Creager n ee ew ORR AUER Asis Bs mae s bare ea ee nT nn Sn ienmmmmmmmmmans id rasetties Wee ets WHS rare HO re rete Witte (ACE Pen TUOERRRER RHR STAR BART ERATE an i 1 5 PHT trendy iano eee ae teat fine, ‘ "WWE beta Hh ) tee aa! ' ” afG » a fi « = a a a s = a o s ™ a ™ « a - = a = e ar se ‘ye v ASR Cornell Univ: =| ea ersity Library | SB 472.w35 The natural vi landsca 3 1924 015 917 580 iui fe ~ Ta ory a SEE & - oe Hera Re Day ALES ey DATE DUE Poe yi ee er | With ii] = = oe ae G A GAYLORD CORNELL. CPS TER LIBRARIES TEREACA DY. 14893 OC Bite Ares Libravy DATE DUE GAYLOFO PRINTED INU.S.A. BLACKMORE LAKE, MONTANA Photograph by Schlechten The Natural Style in LANDSCAPE GARDENING FRANK A. WAUGH BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED Copynicut, 1917, py Ricoarp G. BapGER All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America The Gorham Press, Boston, U.S. A. R.B.MELLON Dee 21 1917 PITTSBURGH,PA. TO GEORGE A. PARKER LOVER OF THE LANDSCAPE AND LOVER OF MANKIND CONTENTS PAGE WuattIs Meant. . . . . . .) SCO Tue Native LanpscaPe . . . . . ... . 85 Form anp Spirir. . . . . . Tue Lanpscape Motive. . . . . . . . 64 PrincipLes oF StrucTuRAL CoMPosiITION . . . . 74 Tue Art or GRouPING . p 3 3 F ; ; . 92 Features AND FurNIsHINGs . . . . . . . 120 Tue Open Fizstp. . «ww wtetassi<‘“CStstsé‘C;t;é*é«*z KO Inprex So? Ee LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Mountain Scenery—Blackmore Lake, Montana. Frontispiece FACING PAGH Explorations Inland . The Meadow Brook Sunlight in the Birches Pipes o’ Pan . . In the Rocky Mountains . A National Forest Landscape, Arizona Pulling Over the Rapids . Informal Composition, Grounds of the Massachusetts Agricultural College . In the Berkshire Hills Early Springtime ae os As Viewed from the Bridge . On Mount Toby, Massachusetts » aE Naturalistic Composition, Grounds of the Massachusetts Agricultural College . New England Country Road . “Going Fishing.” The Country Road . Naturalistic Composition, Back Yard Garden . A Natural Grouping of Trees Row of Trees Along the Pasture Fence Old Apple Orchard : Walk Along Rock Creek, Washington, D. C. Chestnut Trunks. An Effective Grouping . Hillside Garden. Grounds of the Massachusetts Agri- cultural College . 18 18 22 22 30 30 38 Tast of Illustrations FACING PAGE A Garden Campfire. The Author’s Garden . 130 Mountain Trail 130 142 Where Woods and Meadow Meet . THE NATURAL STYLE IN LANDSCAPE GARDENING THE NATURAL STYLE IN LAND- SCAPE GARDENING WHAT IS MEANT LL the older men and women now living Av recollections of garden matters run back, say into the seventies, will remember the violent controversy then raging between the advocates of the formal garden on the one side and of the natural style on the other. Those were days of violent partizanship in all matters. In poli- tics and religion people were habitually intolerant. In certain families it was held that to vote the demo- cratic ticket was prima facie evidence of murder, arson, and embezzlement of funds. In other circles it was fully agreed that unless one were immersed into a particular church he would surely land in the eternal fires. Amongst people trained in this temper the ardent disagreements over garden style were perfectly natural and necessary. 11 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening And, we ought to add, altogether bad. Though some theorists may argue that the modern man’s lack of strong convictions is a weakness, it is per- fectly plain that the growth of tolerance, the broad- ening of view, the greater catholicity of taste in all matters, mark a very genuine advance. It is a great and genuine gain for the spirit of humanity. This change, which has marked all realms of thought, has been as effective in the field of land- scape gardening as anywhere else. To those of us who remember it, it has been equally agreeable. We may fairly claim to have achieved a full freedom in these matters. Every well-trained landscape architect in America designs freely in either the formal or the natural style, frequently using both styles in different parts of the same project. The ill-natured polemics of the seven- ties have disappeared altogether from the garden literature of the present day. This change has been wholly for good. I rejoice in every thought of it; and as I take up now a dis- cussion of the natural style, my unwavering alle- giance to the modern catholicism must be most em- 12 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening phatically declared. Thus when I find it necessary to praise the natural style, to allege some neglect of it, and to make some comparisons in its favor, these statements must not be taken to reflect ad- versely on any other style nor to indicate a partizan opinion. To trace fully the development of the idea of a natural style in gardening would be exceedingly interesting, but it would require a great deal of time and space. Fortunately a complete histori- cal review is not necessary to our present purposes. It is essential to observe, however, that the natural style has meant very different things at different times. Nearly every reformer has advertised his own work as more natural than his predecessors, or as a “return to nature.” The garden of Eden is described as designed in the natural style. Batty Langley was one of the most interesting of these reformers, and it is worth while now to note what was his idea of the natural style. The plate used as an end paper in this volume, from his book, will show pretty clearly what he had in mind when he announced his “New Principles of Gar- 13 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening dening: Or, The Laying out and Planting Par- terres, Groves, Wildernesses, Labyrinths, Ave- nues, Parks, &c., after a more Grand and Rural Manner, than has been done before.” Another curious episode was the career of Laun- celot Brown—‘‘Old Capability Brown,” as his jeal- ous critics dubbed him. His contribution to the natural style was the discovery that “Nature ab- hors a straight line.” Therefore away with straight lines. With a strong start in this direction it is easy to conclude that the further we get away from the straight line the nearer we get to Nature. So Brown made walks and drives and artificial water- courses so crooked that they lost their way. It was said that his walks tied themselves in true lovers’ knots and that his made rivers often doubled and crossed their own courses. Brown made himself thoroughly ridiculous, but he illustrated one idea of the natural style, and an idea which has more recently and in a milder form had a distinguished hearing in America. After Brown arose a small group of doctrinaires who theorized that the only way to make a truly 14 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng natural composition was to copy it in detail from nature. The neglected moraine, the common stone heap and the untutored wayside copse became their patterns to be slavishly reproduced in their “gar- dens.” Because broken, dead and blasted trees were found in the native woods these enthusiasts transplanted dead trees to their private parks. These extravagances, however, soon followed Laun- celot Brown’s crooked line theory into the limbo of discarded jokes. The idea of making literal transcriptions from Nature has had a much greater and more interest- ing development elsewhere. What we know (and very vaguely understand) as the Japanese style of landscape gardening—a style which it appears originated in China—is founded precisely on this theory. The original idea was to copy certain clas- sic landscapes or landscape arrangements; and as these first oriental landscape gardeners were priests, and as their gardening was primarily for the em- bellishment of the temple grounds, their prime models were certain sacred landscapes, made sa- cred by association with other shrines. 15 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening These sacred landscape arrangements were then reproduced in other localities, but, as in a drawing, to a scale considerably smaller than the originals. It was considered obligatory to preserve this reduced scale throughout the copy. Thus if the copy was at one-tenth the size of the original, each hill and each tree must be reduced in the same propor- tion. While obviously this theory has not been rigidly adhered to in all examples of Japanese gardening, it has been carried far enough to make most gardens seem very curious to occidental eyes. But the Japanese gardener sometimes asserts that his is the only natural style, and from his point of view he is just as nearly right as anybody else. In America there have been less radical but very plain differences of opinion as to what really con- stitutes a natural style. The idea which has had the widest vogue has certainly been the native flora cult. A very respectable number of very respecta- ble gardening persons (with perhaps the tender sex predominating) have made themselves quite de- lightful grounds with plants selected strictly from the local flora. Of course there have been some 16 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening differences. One gardener would accept any spe- cies native to America; another insists on plants from his own state; the garden maker of real con- victions accepts nothing but what grows naturally on his own farm. My friend Dr. Wilhelm Miller in his recent cru- sade for “the Illinois way” represents a temperate recrudescence of this native plant propaganda. For it is a part of “the Illinois way” to use Lllinois plants. The arguments for this way are largely the arguments for a natural style of gardening. Probably the majority of trained landscape ar- chitects when designing in the natural style employ a good many non-indigenous species. Their test is simply that a plant shall be effectively natural- ized. Their compositions are pictorial—made to appeal to the eye rather than to a botanical edu- cation. If a plant looks perfectly at home it is to all reasonable requirements natural. This seems to be a safe middle-ground. Cer- tainly he would be a hard theorist and an intoler- able puritan who would exclude the common lilac and the homely apple tree from his grounds simply 17 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening because they are not native to America. It wouldn’t be good democratic Americanism, either, for the great bulk of our citizens are derived from foreign stocks. The anti-straight-line theory as a fundamental element of the natural style seems to have been held by Downing and by Olmsted, Senior. It has been much emphasized by some of their followers; but careful designers have learned that simply to avoid straight lines and radial curves gets one nowhere. It certainly does not lead to naturalness. Indeed, it seems philosophically impossible to found any positive or constructive method on any purely negative dictum. In order to arrive at a perfectly clear conception of what we now mean when we talk among ourselves about the natural style, it seems best to consider more carefully what is meant by style in landscape gardening. It is one of the unfortunate vagaries of language that this term has assumed a special meaning in landscape gardening distinctly differ- ent from what it carries in other arts. In litera- ture, where this other meaning is clearest, style 18 EXPLORATIONS INLAND THE MEADOW BROOK Photographs by the Author The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening signifies the personal peculiarities of the author. Mr. William Dean Howells has his style by which ~ his work can be recognized, and David Grayson has his. In landscape gardening, on the other hand, styles are national—perhaps, more strictly speaking, ra- cial. The Japanese style embodies the garden char- acteristics of a whole race. The Italian style does the same. Every style which ever had a name was called by the name of the race or nation which prac- ticed it; and one of the questions now before the house is whether we shall ever have an American style. We may therefore define style, as used in this particular art, as being the expression of the na- tional, racial or ethnic quality in landscape garden- ing. But what of the natural and the formal styles of gardening? They do not bear national names, though they have been often and inaptly called the English and the Italian styles. The fact is that these are not styles at all in any strict use of lan- guage, but great garden forms. The formal form 19 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening may be closely compared to poetry and the infor- mal form to prose. Each is a structural method of composition—a form. Poetry is one literary form; prose is another. National or personal styles may be expressed through either of these forms. Up to this point, therefore, and subject to a very important addition later to be made, we may say that the so-called natural style is really a funda- mental garden form. It is a structural form char- acterized by certain resemblances to the natural landscape. These points of resemblance are some- times quite arbitrarily chosen by the garden de- signer, and sometimes quite artificially developed; but it is always the logical aim of the artist to discover and to follow the principles of composi- tion followed by nature. This structural form is distinguished further, in a purely negative manner, by contrast with the formal garden form, which is symmetrical, bal- anced, enclosed and determinate, whereas the in- formal form is unsymmetrical, not obviously bal- anced, not apparently enclosed and not marked by visible boundaries. 20 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening (Our terminology here, where we speak of the formal form and the informal form, is execrable, but it is unavoidable, and the ideas are perfectly definite and logical.) Our partial definition of the so-called natural style of landscape gardening speaks of it in terms of form. But any vital style must have something more than form. It must also have a living, breath- ing spirit. Any form without spirit is dead and fit only for the crematory. . What then is the informing spirit of the natural style? Is it not the spirit of the natural landscape? We speak of the spirit of the woods, or the spirit of the mountains; and, quite as precisely as common language can ever convey spiritual ideas, we know what we mean. We do actually have a perfectly clear idea in mind when we speak of these things. The idea is not only clear, but valuable in the highest degree. Our spiritual ideas are always more important than our thoughts about materials; and it is more important to any man—much more im- portant—to know the spirit of the woods or the spirit of the plains or the spirit of the mountains, 21 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng than to know the properties of benzine or the names of golf clubs or the uses of gunpowder. It is not difficult to see that this spirit of the landscape is different from the spirit of architec- ture. Thus any one who is capable of a spiritual conception of any sort can readily accept the prin- ciple that, while the formal garden should be ani- mated by the architectural spirit, the informal gar- den should live by the spirit of the landscape. We are all so much unaccustomed to thinking in spiritual terms, and the significance of this idea is so essential, that it will be well to spend a little more time upon it. For purposes of illustration let us imagine ourselves sitting on the pasture fence in the friendly sunshine of a warm June afternoon. Before us there spreads, let us say, the rolling green pasture lands, interspersed with scattered oaks, and in the midst a dimpling deliberate river. In the shade of the trees the well-fed cows rest and rumi- nate. Over all stretches the quiet blue sky, deep- ening to a purpling haze along the distant horizon as the afternoon wanes. It is a landscape which appeals to every physical sense. We rejoice to 22 PIPES 0° PAN Photographs by the Author The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening be alive in it. But does it not appeal to other than our physical senses? Does it not touch some spiritual sense? As we, civilized human beings, sit there amidst the glory of that June landscape, do we appre- hend nothing but the physical landscape? What do we really see? Only the trees and the grass and the river? Only these? If that is really all we see then the good Jersey cow ruminating under the tree has a very substantial advantage over us. She sees the tree and the grass and the river; and besides that she sees a square meal. She crops the grass, drinks the water, retires to the shade of the tree and ruminates. Do we bring back from that fair landscape any- thing which we may ruminate? If we really do suc- ceed in capturing something more than what the cow gets, that harvest must be a spiritual product. It is the spirit of the landscape. There may be men and women who get less from the landscape than the cow does. If there are, I am sure they will not admit it. So perhaps we may let the case rest there for the present. In a 23 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening subsequent chapter we shall give more extended discussion to the meaning of the native landscape. This is in reality an endeavor to understand the landscape in spiritual terms, and thus to make more clear our full definition which is that the natural style of landscape gardening endeavors to present its pictures in forms typical of the natural land- scape and made vital by the landscape spirit. In this connection it is essential to remember that a good deal of landscape art, and especially that which adopts the natural style, is not required to make every picture out of whole cloth. It might be more accurately described as intelligently let- ting alone a natural landscape. What does the wise landscape gardener do when called upon to treat a stretch of attractive natural scenery? He must, first and foremost, endeavor to understand the spirit of his landscapes. 'Then his work will be to simplify and accentuate the characteristic natural forms (chiefly topography and flora), and to clar- ify and interpret the spirit of the place. This clari- fication and interpretation of spiritual values is the real work of the real artist. 