The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 



ceases to be a unit — it loses its unity. On the other 

 hand it must not stand out with such prominence as 

 to break the unity of the paragraph of which it is 

 a part, or of the whole larger composition. Some 

 artistic skill will be required, therefore, to balance 

 these two tendencies. No rules can be made for 

 matters like this. They are questions of taste pure 

 and simple, and if a man has not the needful taste, 

 he is not a safe designer. 



This much can be said, however, that, in order 

 to give anj^ group any individuality whatever, or 

 any intelligible meaning of anj^ sort, it will always 

 be necessary to follow the law of dominance. Each 

 group must be commanded by some one species, all 

 the other members being plainly subordinate. 

 Thus one plant each of Philadelphus coronarius, 

 Forsythia mispensa, Lonicera tartarica, Weigelia 

 rosea, Bhodotypos Kerrioides, Viburnum lentago, 

 Cornus florida, Spirea callosa, Cydonia japonica 

 and Deutzia gracilis do not constitute a group in 

 any artistic sense. Equal dabs of color out of sev- 

 eral different paint tubes mixed on the palette do 

 not make a color, but only a characterless gray. 



105 



