Chapter 12

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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._

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.

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.

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.

Flower-borders.

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.

Odd and formal trees.

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.

Another example.

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.

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.

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_.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.