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

Landscape Gardening

Certain concessions to architecture are always necessary in natural gardening, even in Yellowstone.

National Park, but they must always be looked upon as detracting from the ideal, and their thoughtless introduction or unskillful treatment may quickly damage the naturalistic landscape beyond repair. And so must flowers, foliage and trees be brought into the architectural garden, but they must, by appropriate methods, be subordinated to the geometrical outlines of the main features.

Geometrical lines, always to be avoided in naturalistic gardening, are to be conservatively sought in working out the architectural ideal. Flower beds, borders, drives, walks, and all other similar elements of the landscape, which in naturalistic compositions would preferably be expressed in flowing curves, will in this style be set in straight lines and geometrical curves. There are pleasing geometrical lines, and unpleasing ones. More exactly are there good combinations of geometrical lines, and bad ones. To discriminate between the good and the bad requires the same taste that is needed to criticize any other art object. To originate a good one in the imagination and successfully to transfer it to the garden requires the mind and the education of an artist.

The amateur may remember that these three tests can safely be applied to his geometrical lines: Simplicity, boldness, grace. Simplicity is of supreme importance. Intricate or complex geometrical designs, which do not appear at once clear and reasonable, even at the first careless, inattentive glance, are curiosities fit for intellectual study, and not elements of a picture for the delight of the more subtle esthetic faculties. They might serve a purpose in a museum. In a garden they have no place.

This is especially to be insisted on at this point, for the novice can easily combine geometrical forms; but doing so without training and without sympathy, his work is at best grotesque, and quite apt to be silly. This same lack of feeling for dignity of outline results in tameness, weakness, puerility, in place of that quality which we have designated as boldness. We might have called this quality dignity; but dignity is both simple and bold. Now if simplicity and boldness alone were demanded of geometrical lines, perfection would be within easy reach. One would have only to confine himself to rectangular combinations to achieve both. But some more graceful outlines are desired by the eye, and to their invention the designer may well give earnest study.