242 Xaufcscape Hrcbttecture 



dwelling. Here the tastes of the owner may have 

 free play, following his imagination and indulging 

 even in trivialities. Everything should be decorative , 

 designed for comfort ; and as ornamental as the means 

 permit. Let the lawns appear as a velvet carpet 

 embroidered with flowers ; gather together the rarest 

 and the most beautiful exotic plants (provided that 

 nature or art will enable them to thrive); polished 

 benches, refreshing fountains, the cool shades of dense 

 avenues, order and fancy, in short everything in turn 

 to evoke the richest and most varied effect, just as 

 one furnishes every salon in the interior of a house in 

 a different style. Thus one may continue the suite 

 of rooms on a greater scale under the open sky, whose 

 blue vault, with ever-renewed cloud canopy, takes 

 the place of the painted ceiling, and in which sun and 

 moon are the perpetual illumination." 



But everywhere the same laws of design should con- 

 trol low, broad, or narrow plantations in contrast or 

 contradiction with high ones. In the beds of flowers 

 the heights of the plants should bear the same relation 

 to each other in the garden as grass spaces and trees 

 and shrubs in the park; alternanthera making, as it 

 were, the grass space, and then coleus and canna, for the 

 trees and shrubs. It is not so much a question of the 

 kind of plants as their mode of treatment. The law, 

 the principle, the type should be the same in all cases. 

 The unity of effect is just as important as the variety. r 



1 See flower beds in Central Park, New York, designed by Calvert 

 Vaux on this principle. See illustrations on p. 240. 



