The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Landscape Gardening
Artificial constructions, in the sense here used, is meant to cover a multitude of whims and fancies which small gardeners—and some of higher rating—are al-ways introducing in their choicest and most conspicuous places. Frequently these arc of the most puerile order; sometimes they are very disgusting. As instances come under my own observation, J may mention a lawn vase made of an old stove painted red; a big rat-trap trellis with no honeysuckles to grow on it; a pile of oyster shells supporting a plant tub on the green lawn; and small flower beds edged with inverted beer bottles.
One of the most generally distributed mistakes of this sort is the conventional rockery. There is not space here to explain how to make a good rockery; but the general principle needs most to be emphasized, that nothing will save a rockery from condemnation unless it appears natural to its surroundings. It may be added that the proper surroundings are not easily secured; and that the small, flat front yard of a city lot can never furnish the associations to justify a rockery. When a heap of stones is dumped in the middle of the hand's-breadth of clipped lawn it must be evident to the most sightless observer that naturalness is lost.
Another affair much affected in some places is the little trellis placed on the lawn for the exhibition of climbing plants. This gives always a note of discord amidst natural or semi-natural elements, and it is very doubtful if such a trellis could be made agreeable in any method of gardening. Climbers on the porches and walls or on old tree trunks, or clambering freely over the tops of bushes, give a more efficient expression of naturalness than almost any other material at the command of the horticulturist; and it is perhaps because of this that they break so forcibly upon the quietness of the scene when treated improperly.
The summer house, which may also be one of the choicest charms of certain grounds, sometimes appears as a very monster of ugliness. A long chapter might be written here, also, detailing what is good and what bad in the way of summer houses, rustic arbors and shady garden seats, but it answers better our present purpose to observe that these are points at which naturalness is often lost, and which, therefore, require careful treatment and good taste to adapt them quite to the best interests of a whole, natural composition.