24 THE NATIVE LANDSCAPE HETHER our foregoing definition of \ \ the natural style is adequate or defec- tive, it must be plain that any natural- istic style of landscape gardening is largely de- pendent on the native landscape. The ideas, mo- tives, and methods must come mainly from nature. Indeed, it would seem certain that any landscape architect of any school must know and love the landscape. Such knowledge and such sympathy would be fundamentally and absolutely necessary. Whenever the designer professes, however, to do his landscape gardening in the natural style, it would seem doubly incumbent on him to bring to his work a critical understanding of nature’s land- scape and a love of the native landscape at once ardent, sane, discriminating and balanced. A mere boyish enthusiasm will not answer. It must be the true, tried and fixed love of maturity. Thus it becomes the first and perhaps the most 25 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening important step in landscape gardening, especially naturalistic landscape gardening, to know and to love the native landscape. Both knowledge and love are required. Can we, now, point out any practical approach to the landscape? any way of understanding it better? especially any means of loving it more? Assuredly we can. At the outset we may gain some respect for the landscape by observing its power. It does exert a truly marvelous power upon the intelligence of men; and their feelings, which lie deeper, are even more profoundly affected. Common men love the landscape passionately. The attachment to home is largely the love of landscape. When the army of Cyrus, defeated and disheartened, came back from their long campaign in Persia, they fell down and wept when, from the top of a hill, they caught the first view of the sea. It was to them the land- scape of home. They were not especially suscepti- ble or responsive men—certainly not artists trained to the love of beauty. Human nature is still the same. Any man, no matter how dull, who has grown up amongst the hills of Vermont has, neces- 26 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening sarily and positively, a deep love of that particular landscape in his heart. Let him be exiled for a few years in Texas or France or Chicago and then let him revisit the Green Mountains. His heart will leap up like a mother to her child. His emotions will be stirred to their profoundest depths. There is hardly a human experience anywhere of greater reach or power. This particular experience, while universal and known of all men, is somewhat provincial. Culti- vated men learn to love other landscapes than those to which they were born. A part of the value of landscape lies in its universality. The landscape is everywhere. The lover of books cannot always live in a library; the lover of music cannot find anywhere a perpetual concert; the lover of paint- ing cannot shut himself up in an art gallery; but the lover of the landscape has his joy always with him. Even the hater of the landscape, if there could be such a man, could not escape from it. Now since art is after all primarily the love and enjoyment of the beautiful, and since the land- scape is physically present to all people, and since 27 — The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening it appeals powerfully to practically all people, we must regard it as the principal source in the world of esthetic joy. It is the world’s principal reser- voir of beauty. It does more for the esthetic life of mankind than all the painting, sculpture, po- etry and architecture in all the world taken to- gether. This is a large claim, but it is a simple and obvious truth. For this reason we should all greatly reverence the native landscape, should seek to conserve it for human use and enjoyment, should endeavor to make it physically accessible to all, should try to make it intelligible to all, should work to open up for it the way to men’s hearts. Let us take the case of the young man who pro- poses to become a landscape architect and who hopes to do some of his work in the natural style —or the informal form, if we prefer an exacter nomenclature. In his earnest desire to know and love the native landscape his first plain step will be to associate with it. He will go out with the landscape. He will spend hours, days and weeks with it. Instead of going to the bowling alleys, 28 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening the billiard rooms, the dances and the movies, he will go to the hills, he will visit the lakes, he will follow the brooks, he will camp on the plains. All this is so simple, so obvious, so easy, that it needs only to be mentioned to be established as a fruitful means of landscape study. Of course the student will visit the landscape— no, he will live with it—with an open mind and heart. He will be trying to see what the landscape has to offer, trying to hear what it has to tell. He will look long, quietly, silently, intently at the hori- zon, or at the distant valley, or at the mountains. And most of all he will consciously seek their spirit- ual message. He will know that as a man it is ab- solutely obligatory upon him to see something in that landscape more than the cow sees. Whatever he gets beyond what the cow gets is the spiritual harvest of the landscape. It is the only part which is of any human use. In another place I have tried to extend the defi- nition of the landscape to include such items as the sky, and the weather. The man who is thus con- scientiously seeking the spiritual message of the 29 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng landscape will look long and often at the sky. My own students are directed to spend frequent hours of solitude lying on their backs looking up into the depths of the heavens. This exercise should be practiced nights as well as days. The deep infinities of the sky are more visible when pricked out by the twinkling stars than when illuminated by the sun. The exercise should be used also in all weathers—when the sky is full of fresh falling snow or of pearly raindrops. For the landscape lover must love all aspects of the sky and all moods of the weather. While the fundamental psychological appeal of the landscape is universal, reaching to all men’s hearts, there are differences in minor manifesta- tions. The landscape does not mean the same to everybody. The landscape, like religion or any other great experience, is “all things to all men.” To the farmer the landscape is a part of the day’s work. He plows and sows and harvests the landscape. If he is a true farmer his fields become inestimably dear to him. The sun, the wind, and the rain are his friends. He knows and loves them. 30 IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS A NATIONAL FOREST LANDSCAPE—ARIZONA Photographs by the United States Forest Service The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng The forester lives in the woods. To him the landscape is full of trees. These are spread over rocky mountain sides and interspersed with friendly brooks. So the landscape takes on for the forester a very special color and character. In America the pioneer has played a deeply sig- nificant role. There have been generations of pion- eers, from those who landed at Plymouth and Jamestown to those who settled the plains and captured the Oregon. This body of pioneers has moved forward across the continent from one ocean to the other with a slow, steady, indefeasible march. For more than 200 years their campfires lighted the way. Generation after generation of hardy men and women lived roughly in the open or sheltered by log huts or sod shanties. They lived very near to the landscape. They loved it profoundly. Many of them loved it so deeply that they could not bear to share it with neighbors. As soon as the settle- ments arrived and the landscape was invaded and despoiled, the pioneers moved on. To understand anything of American history it is necessary to understand these pioneers, and to un- 31 —h The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening derstand them at all we must understand their love of the landscape. This element has had a wide- reaching influence in American life. This feeling, perhaps in a form of genuine hered- ity, shows itself frequently in the best established citizens in the midst of our most complicated mod- ern civilization. Men break away from big cities year by year and seek the wilderness. They go to the farthest solitudes. They spend the longest va- cations they can capture in hunting, fishing, tramp- ing. They find a fierce joy in the wilderness. The landscape to them means freedom. It means re- lease from a strenuous civilization which at best they find only partly good. All outdoor sports constitute more or less tem- porary release from civilization and a return to the landscape. Fox chasing, automobiling, fly fishing, and the entire list of outdoor recreations belong in this category. They are merely so many different ways of reaching the landscape. Even the more socialized competitive outdoor sports, such as baseball and football, are still out- door sports. The baseball game would be worth- 32 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening less if it were not played under the open sky. The spectators on the bleachers must still look up and see the blue heavens even if the horizon is damned with a circle of painted signs advertising the worst brands of beer and tobacco. A. more refined and lady-like approach to the landscape is found in gardening. Gardening as a polite domestic art is perhaps the most com- plete combination of civilization and the landscape which has yet been devised. If we press this on to ' the point where it becomes really landscape garden- ing it would surely deserve this description, for what could landscape gardening be except such a full and final fusion of the landscape with the social human artificial domestic garden? One who undertakes to study the native land- scape with any thoroughness should properly ap- proach the subject by studying the principal types of native landscape. It will not do simply to study the landscape in general. One must be more ana- lytic and specific. As a matter of fact most persons in their primary love of home found their love of landscape upon 33 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening acquaintance with a particular type. The citizen of Cape Cod loves the sea and the dunes. The native of Nebraska loves the plains. The habitant of Quebec loves the woods, and the men bred amongst the mountains of Colorado must love the white-peaked Rockies. The man who really sets out to know and love the landscape, however, whether he be a student of landscape architecture or a mere citizen of the universe, will try to know different types of land- scape. He will seek to make the acquaintance of as many distinct types as possible. For this rea- son it is desirable to consider what are the princi- pal landscape types. It is reasonably accurate to say, though there is nothing scientific in the classification, that the four great types of landscape are the sea, the mountains, the plains, and the forests. These great types every one should know. Certainly every man who professes to be a landscape architect should assimi- late into his own life these fundamental landscape forms. The sea has always been a power in human 34 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening thought. Its wide and infinite reaches, its constant motion, its vivid expression of power, its versatile changes, its human and super-human moods, its delicate colorings, even its salty smell, make it so vivid that no human consciousness could possibly escape it. A mere glimpse of the sea must pro- foundly impress the most unsympathetic stranger. How deeply it affects those who live with it all history can tell. Likewise the mountains in their sublime alti- tudes are capable of moving men’s hearts and minds to the utmost. They have a character of their own as much as the sea. Whole nations have lived with the mountains and drawn their character from them. To the man from a different environment the plains seem monotonous. Their wide expanse, their level horizon, do not make an instant impres- sion. Yet the men and women who live there know that this wide unbroken circle of horizon which the eye can barely reach, speaks to the mind always of infinity. Nothing could be wider and nothing could appeal more to the imagination. Nothing could 35 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng assist more in the enlargement of humanity. When these wide plains are beautifully spangled with native flowers, when they are swept into billows by summer winds, when they are capped by rolling mountains of cloud, when they are ablaze with great prairie fires, when they take on any of their other native aspects they become tremendous, they pre- sent magnificent and tragic spectacles which leave the human mind as profoundly moved as it can ever be by the sea or mountains. Yes, the plains must always be reckoned as one of the great types of landscape. The forests are more friendly and familiar. There is more of the feeling of domesticity about them. It is a strange fact that in the early set- tlement of America pioneers who had their choice avoided the prairies and settled first among the for- ests, even though they were there compelled to clear away the trees with infinite labor to make fields for farming. The natural human love for the forest landscape needs nothing more than mention. It is worth while to recall, however, how this has been put to special use in such enterprises as the 36 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening “forest cure.” It is well known that many sana- toria have been established in the forests and that thousands of men and women have found life and health simply in being exposed to the healing in- fluence of the crowded trees. Besides these four main types of landscape, there are minor types of considerable importance. There are great rivers which throughout their entire courses completely dominate the landscape. They establish its character. Any one who is to know the landscape should know some of the great riv- ers and should have felt their spell. The little brooks too are well worthy of acquaint- ance. As they sing and gurgle down through the forests or roar down the mountainside, they too have a story to tell. It is a story to which every man and woman ought to listen. There are many sections of country which could not be called mountainous, but which are charac- terized by their rolling hills. Such hilly country, whether found in central New York, Missouri, or Bohemia, has a character of its own. It is neither plains nor mountains, but a kind of human com- 37 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening promise. These hills are good to live with. They support large populations. They are mild and pleasant without being so tragic as the sea or moun- tains. For this reason they are psychologically better for daily human association. If one is a real lover of the landscape he will not seek always for the extreme and spectacular types. One of the greatest qualities in all art is restraint and the will- ingness to accept a moderate expression of feeling. This quality of moderation is expressed in the roll- ing hill country characteristic of wide sections on every continent. It is a type of landscape which has been too much neglected,—that is, there has been little attempt to understand its spiritual sig- nificance. In some districts the character of the landscape is taken from its lakes. One whole section of Eng- land is called the Lake Country. The magnificent territory bordering on Lake Champlain, whatever its topography and its other beauties, must ren- der chief homage to the incomparable lake. The lover of the landscape ought also to know some lakes. 38 PULLING OVER THE RAPIDS Photograph by the Author INFORMAL COMPOSITION. GROUNDS OF THE MASSACILUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE Designed and executed by the Author The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening Everywhere where men live the landscape has been more or less changed. Where considerable populations have become established the landscape is much subdued. The most fertile countries are fully developed in farming lands. In some places the forests have been cut away. In others the prai- ries have been obliterated. In place of forests and prairies there are now checkered fields of corn and wheat interspersed with orchards and_ pastures. This agricultural landscape, however, has an effec- tive appeal of its own. It is not unfair to say that it is quite as beautiful as the native landscape which it has supplanted. This type of landscape also has been widely overlooked. The American peo- ple especially have not felt its beauty nor under- stood its significance. In the old country civili- zation has done better. In England there is a lively and conscious love of the cultivated landscape, for practically all England is cultivated. In the Ger- man language the same feeling is recognized in the settled term Kultur-Landschaft. Doubtless, we in America will presently come to a similar under- standing of the beauty of well farmed country, and 39 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng will learn to love the farm landscape and to realize its deeper spiritual significance. The student and lover of the landscape must not only cultivate its acquaintance, he must especially seek what is beautiful in this outdoor world. He must discriminate. He must find the best and give his chiefest homage to that. It is one of the first requirements in art, though often overlooked, that one must find the best and associate with it chiefly. The beginner spends too much time criticizing what is bad or trying to im- prove what is indifferent. The artist will find beauty in many places where thoughtless or un- trained persons overlook it; but wherever he may have to search, he will look only for what is good, dismissing from his attention as quickly as possi- ble everything squalid or disorderly or ugly. Now this exercise of seeking out whatever is best in the landscape and fixing the attention on that, is a perfectly simple undertaking and can be practiced by children. For some years I have ex- perimented with this method of instruction in the public schools. The method is of enough impor- 40 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening tance to bear restatement.* A set of landscape ex- ercises is made up, each one of which calls direct attention to some beautiful feature. Here are sample exercises: No.1. Trees. Where is the finest tree in town? What kind of a tree is it? How old? What is its history ? No.2. Views. Where is the best view or outlook in town? What can you see from this point? How might this view be improved? And soon. The characteristic feature of each ex- ercise is that it sends the pupil to seek something beautiful, it leads him to consider carefully the re- lationships which influence its effect, it helps him to make comparisons, while appealing frankly to his personal preference (and this is fundamentally im- portant), it urges on his thought some reasons for his opinion. When a series of such exercises, carefully planned and fairly superintended, are carried out in school, they lead to a pretty thorough acquaint- * This plan of school instruction is more fully stated in my book “The Landscape Beautiful.” 41 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening ance with the local landscape, always with empha- sis on the features of greatest beauty. This con- stitutes genuine art education, and also it exempli- fies the kind of acquaintanceship with the landscape which is fundamentally necessary to the man or woman who would know what the natural style of landscape gardening means. 