The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



sents a most substantial advance, since nature mani- 

 festly offers her plantings nearly always in large 

 masses. The white pine, for instance, used to ex- 

 ist in solid unbroken forest masses hundreds of 

 miles in extent. There used to be thousands of 

 miles of prairie in this country covered with blue 

 stem and bunch grass. 



3. Nature's mass plantings, however, are con- 

 trolled by very well settled conditions of soil and 

 moisture. A mass planting of high-bush blue-ber- 

 ries or of New Jersey tea, for example, cannot be 

 made indifferently anywhere the landscape gar- 

 dener may choose. The blueberries are at home, 

 native and natural, only in wet, springy or half- 

 swampy land; and the New Jersey tea belongs 

 characteristically on dry warm sandy banks. So 

 our mass plantings, if they are to be true to the 

 pattern of nature, must be placed with strict ref- 

 erence to soil and drainage conditions. This part 

 of planting theory seems to have been set forth 

 first and most clearly by Dr. Engler and Dr. Pe- 

 ters, respectively curator and planting foreman of 

 the new Botanic garden of Berlin. 



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