THE GENERAL PLAN OR THEORY OF THE PLACE
Having now discussed the most essential elements of gardening, we may
give attention to such minor features as the actual way in which a
satisfying garden is to be planned and executed.
Speaking broadly, a person will get from a garden what he puts into it;
and it is of the first importance, therefore, that a clear conception
of the work be formulated at the outset. I do not mean to say that the
garden will always turn out what it was desired that it should be; but
the failure to turn out properly is usually some fault in the first
plan or some neglect in execution.
Sometimes the disappointment in an ornamental garden is a result of
confusion of ideas as to what a garden is for. One of my friends was
greatly disappointed on returning to his garden early in September to
find that it was not so full and floriferous as when he left it in
July. He had not learned the simple lesson that even a flower-garden
should exhibit the natural progress of the season. If the garden begins
to show ragged places and to decline in late August or early September,
it is what occurs in all surrounding vegetation. The year is maturing.
The garden ought to express the feeling of the different months. The
failing leaves and expended plants are therefore to be looked on, to
some extent at least, as the natural order and destiny of a good
garden.
These attributes are well exhibited in the vegetable-garden. In the
spring, the vegetable-garden is a model of neatness and precision. The
rows are straight. There are no missing plants. The earth is mellow and
fresh. Weeds are absent. One takes his friends to the garden, and he
makes pictures of it. By late June or early July, the plants have begun
to sprawl and to get out of shape. The bugs have taken some of them.
The rows are no longer trim and precise. The earth is hot and dry. The
weeds are making headway. By August and September, the garden has lost
its early regularity and freshness. The camera is put aside. The
visitors are not taken to it: the gardener prefers to go alone to find
the melon or the tomatoes, and he comes away as soon as he has secured
his product. Now, as a matter of fact, the garden has been going
through its regular seasonal growth. It is natural that it become
ragged. It is not necessary that weeds conquer it; but I suspect that
it would be a very poor garden, and certainly an uninteresting one, if
it retained the dress of childhood at the time when it should develop
the personalities of age.
There are two types of outdoor gardening in which the progress of the
season is not definitely expressed,—in the carpet-bedding kind, and in
the subtropical kind. I hope that my reader will get a clear
distinction in these matters, for it is exceedingly important. The
carpet-bedding gardening is the making of figure-beds in house-leeks
and achyranthes and coleus and sanitalia, and other things that can be
grown in compact masses and possibly sheared to keep them within place
and bounds; the reader sees these beds in perfection in some of the
parks and about florists’ establishments; he will understand at once
that they are not meant in any way to express the season, for the
difference between them in September and June is only that they may be
more perfect in September. The subtropical gardening (plates IV and V)
is the planting out of house-grown stuff, in order to produce given
effects, of such plants as palms, dracenas, crotons, caladiums,
papyrus, together with such luxuriant things as dahlias and cannas and
large ornamental grasses and castor beans; these plants are to produce
effects quite foreign to the expression of a northern landscape, and
they are usually at their best and are most luxuriant when overtaken by
the fall frosts.
Now, the home gardener usually relies on plants that more or less come
and go with the seasons. He pieces out and extends the season, to be
sure; but a garden with pansies, pinks, sweet william, roses, sweet
peas, petunias, marigolds, salpiglossis, sweet sultan, poppies,
zinnias, asters, cosmos, and the rest, is a progress-of-the-season
garden, nevertheless; and if it is a garden of herbaceous perennials,
it still more completely expresses the time-of-year.
My reader will now consider, perhaps, whether he would have his garden
accent and heighten his natural year from spring to fall, or whether he
desires to thrust into his year a feeling of another order of
vegetation. Either is allowable; but the gardener should distinguish at
the outset.
I wish to suggest to my reader, also, that it is possible for the
garden to retain some interest even in the winter months. I sometimes
question whether it is altogether wise to clear out the old garden
stems too completely and too smoothly in the fall, and thereby
obliterate every mark of it for the winter months; but however this may
be, there are two ways by which the garden year may be extended: by
planting things that bloom very late in fall and others that bloom very
early in spring; by using freely, in the backgrounds, of bushes and
trees that have interesting winter characters.
_The plan of the grounds_ (see Plate II).
II. The plan of the place. II. The plan of the place. The arrangement
of the property (which is in New York) is determined by an existing
woodland to the left or southeast of the house and a natural opening to
the southwest of the house. The house is colonial, and the entire
treatment is one of considerable simplicity. Wild or woodland gardens
have been developed to the right and left of the entrance, the latter
or entrance lawns being left severely simple and plain in their
treatment. To the rear of the house a turf terrace raised three steps
above the general grade of the lawn leads to a general lawn terminated
by a small garden exedra or teahouse with a fountain in its center, and
to two shrub gardens forming interesting and closed pockets of lawn.
The stable and vegetable gardens are located to the south of the house
in a natural opening in the woodland. The design is made by a
professional landscape architect.
One cannot expect satisfaction in the planting and developing of a home
area unless he has a clear conception of what is to be done. This
necessarily follows, since the pleasure that one derives from any
enterprise depends chiefly on the definiteness of his ideals and his
ability to develop them. The homemaker should develop his plan before
he attempts to develop his place. He must study the various
subdivisions in order that the premises may meet all his needs. He
should determine the locations of the leading features of the place and
the relative importance to be given to the various parts of it,—as of
the landscape parts, the ornamental areas, the vegetable-garden, and
the fruit plantation.
The details of the planting may be determined in part as the place
develops; it is only the structural features and purposes that need to
be determined beforehand in most small properties. The incidental
modifications that may be made in the planting from time to time keep
the interest alive and allow the planter to gratify his desire to
experiment with new plants and new methods.
It must be understood that I am now speaking of ordinary home grounds
which the home-maker desires to improve by himself. If the area is
large enough to present distinct landscape features, it is always best
to employ a landscape architect of recognized merit, in the same spirit
that one would employ an architect. The details, however, may even then
be filled in by the owner, if he is so inclined, following out the plan
that the landscape architect makes.
[Illustration: Fig. 2. Diagram of a back yard.]
It is desirable to have a definite plan on paper (drawn to scale) for
the location of the leading features of the place. These features are
the residence, the out-houses, the walks and drives, the service areas
(as clothes yards), the border planting, flower-garden,
vegetable-garden, and fruit-garden. It should not be expected that the
map plan can be followed in every detail, but it will serve as a
general guide; and if it is made on a large enough scale, the different
kinds of plants can be located in their proper positions, and a record
of the place be kept. It is nearly always unsatisfactory, for both
owner and designer, if a plan of the place is made without a personal
inspection of the area. Lines that look well on a map may not adjust
themselves readily to the varying contours of the place itself, and the
location of the features inside the grounds will depend also in a very
large measure on the objects that lie outside it. For example, all
interesting and bold views should be brought into the place, and all
unsightly objects in the immediate vicinity should be planted out.
A plan of a back yard of a narrow city lot is given in Fig. 2, showing
the heavy border planting of trees and shrubs, with the skirting border
of flowers. In the front are two large trees, that are desired for
shade. It will readily be seen from this plan how extensive the area
for flowers becomes when they are placed along such a devious border.