42 FORM AND SPIRIT UR definition of the natural style of land- ( ) gardening recognizes both form and spirit. We have said that it is a method of landscape gardening in which the natural forms of landscape are used and imbued with the spirit of the native landscape. It ought to be perfectly clear that both form and spirit are everywhere requisite. It is altogether possible to separate the two; but the form without the spirit is a mere corpse, empty and disappointing, while the spirit disembodied is a mere ghost—the dream of some artist’s imagination—perhaps a dream which the artist is too lazy or too untrained to realize in physi- cal form. It ought to be obvious further, as a sort of art axiom, that there should always be a close corre- spondence between form and spirit. Certain forms are best adapted to express certain ideas or emo- tions. In architecture the church form, with its 43 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening gothic windows and its towering spire, expresses a religious thought; the business block, with its wide doors and its show windows, expresses a commercial idea; the state capitol, with its columned porches and its rounded dome, expresses a civic feeling. So in landscape architecture, the big formal garden carries the spirit of the courtly life which once filled Schoenbrunn and Versailles; the snug, walled Eng- lish garden expresses the feeling of the home-loving, garden-loving English countryman; the bold “front yard” of the American suburbs, set out with one blue spruce and one weeping mountain ash, ex- presses the crude taste, the ostentation, the desire for public show, of the bourgeois suburbanite. But let us first consider form. It has been said, though hastily and untruthfully, that the natural landscape has no form and no composition. The fact is that it has very definite forms, very distinct and clear-cut types and very rigid principles of com- position. These are founded on the most fundamental prin- ciples of physics,—such simple principles, for ex- ample, as that water runs down hill and that trees 44 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening grow straight up. According to the former prin- ciple it is determined that all lakes shall be in depressed areas and that all rivers shall occupy the valleys instead of the hilltops. This obvious rule is in fact some times violated in so-called landscape gardening. Numerous examples might be men- tioned of ambitious park makers who have put lakes at the tops of hills in order that the river might come dashing down the cheap artificial slope, though the whole intelligence instantly revolts, knowing that no river, or brook even, could ever occupy such a position. Other important principles of natural landscape composition that may be mentioned in illustration are these: That hills and mountains are always wider at their bases than at their tops; that moun- tains tend to stand in ranks or ranges; that prairies are nearly always flat; that slow rivers have wide valleys, while swift water runs in narrow valleys; that trees and all other vegetation are larger and denser in the valleys, shrinking in size and impor- tance as we rise in altitude. So we might go on with a very considerable in- 45 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening ventory of principles, every one of which exercises a quite decided influence upon the forms of native landscape. It will answer the present purpose, however, to point out that these are the simple prin- ciples of physics as expressed in geology and physi- cal geography. In order, therefore, to understand the unit forms of natural landscape we must know something of geology and of physical geography. One then grasps the landscape result along with the geologic cause. It is plain that the Berkshire Hills must have rounded tops because they were ground down by the glaciers, while the Rocky Mountains will have acute tops because they are recently broken up by volcanic action and have never been eroded at the peaks. It is plain that the sand dunes of Lake Michigan and New Jersey must lie in billows; that great areas of the lower Mississippi Valley must be in swamps; and that the west slope of the Cascade range will support a very different flora from the dry east slope. These great geologic forces are then the deter- mining factors in the formation of all the great natural types of landscape as enumerated in Chap- 46 THE BERKSHIRE HILLS IN chouler S graph by R. Photog The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening ter II. These landscape types are in fact so many natural landscape forms. We should further no- tice especially that each of these forms has its own spirit. It is almost impossible to speak of the mountains without thinking of the spirit of the mountains as well as of their physical form. Dr. Wilhelm Miller has recently published a notable treatise on “The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gar- dening,” which deals, as a matter of course, with both the physical prairie and the spirit of the plains. While topography, the main element of the nat- ural landscape, is determined chiefly by geologic factors, vegetation, the element of second import- ance, is determined largely by present climatic con- ditions and is to be understood therefore by ref- erence to the teachings of physical geography. At this time I do not wish to enter into any lengthy discussion of these geologic and geographic data, but merely to make it clear that the natural land- scape does present perfectly definite and recog- nizable forms determined by perfectly simple and well-known forces. The question of vegetation, however, and its relation to landscape forms de- 47 —==| The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng serve some further consideration. In practical landscape gardening the develop- ment of the natural style has always been deeply involved with questions of planting—with the choice and management of species. Indeed, these ideas have comprised the whole sum and substance, the beginning and the end, the body and the meaning, of the natural style in many minds. Unquestionably the selection and management of the plant materials does play a major role in practi- cal landscape gardening, and especially in the natu- ral style. The fact that topography, at least in its main features, is beyond the reach of the landscape maker leaves him under the necessity of falling back to what is in reality this secondary position. But since it is necessary, no matter what the reasons, to produce our principal results through our plant- ings, it becomes doubly necessary to study this part of our work with the utmost care. We must have, not merely a facile familiarity with plants, but we must have some fairly pro- found philosophy of their use. That is, we must be able to use plants as nature uses them, to found 48 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng our selections and our groupings on the same fun- damental laws which govern these matters in the wild and native landscape. Many partial philosophies have been offered in this connection. Every one seems to be sound, as far as it goes. We may say, therefore, that they are all true, and for practical use we may add them all together and adopt the total. A brief review of these different ideas will be worth while here. 1. The use of native species in preference to ex- otics began to be urged strongly in America about 1890. Downing’s theory of the natural style which had prevailed up to this time had endeavored to use the forms of the natural landscape without the native materials. This preference for native plants, however, was reinforced by many argu- ments, some of them very questionable, until it be- came a sort of fad. It was, therefore, only in part an effort to realize a more perfectly natural style of gardening. 2. Very soon, however, appeared the idea of mass planting. This seems to have been the special con- tribution of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. It repre- 49 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening sents a most substantial advance, since nature mani- festly offers her plantings nearly always in large masses. The white pine, for instance, used to ex- ist in solid unbroken forest masses hundreds of miles in extent. There used to be thousands of miles of prairie in this country covered with blue stem and bunch grass. 3. Nature’s mass plantings, however, are con- trolled by very well settled conditions of soil and moisture. A mass planting of high-bush blue-ber- ries or of New Jersey tea, for example, cannot be made indifferently anywhere the landscape gar- dener may choose. The blueberries are at home, native and natural, only in wet, springy or half- swampy land; and the New Jersey tea belongs characteristically on dry warm sandy banks. So our mass plantings, if they are to be true to the pattern of nature, must be placed with strict ref- erence to soil and drainage conditions. This part of planting theory seems to have been set forth first and most clearly by Dr. Engler and Dr. Pe- ters, respectively curator and planting foreman of the new Botanic garden of Berlin. 50 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening 4, Another discovery of still more recent date calls to our aid that branch of botanical science known as ecology. It is readily observed that very few species of plants exist in nature alone. Prac- tically every one associates habitually with certain other species. Thus they form set clubs or societies. And these friendly associations, based upon simi- larity of tastes and complementary habits of growth, should not be broken up. If we as land- scape gardeners desire to preserve the whole aspect of nature, with all its forms intact, we will keep all plants in their proper social groupings. For example, if we wish to use the gray birch, or squaw birch, to give a good naturalistic dress to some dry hillside, we will not leave it alone, but will use its whole society, the roll of which is some- what as follows: SQUAW BIRCH SOCIETY Squaw Birch, Gray Birch, Betula populifolia. Dwarf Savin, Dwarf Juniper, Juniperus com- munis. Black Huckleberry, Gaylussacia baccata. 51 — The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening Sweet Fern, Myrica asplenifolia. Sumach, Rhus glabra and copallina. Or if we have a wide stretch of barren sandy plain in Massachusetts, we will probably adopt the pitch pine flora, which is characteristic of such land. Its main features are as follows: PITCH PINE SOCIETY Pitch Pine, Pinus rigida. Scrub Oak, Quercus prinoides. Black Scrub Oak, Quercus ilicifolia. Poverty Grass, Andropogon scoparius. This ecological principle is the one most clearly elucidated by Willy Lange in his important work, “Die Garten-Gestaltung der Neuzeit.” Looking at the landscape from these different points of view, we gradually gain familiarity with its various forms. We learn to know the shape of the mountains, the forms of the trees, the slope of the terraces on the river banks. If we have within us any spiritual nature we learn at the same time 52 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng something of the spirit of the landscape. This is obviously something much harder to define or de- scribe. I cannot say to every man, lo, here is the spirit of the woods! or look now at the water where you shall behold the naked spirit of the lake. Nevertheless there is a spirit of the woods and a spirit of the lake, and the spiritually minded per- son will certainly discern them. Even the dullest man has so much of the divine essence in him that he cannot wholly escape it. He may look on with the cow at the same fields and views, and though she gets her dinner from them he will get some- thing more and different. It is plain, furthermore, that this spiritual or emotional product of the landscape takes a spe- cific quality from its physical form. The emotions communicated to the human heart from the ocean are not the same as those given by the brook. Our spirits are moved in one way by the pine forest and in a very different way by the prairies. The bank of blue blossoming lupines means one thing to us and the thundering waterfall means quite another. Yet these spiritual, emotional products can hardly 53 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening be described aside from the physical forms and phe- nomena through which they are expressed. So poor are we in the nomenclature of the spirit. This poverty of language, sad as it is, is no new matter, and it need not detain us now if we only understand that the absence of words does not mean a lack of facts. The spiritual portion of the world is still there, just as truly as the physical portion. Probably it is more powerful, more significant and much longer lived. Before men became civilized into their present infidelity and materialism, our landscape was in- habited by wild Indians—the “savage” aborigines. These simple citizens lived much nearer to nature than we do and understood her a great deal better. It is a curious fact that their thought of nature was an extravagant spiritualism, almost as extreme, though never as crude, as our modern materialism. But there is every reason to suppose that they were nearer right than we are. Any direct attempt to capture the spirit of the landscape hardly promises success. Yet, beginning with this clear understanding of the existence of 54 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening such a spirit, and living in the constant thought of learning from that great Mother Spirit, we may be perfectly sure of making some progress. Growth in spiritual discernment and in spiritual power is just as natural to a sane man as growth in bulk is to a healthy boy. A great deal depends on taking the proper atti- tude,—on looking always for the spiritual signifi- cance of the landscape—on thinking of it in spirit- ual terms—in living the life of the spirit in happy association with the dual world (spirit and matter blended) about us,—a world in which we are our- selves characteristic and integral. Every effort is worth while, of course, which will enable us to grasp more firmly our own emo- tional experience. We want to clarify our own feelings derived from the landscape. We can al- ways find help in this direction from any of the arts, since all of them draw their inspiration from nature. Literature is full of this spirit, especially the sounder portions of the modern nature litera- ture. Careful reading in this field will help be- cause it will show us what response good men and 55 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng good women have made to the appeals of the land- scape spirit. For about two generations the painters, like the poets, have dealt honestly with the landscape, en- deavoring to get from it the truth of nature rather than trying to fix upon it their preconceived super- stitions. It hardly needs to be said that every na- ture painter is trying to do more than to record the mere physical features of the landscape. Every one of them is trying, with all the power there is in him, to offer us also a spiritual message. It is, therefore, greatly worth our while, as lovers of the landscape, as believers in spiritual things, and as would-be landscape architects, to see what the paint- ers have to offer. After a good many years of study and teach- ing, however, I am inclined to believe that music offers the readiest approach to a spiritual inter- pretation of the landscape. Music has so slight a physical body that very few persons are troubled by it. Even the stupidest publican understands that music is addressed straight to his spirit. If he gets anything from it it must be some emotional 56 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng effect. The emotional or spiritual quantity in mu- sic is particularly evident. Moreover, the emotions aroused by music are singularly like these aroused by the landscape. One hears a ringing Sousa march, and one experiences the fine martial emotions that one feels of a brisk October morning as one spins down the street in the automobile between the double row of stately maples. Or one listens to Mischa Elman play the Dvorak Humoresque—to take another trite exam- ple—and one feels the homesick longing expressed by Tom Sawyer who sat on the hills in springtime and looked across the valleys and yearned and yearned and wanted to cry but couldn’t think of anything to cry about. So direct is this parallelism between music and the landscape that for some years I have been in the habit of using music to arouse the imaginations of my students in landscape gardening. It is ab- solutely essential, of course, that their imaginations be aroused—that they be trained in the habit of landscape feeling. So I play them on the Victrola the best records that are made—the Sextet from 57 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening Lucia, the Wedding March from Lohengrin, Haen- del’s Largo, and even some symphonic selections, and then I require them to return to me programs of landscapes which would awaken the same sen- timents. The exercise is perfectly simple and prac- tical, and gives better and more uniform results than many of the experiments in chemistry. Any one will find it profitable to use music in this way, and to practice himself in the interpre- tation of music into landscape and landscape into music. It does not require any special musical edu- cation any more than it demands a specialized edu- cation in landscape. In spite of our abject poverty of spiritual lan- guage, it may be worth while for us before drop- ping this subject to try to specify some of the spirit- ual elements or products of landscape. And first of all the landscape breathes with the spirit of life. There may be a perfectly dead land- scape on the moon, but that is not our planet. Our world teems with life. From the infinitesi- mal microbe, swarming by millions in the drop of water, to the crowding trees in the forest there is 58 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng life—growing, urgent, irrepressible life. Hven the inanimate ocean and the tumbling clouds and the singing brook are so nearly alive that they tell the same story to our listening ears. Then the world is full of energy—of power. From the tiniest insect boldly winging its course against the wind, to the storm waves of the ocean grinding to powder the rocks on the headland, there is the expression of immeasurable energy. The wide sweeping prairie wind, the crashing tree in the forest, the roaring waterfall, the spouting gey- ser, all impress our souls with the infinite power which moves creation. Then there is the spirit of beauty, as universal and almost as irresistible. Everywhere the world is beautiful. If one were to ask for a definition of beauty we could not do better than show him the landscape: that is beauty. Nature is the beauty by which all other beauties are measured. This qual- ity, too, is universal. From the most fragile snow crystal to the highest mountain all is instinct with the spirit of beauty. The