ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 79 



Ornamental Planting About the Farm Home. 



By Prof. F. IV. Card, Kingston, R. I. 



The first object in ornamental planting should be to produce 

 a picture. The growing of a plant for its flowers is not land- 

 scape gardening. Neither is the growing of plants to form a 

 pattern bed, in itself, landscape gardening. These things may 

 play a part in the picture to be produced, but in themselves 

 are not the picture. To produce such a picture requires artistic 

 instinct equal to that demanded in the expression of any other 

 kind of art. Indeed, it presents difficulties which other arts 

 do not present. Compare the painting of a landscape upon 

 canvas and the painting of one upon greensward. The land- 

 scape painter chooses first his point of view and compels the 

 one who would look upon the picture to accept that point of 

 view. The landscape gardener must make a picture presentable 

 from many points. The landscape painter may heighten the 

 effect of his production by the introduction of a stately tree, 

 a winding river or a mountain summit. The landscape gar- 

 dener is debarred from such possibilities. The artist upon 

 canvas completes and paints his picture as it is to remain. The 

 gardener must conceive a picture which will be always chang- 

 ing, never complete, yet always artistic and beautiful. He 

 must expect his effort to be often thwarted by accident and 

 disease, yet when rightly conceived and carefully carried out, 

 his living picture may appeal to the highest artistic instinct. 

 It is a picture which presents and interprets nature ; a picture 

 of life and activity, painted by the hand of the divine Master 

 of the universe. 



Landscape gardening, like all other arts, had crude and simple 

 beginnings. In the olden days, when man's house was his 

 castle, and that castle w^as surrounded by a strong wall to keep 

 out his enemies, gardening at its best could but be cramped and 

 artificial. The natural result would be that the planting should 

 partake of the artificial and geometric character of its surround- 

 ings. Straight lines and sharp angles prevailed. A bed on 

 one side would be balanced with a bed on the opposite side. 

 Greensward, the canvas upon which the modern gardener paints 

 his picture, played little part or was entirely wanting. As time 

 passed on the surrounding wall was no longer needed, Init the 



