The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Art Of Landscape Architecture
"Rustic work" as represented by the intricate arrangement of cedar, locust, or sassafras branches twisted into the strange conventional forms has become popular for bridges and summer houses on islands and elsewhere, but good taste should really bar it. It is neither defensible as architecture of a sort, nor suitable as material for use in the landscape.
The outline of the shore of the island is a feature that needs the most careful management to retain the infinitely varied contours and even indentations characteristic of the method of treating such places followed by nature. Nothing that nature does is accidental or haphazard and therefore it is always important to study her methods and see how and why she arrives at certain results. Something of the play of these natural forces is indicated in the diagrams and explanations contained in the quotations from Prince Puckler contained in this chapter.
Rocks
THE employment of rocks in landscape gardening should be founded on study of the way similar fragments have naturally disposed themselves in the scenery of the territory where they are to be employed.
To complete the natural beauty and proper effect of rocks in the landscape, rock plants are required, plants that thrive in shallow soil and in the crevices, pockets, and nooks found in such places.
"They (the rocks) may also occasionally be connected with a stretch of wall built of blasted field stone as if for some purpose, like reconstructing a bridge or supporting a steep bank, one had merely taken advantage of the rocks which had naturally accumulated and supplemented the rest with a wall for the same purpose. This also gives the opportunity to gather together plants which demand a rocky soil, and which are often very ornamental, especially near water where such rock work is most desirable for a bulwark, dam, strong wall, etc., and in a large park they are almost indispensable. A slight artistic touch which can be recommended is to set the stones in a slanting direction as if they had been forced up in that manner and to make one or more of the edges stand out conspicuously, which gives the whole a more picturesque and bold aspect."
There are few things more beautiful in a park or garden than an old wall treated with rock plants in an intelligent manner.
"A grand old wall is a precious thing in a garden, and many are the ways of treating it. If it is an ancient wall of great thickness, built at a time when neither was work shirked nor material stinted, even if many of the joints are empty, the old stone or brick stands firmly bonded, and, already two or three hundred years of age, seems likely to endure well into the future centuries."
