The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Landscape Gardening
In both plans and specifications too great care cannot be taken, nor too deep a study made of the whole and of each of its parts; for, as has already been pointed out, it is fatal to leave latitude for change of mind or to invite alterations. These plans and specifications, too, cannot descend too deeply into the details of the composition; for an unsympathetic treatment of the smallest items may mar the grandest conception.
Mistake is common at this point. Many people, even landscape gardeners, seem to think that if the general outlines of the plan are determined by a master artist, the construction and all minor matters may be left to the plants man, the florist, or the man-of-all-work. On the contrary plans and specifications are not too explicit if they locate every lilac bush and spiraea and clump of columbine, and if they demand that the lilac shall be a Frau Dammann, the spiraea a prunifolia, and the columbine of the variety Skinneri.
It is no controversion of this statement to say, what is the undeniable fact, that the best considered plans will not always work out exactly upon the ground. It is indeed true that there are always arising, in the const ruction, exigencies which require this addition, that omission, or an entire change. It becomes, then, all the more important that, in all things where it is at all possible, a predetermined scheme shall be followed. The ideas of the author, conscientiously worked out in some parts, give a definite suggestion for the concordant treatment of other parts to which his foresight could not have extended. Nor is it a sufficient excuse for changing any detail of a plan that some other item seems at the time to be better than the one originally proposed, even though it be to introduce some new and beautiful plant not known to the artist. Only a few of these changes are required to alter radically the original idea, and possibly to destroy forever the unity of its expression.
Even in the smallest compositions, such as the planing of a town lot or the ornamentation of a cemetery block, a definite and explicit plan should be decided upon at the outset; it should be reduced in full to paper, and should ever after be conscientiously followed.
There are two great styles of landscape gardening, —the natural and the architectural. The former is sometimes called the English style, from the circumstance that it received its first great development at the hands of the English gardeners; and the latter is often known as the Italian style, from having been brought to a high degree of perfection by Italian artists. It is quite possible to conceive of other legitimate styles, and room is accordingly made for a method of treatment not seldom employed, called here the picturesque style.