More color effect can be got from such an arrangement of the flowers
than could be secured if the whole area were planted to flower-beds.
[Illustration: Fig. 3. Plan of a rough area.]
A contour map plan of a very rough piece of ground is shown in Fig. 3.
The sides of the place are high, and it becomes necessary to carry a
walk through the middle area; and on either side of the front, it
skirts the banks. Such a plan is usually unsightly on paper, but may
nevertheless fit special cases very well. The plan is inserted here for
the purpose of illustrating the fact that a plan that will work on the
ground does not necessarily work on a map.
[Illustration: Fig. 4. Suggestion for a school-ground on a
four-corners.]
In charting a place, it is important to locate the points from which
the walks are to start, and at which they are to emerge from the
grounds. These two points are then joined by direct and simple curves;
and alongside the walks, especially in angles or bold curves, planting
may be inserted.
A suggestion for school premises on a four-corners, and which the
pupils enter from three directions, is made in Fig. 4. The two
playgrounds are separated by a broken group of bushes extending from
the building to the rear boundary; but, in general, the spaces are kept
open, and the heavy border-masses clothe the place and make it
home-like. The lineal extent of the group margins is astonishingly
large, and along all these margins flowers may be planted, if desired.
If there is only six feet between a schoolhouse and the fence, there is
still room for a border of shrubs. This border should be between the
walk and the fence,—on the very boundary,—not between the walk and the
building, for in the latter case the planting divides the premises and
weakens the effect. A space two feet wide will allow of an irregular
wall of bushes, if tall buildings do not cut out the light; and if the
area is one hundred feet long, thirty to fifty kinds of shrubs and
flowers can be grown to perfection, and the school-grounds will be
practically no smaller for the plantation.
One cannot make a plan of a place until he knows what he wants to do
with the property; and therefore we may devote the remainder of this
chapter to developing the idea in the layout of the premises rather
than to the details of map-making and planting.
Because I speak of the free treatment of garden spaces in this book it
must not be inferred that any reflection is intended on the “formal”
garden. There are many places in which the formal or “architect’s
garden” is much to be desired; but each of these cases should be
treated wholly by itself and be made a part of the architectural
setting of the place. These questions are outside the sphere of this
book. All formal gardens are properly individual studies.
All very special types of garden design are naturally excluded from a
book of this kind, such types, for example, as Japanese gardening.
Persons who desire to develop these specialties will secure the
services of persons who are skilled in them; and there are also books
and magazine articles to which they may go.
_The picture in the landscape_.
The deficiency in most home grounds is not so much that there is too
little planting of trees and shrubs as that this planting is
meaningless. Every yard should be a picture. That is, the area should
be set off from other areas, and it should have such a character that
the observer catches its entire effect and purpose without stopping to
analyze its parts. The yard should be one thing, one area, with every
feature contributing its part to one strong and homogeneous effect.
[Illustration: Fig 5. The common or nursery way of planting]
[Illustration: Fig. 6. The proper or pictorial type of planting]
These remarks will become concrete if the reader turns his eye to Figs.
5 and 6. The former represents a common type of planting of front
yards. The bushes and trees are scattered promiscuously over the area.
Such a yard has no purpose, no central idea. It shows plainly that the
planter had no constructive conception, no grasp of any design, and no
appreciation of the fundamental elements of the beauty of landscape.
Its only merit is the fact that trees and shrubs have been planted; and
this, to most minds, comprises the essence and sum of the ornamentation
of grounds. Every tree and bush is an individual alone, unattended,
disconnected from its environments, and, therefore, meaningless. Such a
yard is only a nursery.
The other plan (Fig. 6) is a picture. The eye catches its meaning at
once. The central idea is the residence, with a free and open
greensward in front of it The same trees and bushes that were scattered
haphazard over Fig. 5 are massed into a framework to give effectiveness
to the picture of home and comfort. This style of planting makes a
landscape, even though the area be no larger than a parlor. The other
style is only a collection of curious plants. The one has an instant
and abiding pictorial effect, which is restful and satisfying: the
observer exclaims, “What a beautiful home this is!” The other piques
one’s curiosity, obscures the residence, divides and distracts the
attention: the observer exclaims, “What excellent lilac bushes are
these!”
An inquiry into the causes of the unlike impressions that one receives
from a given landscape and from a painting of it explains the subject
admirably. One reason why the picture appeals to us more than the
landscape is because the picture is condensed, and the mind becomes
acquainted with its entire purpose at once, while the landscape is so
broad that the individual objects at first fix the attention, and it is
only by a process of synthesis that the unity of the landscape finally
becomes apparent. This is admirably illustrated in photographs. One of
the first surprises that the novice experiences in the use of the
camera is the discovery that very tame scenes become interesting and
often even spirited in the photograph. But there is something more than
mere condensation in this vitalizing and beautifying effect of the
photograph or the painting: individual objects are so much reduced that
they no longer appeal to us as distinct subjects, and however uncouth
they may be in the reality, they make no impression in the picture; the
thin and sere sward may appear rather like a closely shaven lawn or a
new-mown meadow. And again, the picture sets a limit to the scene; it
frames it, and thereby cuts off all extraneous and confusing or
irrelevant landscapes.
These remarks are illustrated in the aesthetics of landscape gardening.
It is the artist’s one desire to make pictures in the landscape. This
is done in two ways: by the form of plantations, and by the use of
vistas. He will throw his plantations into such positions that open and
yet more or less confined areas of greensward are presented to the
observer at various points. This picture-like opening is nearly or
quite devoid of small or individual objects, which usually destroy the
unity of such areas and are meaningless in themselves. A vista is a
narrow opening or view between plantations to a distant landscape. It
cuts up the broad horizon into portions that are readily cognizable. It
frames parts of the country-side. The verdurous sides of the planting
are the sides of the frame; the foreground is the bottom, and the sky
is the top. It is of the utmost importance that good views be left or
secured from the best windows of the house (not forgetting the kitchen
window); in fact, the placing of the house may often be determined by
the views that may be appropriated.
If a landscape is a picture, it must have a canvas. This canvas is the
greensward. Upon this, the artist paints with tree and bush and flower
as the painter does upon his canvas with brush and pigments. The
opportunity for artistic composition and design is nowhere so great as
in the landscape garden, because no other art has such a limitless
field for the expression of its emotions. It is not strange, if this be
true, that there have been few great landscape gardeners, and that,
falling short of art, the landscape gardener too often works in the
sphere of the artisan. There can be no rules for landscape gardening,
any more than there can be for painting or sculpture. The operator may
be taught how to hold the brush or strike the chisel or plant the tree,
but he remains an operator; the art is intellectual and emotional and
will not confine itself in precepts.
The making of a good and spacious lawn, then, is the very first
practical consideration in a landscape garden.
The lawn provided, the gardener conceives what is the dominant and
central feature in the place, and then throws the entire premises into
subordination to this feature. In home grounds this central feature is
the house. To scatter trees and bushes over the area defeats the
fundamental purpose of the place,—the purpose to make every part of the
grounds lead up to the home and to accentuate its homelikeness.
