In landscape work, whether it be grouping shrubs around the base of a house or planting them in masses about the outside edges of lawns, 
the individual specimen must give way to the effect as a whole 
Planting Shrubs for Mass Effects 
THE LANDSCAPIST’S POINT OF VIEW IN THE MATTER OF SETTING OUT SHRUBBERY BOR¬ 
DERS—THE NECESSITY FOR DETERMINING THE PLAN AND SKY LINE ACCURATELY ON PAPER 
by Grace Tabor 
Photographs by Nathan R. Graves and others 
[The seventh of a senes of aiticles on the subject of landscape gardening as applied to the American home of moderate size, preceding titles being 
<l Utilizing Natural Features ,” “ Getting Into a Place,” “Formal or Informal Gardens,” “ Screening, Revealing and Emphasizing Objects or Views,” 
“ Boundary Lines and Boundary Plantings,” and “ Planting Trees for Air, Light and Shade.” Questions relating to planting details will be gladly 
answered .— Editor.] 
T HERE seems ever to have been an antagonism between the 
horticulturist’s view of a plant and the landscape architect’s. 
To the former it exists as a specimen, an individual that is filling 
an important place in the world in and by itself; the spread of its 
branches and the size and quantity of its blossoms are the things 
by which he judges it and by which he values it—consequently 
the more these are increased, the more any characteristic is exag¬ 
gerated in it, the more valuable to him does it become. Naturally, 
therefore, his whole aim is to provide it with those surroundings 
which will promote such exaggeration to the highest degree. 
But the landscape architect views it from a very different point. 
A plant is to him what a single note is to the musical composer, 
or what the tubes of raw, pure color are to the painter. One 
note, struck by itself, can mean nothing, no matter how loud and 
startling or soft and sweet the tone; one color in a great vivid 
blotch on the canvas expresses nothing, no matter how clear and 
striking it may be. It is only as the note is brought into relation 
with other notes, the color with other shades and colors, that a 
composition takes shape. 
It seems, sometimes, as if the time would never come when this 
truth about plants would be realized by everybody. Year after 
year sees the same mistakes made, even on the larger estates 
where large sums have been paid for the services of professionals 
presumably skilled and cunning in the craft. With all the money 
spent the well planned and well planted place remains the excep¬ 
tion, so rare as to be startling when one comes upon it, while 
examples of wrong ways, wrong from their fundamental ideas 
up, are everywhere. Almost every village and suburban street 
presents a solid front of garden misconceptions disheartening to 
see. 
The two views just cited are of course antagonistic and one 
can readily see how utterly impossible it is to ever make them 
anything else, so one need spend little time in attempting to har¬ 
monize them. Instead let us see what reasons there are for adopt¬ 
ing one and rejecting the other. 
First of all it is necessary to realize that there are certain special 
things, grown for show, and for competitive shows, which have 
no more to do with gardening, considered as a fine art, than chalk 
has to do with oil painting. The biggest Dahlia in the world, 
winner of all the prizes, would add little or nothing to a 
garden’s beauty if it stood outdoors, among the growing things; 
the carefully trained and framed Chrysanthemum plant, bearing 
a thousand blossoms, might as well be a Coreopsis bush for all 
the effect it would create in relation to other plants in the border— 
and the rose bush, coddled and pruned and petted till it produces 
a single four-foot-stemmed American Beauty, becomes a sorry 
spectacle, once its solitary flower is plucked. 
These may be exaggerated examples to be sure, but they illus¬ 
trate the point we need to impress upon our minds—that indi¬ 
vidualism is not the garden’s ideal. And though they are exag¬ 
gerated, they are after all only the result of going a few steps 
farther along the path of individual culture than the usual practice 
which aims to plant shrubs in isolation “so they can develop.” 
Any view that persistently puts the development of a shrub 
before other considerations governing its location, is a mistaken 
one; and until, once and for all, we get over cherishing such views 
we will continue to go wrong in design, and to fail in attaining our 
proper effects. 
Abandon completely and absolutely the mental picture that 
dissociates “shrub” from “shrubbery,” and create in its place 
one which unites the two so closely that you will come to feel 
them one object and synonymous terms. Then live up to this 
creation determinedly, and let no remarks of misguided neigh¬ 
bors—however well meaning they may be—about things choking 
( I 37) 
