242 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 434. 



of the buildings, but for sea walls, roads and much of the 

 filling, so that in altering the profiles of the land little or no 

 extra material was required beyond soil and dirt filling for 

 the top surface. Where masses of large trees were needed 

 holes were blasted in the rock, which is naturally full of 

 fissures, and were filled with soil, in which the trees have 

 been planted. 



In this design it has been the endeavor of the architects 

 to make an interesting ensemble of buildings and grounds 

 in a ground plan studied from the artistic point of view. 

 The forms are irregular, and as unbalanced as the letter L, 

 yet with symmetry and circulation such as they hope will 

 give interesting vistas in every direction. A good plan of 

 house and grounds, as seen on paper, aside from the ques- 

 tions of arrangement, has proportion, form, scale, color, 

 values and character. The drawing of such a plan will 

 awaken as much enthusiasm in the educated architect as 

 does the picture in the painter or the statue in the sculptor. 

 This plan should be thoroughly studied and practically fin- 

 ished before the architect has more than a vague idea of the 

 design of the exterior of the building. The plan involves 

 and determines the entire composition ; the silhouette or 

 outline of the whole is really projected on the plane of this 

 drawing. If the relations to each other of roads, paths, 

 buildings and other features are well studied and look well 

 on paper, they are almost sure to prove successful when 

 seen in perspective after the work is completed. Such a 

 comprehensive plan does away with the necessity of per- 

 spective drawing as a help to architectural as well as land- 

 scape study, and leaves it no place except to explain a 

 building to a layman. The many elevations of the several 

 buildings on Mr. Benedict's place have been evolved from 

 the general scheme, and are the natural expression of the 

 whole plan. No one elevation of the houses would give 

 any idea of the entire scheme, as the greatest interest cen- 

 tres in the general composition of the grounds and rela- 

 tions of the buildings to each other, or what the French 

 call "the plan general." They have a very characteristic 

 name for this portion of the composition, which is the 

 " sauce of the architecture." It is this portion of the design 

 which unites or marries the building with its natural sur- 

 roundings. Most of the same principles of composition 

 obtain in the planning of this portion of the work, as in the 

 planning of the buildings themselves. The silhouette must 

 make first of all an agreeable ensemble with the silhouette 

 of the buildings. 



While the landscape or surroundings should govern the 

 general composition of the building in the beginning, the 

 building should in turn, when completed, influence and 

 govern the arrangement and composition of that portion of 

 the landscape work which comes in immediate contact 

 with it. This landscape work is to surround and support 

 the building, serving both as frame and as pedestal. The 

 accessories of the architecture, such as the terraces, balus- 

 trades, paths, fountains, open spaces and vistas which 

 come nearest to the building, and other architectural 

 features, are really a part of the building. While the 

 plan of the surroundings does not need to repeat the form 

 of the building itself, it should everywhere recall its prin- 

 cipal axis and lines, and it should accentuate its general 

 silhouette, just as where there is a pavilion or important 

 feature in the building there should be a circulation in the 

 surroundings leading up to it. Fountains, balustrades, 

 statues, and rows of trees, when desired, should be clearly 

 indicated in plan. All these things, with the plan of the 

 building itself, should hold together in one ensemble, while 

 there may be interesting details in the form of niches in the 

 verdure for statues, or recesses for seats, or vases, and 

 small round or square breaks taken off the angles where 

 two paths meet. All these forms should be studied almost 

 exactly in the same way as if they were in the plan of the 

 building itself. 



The day is coming when the public and honest critics 

 will demand of design in architecture and landscape some- 

 thing more than mere taste and refinement of details — 



something more than a house planted in the landscape 

 without design, or roads winding in meaningless curves 

 through scattered trees, without unity — and this can be only 

 when the plan is looked upon as something more than 

 merely a question of convenient arrangement, and the pic- 

 turesque as something more than an eccentric accumula- 

 tion of accidentals and good details. _, TT 

 New York. J nomas Hastings. 



Pinus muricata. 



THE characteristic Pine of the Mendocino coast region 

 is Pinus muricata, which here fills the place which 

 farther south is occupied by the kindred Monterey Pine, 

 P. insignis. A hardy adaptable tree it is, making the 

 best of all conditions, and only asking to be near its be- 

 loved sea. Hanging to the sides of the steep ocean bluffs, 

 where the spray dashes, its growth is all on one side and 

 horizontal. Standing on the bold headlands in groves, the 

 wind-scarred veterans on the outside bend from the wind 

 and protect the inner ranks, while within the sheltered 

 park-like areas the favored trees develop into sym- 

 metrical and beautiful dark-leaved specimens. Standing 

 alone on some wind-swept point, tall, gnarled and pic- 

 turesque, the growth one-sided, with only a single living 

 limb perhaps, and this one reaching out horizontally for a 

 long distance and terminating with a dense tuft of green 

 leaves, while the dead limbs are decorated with the cones 

 of years, the tree is always in keeping with its rugged sur- 

 roundings. 



At Fort Bragg, Pinus muricata covers the sandy plains 

 with a dense wood of straight slender trunks, the weaker 

 dying out and leaving finally open deeply shaded groves 

 carpeted with leaves, and the trees fifty or sixty feet high. 

 All the oceanward slopes of this high rocky coast were 

 once, with few exceptions, covered with forests of this 

 Pine, but it has had to give way to green fields and gar- 

 dens. It makes good lumber, but the supply far exceeds the 

 demand, and each year sees large areas of pine woods 

 chopped down, and in the fall fire sweeps through the 

 tangled mass of limbs, vines and underbrush, and makes 

 way for the plow. 



Back from the coast a mile or two, where once the Red- 

 wood held sway, this Pine appears as a hardy colonist ; 

 rising from a heavy thicket of bushes of half a dozen sorts, 

 and a network of logs and fallen trees, it disputes the mas- 

 tery of the upper air with lusty sprouts of Redwood, vigor- 

 ous descendants of the original occupants, with Fir and 

 Hemlock. In the rich soil of these woods it reaches its 

 best estate, and trees of fine proportions and seventy feet 

 high are not uncommon. 



Still farther from the coast in the barrens a hard battle 

 has been waged for ages without material gains to either 

 side. The struggle is for the possession of a poor thin 

 soil, and colony after colony of Pinus muricata, P. contorta 

 and Cupressus Goveniana have occupied the disputed ter- 

 ritory for eight or ten years, only to be swept away by the 

 resistless fires. A few groves where underbrush is thinner 

 have managed to hold their own for ages ; a few live to 

 form groves of handsome trees perhaps twenty years of 

 age, but more only reach the height of six or eight feet. 

 A little farther back, where the barrens cease and the Red- 

 wood forest begins, the last Pine is seen at a distance of 

 less than five miles from the ocean. 



The cones of Pinus muricata are very persistent and the 

 seeds are retained in them for many years. The coast is 

 a region of summer fogs, and the sun is seldom hot 

 enough to open the cones, and it oftener happens that they 

 are never opened until a fire furnishes the needed heat, and 

 in sweeping away one wood seeds the soil for another. 



The wood is valueless for lumber. If left on the ground 

 it will in a few years fall to pieces of its own weight. As 

 an ornamental tree it should rank high. It is easily trans- 

 planted, the foliage is a fine dark green and dense, and it 

 has a good, round-headed form. 

 Ukiah, Calif. Carl Purdy. 



