The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Art Of Landscape Architecture

That all is not perfect in English landscape work Prince Puckler indicates in the following quotation:

"I found the garden (pleasure ground) much altered, but not I think for the better; for there is now a mixture of the regular and the irregular which has a very unpleasant effect. The ugly fashion now prevalent in England of planting the 'pleasure ground' with single trees or shrubs placed at a considerable distance, almost in rows, has been introduced in several parts of these grounds. This gives the grass plots the air of nursery grounds. The shrubs are trimmed round so as not to touch each other, the earth carefully cleared about them every day, and the edges of the turf cut in stiff lines, so that you see more of black earth than of green foliage, and the free beauty of nature is quite checked."

For the flower gardens of Cheswick he has nothing but praise.

"On the other hand," he says, "the flower gardens are magnificent. The beds are so thinly planted that each separate plant has room to spread, excepting in those beds which are entirely filled with one sort of flower. In them, the chief aim is the perfection of the whole, and they are consequently by far the most beautiful."

To emphasize more fully the value of the broad, simple, and wholly natural idea of making a garden, an example is shown from Union College, Schenectady, New York State. There is no pretence here: plenty of trees and shrubs with peonies and other old-fashioned flowers springing abundantly at their feet; little stretches of turf between the flowers and the walk; then almost out of sight a brook running under a bridge of plain boards out into a small grassy hollow, lying in an amphitheatre under high overarching elms. The Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Union College, Isaac W. Jackson, commenced to make this garden in the early thirties of the last century, and his daughter, Mrs. Benedict, still cherishes it with loving care.

I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet; I doubt not they felt the spirit that came From her glowing fingers thro' all their frame.