THE GENERAL PLAN OR THEORY OF THE PLACE 15 
(not forgetting the kitchen window); in fact, the placing of the 
house may often be determined by the views that may be ap- 
propriated. 
If a landscape is a picture, it must have a canvas. This 
canvas is the greensward. Upon this, the artist paints with 
tree and bush and flower as the painter does upon his canvas with 
brush and pigments. The opportunity for artistic composition 
and design is nowhere so great as in the landscape garden, be- 
cause no other art has such a limitless field for the expression 
of its emotions. It is not strange, if this be true, that there 
have been few great landscape gardeners, and that, falling short 
of art, the landscape gardener too often works in the sphere of 
theartisan. There can be norules for landscape gardening, any 
more than there can be for painting or sculpture. The operator 
may be taught how to hold the brush or strike the chisel or 
plant the tree, but he remains an operator; the art is intellec- 
tual and emotional and will not confine itself in precepts. 
The making of a good and spacious lawn, then, is the very 
first practical consideration in a landscape garden. 
The lawn provided, the gardener conceives what is the domi- 
nant and central feature in the place, and then throws the entire 
premises into subordination to this feature. In home grounds 
this central feature is the house. To scatter trees and bushes 
over the area defeats the fundamental purpose of the place, — 
the purpose to make every part of the grounds lead up to the 
home and to accentuate its homelikeness. 
A house must have a background if it is to become a home. 
A house that stands on a bare plain or hill is a part of the universe, 
not a part of a home. Recall the cozy little farm-house that is 
backed by a wood or an orchard; then compare some pretentious 
structure that stands apart from all planting. Yet how many 
are the farm-houses that stand as stark and cold against the sky 
as if they were competing with the moon! We would not be- 
lieveit possible for a man to live in a house twenty-five years and 