[Illustration: Fig. 7. A house]
A house must have a background if it is to become a home. A house that
stands on a bare plain or hill is a part of the universe, not a part of
a home. Recall the cozy little farm-house that is backed by a wood or
an orchard; then compare some pretentious structure that stands apart
from all planting. Yet how many are the farm-houses that stand as stark
and cold against the sky as if they were competing with the moon! We
would not believe it possible for a man to live in a house twenty-five
years and not, by accident, allow some tree to grow, were it not that
it is so!
[Illustration: Fig. 8 A home]
Of course these remarks about the lawn are meant for those countries
where greensward is the natural ground cover. In the South and in arid
countries, greensward is not the prevailing feature of the landscape,
and in these regions the landscape design may take on a wholly
different character, if the work is to be nature-like. We have not yet
developed other conceptions of landscape work to any perfect extent,
and we inject the English greensward treatment even into deserts. We
may look for the time when a brown landscape garden may be made in a
brown country, and it may be good art not to attempt a broad open
center in regions in which undergrowth rather than sod is the natural
ground cover. In parts of the United States we are developing a good
Spanish-American architecture, perhaps we may develop a recognized
comparable landscape treatment as an artistic expression.
_Birds; and cats_
The picture in the landscape is not complete without birds, and the
birds should comprise more species than English sparrows. If one is to
have birds on his premises, he must (1) attract them and (2) protect
them.
One attracts birds by providing places in which they may nest. The free
border plantings have distinct advantages in attracting chipping
sparrows, catbirds, and other species. The bluebirds, house wrens, and
martins may be attracted by boxes in which they can build.
One may attract birds by feeding them and supplying water. Suet for
woodpeckers and others, grain and crumbs for other kinds, and taking
care not to frighten or molest them, will soon win the confidence of
the birds. A slowly running or dripping fountain, with a good rim on
which they may perch, will also attract them, and it is no mean
enjoyment to watch the birds at bathing. Or, if one does not care to go
to the expense of a bird fountain, he may supply their wants by means
of a shallow dish of water set on the lawn.
The birds will need protection from cats. There is no more reason why
cats should roam at will and uncontrolled than that dogs or horses or
poultry should be allowed unlimited license. A cat away from home is a
trespasser and should be so treated. A person has no more right to
inflict a cat on a neighborhood than to inflict a goat or rabbits or
any other nuisance. All persons who keep cats should feel the same
responsibility for them that they feel for other property; and they
should be willing to forfeit their property right when they forfeit
their control. The cats not only destroy birds, but they break the
peace. The caterwauling at night will not be permitted in well-governed
communities any more than the shooting of fire-arms or vicious talking
will be allowed: all night-roaming cats should be gathered in, just as
stray dogs and tramps are provided for.
I do not dislike cats, but I desire to see them kept at home and within
control. If persons say that they cannot keep them on their own
premises, then these persons should not be allowed to have them. A bell
on the cat will prevent it from capturing old birds, and this may
answer a good purpose late in the season; but it will not stop the
robbing of nests or the taking of young birds, and here is where the
greatest havoc is wrought.
It is often asserted that cats must roam in order that rats and mice
may be reduced; but probably few house mice and few rats are got by
wandering cats; and, again, many cats are not mousers. There are other
ways of controlling rats and mice; or if cats are employed for this
purpose, see that they are restricted to the places where the house
rats and mice are to be found.
Many persons like squirrels about the place, but they cannot expect to
have both birds and squirrels unless very special precautions are
taken.
The English or house sparrow drives away the native birds, although he
is himself an attractive inhabitant in winter, particularly where
native birds are not resident. The English sparrow should be kept in
reduced numbers. This can be easily accomplished by poisoning them in
winter (when other birds are not endangered) with wheat soaked in
strychnine water. The contents of one of the eighth-ounce vials of
strychnine that may be secured at a drug store is added to sufficient
water to cover a quart of wheat. Let the wheat stand in the poison
water twenty-four to forty-eight hours (but not long enough for the
grains to sprout), then dry the wheat thoroughly. It cannot be
distinguished from ordinary wheat, and sparrows usually eat it freely,
particularly if they are in the habit of eating scattered grain and
crumbs. Of course, the greatest caution must be exercised that in the
use of such highly poisonous materials, accidents do not occur with
other animals or with human beings.
III. Open center treatment in a semi-tropical country. III. Open center
treatment in a semi-tropical country.
Illustration: The nursery or single-specimen type of planting in a
front yard
_The planting is part of the design or picture._
[Illustration: Fig. 10 A native fence-row] [Ilustration: Fig. 11 Birds
build their nests here]
If the reader catches the full meaning of these pages, he has acquired
some of the primary conceptions in landscape gardening. The suggestion
will grow upon him day by day; and if he is of an observing turn of
mind, he will find that this simple lesson will revolutionize his habit
of thought respecting the planting of grounds and the beauty of
landscapes. He will see that a bush or flower-bed that is no part of
any general purpose or design—that is, which does not contribute to the
making of a picture—might better never have been planted. For myself, I
would rather have a bare and open pasture than such a yard as that
shown in Fig. 9, even though it contained the choicest plants of every
land. The pasture would at least be plain and restful and
unpretentious; but the yard would be full of effort and fidget.
[Illustration: Fig. 12. A free-and-easy planting of things wild and
tame.]
Reduced to a single expression, all this means that the greatest
artistic value in planting lies in the effect of the mass, and not in
the individual plant. A mass has the greater value because it presents
a much greater range and variety of forms, colors, shades, and
textures, because it has sufficient extent or dimensions to add
structural character to a place, and because its features are so
continuous and so well blended that the mind is not distracted by
incidental and irrelevant ideas. Two pictures will illustrate all this.
Figures 10, 11 are pictures of natural copses. The former stretches
along a field and makes a lawn of a bit of meadow which lies in front
of it. The landscape has become so small and so well defined by this
bank of verdure that it has a familiar and personal feeling. The great,
bare, open meadows are too ill-defined and too extended to give any
domestic feeling; but here is a part of the meadow set off into an area
that one can compass with his affections.
These masses in Figs. 10, 11, and 12 have their own intrinsic merits,
as well as their office in defining a bit of nature. One is attracted
by the freedom of arrangement, the irregularity of sky-line, the bold
bays and promontories, and the infinite play of light and shade. The
observer is interested in each because it has character, or features,
that no other mass in all the world possesses. He knows that the birds
build their nests in the tangle and the rabbits find it a covert.
Now let the reader turn to Fig. 9, which is a picture of an “improved”
city yard. Here there is no structural outline to the planting, no
defining of the area, no continuous flow of the form and color. Every
bush is what every other one is or may be, and there are hundreds like
them in the same town. The birds shun them. Only the bugs find any
happiness in them. The place has no fundamental design or idea, no lawn
upon which a picture may be constructed. This yard is like a sentence
or a conversation in which every word is equally emphasized.
[Illustration: Fig. 13. An open treatment of a school-ground. More
trees might be placed in the area, if desired.]
In bold contrast with this yard is the open-center treatment in Fig.
13. Here there is pictorial effect; and there is opportunity along the
borders to distribute trees and shrubs that may be desired as
individual specimens.
