The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



Everywhere where men live the landscape has 

 been more or less changed. Where considerable 

 populations have become established the landscape 

 is much subdued. The most fertile countries are 

 fully developed in farming lands. In some places 

 the forests have been cut away. In others the prai- 

 ries have been obliterated. In place of forests and 

 prairies there are now checkered fields of corn and 

 wheat interspersed with orchards and pastures. 

 This agricultural landscape, however, has an effec- 

 tive appeal of its own. It is not unfair to say that 

 it is quite as beautiful as the native landscape which 

 it has supplanted. This type of landscape also 

 has been widely overlooked. The American peo- 

 ple especially have not felt its beauty nor under- 

 stood its significance. In the old country civili- 

 zation has done better. In England there is a lively 

 and conscious love of the cultivated landscape, for 

 practically all England is cultivated. In the Ger- 

 man language the same feeling is recognized in the 

 settled term Kultur-Landschaft. Doubtless, we in 

 America will presently come to a similar under- 

 standing of the beauty of well farmed country, and 



