226 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
WHAT ARE THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS IN 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING? 
If the teacher or writer is to make any subject 
plain to his pupils or readers he must be able to 
single out a few simple and fundamental principles. 
To state facts and rules is to treat only the inci- 
dents of the subject. Rules are not final. They 
express only the experience of the author, or the 
combined experiences of others; and since experi- 
ences vary, the nature and the application of the 
rules must vary according to circumstances. People 
are forever misunderstanding what landscape gar- 
dening is, because we are always telling them what 
kinds of trees to plant and how to plant them. But 
the planter may not know why he plants. 
The first instruction which should be given in 
landscape gardening, I think, is this: The object of 
landscape gardening is to make a picture. All the 
grading, seeding, shaping, planting are incidental 
and supplemental to this one central idea. The 
green sward is the canvas, the house or some other 
prominent point is the central figure, the planting 
completes the composition and adds the color. 
The second fundament, I think, is the principle 
that the picture should have a landscape effect. 
That is, it should be nature-like. Carpet beds are 
masses of color, not pictures. They are the little 
garnishings and reliefs which are to be used very 
cautiously, in the same way that eccentricities and 
conventionalisms in a building should never be 
more than very minor features. 
Every other concept in landscape gardening is 
subordinate to these two. They are explanations 
of the means and methods of making the picture. 
Some of the most important of these secondary, yet 
fundamental, concepts are as follows: 
Conceive of the place as a unit. If a building 
is not pleasing, ask an architect to improve it. The 
real architect will study the building as a whole, 
grasp its design and meaning, and suggest im- 
provements which will add to the forcefulness of 
the entire structure. A dabbler would add a chim- 
ney here, a window there, and apply various daubs 
of paint to the building. Each of these features 
might be good in itself, the paint might be the best 
of ochre or ultramarine or Paris green, but they 
would have no relation to the building as a whole, 
and would be merely ludicrous. These two exam- 
ples illustrate the difference between landscape gar- 
dening and the scattering over the place of mere 
ornamental features. 
Have some one central and emphatic point in 
the picture. A picture of a battle draws its inter- 
est from the action of a central figure or group. 
The moment the incidental and lateral figures are 
made as prominent as the central figures the picture 
looses emphasis, life and meaning. The borders of 
a place are of less importance than its center. 
Therefore: 
Keep the center of the place open. Frame and 
mass the sides. 
Avoid scattered effects. Flowers and high-col- 
ored foliage are most effective against a background 
of green foliage. A flower bed in the middle of a 
lawn is only a flower bed; against the border plant- 
ing it is not only a flower bed, but it may also be 
a structural part of the picture. 
Flowers are incidents in a landscape picture. 
They add emphasis, supply color, give variety and 
finish; they are ornaments, but the lawn and the 
mass-plantings make the framework. One flower in 
the border and made an incident of the picture is 
more effective than twenty flowers in the center of 
the lawn. 
More depends upon the positions which plants 
occupy with reference to each other, and to the struc- 
tural design of the place, than upon the intrinsic 
merits of the plants themselves. L. H. Bailey. 
ACTUAL COST OF CEMETERY IMPROVEMENTS. 
From time to time articles appear in Park and 
Cemetery on the improvement of new ground in 
cemeteries, but none of them give any figures on 
the actual cost of such work. Cemetery associations, 
as a rule, greatly exaggerate the cost of improve- 
NEW WORK, RIVERSIDE CEMETERY, NORRISTOWN, PA. 
ments. This may be all very well from an adver- 
tising standpoint, because it tends to magnify the 
cemetery in the eyes of the lotholder and the gen- 
eral public, but, nevertheless, all this is very dis- 
couraging to the reader who has a small cemetery 
to develop. 
Now, to illustrate what can be done with a lit- 
tle money, judiciously spent, let the reader look at 
the accompanying view and compare the figures 
given herewith, which is the actual cost of the work. 
There are 930 feet of “macadamized” road, eighteen 
feet wide, with eight inches of quarried stone and 