[Illustration: Fig. 14. A rill much as nature made it.] [Illustration:
Fig. 15. A rill “improved,” so that it will not look “ragged” and
unkempt.] The motive that shears the trees also razes the copse, in
order that the gardener or “improver” may show his art. Compare Figs.
14 and 15. Many persons seem to fear that they will never be known to
the world unless they expend a great amount of muscle or do something
emphatic or spectacular; and their fears are usually well founded.
It is not enough that trees and bushes be planted in masses. They must
be kept in masses by letting them grow freely in a natural way. The
pruning-knife is the most inveterate enemy of shrubbery. Pictures 16
and 17 illustrate what I mean. The former represents a good group of
bushes so far as arrangement is concerned; but it has been ruined by
the shears. The attention of the observer is instantly arrested by the
individual bushes. Instead of one free and expressive object, there are
several stiff and expressionless ones. If the observer stops to
consider his own thoughts when he comes upon such a collection, he will
likely find himself counting the bushes; or, at least, he will be
making mental comparisons of the various bushes, and wondering why they
are not all sheared to be exactly alike. Figure 17 shows how the same
“artist” has treated two deutzias and a juniper. Much the same effect
could have been secured, and with much less trouble, by laying two
flour barrels end to end and standing a third one between them.
[Illustration: 16. The making of a good group, but spoiled by the
pruning shears.]
[Illustration: 17. The three guardsmen.] [Illustration: Fig. 18 A bit
of semi-rustic work built into a native growth] I must hasten to say
that I have not the slightest objection to the shearing of trees. The
only trouble is in calling the practice art and in putting the trees
where people must see them (unless they are part of a recognized
formal-garden design). If the operator simply calls the business
shearing, and puts the things where he and others who like them may see
them, objection could not be raised. Some persons like painted stones,
others iron bulldogs in the front yard and the word “welcome” worked
into the door-mat, and others like barbered trees. So long as these
likes are purely personal, it would seem to be better taste to put such
curiosities in the back yard, where the owner may admire them without
molestation
There is a persistent desire among workmen to shear and to trim: it
displays their industry. It is a great thing to be able to allow the
freedom of nature to remain. The artist often builds his structures
into a native planting (as in Fig. 18) rather than to trust himself to
produce a good result by planting on razed surfaces.
In this discussion, I have tried to enforce the importance of the open
center in non-formal home grounds in greensward regions. Of course this
does not mean that there may not be central planting in particular
cases where the conditions distinctly call for it nor that there may
not be trees on the lawn. If one has the placing of the trees, he may
see that they are not scattered aimlessly; but if good trees are
already growing on the place, it would be folly to think of removing
them merely because they are not in the best ideal positions; in such
case, it may be very necessary to adapt the treatment of the area to
the trees. The home-maker should always consider, also, the planting of
a few trees in such places as to shade and protect the residence: the
more closely they can be made a part of the general design or handling
of the place, the better the results will be.
_The flower-growing should be part of the design._
I do not mean to discourage the use of brilliant flowers and bright
foliage and striking forms of vegetation; but these things are never
primary considerations in a good domain. The structural elements of the
place are designed first. The flanking and bordering masses are then
planted. Finally the flowers and accessories are put in, as a house is
painted after it is built. Flowers appear to best advantage when seen
against a background of foliage, and they are then, also, an integral
part of the picture. The flower-garden, as such, should be at the rear
or side of a place, as all other personal appurtenances are; but
flowers and bright leaves may be freely scattered along the borders and
near the foliage masses.
It is a common saying that many persons have no love or appreciation of
flowers, but it is probably nearer to the truth to say that no person
is wholly lacking in this respect. Even those persons who declare that
they care nothing for flowers are generally deceived by their dislike
of flower-beds and the conventional methods of flower-growing. I know
many persons who stoutly deny any liking for flowers, but who,
nevertheless, are rejoiced with the blossoming of the orchards and the
purpling of the clover fields. The fault may not lie so much with the
persons themselves as with the methods of growing and displaying the
flowers.
Defects in flower-growing.
The greatest defect with our flower-growing is the stinginess of it. We
grow our flowers as if they were the choicest rarities, to be coddled
in a hotbed or under a bell-jar, and then to be exhibited as single
specimens in some little pinched and ridiculous hole cut in the turf,
or perched upon an ant-hill that some gardener has laboriously heaped
oh a lawn. Nature, on the other hand, grows many of her flowers in the
most luxurious abandon, and one can pick an armful without offense. She
grows her flowers in earnest, as a man grows a crop of corn. One can
revel in the color and the fragrance and be satisfied.
The next defect with our flower-growing is the flower-bed. Nature has
no time to make flower-bed designs: she is busy growing flowers. And,
then, if she were given to flower-beds, the whole effect would be lost,
for she could no longer be luxurious and wanton, and if a flower were
picked her whole scheme might be upset. Imagine a geranium-bed or a
coleus-bed, with its wonderful “design,” set out into a wood or in a
free and open landscape! Even the birds would laugh at it!
What I want to say is that we should grow flowers freely when we make a
flower-garden. We should have enough of them to make the effort worth
the while. I sympathize with the man who likes sunflowers. There are
enough of them to be worth looking at. They fill the eye. Now show this
man ten feet square of pinks or asters, or daisies, all growing free
and easy and he will tell you that he likes them. All this has a
particular application to the farmer, who is often said to dislike
flowers. He grows potatoes and buckwheat and weeds by the acre: two or
three unhappy pinks or geraniums are not enough to make an impression.
Lawn flower-beds.
[Illustration: Fig. 19 Hole-in-the-ground gardening] The easiest way to
spoil a good lawn is to put a flower-bed in it; and the most effective
way in which to show off flowers to the least advantage is to plant
them in a bed in the greensward. Flowers need a background. We do not
hang our pictures on fence-posts. If flowers are to be grown on a lawn,
let them be of the hardy kind, which can be naturalized in the sod and
which grow freely in the tall unmown grass; or else perennials of such
nature that they make attractive clumps by themselves. Lawns should be
free and generous, but the more they are cut up and worried with
trivial effects, the smaller and meaner they look.
[Illustration: 20. Worth paying admittance price to see!] But even if
we consider these lawn flower-beds wholly apart from their
surroundings, we must admit that they are at best unsatisfactory. It
generally amounts to this, that we have four months of sparse and
downcast vegetation, one month of limp and frost-bitten plants, and
seven months of bare earth (Fig 19) I am not now opposing the
carpet-beds which professional gardeners make in parks and other
museums. I like museums, and some of the carpet-beds and set pieces are
“fearfully and wonderfully made” (see Fig 20) I am directing my remarks
to those humble home-made flower-beds that are so common in lawns of
country and city homes alike. These beds are cut from the good fresh
turf, often in the most fantastic designs, and are filled with such
plants as the women of the place may be able to carry over in cellars
or in the window. The plants themselves may look very well in pots, but
when they are turned out of doors, they have a sorry time for a month
adapting themselves to the sun and winds, and it is generally well on
towards midsummer before they begin to cover the earth. During all
these weeks they have demanded more time and labor than would have been
needed to care for a plantation of much greater size and which would
have given flowers every day from the time the birds began to nest in
the spring until the last robin had flown in November.
