Manual of Gardening | Page 8

feet long, thirty to fifty kinds of shrubs and flowers can be grown to perfection,
and the school-grounds will be practically no smaller for the plantation.
One cannot make a plan of a place until he knows what he wants to do with the property;
and therefore we may devote the remainder of this chapter to developing the idea in the
layout of the premises rather than to the details of map-making and planting.
Because I speak of the free treatment of garden spaces in this book it must not be inferred
that any reflection is intended on the "formal" garden. There are many places in which
the formal or "architect's garden" is much to be desired; but each of these cases should be
treated wholly by itself and be made a part of the architectural setting of the place. These

questions are outside the sphere of this book. All formal gardens are properly individual
studies.
All very special types of garden design are naturally excluded from a book of this kind,
such types, for example, as Japanese gardening. Persons who desire to develop these
specialties will secure the services of persons who are skilled in them; and there are also
books and magazine articles to which they may go.
* * * * *
_The picture in the landscape._
The deficiency in most home grounds is not so much that there is too little planting of
trees and shrubs as that this planting is meaningless. Every yard should be a picture. That
is, the area should be set off from other areas, and it should have such a character that the
observer catches its entire effect and purpose without stopping to analyze its parts. The
yard should be one thing, one area, with every feature contributing its part to one strong
and homogeneous effect.
These remarks will become concrete if the reader turns his eye to Figs. 5 and 6. The
former represents a common type of planting of front yards. The bushes and trees are
scattered promiscuously over the area. Such a yard has no purpose, no central idea. It
shows plainly that the planter had no constructive conception, no grasp of any design, and
no appreciation of the fundamental elements of the beauty of landscape. Its only merit is
the fact that trees and shrubs have been planted; and this, to most minds, comprises the
essence and sum of the ornamentation of grounds. Every tree and bush is an individual
alone, unattended, disconnected from its environments, and, therefore, meaningless. Such
a yard is only a nursery.
[Illustration: Fig 5. The common or nursery way of planting]
[Illustration: Fig. 6. The proper or pictorial type of planting]
The other plan (Fig. 6) is a picture. The eye catches its meaning at once. The central idea
is the residence, with a free and open greensward in front of it The same trees and bushes
that were scattered haphazard over Fig. 5 are massed into a framework to give
effectiveness to the picture of home and comfort. This style of planting makes a
landscape, even though the area be no larger than a parlor. The other style is only a
collection of curious plants. The one has an instant and abiding pictorial effect, which is
restful and satisfying: the observer exclaims, "What a beautiful home this is!" The other
piques one's curiosity, obscures the residence, divides and distracts the attention: the
observer exclaims, "What excellent lilac bushes are these!"
An inquiry into the causes of the unlike impressions that one receives from a given
landscape and from a painting of it explains the subject admirably. One reason why the
picture appeals to us more than the landscape is because the picture is condensed, and the
mind becomes acquainted with its entire purpose at once, while the landscape is so broad
that the individual objects at first fix the attention, and it is only by a process of synthesis

that the unity of the landscape finally becomes apparent. This is admirably illustrated in
photographs. One of the first surprises that the novice experiences in the use of the
camera is the discovery that very tame scenes become interesting and often even spirited
in the photograph. But there is something more than mere condensation in this vitalizing
and beautifying effect of the photograph or the painting: individual objects are so much
reduced that they no longer appeal to us as distinct subjects, and however uncouth they
may be in the reality, they make no impression in the picture; the thin and sere sward may
appear rather like a closely shaven lawn or a new-mown meadow. And again, the picture
sets a limit to the scene; it frames it, and thereby cuts off all extraneous and confusing or
irrelevant landscapes.
These remarks are illustrated in