38 
House & Garden 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING and a DEFINITE PLAN 
The Basis for Successful Work Rests on Intelligent Study, Due Consideration and the Elimination 
of Guesswork—Now Is the Time to Make Plans for Future Effects 
ROBERT STEEL 
T HE basis of successful landscaping is 
well considered planning before a single 
new shrub or tree or flower is set in the ground. 
Your house cannot be brought to architectural 
perfection without adequate blueprints and 
working drawings. No more can the grounds 
about it be developed at random and result in 
anything but a hit-or-miss composition. 
Where the problem which confronts you in¬ 
volves new grounds which are entirely unde¬ 
veloped, the wise thing to do is to employ a 
professional landscape architect or else read 
up on the subject systematically in the best 
standard books before attempting to draw any 
plans of your own. In probably the 
majority of cases, however, some 
planting has already been done by 
the present occupant of the house, 
or by a former one, and the problem 
involves changes in what has been 
accomplished as well as the addition 
of new features. It is with this 
phase of landscaping work that the 
present article deals. 
Most people think that all radical 
steps in planting operations should 
be taken in the spring. This is 
largely true so far as actual planting 
is concerned, especially with flowers; 
but the time to plan for changes, 
and in some cases to put them into 
effect, is during the summer or early 
autumn. It is then, while the flower 
effects are still fresh in mind and 
the trees and shrubbery in full leaf, 
that you are best in a position to de¬ 
cide upon alterations and additions. 
A Definite Plan Essential 
Assuming that you are to be your 
own landscape architect, the first 
thing to do is to make a good sized 
ground plan of the place as it is, 
showing all beds, shrubs, trees, gar¬ 
den ornaments, outbuildings, walks, 
driveways, etc. Let the scale of the 
drawing be about T to Yf. If this 
results in a map so large as to be 
unwieldy, cut it into sections which 
can be pasted on heavy cheesecloth 
so that the whole can be folded up 
to convenient size. Use a good qual¬ 
ity of paper which will take ink as 
well as pencil lines. The ink may be used to 
indicate existing plantings, and the pencil for 
changes. 
This map is merely a ground plan, a bird's- 
eye view, as it were. You should also make 
what architects call “elevations” — rough 
sketches showing the contour or skyline of the 
plants themselves. If you will consider for a 
moment the importance of contour in a founda¬ 
tion planting of shrubs, for example, where 
they are in effect silhouetted against the house 
walls, you will see just how necessary these 
sketches are. There is no need to draw an 
elevation of every flower bed, of course; the 
lot boundaries, hedges, and shrubbery plant¬ 
ings are the most important. 
With these drawings and the ground plan in 
hand, go over the place carefully, considering 
it from different angles and positions. Take 
along, too, a pencil, a long tape measure, a 
garden line, a few stakes, and someone to help 
you measure and mark out the changes on 
the spot. 
The planting alterations you may wish to 
make naturally cannot be enumerated here, as 
no two problems are identical. Roughly, 
though, consider the color arrangements in the 
flower beds, the creation of new vistas and 
lawn areas, the planting of additional shrub, 
tree or tall perennial backgrounds or the elimi¬ 
nation of existing ones, the use of screening 
vines and evergreens, the placing of a sundial. 
rose arch, lily pool or other embellishment. 
As these changes are determined upon, mark 
them on the ground plan. A simple system of 
duplicating key numbers will make plain the 
various shifts in the plantings when the time 
comes to make them. For additions, use let¬ 
ters to indicate the kinds of plants, if there 
is not space to write them directly on the plan. 
In all of this work leave nothing to memory 
or guesswork. Some of the improvements can 
perhaps be made at once, but the majority will 
necessarily have to wait until November or 
even next spring. Get everything down now 
in black and white, with measurements, loca¬ 
tions and shapes of beds clearly indicated. 
This may seem like an arduous task, but it 
will be well repaid in the final outcome. 
With the exception of evergreens, the plant¬ 
ing of trees and shrubs should not be under¬ 
taken for another two months. The contro¬ 
versy as to the respective merits of spring and 
fall planting of deciduous sorts will perhaps 
never be settled, but you will make no mis¬ 
take if you put in practically all of them, ex¬ 
cept the peaches and other pit fruits, during 
the autumn. Large trees are best moved dur¬ 
ing the cold weather, though when the job is 
done by someone who thoroughly understands 
it, it may be successfully carried through at 
almost any season of the year. 
Garden Ornaments 
The use of garden ornaments is 
one of the important branches of 
landscaping. Nothing can more 
completely disrupt the harmony of 
a planting scheme than a fountain 
or piece of garden statuary unwise¬ 
ly chosen or wrongly placed—wit¬ 
ness “The Storm” as depicted in 
plaster on the bit of turf between 
the grape arbor and the rhubarb 
patch, or the iron mastodon hounds 
and near-stags which in years past 
were wont to adorn (?) a certain 
type of front lawn. Conversely the 
right ornament in the right place is 
eminently desirable. 
The choice of garden ornaments 
is a matter of good taste, but their 
placing is based on rather definite 
rules. 
First, as to arches and pergolas, 
Don’t put up either one of these just 
for the sake of putting it up. Re¬ 
member that the arch especially 
should define an entrance of some 
sort—to the garden, a flight of steps, 
a separate and distinct part of the 
grounds; and that the pergola is 
usually at its best when serving in a 
somewhat similar capacity. The 
arch or the pergola which does not 
lead somewhere misses half its pur¬ 
pose in life. 
Through these entrances we come 
logically to another class of garden 
ornaments: those which are intended 
to serve as accent points or termini 
of vistas, such as sundials, bird 
fountains and gazing globes. Gen¬ 
erally speaking, such features should be simple 
in design and so placed as to have a definite 
background of shrubs or flowers to supply the 
needed contrast. Few simple landscape 
schemes are more effective than the one where, 
through a single arch covered with climbing 
roses, one looks down a straight turf walk 
between flower beds to a gazing globe close 
against a background mass of evergreens. 
Fountains on the small grounds should be 
used with restraint. The (simple jet with 
one or two basins is the safest from an artistic 
point of view, unless you are ready to pay the 
prices which good figure work commands. 
Spring is the usual time for purchasing gar¬ 
den ornaments and furniture, but with the 
prospect of labor shortage and rush work then, 
the wise person will buy this fall. 
Johnston 
Garden statuary must be of the best conception and design, 
else it may be out of harmony. It should, supplement, not 
dominate, the planting of the grounds 