[Illustration: Fig. 21 An artist’s flower border]
Flower-borders.
[Illustration: 22. Petunias against a background of osiers.]
[Illustration: 23. A sowing of flowers along a marginal planting.] We
should acquire the habit of speaking of the flower-border. The border
planting of which we have spoken sets bounds to the place, and makes it
one’s own. The person lives inside his place, not on it. Along these
borders, against groups, often by the corners of the residence or in
front of porches—these are places for flowers. Ten flowers against a
background are more effective than a hundred in the open yard.
I have asked a professional artist, Mr Mathews, to draw me the kind of
a flower-bed that he likes. It is shown in Fig. 21. It is a border,—a
strip of land two or three feet wide along a fence. This is the place
where pigweeds usually grow. Here he has planted marigolds, gladiolus,
golden rod, wild asters, China asters, and—best of all—hollyhocks. Any
one would like that flower-garden It has some of that local and
indefinable charm that always attaches to an “old-fashioned garden”
with its medley of form and color Nearly every yard has some such strip
of land along a rear walk or fence or against a building It is the
easiest thing to plant it,—ever so much easier than digging the
characterless geranium bed into the center of an inoffensive lawn. The
suggestions are carried further in 22 to 25.
[Illustration: Fig. 24. An open back yard. Flowers may be thrown in
freely along the borders, but they would spoil the lawn if placed in
its center.] [Illustration: Fig. 25. A flower garden at the rear or one
side of the place.]
The old-fashioned garden.
Speaking of the old-fashioned garden recalls one of William Falconer’s
excellent paragraphs (“Gardening,” November 15, 1897, p. 75): “We tried
it in Schenley Park this year. We needed a handy dumping ground, and
hit on the head of a deep ravine between two woods; into it we dumped
hundreds upon hundreds of wagon loads of rock and clay, filling it near
to the top, then surfaced it with good soil. Here we planted some
shrubs, and broadcast among them set out scarlet poppies,
eschscholtzias, dwarf nasturtiums, snapdragons, pansies, marigolds, and
all manner of hardy herbaceous plants, having enough of each sort to
make a mass of its kind and color, and the effect was fine. In the
middle was a plantation of hundreds of clumps of Japan and German
irises interplanted, thence succeeded by thousands of gladioli, and
banded with montbretias, from which we had flowers till frost. The
steep face of this hill was graded a little and a series of winding
stone steps set into it, making the descent into the hollow quite easy;
the stones were the rough uneven slabs secured in blasting the rocks
when grading in other parts of the park, and both along outer edges of
the steps and the sides of the upper walk a wide belt of moss pink was
planted; and the banks all about were planted with shrubs, vines, wild
roses, columbines, and other plants. More cameras and kodaks were
leveled by visitors at this piece of gardening than at any other spot
in the park, and still we had acres of painted summer beds.”
Contents of the flower-borders.
There is no prescribed rule as to what one should put into these
informal flower-borders. Put in them the plants you like. Perhaps the
greater part of them should be perennials that come up of themselves
every spring, and that are hardy and reliable. Wild flowers are
particularly effective. Every one knows that many of the native herbs
of woods and glades are more attractive than some of the most prized
garden flowers. The greater part of these native flowers grow readily
in cultivation, sometimes even in places which, in soil and exposure,
are much unlike their native haunts. Many of them make thickened roots,
and they may be safely transplanted at any time after the flowers have
passed. To most persons the wild flowers are less known than many
exotics that have smaller merit, and the extension of cultivation is
constantly tending to annihilate them. Here, then, in the informal
flower-border, is an opportunity to rescue them. Then one may sow in
freely of easy-growing annuals, as marigolds, China asters, petunias
and phloxes, and sweet peas.
[Illustration: 26. Making the most of a rock.] One of the advantages of
these borders lying at the boundary is that they are always ready to
receive more plants, unless they are full. That is, their symmetry is
not marred if some plants are pulled out and others are put in. And if
the weeds now and then get a start, very little harm is done. Such a
border half full of weeds is handsomer than the average
hole-in-the-lawn geranium bed. An ample border may receive wild plants
every month in the year when the frost is out of the ground. Plants are
dug in the woods or fields, whenever one is on an excursion, even if in
July. The tops are cut off, the roots kept moist until they are placed
in the border; most of these much-abused plants will grow. To be sure,
one will secure some weeds; but then, the weeds are a part of the
collection! Of course, some plants will resent this treatment, but the
border may be a happy family, and be all the better and more personal
because it is the result of moments of relaxation. Such a border has
something new and interesting every month of the growing season; and
even in the winter the tall clumps of grasses and aster-stems hold
their banners above the snow and are a source of delight to every
frolicsome bevy of snowbirds.
I have spoken of a weedland to suggest how simple and easy a thing it
is to make an attractive mass-plantation. One may make the most of a
rock (Fig. 26) or bank, or other undesirable feature of the place. Dig
up the ground and make it rich, and then set plants in it. You will not
get it to suit you the first year, and perhaps not the second or the
third; you can always pull out plants and put more in. I should not
want a lawn-garden so perfect that I could not change it in some
character each year; I should lose interest in it.
It must not be understood that I am speaking only for mixed borders. On
the contrary, it is much better in most cases that each border or bed
be dominated by the expression of one kind of flower or bush. In one
place a person may desire a wild aster effect, or a petunia effect, or
a larkspur effect, or a rhododendron effect; or it may be desirable to
run heavily to strong foliage effects in one direction and to light
flower effects in another. The mixed border is rather more a
flower-garden idea than a landscape idea; when it shall be desirable to
emphasize the one and when the other, cannot be set down in a book.
_The value of plants may lie in foliage and form rather than in bloom._
[Illustration: 27. The plant-form in a perennial salvia.] What kinds of
shrubs and flowers to plant is a wholly secondary and largely a
personal consideration. The main plantings are made up of hardy and
vigorous species; then the things that you like are added. There is
endless choice in the species, but the arrangement or disposition of
the plants is far more important than the kinds; and the foliage and
form of the plant are usually of more importance than its bloom.
The appreciation of foliage effects in the landscape is a higher type
of feeling than the desire for mere color. Flowers are transitory, but
foliage and plant forms are abiding. The common roses have very little
value for landscape planting because the foliage and habit of the
rose-bush are not attractive, the leaves are inveterately attacked by
bugs, and the blossoms are fleeting. Some of the wild roses and the
Japanese _Rosa rugosa_, however, have distinct merit for mass effects.
Even the common flowers, as marigold, zinnias, and gaillardias, are
interesting as plant forms long before they come into bloom. To many
persons the most satisfying epoch in the garden is that preceding the
bloom, for the habits and stature of the plants are then unobscured.
The early stages of lilies, daffodils, and all perennials are most
interesting; and one never appreciates a garden until he realizes that
this is so.
