The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Landscape Gardening
GAINING NATURALNESS
A few simple rules will help to gain this naturalness, which is lost oftener by thoughtlessness than by intention. Perhaps it is not strictly correct to say that naturalness is gained. As a matter of fact, when a house is built or a park laid out naturalness is lost to some extent. But by thoughtful work we may subtract greatly from the artificiality of the construction, and in that sense it is true that naturalness is gained.
Open lawns are the natural foundation of a natural landscape. They should be as large and as little interrupted as circumstances will allow. Speaking in a very general way, and with room for exceptions, it is good practice to devote all the center and interior of any landscape piece to open lawn. The plantings of trees and shrubs should, as a rule, be confined to the boundaries. Buildings should be located toward one side. And most certainly should the drives and walks never cut through the middle of the grounds if a natural, rural effect is to be preserved.
These lawns may be kept clipped, or the grass may be allowed to grow at its own will; but clipped lawns have a distinct suggestion of artificiality, and the clipping should be confined to the vicinity of buildings or other positions where smooth surfaces and straight lines are already in evidence. The unmowed lawn is suitable for larger places and for more emphatically natural surroundings. The lawn should cover a comparatively large area. One would not want the furniture in the parlor to take up three-fourths of the room; much less would one want the green carpet of the lawn nearly covered with such furniture as trees and flower beds.
Curved lines are usually natural, but not necessarily so. They may be grotesque and artificial to almost any degree, but it requires an effort to make them bad. Straight lines are specifically unnatural. Nature works only in curves. The planets move in curves, the smallest leaflet is bounded by curves, and your sweetheart's face has not the faintest suggestion of a straight line. You will with great difficulty find a straight line in nature. Inasmuch as the grounds on which the landscape gardener works often exist chiefly for some utilitarian purpose, many strictly non-natural features must be introduced, and in many cases the naturalness of the curved line must be abandoned for the usefulness of the straight. This is sometimes true of walks and drives, which are usually the most conspicuous lines on the grounds; yet the general rule must still be adhered to,—that the drives and walks should be curved unless there is some good reason to the contrary.
