AMEKICAN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 115 



5. The native plants were used in large quantities. Common 

 dogwood and viburnums were put in by carloads. For the first 

 time in the history of landscape art, plants were adequately massed. 

 This principle was not carried to extreme, however; and in fact it 

 has not yet received the development which it merits. While it 

 received less popular approval than item 4 above, its intrinsic im- 

 portance from the standpoint of good art is much greater. 



6. Indigenous plants were given their natural environment. 

 Much attention was given to the development of this principle, 

 especially by some of the followers of Olmsted. Up to this time, 

 along with the preference for exotics, had gone the gardener's pride 

 in growing plants out of their altitude, latitude, and longitude. The 

 alpine garden was the gardener's pet, and Downing himself nursed 

 his lonely fig trees through the cold and snowy New York winters. 



7. Olmsted's roads were peculiar and characteristic, and pecul- 

 iarly and characteristically successful. A considerable part of their 

 success is due to their adaptation to the contour of the land, and is 

 thus related to principle 3 discussed above. Their striking in- 

 dividuality appears to be largely the result of their nodal treatment, 

 but this is a matter of technic rather too complicated for a discussion 

 in a popular lecture. As a third characteristic they were always 

 laid on natural lines. This means that there are no straight lines 

 and no mathematical curves either in horizontal projection or in 

 profile. In this matter of road design, Olmsted has been widely 

 followed, usually without marked success. 



8. Olmsted appears to have been the first conspicuously to 

 adopt the principle of rhythm in natural landscape composition, 

 though any artist composing freely and with a proper feeling for his 

 work will inevitably follow this method more or less. This method 

 cannot be formulated in a sentence, but every artist at least will 

 understand what it signifies. 



The Present Time. 



The most interesting and instructive exercise of all which we 

 might undertake would be a study of present-day works and workers. 

 There are many reasons besides the lack of time whv we cannot do 