[Illustration: 28. Funkia, or day-lily. Where lies the chief
interest,--in the plant-form or in the bloom?] [Illustration: 29. A
large-leaved nicotiana.] Now let the reader, with these suggestions in
mind, observe for one week the plant-forms in the humble herbs that he
meets, whether these herbs are strong garden plants or the striking
sculpturing of mulleins, burdocks, and jimson-weed. Figures 27 to 31
will be suggestive.
Wild bushes are nearly always attractive in form and habit when planted
in borders and groups. They improve in appearance under cultivation
because they are given a better chance to grow. In wild nature there is
such fierce struggle for existence that plants usually grow to few or
single stems, and they are sparse and scraggly in form; but once given
all the room they want and a good soil, they become luxurious, full,
and comely. In most home grounds in the country the body of the
planting may be very effectively composed of bushes taken from the
adjacent woods and fields. The masses may then be enlivened by the
addition here and there of cultivated bushes, and the planting of
flowers and herbs about the borders. It is not essential that one know
the names of these wild bushes, although a knowledge of their botanical
kinships will add greatly to the pleasure of growing them. Neither will
they look common when transferred to the lawn. There are not many
persons who know even the commonest wild bushes intimately, and the
things change so much in looks when removed to rich ground that few
home-makers recognize them.
[Illustration: 30. The awkward century plant that has been laboriously
carried over winter year by year in the cellar: compare with other
plants here shown as to its value as a lawn subject.]
[Illustration: Fig. 31. Making a picture with rhubarb.]
Odd and formal trees.
[Illustration: Fig 32. A weeping tree at one side of the grounds and
supported by a background.] It is but a corollary of this discussion to
say that plants which are simply odd or grotesque or unusual should be
used with the greatest caution, for they introduce extraneous and
jarring effects. They are little in sympathy with a landscape garden.
An artist would not care to paint an evergreen that is sheared into
some grotesque shape. It is only curious, and shows what a man with
plenty of time and long pruning shears can accomplish. A weeping tree
(particularly of a small-growing species) is usually seen to best
advantage when it stands against a group or mass of foliage (Fig. 32),
as a promontory, adding zest and spirit to the border; it then has
relation with the place.
This leads me to speak of the planting of the Lombardy poplar, which
may be taken as a type of the formal tree, and as an illustration of
what I mean to express. Its chief merits to the average planter are the
quickness of its growth and the readiness with which it multiplies by
sprouts. But in the North it is likely to be a short-lived tree, it
suffers from storms, and it has few really useful qualities. It may be
used to some advantage in windbreaks for peach orchards and other
short-lived plantations; but after a few years a screen of Lombardies
begins to fail, and the habit of suckering from the root adds to its
undesirable features. For shade it has little merit, and for timber
none. Persons like it because it is striking, and this, in an artistic
sense, is its gravest fault. It is unlike anything else in our
landscape, and does not fit into our scenery well. A row of Lombardies
along a roadside is like a row of exclamation points!
IV. Subtropical bedding against a building. Caladiums, cannas,
abutilons, permanent rhododendrons, and other large stuff, with
tuberous begonias and balsams between. IV. Subtropical bedding against
a building. Caladiums, cannas, abutilons, permanent rhododendrons, and
other large stuff, with tuberous begonias and balsams between.
But the Lombardy can often be used to good effect as one factor in a
group of trees, where its spire-like shape, towering above the
surrounding foliage, may lend a spirited charm to the landscape. It
combines well in such groups if it stands in visual nearness to
chimneys or other tall formal objects. Then it gives a sort of
architectural finish and spirit to a group; but the effect is generally
lessened, if not altogether spoiled, in small places, if more than one
Lombardy is in view. One or two specimens may often be used to give
vigor to heavy plantations about low buildings, and the effect is
generally best if they are seen beyond or at the rear of the building.
Note the use that the artist has made of them in the backgrounds in
Figs. 12, 13, and 43.
Poplars and the like.
Another defect in common ornamental planting, which is well illustrated
in the use of poplars, is the desire for plants merely because they
grow rapidly. A very rapid-growing tree nearly always produces cheap
effects. This is well illustrated in the common planting of willows and
poplars about summer places or lake shores. Their effect is almost
wholly one of thinness and temporariness. There is little that suggests
strength or durability in willows and poplars, and for this reason they
should usually be employed as minor or secondary features in ornamental
or home grounds. When quick results are desired, nothing is better to
plant than these trees; but better trees, as maples, oaks, or elms,
should be planted with them, and the poplars and willows should be
removed as rapidly as the other species begin to afford protection.
When the plantation finally assumes its permanent characters, a few of
the remaining poplars and willows, judiciously left, may afford very
excellent effects; but no one who has an artist’s feeling would be
content to construct the framework of his place of these rapid-growing
and soft-wooded trees.
[Illustration: Fig. 33. A spring expression worth securing. Catkins of
the small poplar.] [Illustration: Fig. 34. Plant-form in
cherries.--Reine Hortense.] I have said that the legitimate use of
poplars in ornamental grounds is in the production of minor or
secondary effects. As a rule, they are less adapted to isolated
planting as specimen trees than to using in composition,—that is, as
parts of general groups of trees, where their characters serve to break
the monotony of heavier forms and heavier foliage. The poplars are gay
trees, as a rule, especially those, like the aspens, that have a
trembling foliage. Their leaves are bright and the tree-tops are thin.
The common aspen or “popple,” _Populus tremuloides_, of our woods, is a
meritorious little tree for certain effects. Its dangling catkins (Fig.
33), light, dancing foliage, and silver-gray limbs, are always
cheering, and its autumn color is one of the purest golden-yellows of
our landscape. It is good to see a tree of it standing out in front of
a group of maples or evergreens.
Plant-forms.
Before one attains to great sensitiveness in the appreciation of
gardens, he learns to distinguish plants by their forms. This is
particularly true for trees and shrubs. Each species has its own
“expression,” which is determined by the size that is natural to it,
mode of branching, form of top, twig characters, bark characters,
foliage characters, and to some extent its flower and fruit characters.
It is a useful practice for one to train his eye by learning the
difference in expression of the trees of different varieties of
cherries or pears or apples or other fruits, if he has access to a
plantation of them. The differences in cherries and pears are very
marked (Figs. 34-36). He may also contrast and compare carefully the
kinds of any tree or shrub of which there are two or three species in
the neighborhood, learning to distinguish them without close
examination; as the sugar maple, red maple, soft maple, and Norway
maple (if it is planted); the white or American elm, the cork elm, the
slippery elm, the planted European elms; the aspen, large-toothed
poplar, cottonwood, balm of gilead, Carolina poplar, Lombardy poplar;
the main species of oaks; the hickories; and the like.
[Illustration: Fig. 35. Morello cherry.] [Illustration: Fig. 36. May
Duke cherry.] It will not be long before the observer learns that many
of the tree and shrub characters are most marked in winter; and he will
begin unconsciously to add the winter to his year.
_Various specific examples_.
The foregoing remarks will mean more if the reader is shown some
concrete examples. I have chosen a few cases, not because they are the
best, or even because they are always good enough for models, but
because they lie in my way and illustrate what I desire to teach.
A front yard example.
