THE GENERAL PLAN OR THEORY OF THE PLACE - Continued
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.]