We have now discussed some of the principles and applications of landscape architecture or landscape gardening, particularly in reference to the planting. The object of landscape gardening is to make a picture. All the grading, seeding, planting, are incidental and supplemental to this one central idea. The greensward is the canvas, the house or some other prominent point is the central figure, the planting completes the composition and adds the color.
![[Illustration: Fig. 53. An enclosure for lawn games.]](images%5Cfig053.png)
![[Illustration: Fig. 54. Sunlight and shadow.]](images%5Cfig054.png)
The second conception is the principle that the
picture should have a
landscape effect. That is, it should be nature-like.
Carpet-beds are
masses of color, not pictures. They are the little garnishings and
reliefs that are to be used very cautiously, as little eccentricities
and conventionalisms in a building should never be more than very
minor features.
Every other concept in landscape gardening is subordinate to these two. Some of the most important of these secondary yet underlying considerations are as follows:--
The place is to be conceived of as a unit. If a building is not pleasing, ask an architect to improve it. The real architect will study the building as a whole, grasp its design and meaning, and suggest improvements that will add to the forcefulness of the entire structure. A dabbler would add a chimney here, a window there, and apply various daubs of paint to the building. Each of these features might be good in itself. The paints might be the best of ochre, ultramarine, or paris green, but they might have no relation to the building as a whole and would be only ludicrous. These two examples illustrate the difference between landscape gardening and the scattering over the place of mere ornamental features.
![[Illustration: Fig. 55. An upland garden, with grass-grown steps, sundial, and edge of foxgloves.]](images%5Cfig055.png)
![[Illustration: Fig. 56. A garden corner.]](images%5Cfig056.png)
There
should be one central and emphatic point in the picture.
A
picture of a battle draws its interest from the action of a central
figure or group. The moment the incidental and lateral figures are made
as prominent as the central figures, the picture loses emphasis, life,
and meaning. The borders of a place are of less importance than its
center. Therefore:
Keep the center of the place open;
Frame and mass the sides; Avoid scattered effects.
In a landscape picture flowers are incidents. They add emphasis, supply color, give variety and finish; they are the ornaments, but the lawn and the mass-plantings make the framework. One flower in the border, and made an incident of the picture, is more effective than twenty flowers in the center of the lawn.
More depends on the positions that plants occupy with reference to each other and to the structural design of the place, than on the intrinsic merits of the plants themselves.
Landscape gardening, then, is the embellishment of grounds in such a way that they will have a nature-like or landscape effect. The flowers and accessories may heighten and accelerate the effect, but they should not contradict it.
![[Illustration: Fig. 57. An old-fashioned doorway.]](images%5Cfig057.png)
![[Illustration: Fig. 58. An informally treated stream.]](images%5Cfig058.png)