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

Landscape Gardening

The specially trained artist should be able to see more clearly and to feel more keenly than the average man the subtle beauties of mountain, forest and sky; and in some way he ought to help these average men and women to see and understand and enjoy more than they could without the help of the artist. All great art is interpretive. The greatest actors interpret Shakespeare, and the greatest musicians interpret Bach and Beethoven. So the transcendent beauties of landscapes require interpretation, and surely this is the calling of the landscape architect.

Constructively the work of landscape architecture is quite different in these great reservations from what it is in ordinary parks. It consists largely in making the landscape accessible. The best scenery must be found, the most superlative views located, and walks, trails or drives so planned as to bring visitors to these best scenes. Sometimes views will be helped by the removal of dead timber or other obstructions. Sometimes a lake will be improved by impounding additional water-flow. But in general the engineering work of the landscape architect in such circumstances will consist in letting the landscape sympathetically alone.

To himself the layman owes another duty, namely to understand and enjoy the glorious landscape preserved for him in these noble parks and forests. For appreciation is something that can be learned. Taste can be improved, in landscape as truly as in literature.

And simpler than that is the fact that enjoyment increases with experience; the more one sees of such great landscapes the more good one draws from them. It is like the old proverb: "Appetite comes with eating." As one sees more and more of the best landscapes one's appreciation grows.

There is another point here to be considered, and an important one. Most of us do not live in the grand Canyon nor in view of Niagara Falls. A good many of US are denied the opportunity even to visit those famous places. Perhaps we never see them in an entire lifetime. But we do live in some sort of a landscape all the while, and most landscape is beautiful. Some is better than the rest. Our duty and our privilege are to see what is good and to enjoy it. Every one indeed ought to love his native country, to— "Love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills," and take a constant and quick joy in the landscape by which he is daily environed. This understanding of the beauty of natural landscape ought to be one of the benefits imparted by landscape gardening.