landscape is nearly always peaceful. There 59 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening are occasional storms of magnificent fury, but as a rule the arctic wastes and the tropical jungles are both as peaceful as eternity. Those who seek peace wisely always go to the landscape. Physi- cians uniformly prescribe the quiet country and the open landscape for their over-civilized and bedev- iled patients. The worried man who makes an ex- cuse of his trout rod to linger in the solitudes where the shadows lie across the pools knows this land- scape spirit of peace; and the tired woman gazing out of her window to the purple of the distant hills knows. In the landscape is not only peace but joy. It is a Joy sometimes so wild and gay as almost to contradict the spirit of peace. The rivers chuckle to themselves as they tumble over obstacles in their way; the flowers burst with joyous bloom; the birds sing with all their might and main, and the trees of the forests clap their hands for joy. It is enough to dry the tears of Niobe. Yet even in our moments of deepest vision and highest ecstasy the landscape is not wholly revealed. There is always something beyond. Indeed, this 60 EARLY SPRINGTIME Photograph by the Author AS VIEWED FROM THE BRIDGE The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng spirit of mystery is one of the most truly charac- teristic qualities of the natural world. It is a great and highly spiritual quality wholly opposed to the scientific passion for complete and classified knowl- edge. Our generation has followed this passion for science to such lengths, has been so wrought with the ideal of discovering and publishing everything, that this spirit of mystery comes as a greatly needed corrective. We shall never understand the land- scape until we understand that we can never un- derstand it all. In the story of the creation it is related that the spirit of God breathed upon the waters. The spirit of God still breathes there. Most men find God speaking to them most directly from the clouds, from the rain, from the sea or from the hills. One of them said: “T will look up to the hills, whence cometh my help: “My help cometh from the Lord, who made Heaven and Earth.” Yes, quite plainly, of all the spirits moving in the landscape the greatest is the Father of all spir- its, the one known to the theologians as the Holy 61 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening Spirit. But of his progeny there are legions more. Not only the great spirit of life, the spirit of power, the spirit of beauty and the spirit of joy, but all the lesser spirits—the prairie spirit, the spirit of the pine woods, the spirit of the palmetto swamps, and all the rest—to every landscape its own spirit. It is very, very easy to conclude that the Indians were right when they thought of the world as peo- pled with spirits, assigning to every tree and shrub its living soul. And so we conclude that this physical world which we see (and which the cow sees) is only a part of the landscape. Within those physical forms and without them and beyond them there are corresponding spiritual parts which form a spirit- ual landscape just as real and even more closely related to our half-human, half-divine souls. 62 THE LANDSCAPE MOTIVE VERY work of art should have its subject, Bye or motive. This principle is suffi- ciently obvious. In the natural style of landscape gardening, however, it becomes especially important to keep this principle in view, and to have some very definite method for putting it into effect. In certain types of gardening it may pos- sibly answer to give a general, more or less vague, feeling of beauty, or of festivity, or of courtliness, but when one essays the larger flights of composi- tion in informal landscape, it is positively neces- sary to artistic success that some definite, concrete motive be adopted and developed. Comparisons with the other arts are illuminating at this point. The idea of the theme or motive * is universally recognized in music. If we adopt the *In common studio patter this word is always pronounced and written motif; but since we have a plain English spelling for precisely the same word, I prefer to spell it motive. 63 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening stronger form of the idea which the musicians rec- ognize as the leit-motiv, we shall have just what the landscape gardener is seeking for his art. It is the leading motive or theme of the musical com- position which stands out as its recognizable quan- tity, which gives it character. This leading motive is introduced near the beginning of the work, fre- quently in the very first period, and is carried for- ward to the finale. In the meantime it is presented in many different ways, sometimes very simply, sometimes much elaborated: and overlaid with or- nament, sometimes changing keys, but always capa- ble of recognition as the dominating theme. The comparison with literature is quite as much to the point. No one would attempt to excuse a literary essay which did not promptly announce one distinct theme and then stick strictly to it. In successive paragraphs of the essay or sermon this theme would be developed from different points of view and would be given different methods of lit- erary treatment. First it would be stated in sim- ple terms, then it would be illustrated by an ex- ample, then enforced by historical evidence, then 64 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening given the “human interest” treatment (vox humana stop), then touched off with a funny story, then brought to a resounding climax. But all the way through, and in every paragraph, the theme—the leading motive—would stand out clearly and con- trol the meaning of every word. This comparison is the more valuable because the informal type of landscape composition bears so many resemblances to prose composition in lit- erature. The formal garden might be likened to poetry. Each line has just so many feet; each part is formally balanced by another exactly cor- responding part. In poetry it is much less neces- sary than in prose to develop a definite and didactic theme. The form may be so beautiful in its obvi- ous perfections that a mere vague feeling of beauty or of mystery or of human passion may suffice. It is not at all necessary to reach any specific con- clusions. But the prose writer and the naturalis- tic landscape gardener can not depend on these things,—the forms with which they deal are not suf- ficiently obvious to be admired on their own ac- count; more attention must be given to content, 65 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening and content must be presented in a logical, under- standable way. Now sound prose writing depends absolutely on two principles, videlicit, first, on unity of theme, and, second, on paragraphic structure. It is now our purpose to develop these two principles in their application to the naturalistic form of landscape gardening. The landscape motive may be defined as the cen- tral subject matter of each composition. This defi- nition should specifically include both form and spirit, for the landscape motive should present a tangible physical unit clearly expressive of the dom- inating spirit of the whole work. This definition is illustrated in the comparisons already made between the subject, text or topic in literature, the theme or motive in music, and the leading motive in landscape. The idea can be made clearer, however, and further illustrated, by giving a few examples of landscape motives. The oak-tree motive: On the low rolling hills of the central Mississippi basin, perhaps most typi- cally in Missouri, are miles and miles of scattered 66 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening oaks. ‘These give the country its character. They are the natural landscape motive. As such they could be readily adopted by the artist designing a naturalistic park reserve in this country. It would then become his opportunity to present the beauty of the oak trees from as many points of view and in as many different ways as possible. The Florida pine-tree motive: In central Flor- ida the tall, straight, sparsely scattered pine trees dominate the landscape. Here they are always as- sociated with the scrub palmetto, forming an eco- logical group (see page 51) which, however, may still be called the pine-tree motive. . The birch-tree motive: On the dry hill-side pas- tures of New England the birches are very much at home. The squaw birch, or gray birch, in par- ticular may be accepted as the most characteristic plant. It is usually associated with other plants (see page 51), and these together form a great variety of effective pictures. The young sprouts, the crowded young trees, the graceful mature groups, or the hoary old specimens are all beautiful, so that the development of the birch tree idea has 67 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening alluring possibilities. The sunflower motive: My own little garden is dominated by its sunflowers. This is partly a rem- iniscence of Kansas, and doubtless also partly an expression of my own weedy philosophy. What- ever the primary reason for having those sunflow- ers there no one could ever think of that garden without its sunflowers. It has other things in it —plenty of them,—but it is essentially a sunflower garden,—it is dominated by the sunflower motive. The hollyhock motive: In Vermont, on the shores of Lake Champlain, I know a fine substan- tial dignified old-fashioned stone farmhouse. About it is a comfortable lawn space set off by a low picket fence from the encroachments of the farmyard. Along the foundations of this comfortable old house and also close up against the picket fence runs a border of hollyhocks. There may or may not be other things growing in that garden—I don’t re- member. To me it is always a garden of holly- hocks. The river motive: Wherever a river threads its way through a landscape it is pretty sure to carry 68 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening with it the dominating landscape theme. Count- less beautiful views show up and down its stretches. Masses of hills or trees come into view at every bend. Endless pictures are reflected in its quiet reaches, and endless songs go up from its rocky riffes. Any park lying along almost any river would quite certainly be dominated by the river motive. In the Muddy Brook Parkway, Boston, Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., gave us a small but highly refined example of this type of landscape motive. The prairie motive: Personally, just to satisfy my own artistic aspirations, I would like to make a prairie park. I would like to have a few miles of perfectly flat land in Central or Western Kansas, and I would like to have it lie where the level hori- zon would form an unbroken circle some fifteen miles in radius. This level line would be my mo- tive, and I would put in only enough upright lines to give the little necessary artistic contrast and to supply a scale of distances. I would have a lawn of buffalo grass furnished with the exceptionally 69 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening rich and interesting flora of that section,—Anem- one carolina, Astragalus missouriensis, Baptisia australis, Salvia grandiflora, Asclepias varticillata, Tradescantia virginica, and never forgetting Opun- tia rafinesquii. Here a man might stand quietly in the center of a stable horizontal world with crea- tion all open around and above him, with himself the center of it,—the very type of our whole north- ern anthropocentric philosophy. The Connecticut motive: This reference to the prairie motive introduces us to a much more com- plex notion, the motive made up of several ele- ments, the relationships of which may fluctuate from paragraph to paragraph. I once heard an art critic say of certain paintings that they looked very Connecticut. The landscape gardener who could make a park look very Connecticut would plainly be obliged to use the Connecticut motive. This mo- tive would be a compound of several simple ele- ments, such as a. Low rounded hills. b. Scattering forest of mixed chestnut, oak and pine. 70 ON MOUNT TOBY, MASSACIIUSETTS Photograph by the Author NATURALISTIC COMPOSITION. GROUNDS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS AGRICUL- TURAL COLLEGE Planned, evecuted and photographed by the Author The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening ce. Undergrowth of laurel. d. Marginal growth of birch, dogwoods and viburnums. e. Half-open pastures with red cedars. This Connecticut landscape then becomes a theme of unlimited possibilities. It may be given more liberal, diversified and intricate treatment than the pine-tree motive, and it will necessarily be much harder to carry such a theme clearly home to the audience. Yet this is just what every thoughtful landscape gardener is trying to do. The history motive: Any one who visits the na- tional reservation at Lookout Mountain must find the views very impressive. But unless he is wholly innocent of imagination he will be promptly drawn away from the glories of Moccasin Bend by the historic associations. The place is saturated with them. Relics, tablets and monuments are com- moner than trees. They are easily accepted as the dominating subject matter—the leading motive. The Shakespeare motive: In a London park I once visited a little enclosed garden said to contain every kind of flower and shrub mentioned in the 71 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng works of Shakespeare. It was a curious place—I am sure some persons found it interesting. To me it stands as a first-class illustration of the liter- ary or extrinsic or accidental motive. This is cer- tainly not the highest type of landscape motive, but it is perfectly legitimate, nevertheless. Possibly it may make this important matter of motives clearer to summarize what has been said by a rough sort of classification. It is clear that the more usual landscape motives fall into the follow- ing groups: 1. Topographic motives, such as prairie, moun- tains, rivers, lakes. 2. Tree motives, belonging primarily to those natural landscapes which are dominated by some single species. This motive species is usually as- sociated with other secondary species, which then become integral to the theme. 8. Garden flower motives, such as sunflower, the hollyhock, and hundreds more, suited for use chiefly in small gardens. 4, Historic, literary and other extraneous mo- tives. 72 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening The manner in which these motives are developed in landscape composition will be discussed more fully in the next chapter. 73 PRINCIPLES OF STRUCTURAL COM- POSITION HOSE who have not considered the matter are apt to think that a garden in the natural style has no structure, that it is a merely ac- cidental succession of parts. This notion is wrong, of course. The home garden, public park or forest reserve intelligently designed in the natural style has just as definite and logical a plan as the best geometrical garden. Its structure follows laws just as plain and necessary. There are, to be sure, a great many gardens to be found in an alleged nat- ural style which truly have neither rhyme nor rea- son. They have no plan nor structure. They were not designed. They just grew, like Topsy. No— that’s assigning them too much credit, for a garden which grows up honestly round the family life of owners, or a park that grows up decently in the hands of a devoted superintendent, often shows a genuine form and structure given to it by the natu- 74 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng ral forces of growth. The mere fact that there are some “natural” gardens without form and void cannot stand against the structural possibilities of this style. There are also a great many geometri- cal gardens in which the structure is merely fortu- itous or wholly inarticulate. The first structural problem in designing in the natural style comes with the division of the ground into various compartments. If we are dealing with a park of any size, there will be perhaps a piece of woodland here, beyond it an open field to be de- voted to golf, on the other side a section for a picnic ground, then a little children’s playground, and finally an area for public music and festivity. These divisions will follow the natural features of the topography and the social demands of the situ- ation, but they are to be made with great care. Frederick Law Olmsted used to give particular thought to this part of his study and it is very in- teresting to go over the plans of Mount Royal Park, Montreal, Franklin Park, Boston, or Jack- son Park, Chicago, for examples, to see how these divisions were made and what clever names he in- 75 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening vented for them. This naming of the parts, e. g., “The Upper Fells,” “The Greeting,’ “The Wooded Island” is significant, for it indicates that to each of these parts the artist wished to give a character of its own. This little trick was peculiar to Olmsted and has not even been well imitated by anybody since his day. Even in the small private garden, the same method of subdivision has to be followed to some extent. The massing of wild flowers should be ap- pointed to one section, the open lawn with its cro- quet ground should have its own allotment, the big shade trees belong in another quarter and the ever- greens still elsewhere. It may not be possible to develop these several characters so completely as in the larger spaces of a big park, but the essential structure is there Just the same. A coffee mill is not so big as a turbine steamship, but it has its own parts and structure quite as truly. It is not to be understood that these parts in a natural park or garden are to be separated from each other by distinct lines in any case. If they are set apart by high walls, then we have several gar- 76 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening dens instead of one, and each of these gardens has its own organization. The happy blending of these several compartments along their lines of juncture, while preserving their essential character within, is a part of the landscape gardener’s art. So far as this art has any technic, it follows the rules dis- cussed elsewhere for the blending of groups in planting. In very large parks, however, the various sec- tions, or certain of them, may become so large as to require treatment like separate parks. A big state park of fifty square miles, for example, might have a public camp ground along the lake shore, a forest reserve on the mountain sides, and a fair grounds at one corner. These three enterprises would present practically three problems and would call for three park designs. Every work of art must fall into commensurable limits, that is within such range that one man at one time and place can comprehend and enjoy the whole. When it re- quires three days to perform one musical composi- tion it ceases to be a work of art and becomes a gen- eral exhibition. 