We will first look at a very ordinary front yard. It contained no
plants, except a pear tree standing near the corner of the house. Four
years later sees the yard as shown in Fig. 37. An exochorda is the
large bush in the very foreground, and the porch foundation is screened
and a border is thereby given to the lawn. The length of this planting
from end to end is about fourteen feet, with a projection towards the
front on the left of ten feet. In the bay at the base of this
projection the planting is only two feet wide or deep, and from here it
gradually swings out to the steps, eight feet wide. The prominent
large-leaved plant near the steps is a bramble, _Rubus odoratus_, very
common in the neighborhood, and it is a choice plant for decorative
planting, when it is kept under control. The plants in this border in
front of the porch are all from the wild, and comprise a prickly ash,
several plants of two wild osiers or dogwoods, a spice bush, rose, wild
sunflowers and asters and golden-rods. The promontory at the left is a
more ambitious but less effective mass. It contains an exochorda, a
reed, variegated elder, sacaline, variegated dogwood, tansy, and a
young tree of wild crab. At the rear of the plantation, next the house,
one sees the pear tree. The best single part of the planting is the
reed (_Arundo Donax_) overtopping the exochorda. The photograph was
taken early in summer, before the reed had become conspicuous.
[Illustration: 37. The planting in a simple front yard.]
A ground plan of this planting is shown in Fig. 38. At A is the walk
and B the steps. An opening at D serves as a passage. The main
planting, in front of the porch, fourteen feet long, received twelve
plants, some of which have now spread into large clumps. At 1 is a
large bush of osier, _Cornus Baileyi_, one of the best red-stemmed
bushes. At 2 is a mass of _Rubus odoratus_; at 5 asters and
golden-rods; at 3 a clump of wild sunflowers. The projecting planting
on the left comprises about ten plants, of which 4 is exochorda, 6 is
arundo or reed, at the back of which is a large clump of sacaline, and
7 is a variegated-leaved elder.
[Illustration: Fig. 38. Plan of the planting shown in Fig. 37.]
[Illustration: Fig. 39. Diagram of a back-yard planting. 50 x 90 feet.]
Another example.
[Illustration: Fig. 40. The beginning of a landscape garden.]
[Illustration: Fig. 41. The result in five years.]
A back yard is shown in Fig. 39. The owner wanted a tennis court, and
the yard is so small as not to allow of wide planting at the borders.
However, something could be done. On the left is a weedland border,
which formed the basis of the discussion of wild plants on page 35. In
the first place, a good lawn was made. In the second place, no walks or
drives were laid in the area. The drive for grocers’ wagons and coal is
seen in the rear, ninety feet from the house. From I to J is the
weedland, separating the area from the neighbor’s premises. Near I is a
clump of roses. At K is a large bunch of golden-rods. H marks a clump
of yucca. G is a cabin, covered with vines on the front. From G to F is
an irregular border, about six feet wide, containing barberries,
forsythias, wild elder, and other bushes. D E is a screen of Russian
mulberry, setting off the clothes yard from the front lawn. Near the
back porch, at the end of the screen, is an arbor covered with wild
grapes, making a play-house for the children. A clump of lilacs stands
at A. At B is a vine-covered screen, serving as a hammock support. The
lawn made and the planting done, it was next necessary to lay the
walks. These are wholly informal affairs, made by sinking a plank ten
inches wide into the ground to a level with the sod. The border
plantings of this yard are too straight and regular for the most
artistic results, but such was necessary in order not to encroach upon
the central space. Yet the reader will no doubt agree that this yard is
much better than it could be made by any system of scattered and
spotted planting. Let him imagine how a glowing carpet-bed would look
set down in the center of this lawn!
A third example.
[Illustration: Fig. 42. A meaningless back-yard planting, and an
unnecessary drive.] [Illustration: Fig. 43. Suggestions for improving
Fig. 42.]
The making of a landscape picture is well illustrated in Figs. 40, 41.
The former shows a small clay field (seventy-five feet wide, and three
hundred feet deep), with a barn at the rear. In front of the barn is a
screen of willows. The observer is looking from the dwelling-house. The
area has been plowed and seeded for a lawn. The operator has then
marked out a devious line upon either border with a hoe handle, and all
the space between these borders has been gone over with a garden roller
to mark the area of the desired greensward.
The borders are now planted with a variety of small trees, bushes, and
herbs. Five years later the view shown in Fig. 41 was taken.
A small back yard.
A back yard is shown in Fig. 42. It is approximately sixty feet square.
At present it contains a drive, which is unnecessary, expensive to keep
in repair, and destructive of any attempt to make a picture of the
area. The place could be improved by planting it somewhat after the
manner of Fig. 43.
V. A subtropical bed. Center of cannas, with border of _Pennisetum
longistylum_ (a grass) started in late February or early March. V. A
subtropical bed. Center of cannas, with border of _Pennisetum
longistylum_ (a grass) started in late February or early March.
A city lot.
[Illustration: Fig. 44. Present outline of a city back yard, desired to
be planted.]
A plan of a city lot is given in Fig. 44. The area is fifty by one
hundred, and the house occupies the greater part of the width. It is
level, but the surrounding land is higher, resulting in a sharp
terrace, three or four feet high, on the rear, E D. This terrace
vanishes at C on the right, but extends nearly the whole length of the
other side, gradually diminishing as it approaches A. There is a
terrace two feet high extending from A to B, along the front. Beyond
the line E D is the rear of an establishment which it is desired to
hide. Since the terraces set definite borders to this little place, it
is desirable to plant the boundaries rather heavily. If the adjoining
lawns were on the same level, or if the neighbors would allow one area
to be merged into the other by pleasant slopes, the three yards might
be made into one picture; but the place must remain isolated.
There are three problems of structural planting in the place: to
provide a cover or screen at the rear; to provide lower border masses
on the side terraces; to plant next the foundations of the house. Aside
from these problems, the grower is entitled to have a certain number of
specimen plants, if he has particular liking for given types, but these
specimens must be planted in some relation to the structural masses,
and not in the middle of the lawn.
The owner desired a mixed planting, for variety. The following shrubs
were actually selected and planted. The place is in central New York:—
_Shrubs for the tall background_
2 Barberry, _Berberis vulgaris_ and var. _purpurea_.
1 Cornus Mas.
2 Tall deutzias.
3 Lilacs.
2 Mock oranges, _Philadelphus grandiflorus_ and _P. coronarius_.
2 Variegated elders.
2 Eleagnus, _Elœagnus hortensis_ and _E. longipes_.
1 Exochorda.
2 Hibiscuses.
Privet.
3 Viburnums.
1 Snowball.
1 Tartarian honeysuckle.
1 Silver Bell, _Halesia tetraptera_.
[Illustration: Fig. 45. The planting of the terrace in Fig. 44.]
These were planted on the sloping bank of the terrace, from E to D. The
terrace has an incline, or width, of about three feet. Figure 45 shows
this terrace after the planting was completed, looking from the point
C.
_Shrubs of medium size, suitable for side plantings and groups in the
foregoing example_
3 Barberries, _Berberis Thunbergii_.
3 Osier dogwoods, variegated.
2 Japanese quinces, _Cydonia Japonica_ and _C. Maulei_.
4 Tall deutzias.
1 Variegated elder.
7 Weigelas, assorted colors.
1 Rhodotypos.
9 Spireas of medium growth, assorted.
1 Rubus odoratus.
1 Lonicera fragrantissima.
[Illustration: Fig. 46. Said to have been planted.]
