8o Landscape Gardening 



striking foliage. The best landscape architects nowadays 

 depend more on the subtle blending of closely related tints. 



Objects of a lighter color than that of any mere vegetable 

 forms, such as vases, statuary, foun ains, buildings of any 

 kind, or pieces o ' water will largely contribute to variety. 

 Anything lighter than the color of ordinary stone is, however, 

 hardly admissible, for the whiteness of plaster figures, inde- 

 pendently of their coarseness and commonness, is too little 

 in harmony with a garden scene to satisfy a cult vated taste. 

 Greenhouses that are painted white on the outside are simi- 

 larly incongruous. They should be of the same color as the 

 building to which they are attached. 



Water, with its beautiful changes of aspect and complex- 

 ion, deserves to be more distinctly mentioned as a source of 

 variety. The feathery spray of a fountain or cascade; the 

 ripple of a pool as it is agitated by winds or disturbed by 

 fish; the reflections of lawn, plant and sky, which are so 

 softly mirrored on its glassy surface after a warm rain; the 

 murmur and music, and Hfe of a stream; the transparency, 

 the glitter, the coolness, almost inseparable from the pos- 

 session of water, in any form, are all causes of a well-nigh 

 endless variety. And if aquatic plants can be cultivated in 

 it, or water-fowl encouraged, its variations and its liveliness 

 will be far more conspicuous. 



Like the atmosphere, which it in some measure resembles, 

 and with which it is sympathetically affected, water is suscep- 

 tible of a wondrous variety of impressions in different states 

 of the weather. Taking only its capacity to reflect objects, 

 an attentive observer will find that, as a landscape never 

 looks precisely the same under different atmospheric condi- 

 tions, so a smaller scene is pictured in water alike differently 

 as to clearness or dimness, shades of coloring, play of light 

 and shadow, distinctness or indefiniteness of lines, and all 



