360 
The Garden Magazine, August, 1920 
the wild woods cannot have. Merely because it was planted in 
that spot it acquires a new range of meanings. Obviously 
therefore a carefully considered garden has, or may have, 
much to say that is not measured by the commoner 
natural laws. Vet we hear little of the symbolic use of plants 
in gardens to-day; it is a step toward garden perfection that we 
have yet to recognize, apparently. There is too much of setting 
forth of plants to please the eye alone, in orderly pictorial array. 
This thought of garden imagery lifts the garden above the 
commonplace, gives it a character of its own, and takes its art 
out of the realm of the merely decorative. 
The difficulty has been, 1 suppose, that the plants are natural 
TURNING THE CLOCK BACK ON CIVILIZATION 
Hidden in a bit of wilderness on the estate of Mr. John H. Fisher, Redlands, 
Cal., this campfire shelter, inspired by the ancient adobe dwellings of the 
mesa, brings to vision a teeming nation moving into relentless oblivion 
objects themselves, proper to a garden; and their further sug- 
gestive meaning is not easily understood. Yet here we may 
make effective, even though restricted, use of unusual horticul- 
tural forms that the eye marks at once as not wholly natural 
features, their presence to be explained by further reason than a 
function as vegetation. 
Topiary work for example is in part accounted for as weak 
imagery, especially when animals and furniture are done in 
plants. But except in very formal or elaborate gardens this 
kind of image making has little value, except as reminiscence 
of the past. The figures do directly suggest definite objects, 
but defeat their own ends by their very directness — by their 
broad and altogether literal, therefore clumsy, appeal. 
P LANTS may subtly, by associations in the mind of the be- 
holder. bring into the garden natural features wholly exterior 
to the spot. Willows, Iris, Rushes, and other water-loving 
plants along a stretch of sand may introduce a sense of water 
though no water is visible; tufted Junipers and Sweet Fern may 
(with a few rocks) put a rocky pasture into a piece of level and 
uninteresting lawn; or even the plant itself may represent the 
rock or hill or island, as is done in gardens of Japan. The 
Japanese “dry brook” is another case in point, the complete 
tortuous water-course being dug, bedded with pebbles and gravel 
appropriately planted along its banks and bridged where a path 
demands a means of crossing, precisely as a brook would, or 
might, be — with not a drop of water in sight nor expected. 
The imagery is so eloquent, however, in the hands of the Japanese 
artist, that one’s senses accept the suggestion even to the extent 
of supplying the water’s murmur as it would be if this actually 
gurgled over and among the stones. 
The next step beyond suggesting natural objects is portraying 
esthetic values. This subtler phase is wholly in the realm of art 
and it need have no connection with nature, religion, or persons 
or places, though it gains immensely in force of truth if it has 
visible connection with things actual. Subject to the laws of 
art and guided by good sense and good taste plant motifs 
expressive of abstract thought or ethical concepts may perfectly 
well be created for the garden; for the sister arts have the same 
kind of thing. In gardens of the past, in all ages of greatness, 
there has been a great deal of this use of plants. 
Some of this we have inherited, more of it we have lost : possi- 
bly color schemes for flower gardens are a modern expression of 
one lesser element or phase of it, though the direct connection is 
not apparent. Undoubtedly much that we have of plants sug- 
gesting mental states, through association — as the “funereal 
Cypress” — is part of this ancient treasure, but as a garden factor 
or possibility we are appreciating less and less even the little 
that remains. Which is lamentable — for it is most difficult to 
evolve or to control. It should not of course, be forced; but the 
fact that in gardens of other lands and races certain plants have 
definite religious, ethical, or other emotional associations, and 
that we have inherited this feeling through the ages, makes it 
legitimate and proper for us to make much of this once more, if 
we can. 
I F RELIGION, for example, can express symbolically in plants 
and planting — as witness the use of the Lily— then the gar- 
dens about churches quite as well as church architecture, can con- 
tribute to the story of the Christian faith. In the new landscape- 
cemetery idea there is a possibility that the planting may take 
on a new significance. Civic ideas of education, transportation, 
legislation, as embodied in public buildings, might have further 
emphasis through the adjacent tree planting, as the Plane-tree 
was the civic emblem in ancient Greece. 
Three things are to be considered, separate yet inter- 
dependent, when seeking hidden meanings in the use of certain 
plants in the garden. First there is personal sentiment, which is 
purely local, accidental, and of little use in another garden. It 
cannot be manufactured, but used only as some local factor 
'gives it excuse for being. It is therefore special, never general. 
But second, some personal or local usages of plants, or associa- 
tions, may at last take on a wider application, and thus become 
true symbols with a story. (Thus a symbol evolves in a slow 
way — this is the process from time immemorial. The garden, 
however, has been less enriched in this manner than other arts, 
or more probably its riches have been long lost.) And then there 
is the third thing, which we may call the art-expression, in 
which the plants, as well as statuary or other inanimate objects, 
express certain ideas that together convey the story and picture 
the garden is designed to present. This may be just a simple 
thought or abstraction, or as complex as imagination can supplv. 
A CERTAIN plant necessary for a certain story-effect 
may therefore become sentiment, symbol, and art rolled in 
one, enormously full of suggestion, showing that it is hopeless to 
try to separate wholly these three phases of the garden story- 
telling possibilities of plants. 
One value in very direct suggestion comes in the use of se- 
lected plants in relation to the natural topography and the 
environment of the planting. A very little hill can be made to 
seem much larger by adding a few narrow or erect trees, or even 
better by stunted, crocked, windswept trees and shrubs to give 
the feeling of an exposed hilltop. A small valley or meadow 
becomes larger and more dignified by the planting of a few trees 
and shrubs with horizontal branches, thus increasing the idea 
of extent. A narrow section cf the garden between two impor- 
tant portions becomes more restricted and alley-like with colum- 
nar trees and shrubs in straight lines or wall-like rows. 
To a certain extent these uses of irregular, horizontal and ver- 
tical vegetation are effective through geometrical similarity, but 
there are psychological factors of association also. A few trees 