77 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening We have in hand now our tract of land with all its natural features, we understand all the require- ments of our problem, we have determined on the plan of subdivision, and we are ready to attack the design. We may suppose also that we have adopted a theme or leading motive, such as has been dis- cussed in Chapter IV. The next problem in struc- tural technic is to effect an entrance. The main entrance to a park or garden is fre- quently fixed by the conditions of the problem. In such cases it is usually possible to accept the situation without discussion, though occasionally a proposed entrance is so unfortunate as to justify heroic efforts for its displacement. If the designer has some freedom of choice he will give this ques- tion very special attention, for a good introduction is half the story. The orator spares no pains with his exordium to ingratiate himself with his audi- ence. The composer of music arranges a carefully studied introduction for every set piece. The ar- chitect always wishes to have the portal and en- trance hall of every building as attractive as pos- sible. 78 NEW ENGLAND COUNTRY ROAD “GOING FISHING.’ THE COUNTRY ROAD Photographs by the Author The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening In general, the entrance to the park will be at some distance from the culminating feature, if not indeed at the farthest remove from it. If contrari- wise, one should make his entrance directly upon the main show, or immediately facing the grand view, the rest of the visit to the park might better be abandoned, for it will be a depressing down grade run to an anticlimax. For this reason it is quite possible, in the anxiety to make a good first impression, to overdo the treatment of the park en- trance. I could name more than one park in Amer- ica in which one sees nothing further to compare with the blaze of ornament which greets him at the front gate. I hesitate to lay it down as a general rule, but I have a strong feeling that it is good technic to place the entrance somewhere near the lowest level of the park. By this expedient, the visitor will see most of the scenery as he drives the road on an up grade. Photographers and painters know that the picturesque compositions which gather along a roadway are usually seen to best advantage when viewed toward the rising grade. In the strongest 79 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening pictures the road curves upward, and a composition in which it takes a downward course is almost al- ways pictorially weak. The visitor, too, on the up grade will drive more slowly and have more time to enjoy the view. Then when he has reached the climax somewhere near the top he can quickly find his way down hill to a convenient exit. I think there is a psychological reason also for the rule here suggested. There is a feeling of ex- hilaration and a satisfaction of achievement as one climbs the hill which is quite absent from the down trip. Mountain climbers always get their pay go- ing up. The views coming down are only remi- niscences. It is good technic to present the main theme, or at least to suggest it, in the introduction. The musical composer does this. The architect would consider his entrance badly designed if one could not tell from it whether he was entering a church or a military barracks. If the pine woods are to be the main theme in a park, it would be quite proper to introduce a few pines at the park entrance. Cer- tainly a rose-garden would be artistically unsuit- 80 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening able for the entrance to such a park. If we are planning a riverside park, we ought to have a glimpse of the river from the entrance, or at least some planting or some sculptured setting to suggest the flowing water. If we are designing a cemetery park the quiet and solemn character of the place should be plainly signified at the entrance. I know a certain woodland cemetery which has a truly gor- geous bed of cannas and coleus at the entrance, fit for Monte Carlo or Coney Island. From the entrance forward the natural park is developed in a sort of panorama. ‘The visitor is led from point to point, where he sees picture after picture, some of pleasing foregrounds filled with flowers, some of quiet masses of trees in middle ground, and some inspiring outlooks to distant landscapes. These points are connected by a suit- able path or roadway which forms the true back- bone of the garden structure. These successive pictures, however, should bear a very definite relationship to one another. First of all, each one should present the leading motive in some phase of its development. If we are using 81 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening the river motive then the river should be visible or distinctly suggested in each fully developed picture. Furthermore, these successive pictures will occur at definite points or paragraphs. Each section of our drive or walk or trail will be designed to de- velop some particular phase of the leading motive. Each paragraph then will have its point of culmi- nation, beyond which we pass rapidly to the next paragraph. These culminating points, paragraphic points, or nodes, will be given further emphasis by spe- cial structural methods, particularly by giving to our drive or walk at these points its principal change of direction and its principal change of grade. It follows naturally that any other fea- tures of emphasis, such as seats, shelters or special ornamental structures should be placed at para- graphic points. If definite exterior or interior views are to be emphasized, they, too, should be pre- sented from these nodes or paragraphic points. To summarize: Each paragraph will proceed from its introduction to its culmination consistently developing some phase of the leading motive. At 82 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng the paragraphic period we would usually find the following features: 1. The clearest expression of the paragraphic episode—the culmination of the particular phase of the leading motive here under development. 2. The principal change in horizontal direction of the roadway. 3. The principal change of grade. 4. The principal features of architectural or or- namental emphasis. 5. The principal change in plantings. As an illustration we may suppose that the first section of our afternoon drive takes us on a long sweep to the westward with the warm sun in our faces and the wind at the left. We are jogging comfortably along on a practically level road, but with an up grade varying from nothing to two per cent. We are passing across a level meadow land spangled with buttercups and daisies. Here and there at wide intervals stand fine specimens of white oak, representative of the deciduous forest, the lead- ing motive of our composition and the subject of our afternoon’s enjoyment. In front of us we see 83 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening the heavier masses of the woods scattered over roll- ing hills and making a bold but fluent sky line against the three o’clock sun. A bobolink sings us a snatch of Robert of Lincoln: Spink, spank, spink, Chee, chee, chee! awakening the music in our hearts, as the sun has already melted the reserve of our city manners and we know that we are in the country and the wor- ries of the morning’s business are already half for- gotten. Presently we reach the foot of the hill land. The roadway turns rather sharply to the right to avoid the climb, but nevertheless the gradient is percep- tibly increased, varying from two to four per cent. Dobbin slows down to a walk and we pass to para- graph number two. Here the white oaks are still scattered rather than massed (white oaks do not like to be too sociable; they prefer to keep their individuality) ; but they are close enough together to suggest the forest. As we rise we still get occa- sional glimpses of the meadow, but our main in- 84 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening terest here is in the trees with occasional outcrop- pings of interesting rocks partly covered with trail- ing masses of sweet briers, and the striking outline of the hill to the north of us which now faces us since we turned. OPEN MEADOW ——> Views & PARAGRAPHS And so we pass from paragraph to paragraph. Perhaps number three brings us to a hill top and gives us a view of the woodland about us; perhaps number four descends into a wooded ravine, where oak forest passes gradually into maple or beech; perhaps number five skirts the bank of a lake, giv- 85 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening ing us an opportunity to see the magnificent forms of the trees on the opposite shore, with their in- verted images rippling toward us over the water. Such is the paragraphic structure of the natural park. The same method is applicable to all kinds of in- formal composition. If the problem is a simple border of mixed perennials along a garden wall, we can adopt a leading motive and a paragraphic treatment. Or if we are only trying to improve a skyline we will divide it into paragraphs, giving each section its own treatment, its climax and its blend into the next section. It is easy to show, of course, that this method is practically universal in art. Precisely the same terms may be used to describe the structure of an oration, a drama, or a good editorial in the Spring- field Republican. Each has its theme, its succes- sive paragraphs, its periods, its climaxes and its con- clusion. Every musical composition has its theme, it is divided into several movements, it is para- graphed into strains, usually of sixteen measures each, the strains are subdivided into bars, and each 86 NATURALISTIC COMPOSITION. BACK YARD GARDEN Design by Mr. Jens Jensen Photograph by Henry Fuermann § Sons The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening bar may have two, three, four or six beats. This gives us our musical rhythm; but rhythm has its uses in other branches of art besides music. I have often found it most convenient to speak of the rhythm of a garden composition. A row of trees has just the same succession of accents which we find in the measures of martial music. Rhythm is merely a certain kind of paragraphic structure. It is easy to see the same rhythmic or paragraphic dis- position of parts, in ornamentation or total compo- sition, in architecture; it can be found also in paint- ing, especially in decorative painting, while any ensemble of sculpture necessarily follows the same plan of grouping. The comparison of landscape gardening with mu- sic is always suggestive, and this comparison de- serves to be followed out a little further just at this point. The composer of music, as will be easily dis- covered, builds up his compositions upon his se- lected motives in divers ways. ‘The simplest song theme stands alone. The airs of ballads and folk songs, and even of dance tunes are always first used in this manner. 87 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening Later follows part singing, with two or three or four voices, in duet, trio or quartet. These several parts are harmonized. One voice, usually the so- prano, “carries the air,” that is the theme, while the others support it with harmonizing notes. This method of composition is frequently followed by the landscape architect. In his more complex works, as in advanced sym- phony, he uses two motives together—sometimes three or four. These are woven through and through one another and into the texture of his symphonic fabric by the method which he calls counterpoint. Sometimes motives follow one an- other or are contrasted against each other without being counterpointed. This contrapuntal method of composition is always open to the landscape de- signer; and if it has been seldom adopted the diffi- culty of the problem will sufficiently explain that fact. We may as well admit just here that this theory of paragraphs and motives does not make plain the whole of art. Neither does it offer a short cut to success in landscape architecture. We are not 88 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening offering to teach the sum of garden art in one les- son. The paragraphic art has been known in litera- ture almost since literature began, yet there are only a few writers who give a sound paragraphic structure to their work. There are still many es- says, editorials and sermons which start nowhere and without any recognizable theme, run a level uneventful course to the same point. Unfortu- nately a considerable part of our naturalistic land- scape gardening is of this sort. A man must have something to say and some way of saying it before he can preach a real sermon. A landscape architect must have a genuine inspiration and must then be possessed of an effective technic before he can make a landscape which has theme and structure, char- acter and clothes, spirit and body. ‘The para- graphic method belongs only to technic and even here indicates merely the fundamental principle. Its application still requires artistic skill and the skill of the artist comes only through years of de- voted practice. In as much as these structural principles of in- formal composition have been widely overlooked, 89 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening and as it is important that they should be distinctly understood it may be worth while to summarize the entire case here. SUMMARY 1. Every informal park or garden should be par- tially or wholly enclosed in order to give it a feeling of unity and sometimes of privacy,—but this en- closure need not be so obvious nor so complete as in the formal garden. Good outlooks should be especially preserved. ‘The enclosure will be com- posed chiefly of borders of trees and shrubs. In very large parks no general enclosure will be at- tempted, but special areas may be more or less seg- regated for special purposes. 2. The main structural features will usually be roads, paths, or navigable waters; and the principal one of these lines will, as nearly as practicable, cir- cumscribe the area under treatment. In certain cases it will become a linear vertebral support, as, for example, in a long river-way or park-way. 8. The principal considerations in locating drives, walks, etc., will be (a) the shape of the area, 90 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening (b) topography, (c) convenience of travel between important points, (d) development of views. 4, To secure unity of artistic effect a suitable motive or theme should be selected and should be adhered to as closely as possible. Under no circum- stances should effects at variance with the leading motive be introduced. 5. The successive episodes in the development of this motive will appear at well marked points, which points will all be upon the main structural roads or paths, thus developing the theme in a paragraphic manner. 6. The principal landscape effects will be brought together at these paragraphic points or nodes. At these points will occur (a) the principal changes in direction of roads or paths (b) principal change or grade, (c) change of planting, (d) prin- cipal interior or exterior views, (e) but especially the culmination of the motive episode. 7. It is desirable to avoid the use of straight lines and radial curves,—but awkward and unnat- ural curved or crooked lines must be equally avoided. 91 THE ART OF GROUPING [ ANDSCAPE gardeners, especially those of the naturalistic persuasion, have always had a suspicion that the art of grouping their plants was a very important matter. At one time and another a good deal of discussion has been given to the subject, a large part of it fruitless. Indeed the net result, after years of landscape gar- dening, seems very slight. The best men still ap- pear to have vague and hazy ideas on the subject. Old practitioners have indeed fallen into working formulas of their own, but they themselves usually feel that these formulas are inadequate, while every one else can see that these set methods of grouping are more detrimental than useful. It is perhaps too much to expect that, under these cir- cumstances, the whole art of plant grouping can now be set forth simply and effectively in a book. Yet a careful discussion of the main points must prove helpful, and the endeavor to reach a state- 92 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening ment of principles will at least be suggestive. It seems possible to distinguish seven different types of plant groups classified as to form. These are (1) the single specimen, (2) the group of two, (3) the group of three, (4) the larger group of five or more, (5) the row, (6) the mass, (7) the social group. The single specimen is, strictly speaking, not a group, of course, but it demands treatment in this same connection. Early landscape gardening dealt largely in specimens. Writers often emphasized the importance of giving each individual room for complete development. Many of the old time gar- dens were nothing more than collections of indi- vidual specimens. This tendency toward specimen planting has not wholly disappeared. In botanic gardens it is appropriate and necessary. But in pure landscape gardening, where the idea of pic- torial composition prevails, the specimen method must be curbed. The single fully developed tree, standing by itself, is an abnormality and a rarity in nature. It is, however, a rarity which is very pleasing to the human eye, and the landscape gar- 93 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng dener may well introduce this unit with consider- ably greater frequency than nature does. However, in any pictorial composition, specimens must be introduced with great restraint. It may be considered false composition to make more than one specimen visible in any one view. Perhaps it will be safe to say that any first-class specimen should be so placed as to form the culmination of a para- graph. Certainly if an individual tree is worth keeping as a specimen it must be worthy of con- siderable emphasis, an emphasis which it could pos- sibly have at no other point in the composition. The group of two seems to be habitually avoided by landscape gardeners. Yet I am convinced that this is due to an unfounded prejudice. In many years of sketching and photographing, seeking about for attractive compositions, I have repeatedly been drawn to admire two trees of a species stand- ing faithfully together in the pasture, in the fence row or on the hillside. Indeed I can hardly think of any other unit which has so often attracted my pencil or my camera. Every one, I suppose, has a somewhat human feeling about trees, as though 94 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng they possessed personalities like our own; and cer- tainly two persons of like character always stand well together. It is the human feeling that “two is company, three is a crowd.” I am sure that the works of the painters and artist photographers will show that two trees properly related have great pic- torial value, and this