The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Art Of Landscape Architecture
The people who use lawns often fail to gain a sufficient realization of the need of care in their development. They would not think of walking over flowers or beautiful dwarf foliage plants used in bedding. Just as much in their own way do the blades of grass need to be cultivated and preserved. The limitations of the use of the mowing-machine should be strictly maintained during abnormally wet or dry weather, hot or cold weather, or during certain stages of growth. There is a colour and shade and actual grace peculiar to a lawn thus maintained that is of the highest importance in landscape gardening. The use of sheep on lawns has its advantages, and certainly the grass will do well under the effects of such pasturing, and gain a more natural appearance, and give a more pastoral effect.
Roads And Paths
FOR what is the good of a park that presents the same recurring picture from a few points of view, a park where I am never led, as by an invisible hand, to the most beautiful spots, seeing and comprehending the picture in its entirety and at my ease? This is the purpose of roads and paths, and while they should not be unnecessarily multiplied, too many are better than too few. Roads and paths are the dumb conductors of the visitor and should serve in themselves to guide him easily towards every spot which could afford enjoyment. Roads and paths, therefore, should not be too conspicuous but should be carefully laid out and concealed by plantations. I mean too conspicuous in the English sense where a property of a thousand acres has only one or two main roads or paths, yet the opposite system of our imitation English gardens, where often two or three adjacent paths all show the same points of view and lead to the same spot, is also very objectionable.
"It follows from what I have said elsewhere that the roads and paths should not run in continual curves like a serpent wound round a stick but should rather make such bends as serve a definite purpose easily and effectively, following as far as possible the natural contours of the ground. Certain aesthetic rules dictate these bends in themselves and hence in places obstacles must be set up where they do not naturally occur in order to make the graceful lineappear natural. For instance, two curves close together in the same road or path seen at the same time do not look well. If this cannot be entirely avoided then a sharp turn should be relieved by a larger, more rounded turn and the former should seem justified by trees or plantations on the inner side, or by elevations where the road or path is apparently more easily led around than over them."
