The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



differences. One gardener would accept any spe- 

 cies native to America; another insists on plants 

 from his own state; the garden maker of real con- 

 victions accepts nothing but what grows naturally 

 on his own farm. 



My friend Dr. Wilhelm Miller in his recent cru- 

 sade for "the Illinois way" represents a temperate 

 recrudescence of this native plant propaganda. For 

 it is a part of "the Illinois way" to use Illinois 

 plants. The arguments for this way are largely 

 the arguments for a natural style of gardening. 



Probably the majority of trained landscape ar- 

 chitects when designing in the natural style employ 

 a good many non-indigenous species. Their test 

 is simply that a plant shall be effectively natural- 

 ized. Their compositions are pictorial — made to 

 appeal to the eye rather than to a botanical edu- 

 cation. If a plant looks perfectly at home it is to 

 all reasonable requirements natural. 



This seems to be a safe middle-ground. Cer- 

 tainly he would be a hard theorist and an intoler- 

 able puritan who would exclude the common lUac 

 and the homely apple tree from his grounds simply 



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