LANDSCAPE C.ARDENING 



LANDSCAPE GARDENING 1779 



It in not onougli to i)Iant: the plants must be in the 

 riglit place. A yard or a lawn with bushes or flower- 

 beds scattered over it may he interesting as a mere 

 garden, but it is not a landscape garden. .\ real land- 

 scape garden has open breadth, s])ace, atmosphere. It 

 usually has an open center with mass-planted sides, 

 and vistas to the otTscape. Incidentally, it may be 

 ornamented : yet many persons even confound ornamen- 

 tal garilenint; with landscape gardening: it would be as 

 proper to confound house-painting with architecture. 



It will be gleaned from the above tliat tlie term land- 

 scape gardening precisely expresses the art of making 

 a garden or tame area whicli sliall be a landscape or 

 picture. It is not every place that is adapted to the 

 making of a landscape picture. Formal gardens are 

 often more to be desired than natural gardens. They 

 may conform to the principles of art, but it is the art 

 of formal gardens, not of natural gardens. Too often 

 have formal gardens been judged from the viewpoint 

 of the natural or landscape garden, and hence confusion 

 has arisen. There is now a slow but wholesome reaction 

 against the too exclusive use of the true landscape or 

 "natural" garden. In practice, however, one cannot 

 separate the two, so that one practitioner is, or should 

 be, competent to undertake either or both, although it 

 naturally develops that a practitioner may have 

 special aptitudes and qualifications in one or the other. 



Landscape gardening has undergone many fluctua- 

 tions of taste w'ithin a century. Such changes are to 

 be expected as long as the human race makes progress. 

 The constantly increasing wealth in plants modifies 

 the spirit of the work. It is no longer worth while to 

 follow any school or cult. Every style has its use and 

 place. In small places, a formal or formalesque treat- 

 ment of the ground plan may be desirable. In larger 

 and freer places, the spirit of the fields may be given 

 fuller expression. The fundamental consideration is 

 that there must be a general theory or plan before any 

 grading and planting takes place or structures erected, 

 — these latter parts are only means to an end. Yet 

 many persons who would be called landscape gardeners 

 conceive that to plant a place is the whole of the prob- 

 lem. The working out of the details of the plan is to 

 landscape gardening what building is to architecture, 

 or what pen-work and grammar are to literature. It is 

 the industrial or constructional part of the work. It is 

 what has been called landscape horticulture (Bailey, 

 "Garden and Forest," 1:58). It has to do with all the 

 details of kinds of plants, the care of them, the making 

 of lawns, and similar problems. The .\merican WTit- 

 ings on landscape gardening are mostly wTitings on 

 landscape horticulture and kinds of plants. 



A marked development of landscape art in recent 

 time is the application of it to very small and plain 

 home grounds and to secondary civic areas. Even the 

 back yard of the tenement is within its range (Fig. 

 2075). This is an illustration of the extension of social 

 democracy. 



The practitioners. 



The first .American practicing landscape gardener of 

 note was apparently .\ndre Parmentier, who came to 

 this country from IJelgium about 1S24 and established 

 a nursery on ground which is now in the heart of Brook- 

 lyn. He was a man of great tii,ste and skill, and .Andrew 

 J. Downing considered his "labors and exami)le, a.s 

 having effected, rlirectly, far more for lanflscape gar- 

 dening in .America than those of any other individual 

 whatever." He laid out many [)laces, even as f.ar away 

 as the sf)Uthern states on the .south and Montreal on the 

 north. The first .American book on Landscape garden- 

 ing was from the pen of .A. .J. Downing in 1S41, without 

 having undergone the tedious evolution of preliminary 

 and imperfect editions which characterize so many 

 horticultural and kindred writings. It was immediately 

 popular, and exerted a great influence on American 



horticulture. Downing was also the second prominent 

 practicing landscajie ganlener, although his untimely 

 death left the country with no completiMl works of his 

 genius. His Ix-st known |)ul)lic iiicces are the grounds 

 of the Smithsonian Institution and Lafayette Square, 

 Washington, but it is doubtful whether the subsequent 

 treatment carries out the spirit of the designer. A. J. 



2066. An improvised ruin. 1728. 



Downing's pomological work was continued by his pains- 

 taking brother Charles; but the artistic work dropped at 

 his death, and Henry Winthrop Sargent, who edited the 

 sixth edition of the "Landscape Gardening," in 1859, 

 declared that "there has been no one since Mr. Down- 

 ing's death who has exactly filled the niche he occupied 

 in the public estimation." Ignatz A. Pilat, an Austrian 

 by birth, was early chief landscape gardener of Cen- 

 tral Park, and a general practitioner of influence fol- 

 lowing Downing. 



The subsequent genius of American landscape gar- 

 dening, and the one who carried the art to its high- 

 est points of excellence, is Fre(lerick Law Olmsted, who 

 as a young man was inspired by Downing, and who 

 became a landscape gardener when he was i)laced in 

 charge of the improvements of Central Park, New York 

 City, about 1856. For more than thirty years, Mr. 

 Olmsted gave his talents wholly to this delight fid art, 

 and, more than any other American, moulded and 

 crystallized public taste respecting the appreciation of 

 landscape gardening. A leading spirit in the construc- 

 tion of this great i)ark was Calyert Vaux, who, with 

 Olmsted, w;is joint author of the original jilan. Vaux 

 was also a.ssociate<l with Downing. The initiation of 

 Central Park as a pleasm-e-ground inaugurated the 

 modern jiark systems of the country, and created what 

 the Earl of Meath has designate<l the "veritable rage for 

 park making" which has "seized the American ]niblic." 



Within recent years, the number of practitioners of 

 landscape gardening has greatly increased. The art is 

 established in popular estimation. It has now fairly 

 won its place, also, with the architects and .artists. 

 Tastes may change, but the changes will affect only the 

 minor applications of the art. The desire for artistic 

 treatment of grounds is ineradicable. Two national 

 societies are conservators of the landscape gardening 

 and rural art of the country: American Society of Land- 