type of grouping ought to be more frequently used by landscape planters. The group of three, on the other hand, seems to have a special fascination for the landscape gar- dener, like a bright light for wild animals. Look over the planting plans and planting lists in any office, and how many hundreds of groups of three shall you find! The funny song about “The Three Trees” might have been made for their particular use. There are literally thousands of entries such as “3 Red Maple,” “3 Tupelo,” “3 Honey Locust,” “3 Lilacs” or even “3 Hydrangea p.g.” This is, I suspect, a psychological phenomenon, but we need not stop now for psychological expla- nations. We can be sure, I believe, without such in- vestigations, that the group of three has no such pictorial value as its strangely frequent use would 95 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening imply. Indeed in purely pictorial effect I think two trees are usually better than three. And I will add one further suspicion, viz., that when three trees or shrubs compose a group it is usually better to place them in an irregular row than in an equi- lateral triangle, though the amateur planter has a strong tendency toward the latter figure. The group of three ought to be used and used with considerable freedom, but it must not be con- ventionalized. There can be no doubt about its being too often employed. Nature herself does not hold the number sacred. She does not choose three trees for a group any oftener than two or four. The four-tree group is practically unknown in artificial planting. Of course there is nothing in nature against this unit; but the landscape gar- dener seems to feel that four trees of a kind are just enough to lose their individuality without gain- ing the proper effect of the mass. Five trees or shrubs, however, always appeal to the thought of the man who makes planting plans on a drawing board. The fact that some nursery catalogues quote stock by fives and tens also has its 96 A NATURAL GROUPING OF TREES Photograph by the duthor The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening psychological effect. The feeling for odd numbers also throws its emphasis on the five. With any- where from five to twelve, according to species, we have individuals enough to make a genuine and effective group. At this stage grouping comes to its real meaning; and it must be allowed that most planters are more successful in groups of this size than in any other scale. Perhaps this is the same as to say that in common garden and park problems this unit gives the most advantageous effect. Another good reason, however, for the success of these larger groups lies in the fact that they offer much wider possibilities in detailed composition. There is much less danger of falling into one stiff, set grouping. Since groups of this moderate size have such spe- cial value in landscape composition we may prop- erly dwell somewhat longer on the problems con- nected with their development. Thus far we have assumed that each group is to be composed of plants all alike—all of the same species and variety. In groups of less than five, this is almost obligatory, but in larger units there 97 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening The row of trees is commonly excluded from all naturalistic planting, or is admitted only under protest. The row is obviously artificial and so con- tradicts flatly the feeling which the landscape gar- dener is often trying to establish, i.e., the feeling that here nature has had her own way. It is quite plain that the tree row is outside the forms of nature and may even break seriously upon the spirit of naturalistic work. All this may be granted, and yet the tree row not wholly abolished. There are many places where the natural style may be appropriately adopted yet where the illusion of the uninhabited wilderness can never be attained. Large and obvious compromises with civilization may be made without vitiating en- tirely the naturalistic method. Straight streets and long architectural lines are common elements in our practical landscape problems; and they are ele- ments to be met frankly and honestly. Along such lines the formal row of trees always has charm, dignity, beauty. It is by no means always neces- sary, therefore, to exclude such objects of charm, dignity and beauty from every composition on the 99 ROW OF TREES ALONG THE PASTURE FENCE Photograph by the Author OLD APPLE ORCIIARD The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening scape more fully into our feeling for nature we shall be less sensitive about the unnaturalness of these informal rows of trees and shrubbery. The agricultural landscape is in reality one of the great topographical types, and one which we must learn to appreciate more highly. Mass planting is a comparatively new discovery in landscape gardening and marks one of the great- est advances yet made toward a genuinely natural- istic style. The use of trees by the thousands for screens or backgrounds, the introduction of rhodo- dendrons by carloads for underplanting, the devel- opment of considerable forest tracts as elements in pictorial landscape treatment, these are all good examples of mass planting. We may have mass effects on a much smaller scale than this, however. Without splitting hairs we may define a mass as a group of such extent that its limits are not all vis- ible from some chosen point of view. Mass plantings are of two kinds, pure and mixed. Pure masses are composed of a single spe- cies or variety, mixed masses of several. The usual continuous border planting follows the mass struc- 101 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening of distribution. In a word, good grouping is abso- lutely essential to the natural style. Considering the group with reference to total structure we shall see that the unit group in the smaller works may constitute the entire paragraph. In other words, to develop a small garden in good paragraphic structure it may prove best to use only one group to each paragraph. Or certain para- graphs may have only the one group in each. In larger works there will usually be several or many groups to each paragraph. In short, the group will be a smaller unit than the paragraph. When several groups are used in any one para- graph they must obviously be much alike. This follows from the fact that they must all present the leading motive in a consistent manner, because it is the purpose of each paragraph to make a perfectly clear and unified presentation of some one phase of the leading motive. It will occur to all that any feeling of rhythm which our landscape compositions may possess is likely to be given through the appearance and reap- pearance of similar forms in successive groups—is 103 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng likely to be a matter of grouping. Now the cor- respondence between music and landscape is very close; and since rhythm plays so great a role in music we might expect it to be equally important in landscape composition. But this expectation is not wholly fulfilled. Repetition of similar elements— lines, forms, colors, species,—is indeed a very val- uable practice in landscape composition, and this repetition may be fairly regular and rhythmic. It is easy, too, to cite the great rhythms of Nature, particularly the round of the hours, of day and night, and of the seasons. Yet when we come to practical problems of grouping plants in informal composition it must be confessed that Nature’s rhythms are too subtle for easy imitation. The landscape designer, sitting at his drawing board, with his nurseryman’s catalog in his left hand, can not make much headway in his planting plans upon any rhythmic formula. Rhythm in the formal gar- den is a much simpler matter, for the formal garden is essentially rhythmic in its structure, like poetry. It is fairly evident that each group must have some character—some individuality. Otherwise it 104 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening ceases to be a unit—it loses its unity. On the other hand it must not stand out with such prominence as to break the unity of the paragraph of which it is a part, or of the whole larger composition. Some artistic skill will be required, therefore, to balance these two tendencies. No rules can be made for matters like this. They are questions of taste pure and simple, and if a man has not the needful taste, he is not a safe designer. This much can be said, however, that, in order to give any group any individuality whatever, or any intelligible meaning of any sort, it will always be necessary to follow the law of dominance. Each group must be commanded by some one species, all the other members being plainly subordinate. Thus one plant each of Philadelphus coronarius, Forsythia suspensa, Lonicera tartarica, Weigelia rosea, Rhodotypos Kerrioides, Viburnum lentago, Cornus florida, Spirea callosa, Cydonia japonica and Deutzia gracilis do not constitute a group in any artistic sense. Equal dabs of color out of sev- eral different paint tubes mixed on the palette do not make a color, but only a characterless gray. 105 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening The only possible way to compose groups in land- scape gardening is to select one species for the dominating element in each group, and then to build the other material on to this controlling quan- tity. Naturally the dominating element will be the main factor in relating the group to its paragraphic control and to the leading motive of the entire com- position. No survey of Nature’s methods of grouping would be complete without mention of a landscape form which classifies with difficulty into our poor human categories. This is the scattered distribu- tion which presents individuals, yet presents them in such constantly obvious relationship that the usual effect is not that of the individual, neither is it the effect of the mass. The most striking exam- ples of this are to be found in the scattered oaks along the hills which follow the Mississippi river from St. Paul to Cairo, and in the widely spaced pines on the pine barrens of central Florida. There are, however, hundreds of good examples of this scattering habit in the natural distribution of wild species. 106 WALK ALONG ROCK CREEK, WASHINGTON, D. C. CHESTNUT TRUNKS. AN EFFECTIVE GROUPING Photographs by King and the Author The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening Usually this arrangement is wholly pleasing to the eye. The spiritual effect is characteristic and agreeable. It is unfortunate, therefore, that this method should have been quite generally overlooked by the men who make planting plans. It would seem to be a method capable of considerable service in informal designing. Old time debates about questions of grouping used to turn usually upon the shapes of groups, meaning their horizontal projection or plan. Some planters, whatever their theoretical principles, plainly made all their groups in a monotonously oval form. Hundreds of gardeners—and not all of them amateurs—still speak of “clumps of bushes” or of trees. Quite recently I visited a city park where the designing was professedly naturalistic yet in which the margin of an informal lake was’ decorated with successive, equally spaced perfectly circular “clumps” of shrubs, each “clump” of a single species, but each one different from all the others. Earlier in this chapter reference has been made to the equilateral triangle which so easily becomes a 107 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening conventionalized group form. An examination of any large number of planting plans will indicate how easy it is to fall into some set form of grouping and how very, very hard it is to learn that infinite variety which so bountifully blesses the works of Nature. I have often been especially impressed with the structural stupidity of the ordinary plan for an herbaceous border. It consists of a crazy patchwork of irregular spots of approximately the same size. The finished border cannot be anything except a sample book of the nurseryman’s ma- terials. Now the remedies for this are three. Simplifica- tion—changing to a much simpler geometric pat- tern; dominance—the selecting of one or two spe- cies which shall be placed in so large a majority as to control the whole; pictorial instead of horticul- tural treatment—making of the border a unified picture instead of a collection of miscellaneous gar- den plants, however pretty and pleasing they may be. All these faults of grouping have one basis in common. They all result in part from the perni- 108 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening cious habit of studying planting plans in the flat, in plan on the drawing board. Every designer at his drawing tries of course to visualize his group. He tries to imagine how it will look on the ground. He tries to picture it in its vertical projection. But the case is a good deal like that called to mind by Josh Billings when he said, “All men aim to tell the truth but some of them are almighty bad shots.” All men try to imagine their groups in their finished perspective, but unfortunately many designers suf- fer from defective imagination. There is some point to the contention which I have heard from the lips of infuriated landscape gardeners that no man should be permitted to draw a planting plan on paper. It might be better, were it practicable, to do all designing on the ground. The landscapist could then put his materials in their proper places in the picture, much as a painter puts a touch of red here and a stroke of orange there, feeling his way slowly to the finished result. Certain it is that all grouping should be studied with least emphasis upon plan and much greater attention to vertical projection, and this feature can 109 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng be judged much better in the field than in the draft- ing room. The effective development of sky-lines can hardly be reached in any other way, yet effec- tive sky-lines are indispensable to good landscape workmanship. It need hardly be remarked here that the designing of good sky-lines is intimately involved in the placing of groups and in the order- ing of paragraphs. All these studies go together. Whether the sky-line be long and level or sharply serrated it must harmonize with the principal theme. If it has a vigorous rhythm it must cor- respond with the rhythm of the structural para- graphs and their component groups. Whatever rationale may be discovered in the designing of the sky-line must be founded on the principle of the leading motive, the paragraphic structure and the development of the group. Thus far we have considered the art of grouping only with reference to the external form and inter- nal structure of groups. At least two other mat- ters require attention in this connection, viz., color and texture. Much has been said about color harmonies and 110 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening color effects in the garden—much more, indeed, than the matter warrants. Color plays such a very important part in some other closely related arts that beginners naturally try to follow the same well-marked paths in garden designing. Frankly this color scheming in the garden seems to me to have been greatly misunderstood. There is a dan- gerous facility in the assumptions that gardening is merely a decorative art, and that it may therefore follow all the rules of the other decorative arts. Neither assumption is quite half true. The infer- ences and practices which follow in this train of reasoning are frequently altogether wrong. Under the first head let it be stressed that gar- dening is a structural art, like architecture. The purely decorative work put upon a church or villa is its least important feature. The architect is con- cerned mostly with foundations, the distribution of loads, the requirements of heat and.ventilation and all that sort of thing; even the esthetic value of the church building is gained more by structural mass than by decorative detail. The art of gardening stands precisely where architecture stands in this 111 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening respect, and the one who thinks of it merely as a scheme of superficial ornament hasn’t come within glimpsing distance of the main idea. Nevertheless there are many situations where the garden, having been built in all structural sound- ness, presents a pretty field for purely decorative treatment. At this point our second group of mis- understandings must be forestalled. These rest, as has been suggested, upon the assumption that the common practices of decorative art may be trans- ferred without redigestion to use in the garden. Take the color scheme as an example. It is one on which hundreds of respectable men and thousands of intelligent women have gone wrong,—men and women of the right sort—sound on the suffrage, who go to church, who know what eugenics is and who love their neighbors reasonably. These good people have learned (but not in gar- dening) that the color scheme is the greatest scheme in the world for securing unity of artistic effect. Millicent spends the nights of her girlhood in a pink bedroom developed by her own good taste; she adopts another color scheme for her trousseau; 112 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening she has her new dining room done in rich browns and her limousine in blue. If she gives a party, a dance, or a dinner, the color scheme has to be de- cided before the menu or the music. Why shall she not, in the garden, where all sorts of beautiful colors are placed at her disposal, mass them in tri- umphant color effects? Perhaps she should, but there are important points first to be taken into account. At the outset she should consult with nature who will have much to say about the results whether she be asked or no. Now nature has a color scheme of her own for every garden. Her ideas run very emphatically to green. She is like the famous fireman who didn’t care what color they painted the hose wagon just so it was red. Nature seems willing to let Millicent adopt any sort of color scheme in the garden just so it is green. And after the dear girl has spent years of effort on her pink garden she one day begins to realize that all the pink she has is a few faint splashes of color on an acre of rich velvety green background and under a bright blue sky. Nature has been laughing at her all the 113 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening while. At sundry times and in divers places it does seem indeed as though the good old mother gardener would try some novel color effects of her own. She does occasionally spread out those miles upon miles of yellow California poppies, or cover a state like Kansas with sunflowers, or fill the French fields with poppies glowing scarlet, or delight the Germans with some acres of cyanin-blue kaiser- blumen. But mostly she comes back to the greens, the grays and the gray-greens,—and always with that inevitable blue sky overhead. Her pinks and