CHAPTER XI 

 PLANTING DESIGN OF PARKS 



GOOD examples of planting composition are hard to find in the 

 ordinary run of parks. This is due in great part to lack of 

 academic training of those in immediate charge of parks. 



Until very recent years our parks have been in the care of men 

 who have grown up as gardeners, highly competent as such but to 

 whom the aspect of the individual plant has been of chief importance. 

 Their influence has resulted in plant collection rather than plant com- 

 position, interesting horticulturally but rarely so pictorially. To 

 the landscape designer, composition is first; individual plants to him 

 are merely planting fragments of minor importance and meaningless 

 in themselves until, like the irregular pieces of a picture-puzzle, they 

 are brought together into the recognised relationship of a picture. 



GARDENERS ARE RARELY DESIGNERS 



Examples from Italian gardens are offered very often as showing- 

 well composed planting created by gardeners, men without academic 

 training. In some cases, yes, but most of the famous gardens of Italy 

 are old established creations, many of them originally designed by such 

 men as Vignola, Michael Angelo and Raphael, who laid down plans 

 of such intelligence and omnipotence as to render planting incidental, 

 for all time controlled by the general composition. In most cases 

 where gardeners are in charge of European parks and gardens to-day, 

 they have little opportunity for original design, their duties being 

 principally the up-keep of a definitely executed design, and their 

 creative genius limited to relatively unimportant parterres and floral 

 display. At the same time, these very men and their fathers before 

 them have been so surrounded with examples of art and design all their 

 lives that, where liberty of planting is given them, they are able, un- 



222 



