The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Art Of Landscape Architecture
When this is suddenly opened, the effect is most striking and surprising. You suddenly look down the avenue of ivy-clad pillars, and see their grand perspective lines closed at a distance of three hundred feet by a magnificent window eighty feet high and thirty broad; through the intricate tracery you see a wooded mountain from whose side project abrupt masses of rock. Overhead the wind plays in the garlands of ivy, and the clouds pass swiftly across the deep blue sky. When you reach the centre of the church, whence you look to the four extremities of the cross, you see the two transept windows nearby as large and as beautiful as the principal one; through each you command a picture entirely different, but each in the wild and sublime style which harmonizes so perfectly with the building. Immediately around the ruin is a luxuriant orchard. In spring how exquisite must be the effect of these grey venerable walls rising out of that sea of fragrance and beauty. A Vandal Lord and Lord Lieutenant of the country conceived the pious design of restoring the church. Happily Heaven took him to itself before he had time to execute it."
Everything that has been here said about the location of buildings applies equally to other buildings on any place; the interlocking of vines and other plants with the buildings can nearly always be made to accomplish beautiful results.
If the estate be comparatively small the house and the outbuildings should be segregated, grouped together and planted with trees and shrubs, so as to seclude them from the general landscape. In the case of some fine view it may be wise to leave an outlook from the house into the distance. On the other hand, the trees and shrubs always help the house where they partially screen its entire mass from view, only affording glimpses of the roofs through the foliage. This does not mean that the trees and shrubs should be allowed to smother the house, for there should be open space, lawns and formal gardens, near the house, and outbuildings, but only that as you approach it from certain directions the roofs should emerge from a mass of foliage.
One of the most difficult problems to be settled is the height of the first floors of the principal living rooms above the surrounding lawn. This is always a question that requires careful consideration both by architect and landscape architect. An open level space is generally desirable for the site of a house unless it is designed in a special manner on two or more levels, and in any case it should not be set on a pinnacle or peak of ground.
