The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Art Of Landscape Architecture
All formalism in the planting should be avoided and the trees and shrubs grouped in many sizes, but for the sake of a considerable mass of colour, masses of one sort should be used together. If a small valley or cleft in the crest of an island occurs, it should not be planted, except with low shrubs or undergrowth, so as to emphasize the variety of surface and increase the contrast or contradiction of parts which contributes so much to the beauty and picturesqucness of the landscape.
It takes almost a special gift to compass these natural effects, but the above simple hints or suggestions will place one on the right road. It sometimes almost makes one despair of trying to manage to create these natural-looking features. There are bits of views that have a beauty that cannot be imitated, and therefore it is often better to let a fine view alone when we can, because we can rarely improve it. Fortunate is any one who already has a natural and beautiful island. Best set out a water-lily or two or some other aquatic flower, but leave the trees and shrubs of the island untouched except a little cutting out of dead wood here and there or lopping off a rampant branch.
A landscape gardener learns above most artists to exercise restraint and humility. Nature is so much better an artist than he can hope to be. Many a place should never be planted at all except with vines and low shrubs and a tree or two immediately adjoining the house; nature herself having done the work so supremely well.
It has been already noted that to make an island after nature's standard, or type, there may well be more than one island, one in several and yet the whole constituting an island scheme, a unified effect. The most natural and beautiful island is one that is growing, one that has other small islands around it, emerging into sight, consisting, in some cases, of no more than a rock or a few square feet of earth and one or more small shrubs, an island very much like the larger one was at an earlier stage of its existence. To build such companion islands successfully, the controlling forces of the environment must be carefully studied and taken into account, the character of the current and the prevailing winds, from whence the soil drifts, even the source of the stones that may be conveyed by the ice. These factors will all work effectively in the natural development of an island, and in artificial constructions we should continually recognize their value.
If an island is large enough to require a bridge to connect it with the mainland, or to make the erection of some kind of building advisable, the simplest forms and material should be used, and generally it would be better to use stone alone.