Most of these shrubs were planted in a border two feet wide, extending
from B to C D, the planting beginning about ten feet back from the
street. Some of them were placed on the terrace at the left, extending
from E one-fourth of the distance to A. The plants were set about two
feet apart. A strong clump was placed at N to screen the back yard. In
this back yard a few small fruit trees and a strawberry bed were
planted.
_Low informal shrubs for front of porch and banking against house_
3 Deutzia gracilis.
6 Kerrias, green and variegated.
3 Daphne Mezereum.
3 Lonicera Halliana.
3 Rubus phœnicolasius.
3 Symphoricarpus vulgaris.
4 Mahonias.
1 Ribes aureum.
1 Ribes sanguineum.
1 Rubus cratægifolius.
1 Rubus fruticosus var. laciniatus.
[Illustration: Fig. 47. An area well filled. Compare Fig. 46.]
These bushes were planted against the front of the house (a porch on a
high foundation extends to the right from O), from the walk around to
P, and a few of them were placed at the rear of the house.
_Specimen shrubs for mere ornament, for this place_
Azalea.
Rhododendron.
Rose.
2 Hydrangeas.
1 Snowball.
1 each Forsythia suspensa and F. viridissima.
2 Flowering almonds.
These were planted in conspicuous places here and there against the
other masses.
Here are one hundred excellent and interesting bushes planted in a yard
only fifty feet wide and one hundred feet deep, and yet the place has
as much room in it as it had before. There is abundant opportunity
along the borders for dropping in cannas, dahlias, hollyhocks, asters,
geraniums, coleuses, and other brilliant plants. The bushes will soon
begin to crowd, to be sure, but a mass is wanted, and the narrowness of
the plantations will allow each bush to develop itself laterally to
perfection. If the borders become too thick, however, it is an easy
matter to remove some of the bushes; but they probably will not.
Picture the color and variety and life in that little yard. And if a
pigweed now and then gets a start in the border, it would do no harm to
let it alone: it belongs there! Then picture the same area filled with
disconnected, spotty, dyspeptic, and unspirited flower-beds and rose
bushes!
Various examples.
[Illustration: Fig. 48. The screening of the tennis-screen.]
[Illustration: Fig. 49. At the bottom of the clothes-post.]
Strong and bare foundations should be relieved by heavy planting. Fill
the corners with snow-drifts of foliage. Plant with a free hand, as if
you meant it (compare Figs. 46 and 47). The corner by the steps is a
perennial source of bad temper. The lawn-mower will not touch it, and
the grass has to be cut with a butcher-knife. If nothing else comes to
hand, let a burdock grow in it (Fig. 1).
The tennis-screen may be relieved by a background (Fig. 48), and a
clump of ribbon-grass or something else is out of the way against a
post (Fig. 49).
Excellent mass effects may be secured by cutting well-established
plants of sumac, ailanthus, basswood, and other strong-growing things,
to the ground each year, for the purpose of securing the stout shoots.
Figure 50 will give the hint.
[Illustration: Fig. 50. Young shoots of ailanthus (and sunflowers for
variety).]
But if one has no area which he can make into a lawn and upon which he
can plant such verdurous masses, what then may he do? Even then there
may be opportunity for a little neat and artistic planting. Even if one
lives in a rented house, he may bring in a bush or an herb from the
woods, and paint a picture with it. Plant it in the corner by the
steps, in front of the porch, at the corner of the house,—almost
anywhere except in the center of the lawn. Make the ground rich, secure
a strong root, and plant it with care; then wait. The little clump will
not only have a beauty and interest of its own, but it may add
immensely to the furniture of the yard.
[Illustration: Fig. 51. A backyard cabin.]
About these clumps one may plant bulbs of glowing tulips or dainty
snowdrops and lilies-of-the-valley; and these may be followed with
pansies and phlox and other simple folk. Very soon one finds himself
deeply interested in these random and detached pictures, and almost
before he is aware he finds that he has rounded off the corners of the
house, made snug little arbors of wild grapes and clematis, covered the
rear fence and the outhouse with actinidia and bitter-sweet, and has
thrown in dashes of color with hollyhocks, cannas, and lilies, and has
tied the foundations of the buildings to the greensward by low strands
of vines or deft bits of planting. He soon comes to feel that flowers
are most expressive of the best emotions when they are daintily dropped
in here and there against a background of foliage, or else made a
side-piece in the place. There is no limit to the adaptations; Figs. 51
to 58 suggest some of the backyard possibilities.
Presently he rebels at the bold, harsh, and impudent designs of some of
the gardeners, and grows into a resourceful love of plant forms and
verdure. He may still like the weeping and cut-leaved and party-colored
trees of the horticulturist, but he sees that their best effects are to
be had when they are planted sparingly, as borders or promontories of
the structural masses.
[Illustration: Fig. 52. A garden path with hedgerows, trellis, and
bench, in formal treatment.]
The best planting, as the best painting and the best music, is possible
only with the best and tenderest feeling and the closest living with
nature. One’s place grows to be a reflection of himself, changing as he
changes, and expressing his life and sympathies to the last.
_Review_
We have now discussed some of the principles and applications of
landscape architecture or landscape gardening, particularly in
reference to the planting. The object of landscape gardening is _to
make a picture_. All the grading, seeding, planting, are incidental and
supplemental to this one central idea. The greensward is the canvas,
the house or some other prominent point is the central figure, the
planting completes the composition and adds the color.
[Illustration: Fig. 53. An enclosure for lawn games.] [Illustration:
Fig. 54. Sunlight and shadow.]
The second conception 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 that are to be used very cautiously, as little 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.
Some of the most important of these secondary yet underlying
considerations are as follows:—
The place is to be conceived of 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
improvements that will add to the forcefulness of the entire structure.
A dabbler would add a chimney here, a window there, and apply various
daubs of paint to the building. Each of these features might be good in
itself. The paints might be the best of ochre, ultramarine, or paris
green, but they might have no relation to the building as a whole and
would be only ludicrous. These two examples illustrate the difference
between landscape gardening and the scattering over the place of mere
ornamental features.
[Illustration: Fig. 55. An upland garden, with grass-grown steps,
sundial, and edge of foxgloves.] [Illustration: Fig. 56. A garden
corner.]
There should be _one central and emphatic point in the picture_. A
picture of a battle draws its interest 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 loses 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_.
In a landscape picture _flowers are incidents_. They add emphasis,
supply color, give variety and finish; they are the 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 on _the positions that plants occupy with reference to
each other and to the structural design of the place_, than on the
intrinsic merits of the plants themselves.
Landscape gardening, then, is the embellishment of grounds in such a
way that they will have a nature-like or landscape effect. The flowers
and accessories may heighten and accelerate the effect, but they should
not contradict it.
[Illustration: Fig. 57. An old-fashioned doorway.]
[Illustration: Fig. 58. An informally treated stream.]