reds and blues and purples—colors which if put into Millicent’s dining-room would wreck the house —she throws about quite carelessly and promis- cuously. The most incompatible colors are set out together just as though they had passed the censor- ship. At this sort of thing nature beats the neo- impressionists, the cubists, and the militant suf- fragists. The fact is, of course, that these miscellaneous colors are actually harmonized by Nature, and by such heroic means as the artists never could com- 114 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng mand. She uses first that never-failing background of cool green which absorbs so much of the con- flicting colors that there is little left to offend the eye. And then over all there pours the bright sun- shine from heaven out of that warm and infinite sky; and that brilliant sunshine, while it makes the individual colors more vivid, catches them up in such a quantity of white light that they are all brought into solution, as it were, and are effectively blended in spite of all their antagonisms. So it happens that color combinations which would seem wild and savage in the subdued light of Millicent’s boudoir pass gloriously unchallenged out in the white sunlight under the open sky and against that quiet background of green. Even at that, I am often tempted to feel that our super-civilization has made us too finicky about colors. A whole lot of the rules and regulations which are supposed to govern colors seem very arbi- trary, and are the invention of man rather than a wise interpretation of nature. After some years of impeccable existence amongst the most delicate and refined color modulations we suddenly find an 115 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening Indian blanket brilliant with the loudest yellows, reds, and blues, but beautiful beyond all gainsay- ing. Or we get a shelfful of old Bavarian peasant pottery, or we see the Swede girls in their native costumes, and we are lost in wonder that anything so absolutely opposed to our teaching can be so thoroughly good. For a moment we may have a suspicion that nature knows her own game as well as we do, and is quite as willing to have the world beautiful in her own way as after any manner which we can teach her. Even the artists themselves sometimes attempt the use of raw colors. One has only to visit the modern art shows to see that some of the most thoughtful workers have decided that white light and the human eye can be depended on to resolve the primary colors into harmonious effects even where a scientific analysis might demonstrate their utter incompatibility. All of which is respectfully submitted to show why, whenever I hear of some precious lady who is going to make a pink garden or a purple garden, I look the other way and smile. It would be too 116 HILLSIDE GARDEN. GROUNDS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE Designed, executed and photographed by the Author The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening much to say that questions of color can be wholly ignored in gardening. The truth is simply that they have to be treated quite differently from the way they are managed in millinery. Thus, as 1 reason out the situation, I would decide that, while color patterns may possibly be worked out to a qualified success in the formal garden, there is small opportunity for anything of this sort in the natu- ralistic informal garden. Shrubs and trees show differences in color, to be sure; and in the art of grouping one must see that inharmonious colors are not placed side by side, either in the same or in adjoining groups. There are wide ranges of value in greens—a whole gamut between the light gray greens and the dark blue greens;—and very rich, though delicate, modula- tions are possible within these limits. Here is where the landscape gardener can be as subtle as he pleases. For the most important consideration we may adopt a negative rule, viz., avoid all unusual and unnatural colors. In naturalistic gardening such plants as Pissard’s plum, Schwerdler’s maple and 117 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening the variegated weigelia should be used most rarely or never at all. To this may be added one simple rule, as follows: Use the brightest colors, when they are used at all, in the distance, medium colors in middle ground, and the softest colors in the foreground. This method, it should be clearly understood, is applicable only in purely naturalistic gardening on lands of considerable extent. In small gardens and in the areas about dwellings, club houses, etc., colors may be handled quite differently. The scheme of color planting recently presented by Professor R. R. Root, which seems on its face to contradict the principle here laid down, is in reality effective and appropriate in these smaller, more refined, more humanized (and nearly always more formal- ized) places. Textures in naturalistic planting are usually more important than colors. By texture in this connection we signify the size and character of foliage plus the habit of twig growth plus pretty much the whole habit of the plant. Plants of dif- ferent habit of growth should rarely be combined 118 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening in the same group unless a definite contrast is de- sired and achieved. Textures of twig and foliage should be quite as carefully harmonized as colors. In general, too, we may safely follow the rule of placing the coarsest textures in the background and the most delicate textures in the foreground. In special cases very coarse and very fine textures may be brought together for purposes of contrast, remembering always that in art harmony should prevail and contrast should be the exception. Fre- quent contrasts in any work of art soon lose their force and become tedious or even obnoxious. 119 FEATURES AND FURNISHINGS WO good reasons why the formal garden has sometimes appealed more to the popular mind than has the informal garden are, first, that the former has possessed more features of striking interest and, second, that the formal gar- den has often been better supplied with the furni- ture necessary to make it humanly habitable and usable. The informal garden, in a word, has too often been featureless and unfurnished. These faults ought to be corrected. It is the business of the landscape gardener to supply these desirable features. He must find them on the ground, develop them, invent them, create them—provide them by the main strength of his artistic genius. Some little study in this field may show perhaps that the possibilities are as great for the naturalistic garden as for the most architectural enterprise. First of all the landscape designer should utilize 120 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng to the utmost all the natural scenery. Every good view, within or without the park or estate, should be fully developed. This development will require at least three things: First the line of the best view must be determined and kept open; second, this view must be framed by suitable plantings; third, inferior views must be blocked out or reduced to mere promissory glimpses. As a rule such special views require further to be fixed, marked and advertised by placing at the optimum point of observation an appropriate seat, carriage turn, rest house or some similar accessory. Thus the stranger is directed unmistakably to the main feature, the desirable vista or the glorious outlook. In formal garden design it is considered abso- lutely obligatory that each axis shall terminate upon some adequate object. Similarly in informal design each vista should terminate clearly and definitively upon some satisfactory object. There should be some hill, mountain, lake, church spire or other definite object of interest or beauty upon which the open vista clearly centers. To build up a long 121 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening vista with nothing at the end of it is like hanging on the parlor walls a frame without any picture in it. In grounds of any considerable extent there are usually natural features which can be played up by the intelligent designer. A brook, no matter how small and mean, offers unlimited possibilities. If there is only a trickle of water in it one can set back certain stretches so as to make reaches of flat water on which the shadows lie and on the margin of which all manner of aquatic plants will thrive. Then there will be alternating stretches of water singing over stones or flashing in the sun. Foot bridges or stepping stones at suitable points add to the picture. There may be seats in shady nooks from which one can watch the panorama of life upon the brook; while at other points there will be sunny, grassy glades opening back into neigh- boring meadows or looking out to adjoining lawns. In other grounds there will be natural ponds or cliffs or outcrops of rock or glacier-planed boulders or old plantations of pine or oak. Every such feature must be seized upon and developed 122 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening with skill and imagination. Some heroic landscape makers even create such features for themselves. They make artificial ponds and rivulets, even arti- ficial hills. One of them of whom I know, instead of building a concrete retaining wall to stop the erosion of a troublesome storm-fed gully, preferred to reproduce a complete outcrop of limestone ledge, stratum on stratum. Such work, of course, must be very skillfully done or it is anything but natu- ralistic. But when it is artistically successful it has every right to be called good naturalistic landscape gardening. Natural growth of good trees or artificial forest plantations always make good landscape features, and should be joyfully accepted in works of the natural style. Even a single tree of any size or symmetry can be emphasized by proper vistas and may be worth using as a feature. The planting of specimen trees and shrubs on all sorts of grounds has unquestionably been badly overdone in early examples of American landscape gardening. This particular trick may fairly be reckoned as a fault of the late Andrew Jackson Downing and of his 123 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening less capable disciples. Specimen planting must be done with great restraint; yet within judicious limits it is wholly proper and effective. It need not be forgotten, either, that to many sane and cultivated persons a garden is still a place where plants grow—where trees and shrubs and flowers are to be enjoyed. Many good people still admire plants, and to them no possible exhibition of architecture, statuary or ceramics can take the place of good maple trees or blossoming lilacs or masses of blue larkspurs. The unlimited wealth of all the nursery catalogs is at the command of the designer who is ready to cater to this amiable and legitimate taste. There are literally thousands of interesting plants which can be employed to make a garden a place worth visiting. 'These embellish- ments, too, have one indubitable advantage over the sun dial and the pergola, in that they change from week to week and day to day. The garden which is ablaze this month with poppies may be just as glorious next month with peonies. The gar- den which emphasizes features of this sort has a wide versatility. 124 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening Even collections of plants are not wholly inad- missible. The “pinetum” and the “orangery” and the “rosarium” are perfectly good ideas, in spite of their factitious origin and sometimes juvenile treat- ment. One garden that I know has specialized in lilies, and another contains every species of fern which an enthusiast and an adept can grow. Itisa great experience to see a hundred varieties of peonies or dahlias or gladioli all together. One might travel far for the opportunity. Such features are worth putting into gardens; and for the present one need only be reminded that over-planting and the making of collections have ruined more gardens than they have made in America. The landscape gardener who would make much of these elements in his work must be a man of power, that is, a man of great self-restraint. He must be a designer to whom the initial plan is clear and sacred or else he will very soon lose all sense of design in his enthusiasm for his horticultural collections. Sometimes these collections of plant materials may be turned to a special purpose and become 125 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardemng thereby new sources of interest and pleasure. For instance, a bird garden. Persons who are fond of flowers and of gardens (and not too fond of cats), are apt to be fond of birds also. The cultivation of birds opens up new and interesting possibilities in gardening. There will be plantings of viburnum, roses, mulberries and other materials on which the birds feed; there will be bird baths; there will be picturesque little bird houses; and, most interesting of all, will be the birds themselves. If one can have in one’s garden a catbird and a thrush, a humming bird, two robins and a song sparrow, it will prove a great addition to the columbines and sweetpeas. A bird sanctuary is obviously a very appropriate feature for the grounds designed in the natural style. And speaking of birds we should pause to em- phasize the fact that any living moving animals in a garden or park add enormously to the general interest. The old English parks often had deer running at large. I once counted three hundred beneath the dining-room window of an English country house. A few sheep on a park lawn will 126 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening be photographed hundreds of times every week, thus demonstrating their pictorial appeal. Some Jersey cows are almost as good. Most park super- intendents try to have a variety of water fowl— ducks, geese and swans—on their park lakes. AIL this is perfectly good landscape gardening. Then there is the garden theater or players’ green. Most of the outdoor theaters recently con- structed in America have been of the emphatically formal extremely architectural type. They have often been called “Greek” theaters. But neither the Greek theater nor the garden theater need be characteristically architectural. The classic Greek plays were probably presented originally amidst very informal surroundings, under the trees, on bits of fortuitous lawn, or even in the street. The architectural Greek theater and the big Roman circus belong to a later and possibly less artistic period. Certain it is that the modern outdoor theatricals which have been most successful have been very informally presented amidst characteristically in- formal garden surroundings. In this list would 127 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening come the famous performances of the Ben Greet Players, the Coburn Players, etc. In the same connection it is to be remarked that the many suc- cessful pageants given in America of late years have nearly all been staged in landscape settings of the most pronounced informality. These facts are pertinent and important. As a problem in garden design, it is wholly feasible to make a garden theater or players’ green of the most informal character. It may be fitted so snugly into the garden or into the woods or against the stream bank that every one would sup- pose it to be wholly the work of nature herself. There is not space here to discuss the whole com- plicated technic of outdoor theater design; but it is a matter which the proficient landscape gardener may be expected to understand and to practice. So here is another feature of vital human interest which may add to the charm of the naturalistic garden. Another special feature which seems peculiarly appropriate to the naturalistic park or garden is the campfire. The campfire is a peculiarly American motive, associated with our long years of pioneering. 128 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening From the Atlantic to the Pacific our civilization has been carried forward by a long relay of campfires. Thousands of men and women now living unsus- pected in the haunts of urban luxury have taken their turns beside the evening blaze or cooked their ration of bacon in the frying pan. That was a shrewd observation made by David Harum at New- port when he offered to bet a quarter that, on the shore drive, he could make one-half the millionaires duck their heads by shouting suddenly “low bridge!” Even those who have not personally lived the camp life have had father or mother or uncle whose stories of the early days have fired the ten- derest springs of imagination. Moreover camping, even where it has long been given up as a mode of life, persists as a glorious and popular sport. Thousands of men and women go camping annually for their vacations to the Adirondacks, to Canada, to the Rocky Mountains; and there, during the happiest days of all the year, they sit and smoke and dream and cook by the birchwood blaze. The great majority of sound, healthy and really cultivated persons in this country 129 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening know something from personal experience of the campfire’s charms. It is not hard to believe that such persons would find a garden campfire on their own grounds an appealing reminiscence of happy experience. The garden has long been recognized as a happy blend of those great elements of earth, air (or sky), plant life and water. The practical necessity of water in some form in every garden has been over- looked at times, particularly in America, and par- ticularly by designers in the American natural style. Just here they lost a point to the formal designers who nearly always found room for some fountain or pool. Now in this blend of elements fire may have its place as well as earth and sky and water, and its human appeal is just as primitive and just as strong. | Fire indeed is the one of these elements which has oftenest been worshipped by men. Even the professors of the purer and more spiritual religions have frequently used fire in their sacrifices and ceremonials; and the flame upon the altar or upon the domestic hearth still appeals to us as a definite 130 , GARDEN 8 AUTHOR MPYIRE. CA A GARDEN Planned Author uted and photographed by the evec TRAIL N MOUNTAI Photog by the Author graph The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening expression of divine mercy. There is also the pictorial effect to be considered, for a garden is made partly to be looked at. Now a campfire against a dark background of trees, in the dusk of the evening, with its inviting flicker of flame and its up-curling thread of smoke, makes about as fetching a picture as the garden artist can ever hope to compose. The quiet evening after- supper hour is often the very best one of the day in the garden. It is the hour when the family can be together and when intimate friends can drop in for a word of gossip. The technical methods to be observed by the landscape architect in installing the garden camp- fires