187 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATIONS 
CONDUCTED BY 
FRANCES COPLEY SEAVEY, 
WATERSIDE PLANTING. 
Downing, the best-known American authority on 
landscape gardening, together with other disciples of 
the art, consider that the three great elements of a 
perfect landscape are (i) grass, (2) trees, (3) water. 
Downing says : “A river or a lake in which the ‘tufted 
trees’ may see themselves reflected, is ever an indis- 
pensable feature of a perfect landscape.” In his opin- 
The bare and regular shores sometimes seen about 
bodies of water in parks, cemeteries, etc., are prosaic 
in the extreme and well deserve the appellation of “dish 
pan ponds,” once applied by that model of horticul- 
tural and landscape taste. Prof. L. H. Bailey. 
A mysterious, subdued and poetic landscape beauty 
is attainable with water and waterside planting that 
cannot be otherwise secured, yet ponds in very small 
areas are to be avoided. An easily applied general 
rule for deciding for or against their use is found in 
Robinson’s Parks and Promenades of Paris. He says 
that they “seem out of place in a park or square from 
which the surrounding buildings are not hidden.” 
Hardy material supplies a sufficient and adequate 
WATERSIDE PLANTING EFFECTS, B. & A. R. R. STATION, WOODLAND, MASS. 
ion a small lake or a little river were preferable to 
larger bodies of water and broader streams. 
Water gardens proper are desirable where feasible, 
but they are a thing apart and should be treated by 
themselves, while the treatment of the banks and mar- 
gins of lakes and waterways must frequently be con- 
sidered in the landscape work undertaken by improve- 
ment organizations. 
It should be borne in mind that full advantage 
should be taken of natural beauty in developing such 
work; that the contour of banks is an important fea- 
ture; that the shore line of waterways and bodies of 
water should be irregular in character to produce bays 
and inlets ; and that broad and quiet effects, which in- 
clude a fair proportion of open lawns reaching to the 
water’s edge, are usually accounted more appropriate 
in waterside planting than spottily planted borders. 
source from which to draw all requisite vegetation for 
waterside planting, which includes aquatics, bog 
plants, and plants, trees and shrubs that thrive in rath- 
er moist situations. 
By the proper choice and distribution of such ma- 
terial, the shores may be wooded, shrub-clothed, or 
covered with herbaceous vegetation. The plantations 
may merge gradually into the lawns or other grounds 
on the one side by means of scattered clumps or indi- 
vidual plants of handsome grasses (notably Eulalias) 
etc., and by cunningly disposed irises, sedges, acorus, 
etc., and irregularly shaped floating islands of hardy 
water lilies into clear water on the other side. 
Flecks and dashes of color, applied in rather a Jap- 
anesque fashion, will appear and disappear at various 
points as the seasons pass, and the changing beauty of 
form and color, clearly or brokenly reflected on the 
