The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Art Of Landscape Architecture
"The chief tool which we use for construction, i.e., our brush and chisel, is the spade, the chief tool for maintenance and improvement is the axe. It must not rest for a single winter, or it will happen to us with the trees as it did with the water-carriers in the Tale of the 'Wizard's Apprentice'—they will grow over our heads."
It is more than a case of overcrowding a design which is always about to be but never is, in Fichte's phrase. It is also in other words always becoming, an ebb and flow, an unceasing evolution of skilled results, continually improvement, or retrogression, deterioration, and decay. Nature never stands still. It is ever increasing life or ever increasing decay, oscillation between the two, steadily or spasmodically, as the one gets the upper hand of the other. Consequently the maintenance and care must be unceasing and vigilant and based on penetrating study of new conditions as they arise. The seasons, cold, heat, drought, insect life, fungi, and pests of every sort, all need to be watched intelligently and continually.
It is a common saying that he, or she, knows how to make a plant grow. It thrives under his hand. A great propagator handles plants like a wizard. There is something, people think, uncanny in such successful operations. But, after all, it is chiefly a matter of maintenance. Seed is sown, a cutting or a small plant is set out, or a graft is set in a stock; one must know how to do it; but nine tenths of the success attained comes from an unceasing conflict with adverse conditions, eventually finding in the process of development the brief poise and equilibrium of a mature and successfully grown shrub or tree. Intimate, loving comprehension of the nature of the plant can alone do this. It would seem that love is actually necessary to achieve the greatest results even in growing a plant, but love without knowledge can accomplish little, as many an amateur horticulturist has learned to his cost. Knowledge generally comes from long, heart-breaking failure and diligent, oft-repeated effort. The man who hires such work done, even with practically unlimited means, seldom gets as good results as some enthusiastic amateur—crank his neighbours probably dub him—who works night and day whenever he has a moment to spare to give to his plants. And there is incessant work to do. There is planting to be done every little while throughout the seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter, especially if the work is supplemented by a greenhouse. There is always pruning of some sort, pinching if nothing else, and warfare always on insects, weeds to fight and watering to be done, and cultivation, spading, hoeing, and mulching to be maintained.
