The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Art Of Landscape Architecture
"He is a true poet (landscape architect) who feels himself at once bound to his predecessors and free, conservative and revolutionary, like Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, who receive into themselves centuries of history, of thought and poetry and add to those centuries something that is the present and will be the future: charges du passe, gros de l'avenir."
Unfortunately this style of landscape gardening persists more than it should down to the present day in Paris, and elsewhere in France, and for that matter in all the principal capitals of Europe.
In view of the great body of doctrine set forth in the following pages it will be evident that there should be more recognition of actual principles, more display of good artistic sense in the use of landscape gardening materials. A great deal of the writing on landscape gardening is not much more than a description of the virtues and vices of certain trees and shrubs and flowers, their beauties and their drawbacks. Some attention should be given naturally to the practical side of the subject, but only enough to make plainer the application of the fundamental ideas. There is undoubtedly a separation required—were it but temporary—between what may be called fundamental ideas and what is mere detail. At present in landscape gardening as usually practised, good ideas based on sound precedents are words almost without meaning to most people. A complete, all-comprehending system is of course impossible at present and doubtless always will be. Yet, if real effort of thought could be concentrated on cardinal issues and less padding of conventional and traditional details were foisted in, much might be done to make research into landscape-gardening lore more fruitful.
This at least should be always kept in mind, that the art of landscape gardening has been an evolution of ideas originated and developed down through the ages by the unfolding of the genius and the practical experience of skilled and cultured men.
No man is entirely original, indeed it was said by John La Farge that if an idea were an original one it would be safe to say it would not be a good one. Landscape gardening like everything else has its roots in the past, and the best art of this kind, or for that matter of any kind, is made up of the ideas obtained from many ources, both natural and historical. In The Philosophy of the Practical by Benedetto Croce are the following words:
And this growth is ever moving on, not without setbacks, at what seems to be slow and irregular advance, but in the long future we can confidently believe there will be always a day of better things.