need not be wholly overlooked. It is to be observed first that, as this motive comes from the pioneer life or from the vacation experiences in the wild woods, it harmonizes best with the wilder aspects of landscape gardening. ‘The campfire should be relatively remote from the house, in the most informal part of the grounds, and should have, if at all possible, its background of tall, dark trees. It is good art, furthermore, to associate the camp- 131 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening fire with water, either the level pond or the running brook. The typical camp-site must be beside a stream or lake; and thus the associations aroused by the one are intensified by the other. And, more- over, the pictorial effect of the flame reflected in the still water is well worth planning for. It should be understood that a garden campfire is not a bonfire. Indeed a blaze the size of a teacup is frequently all that is desired. All the furniture necessary in providing for this is a bare bit of earth six feet in diameter, though a few rough stones laid into a loose pavement, with two central stones on which to place the fuel, make a convenient arrangement. A simple flagging of cement may be laid, but this verges rapidly away from the rustic informality appropriate to the scene. Some comfortable seats ought to be provided in connection with every campfire. These should be as simple and plain as possible, harmonizing with their surroundings. Statuary in bronze, marble or plaster, has been used many times in naturalistic gardens in Europe and America. It must be allowed that in a few 132 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening cases these experiments have been successful. They have proved that it is possible to find plastic figures or groups which will fit artistically into a natural- istic or semi-naturalistic environment. More than that could hardly be claimed; and it would have to be understood that sculpture of all sorts nearly always comports better with the formal garden. Aside from these special features of interest every garden, even the wildest, needs some of the furni- ture of civilization. The human man still demands his creature comforts. Whoever has gone house hunting, and, piloted about by the dapper agent, has wandered from one empty tenement to another, has acquired in an intense form the feeling which goes also with the unfurnished garden. The rooms are bare, blank, chill and cheerless. That place which, with a few chairs and tables, a picture and a ribbon, was a bright and habitable home, is now more dreary than a cemetery; and the dapper house agent reminds one painfully of the cheerful businesslike under- taker. The difference between a living home and a dead empty house of course lies in the human 133 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening persons who daily inhabit the former. Yes, to be sure; but it seems to be in the furniture. The illusion is so powerful that no one can escape it. Even a dog feels it; and the dullest mind is sure to find that the house deserted by human beings is haunted by horrible ghosts. So strongly does the mind respond to this condition of desolation. All this argument carries over directly to the garden. For, though many people do not feel it nor make it true, the garden is just as much a part of the home as the library or billiard room. And the very reason why some folks do not find it so is that the garden, like the tenantless house, lies open, bleak and unfurnished, to the cold wind or the burning sun. This condition is commoner in American gardens than in those of Kurope. In our land the garden seems to be considered solely a field of horticultural experiments,—a place to grow trees or shrubs or pretty flowers,—a spot to be looked at occasionally and admired rather than a place to be lived in constantly and enjoyed. To tell the whole truth, of course, it would be necessary to say that there are a few gardens in 134 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening America which are over-furnished. For it is just as possible to overdo this work of gardening as to underdo it; and since the former is much the com- moner fault in American house furnishing we might possibly expect to see the same defect creeping into gardens. The overloaded gardens in this coun- try are mostly, on the contrary, the distinctively un-American gardens. Usually they are filled with European or Asiatic junk and are called Italian gardens or Japanese gardens. But these cases are exceptional, and may be passed over with this brief reference. The opposite mistake of leaving the garden bare of furniture is the common one with us. It is well nigh the rule, especially in our gardens made after the natural style. There are thousands of gardens, otherwise pretty well made, which haven’t in them a single bench or chair or table or shelter, nor even a wheelbarrow to sit down upon should one desire to smoke or talk or watch a humming bird at the columbines. These gardens are as absolutely devoid of those conveniences which would make them habitable as the house which has only the 135 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening paper on the walls. The notable lack of use suf- fered by our American gardens goes on all fours with this lack of usable furniture. In fact nothing would go so far toward popularizing our gardens, bringing them into steady use and making them a vital organic part of the home, as to fit them with suitable furniture. First of all there should be shelter. Instead of the pergola and the classical “temple” or “gazebo” or “music house,” there may be the “arbor,” the “summer house,” the “log cabin,” the boat house or the fishing lodge. There are just as many ideas— just as many motives,—amongst which we may choose in naturalistic gardening as in formal work, only we haven’t so fully developed them. Such shelters, protecting against rain or sun or wind, enable tender persons to remain in the garden many hours when without them they would be driven in to the library or the bridge table. The typical American garden porch is a move in the right direction, but it ought not to be the last move. Wherever there are shelters there will nearly always be places to sit, but there ought to be ample 136 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening temptation to linger and rest at other points in the park. Especially at those stations where good views are to be enjoyed, should there be ample pro- vision of seats. In the family garden there ought to be hospitable allowance of both seats and tables, such that meals may be taken, reading made easy, card games enjoyed, and so that those who want merely to sit and visit may find full opportunity. Amidst naturalistic surroundings the landscape gardener, of course, will not install the marble tables and seats of the big formal garden, but he will be able to provide substantial wooden benches and furniture of more or less rustic design. The extreme rustic fad of the ’fifties—twisted and con- torted tree stems grotesquely woven into settees or chairs—should be forgotten; but the plain rough- sawed or hewn planks of more modern times, stained or weathered, are both appropriate in the picture and comfortable in the using. Such seats and tables, it has been suggested, will be placed where there are good views. A more exact, and at the same time a more comprehensive, tule would be to place them at the nodes in the 137 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening design. Thus these help materially to emphasize the artistic paragraphs in which the design develops. Certain outdoor games may be provided for in the garden or the park, and such provisions help further to add interest to the place and to popular- ize the landscape gardening in a good and proper sense. Of these golf is the one game which prac- tically demands a background highly developed in the natural style. Golf in a formal garden would be less fitting than a dress suit on a fishing trip. But tennis, baseball, croquet, bowling, and other games can be nicely managed in naturalistic grounds of suitable size. In all northern climates special provision may very well be made for skating. This and other ice sports belong in the informal landscape almost as distinctively as does the game of golf. And, simi- larly, in larger grounds where water is present, arrangements can sometimes be secured for the corresponding summer sports,—such as bathing, boating and fishing. Yes, there are hundreds of things which the good designer can do to put life, interest and variety 138 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening into his naturalistic compositions. The well- trained landscape gardener will have studied these items of his art and will know how to develop them with taste and discretion. 139 THE OPEN FIELD NE does not need to be a partisan advocate ( ):: the natural style of landscape garden- ing to believe that it has a wide present usefulness and a glorious future. Let us, there- fore, avoiding all invidious comparison, try to esti- mate the special field of the naturalistic style. First of all let us remember that to the profes- sional landscape gardeners, in a rather special sense, is given the custody of the native landscape. This immeasurably precious heritage ought to be pre- served and passed on to succeeding generations in all its pristine loveliness. It may be modified here and there, forests may be cut, prairies plowed and cities built; but the beauty and majesty of the land- scape in its entirety need not be impaired. And adequate types of all pure landscapes will every- where be preserved. Elsewhere we have said that the work of the landscape amateur and of the professional practi- 140 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardenng tioner is (1) to conserve the native landscape, (2) to restore the landscape where it has been need- lessly despoiled, (8) to improve and clarify the existing examples of native landscape, (4) to make the landscape physically accessible to all men, women and children, (5) to make it intellectually intelligible, and (6) to give spiritual interpretation to the landscape. This is a great and glorious charge. As we have said, it falls primarily upon the professional landscape gardeners; for if they do not understand and love the landscape, who shall? And if they do not labor to conserve and restore it, who will lift a hand? If they cannot improve and clarify it, who can? If they cannot make it physically and intellectually accessible, who will show the way? And if they cannot give it a spiritual interpretation then the whole effort fails at last. Now all these great duties devolve on all land- scape gardeners, but most especially on those who know and love the naturalistic form of landscape design. These duties will fall on these men some- times as matters of public responsibility. There 141 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening will be many cases in which, as citizens, they must defend the landscape without hope of remuneration. There will be many cases, however, in which they will find congenial and profitable employment in these tasks. For one thing there will always be suburban and country estates and country clubs where private owners will require designs conceived and carried out in the natural style. In many cases these pri- vate commissions will involve the preservation of natural forests, lakes, islands and streams and their development to the best of their native character. This is the field in which all landscape gardening began, the natural style with the rest,—and it is a field which will never be exhausted as long as men make new homes. In the second place it is an error to suppose that the natural style, even in its extreme forms, is out- lawed in park design. Of course, it is no longer accepted without question as the only style for park design. We are now making our city parks into genuine recreation grounds. Recreation facilities have come to be altogether more important than 142 WHERE WOODS AND MEADOW MEET Photograph by the Author The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening landscape pictures, no matter how pretty the pic- tures may be. At the same time, however, all enter- prising cities are reaching out to equip themselves with rural parks—with large sections of wild land at relatively long distances from the crowded city section,—and these outer parks are to be real scenery reservations. They will still be devoted to recreation, but to the larger, quieter forms, such as camping, boating, and fishing. In these parks the work of the landscape designer must lie in the direction of the most advanced natural style. Beyond these outer city parks will lie the country parks. There will be county and state reserves. Such reserves are now just being made by the more enterprising counties and commonwealths. State park systems will very soon emerge; and as there is a logical place for them in civilization, we may expect for them a large future. These state parks will be concerned chiefly with the conservation of large tracts of wild land, that is of native land- scape; and the problem will be not only to conserve, but to improve these tracts and to make them physically and spiritually accessible. The only pos- 143 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening sible treatment of such problems in the hands of the landscape gardener lies in the application of the natural style of design and development. Beyond the state parks lie the national parks. These already are a public asset of incalculable value. We have already taken over several millions of acres in national parks, including superlative types of some of our best American scenery,—and in that category I include, as a matter of course, the Canadian scenery and the Canadian national parks. A good many more of these national parks remain to be established. This movement is des- tined to go forward with vigor for another fifty years. In the meantime we shall discover that other great areas, held primarily as national forests, can serve most admirably all the purposes of parks without in the least impairing their usefulness as forests. Their park qualities will be developed accordingly. We have, therefore, in hand several millions of acres of national park lands (including the national forests and the national monuments), with other millions fairly in sight, and we are just organizing 144 The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening a national park service to develop these unimagined resources in the public interest. This is an enter- prise worth more to the country than all the armies ever organized and all the navies ever built. And this magnificent enterprise will soon be in the hands of the landscape gardeners; for who can deal with it except the men best trained in the love of the landscape and in the technical methods by which alone it can be conserved, restored, improved, clari- _ fied, made available and spiritually effective in the hearts of men and women? Yes, indeed, the natural style of landscape gar- dening has before it the greatest opportunities ever offered to any art at any time in the world’s history. It is high time that this old, yet ever new, natural style received a more thoroughgoing study at the hands of all thoughtful persons, but especially by those who call themselves professional landscape architects. 145 INDEX INDEX Agricultural Landscape, 39 Animals, 126 Applications, 140 Art of Grouping, 92 Artificial Landscape, 123 Birch Tree Motive, 67 Bird Garden, 126 Brook, Treatment of, 122 Brooks, 37 Brown, Launcelot, 14 Campfire, 128 Campfire Construction, 131 Catholicity of Taste, 12 Climatic Influences, 47 Color Composition, 111 Colors in Nature, 114 Connecticut Motive, 70 Country Clubs, 142 Country Estates, 142 Country Parks, 143 County Parks, 143 Division of Land, 75 Ecological Grouping, 51 English Style, 19 Entrance Design, 74 Farmer and the Landscape, 30 Features, 120 Fire, 130 Florida Pine Tree Motive, 67 Forester and the Landscape, 31 Forests, 36 Form, 20 Form and Spirit, 43 Furnishings, 120 Furniture, 133 Garden Forms, 20 Garden Theater, 127 Gardening, 33 Geologic Forces, 46 Golf, 138 Group Forms, 107 Grouping, 92 Groups of Different Types, 93 Growth, 74 Hills, 37 History Motive, 71 Hollyhock Motive, 68 Indian Idea of Nature, 54 Indigenous Species, 17 Individuality of Groups, 104 Informal Tree Row, 100 “THlinois Way,” 17 Italian Style, 19 149 Index Japanese Style, 15 Lakes, 38 Landscape Conservation, 140 Landscape Forms, 44 Landscape Motive, 63 Landscape Motive Defined, 66 Langley, Batty, 13 Laws of Grouping, 98 Leit-Motiv, 64 Literature of the Landscape, 55 Mass Planting, 49-101 Miller, Wilhelm, Quoted, 17 Mixed Groups, 97 Motives, 63 Motives Classified, 72 Mountains, 35 Muddy Brook Parkway, 69 Music and the Landscape, 56 National Forests, 144 National Parks, 144 Native Flora, 16 Native Landscape, 25 Native Species, 49 Natural Composition marized, 90 Natural Forests, 123 Natural Style Defined, 24 Sum- Oak-Tree Motive, 66 Outdoor Games, 138 Outdoor Sports, 32 Over-Furnishing, 134 Over-Planting, 125 Painters of Landscape, 56 Paragraphic Development, 81 Paragraphic Structure, 66 Park Composition, 77 Park Design, 142 Pictorial Grouping, 108 Pioneer and the Landscape, 31 Pitch-Pine Society, 52 Plains, 35 Plant Collections, 124 Plant Materials, 48 Plant Societies, 51 Planting, 48 Planting Plans, 109 Players’ Green, 127 Power of Landscape, 26 Prairie Motive, 69 “Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening,” 47 Preservation of the scape, 140 Principles of Structural Com- position, 74 Professional Landscape Archi- tect, 140 Prose Composition, 65 Land- Rhythm, 103 River Motive, 68 Rivers, 37 Rows of Trees, 99 Rural Parks, 143 150 Index Scattered Plantings, 106 Sea, 34 Seats, 136 Shakespeare Motive, 71 Shapes of Groups, 107 Shelter, 136 Simplification of Groups, 108 Sky, 29 Sky Lines, 110 Social Group, 102 Soil and Moisture, 50 Specimen Plants, 93 Spirit of Beauty, 59 Spirit of Joy, 60 Spirit of Life, 58 Spirit of Mystery, 60 Spirit of Natural Landscape, 21 Spirit of Peace, 59 Spirit of Power, 59 Spirit of Reverence, 61 Spirit of the Landscape, 53 Squaw Birch Society, 51 State Reservations, 143 Structural Composition, 74 Study of Landscape, 28-41 Style, 18 Subdivision into Parts, 75 Suburban Estates, 142 Summer Sports, 138 Sunflower Motive, 68 Tables, 137 Termination of Vistas, 121 Textures, 118 Theme, 63 Topography, 45 Triangular Grouping, 107 Types of Landscape, 34 Unity of Theme, 66 Universality of Landscape, 27 Vacation in the Landscape, 32 Vegetation, 47 Vistas, 121 Water, 30 Water in the Garden, 130 What is Meant, 11 Winter Sports, 138 151 neg PUM Crater gd Mahaney Viste Pell pee g ir is tra te BRePr ag in ia an) { S tw te Coe te, Ss ee SMM gM 971, 8 o oe ak a bh by playa ey ly le laos ol eyez le, i th a ee 1 01 by dy yo, 3 fe il os 1 4 Cee F VX220 S25 3 249 & ae ae q vA) 2or8 ans EEE 3464 par a ay »e@ew Cah wees 4 wy oy ba oe Recs ra 6546 pa Bw ee Sel 1 4 \ ; eg 538 il “| bf if 4 li ‘Ge 25 1h rm) 3 {f AL? if aN