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

Landscape Gardening

Gentle curves are better than straight lines, for walks, except upon small places or in a geometrical plan. These curves must be determined by the exercise of good taste and judgment, on the ground. A design made on paper is apt to be unsatisfactory when transferred to the soil unless it is made by an experienced hand from an accurate topographical survey. Even then it may not tit. Curves made up of arcs of circles are not very satisfactory, unless the arcs are comparatively short and judiciously combined. If a road is properly designed, only a short arc will be visible from any point; and this enables the designer, when working on the ground, to make many curves and combinations of curves which would be unpleasing when accurately platted on a map.

When a walk or a drive branches, each arm should take such a course as to appear to be the proper continuation of the trunk. Imagine how one arm would look with the other removed. Would it still be complete? Would the whole seem to be the perfectly natural course for the walk? Such bifurcations should not be at too obtuse an angle; and yet this angle of divergence is of quite minor importance if the foregoing consideration is kept fully in mind.

Where several drives or walks meet, upon demand, a suitable concourse must be provided, for at such points there is always apt to be a congestion of traffic.

The size and form of this concourse is determined solely by circumstances. Sometimes such a spot commands some specially fine view. The place may be treated, then, with direct regard to the outlook. When no desirable external view is to be exhibited, the concourse area may have a special treatment of its own. It may be flanked by heavy plantings on part of its circumference, with open vistas left at the most favorable points. Or, if near a building, as is frequently the case, it may be treated as an outlying part of the architect's work, and made to conform to it in shape and ornamentation.

The provision of parking spaces for automobiles is a serious problem in the design of most public grounds, and may not always be disregarded even on small private places. These parking spaces become a part of the traffic system and must be designed along with the roads. When adequate parking space is not provided parking in the roads is certain to follow, and this is in every way unfortunate.