The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



important step in landscape gardening, especially- 

 naturalistic landscape gardening, to know and to 

 love the native landscape. Both knowledge and 

 love are required. Can we, now, point out any 

 practical approach to the landscape? any way of 

 understanding it better? especially any means of 

 loving it more? Assuredly we can. 



At the outset we may gain some respect for the 

 landscape by observing its power. It does exert a 

 truly marvelous power upon the intelligence of 

 men; and their feelings, which lie deeper, are even 

 more profoundly aiFected. Common men love the 

 landscape passionately. The attachment to home 

 is largely the love of landscape. When the army 

 of Cyrus, defeated and disheartened, came back 

 from their long campaign in Persia, they fell down 

 and wept when, from the top of a hill, they caught 

 the first view of the sea. It was to them the land- 

 scape of home. They were not especially suscepti- 

 ble or responsive men — certainly not artists trained 

 to the love of beauty. Human nature is still the 

 same. Any man, no matter how duU, who has 

 grown up amongst the hills of Vermont has, neces- 



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