 expensive if few varieties are used in large quantities, 

 rather than many varieties in small quantities. 



Persons of refined taste prefer a landscape made up of 

 plants having the normal green foliage, with all the 

 exquisite variations in tone, texture and shade through- 

 out the summer season that follow the spring's out- 

 burst of delicate pinks, grays, reds and yellows in the 



budding leaves. Such persons enjoy the modelling, the 

 coloring, the bark patterns on trunks, the varied 

 ramifications of branches and twigs in winter. They 

 are entertained by the brief but gorgeous riot of autumn 

 color as by a yearly Mardi Gras. For those who like 

 to live with the garish, the spectacular and the peculiar, 

 there are enough odd horticultural forms to make a 



2076. The free and open front. Gore Place, Waltham, Mass. Page 1781. 



2077. The free center. The Meadow, Central Park. Page 1781. 



lawn landscape of curiously distorted branches and of 

 yellow, purple and variously blotched, dissected and 

 twisted foliage. 



A very few of the finest of such forms, like the sturdy 



Eurple and the weeping beech, the vigorous Schwed- 

 ;r's maple, the lace-like Japanese maples, are worthy 

 of a place in a lawn planted with the finer exotics and 

 garden varieties, especially if the plants that carry 

 their conspicuous colors through the summer are not 

 allowed to compete with fine distant views or quiet 

 lawn landscapes. Such forms may well be placed in 

 special compartments, in which each color is massed 

 as one masses roses in a special rose-garden. The most 

 serviceable of these garden forms are such fastigiate 

 types as the Lombardy poplar, to make foliage screens 

 in narrow spaces or to give such points of emphasis 

 in green landscape as does the church-spire in the 

 village. 



There is an important place in plantations on large 

 areas for such very rank and rapid-growing, easily 

 propagated and therefore cheap trees as the cotton- 

 wood, willow, Russian mulberry, soft maple, catalpa, 

 black locust, and in the warmer regions, the eucalyp- 

 tus and the camphor tree. Such trees will give high, 

 dense masses of foliage in different soils quickly. It is 

 usual, however, to plant slower-growing, more perma- 

 nent, sturdy and interesting trees, such as hard maples, 

 oaks, magnolias, with these rapid-growing nurse trees, 

 the latter to be gradually removed as the more per- 

 manent trees develop. In coniferous plantations, the 

 rapid-growing and short-lived Scotch and Austrian 

 pine and fir balsam are not 

 infrequently used as a filler 

 for the more permanent and 

 valuable pines. 



In working up detailed 

 planting plans, the knowl- 

 edge that some 5,000 spe- 

 cies and named varieties of 

 woody plants can be pur- 

 chased in American nurse- 

 ries, should lead to great con- 

 servatism in planting to 

 avoid the mussy mass of 

 odds and ends that are 

 scattered all over the open 

 spaces of some small home 

 and park grounds even now, 

 in spite of the good advice 

 that is being conveyed to 



