The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Landscape Gardening

This is so potent a principle that in making up the surface of the grounds for park or residence purposes great care is usually taken to avoid a perfect plane, and still to give a uniform swell or depression. Breaking the plane with a succession of little hillocks would be fatal indeed. Of these three classes of surface the concave is usually to be preferred for small areas,

for it gives much the best effect of extent. From any point within a concavity the whole surface is visible. This is not true of a convexity; and a perfectly flat surface will, unless given some bold and striking treatment, always have a suggestion of inconsequentiality about it.

A caution needs to be inserted here to secure the best use of these several varieties of surface. As long ago as 1770 Thomas Wheatley said: "In made ground the connection is, perhaps, the principal consideration. A swell which wants it is but a heap; a hollow but a hole; and both appear artificial. . . . Such shapes should be contiguous as most readily unite; and the actual division between them should be anxiously concealed. If a swell descends upon a level; if a hollow sinks from it, the level is an abrupt termination, and a little rim marks it distinctly. To cover that rim a short sweep at the foot of the swell, a small rotundity at the entrance of the hollow, must be interposed." All these cautions are fully worth attention, for the slightest differences in the surface of the ground are obvious and important to the sensitive beholder.

Broken ground offers an evident and spicy variety. The value of broken ground for developments of the picturesque is to be especially considered.

Sloping grounds have a value all their own, and for their most effective utilization, require a special treatment. For the present we will content ourselves by saying that two opportunities are afforded the gardener by sloping grounds which are elsewhere unusual. The first is in the diversity of surface presented. The second is in the advantageous situation for the display of many plants which, in any other position, would not appear to advantage. The respect to the first, it should be explained that even comparatively gentle slopes may be emphasized by proper treatment until they appear to be steep declivities. The first expedient to this end lies in the treatment of the ground itself. It is simply to contrive small irregularities of the surface by placing here and there a little swell which rises abruptly and then falls away very gently down the hill. This part of the declivity will of course be steeper than the general slope; and a few of these contrasts will give the appearance desired.