Landscape Horticulture.
Landscape horticulture has often been likened to the painting of a picture. Your art-work teacher has undoubtedly told you that a good picture should have a point of main interest, and therest of the points simply go to make more beautiful the central idea, or to form a fine setting for it. So in landscape gardening there must be in the gardener's mind a picture of what he wants the whole to be when he completes his work.
From this study we might be able to work out a little theory of landscape horticulture.
Let us go to the lawn. A good extent of open lawn space is perpetually beautiful. It is restful. It adds a feeling of space to even small grounds. So we might infer & say that it is well to keep open lawn spaces. If one covers his lawn space with many trees, with little flower beds here & there, the common consequence is choppy and fussy. It is a bit like an over-dressed person. One's grounds lose all identity thus treated. A single tree or a small group is not a bad arrangement on the lawn. Do not centre the tree or trees. Let them drop a bit into the background. Make a admirable side feature of them. In selecting trees one must keep in mind a number of things. You should not choose an overpowering tree; the tree should be one of good shape, with something fascinating about its skin, leaves, flowers or fruit. While the poplar tree is a rapid grower, it sheds its leaves early and so is left standing, bare & black, before the fall is old. Remember, there are places where a row or
double row of Lombardy poplar trees is very effective. But I think you will agree with me that one lone poplar is not. The catalpa is quite beautiful by itself. Its leaves are broad, its flowers appealing, the seed pods which cling to the tree until away into the winter, add a bit of picture squeness. The bright berries of the ash, the supreme foliage of the sugar maple, the flowers of the tulip tree, the skin of the white birch, and the leaves of the copper beech all these are beauty items to view.
Place makes a difference in the selection of a tree. Suppose the lower portion of the grounds is a bit low and wet, then the spot is best for a willow tree. Don't group trees together which look weired. A long-looking poplar tree does not go with a nice rather rounded little tulip tree. A juniper bush, so neat and prim, would look silly beside a spreading chestnut. One must keep ratio and suitability in mind.
I'd never advise the planting of a group of evergreens close to a house, & in the front yard. The effect is very gloomy indeed. Houses thus embedded are overcapped by such trees and are not only dark to live in, but truly unhealthy. The important requirement in the a house is sunlight & plenty of it.
As trees are selected because of certain good points, so shrubs should be. In a clump I should wish some which bloomed early, some which blossomed late, some for the beauty of their fall foliage, some for the color of their bark and others for the fruit. Some spireas and the forsythia bloom early. The red bark of the dogwood makes a bit of colour all winter, and the red berries of the barberry stick to the shrub well into the winter.
Certain bushes are good to use for hedge purposes. A hedge is rather better usually than a fence. The Californian privet is excellent for this purpose. Osage orange, Japan barberry, buckthorn, Japan quince, & Van Houtte's spirea are some other shrubs which make good hedges.
I forgot to say that in tree & bush choice it is generally better to choose those of the locality one lives in. Unique and foreign plants do less well, & often harmonize but poorly with their new setting.
Landscape gardening may follow along very formal lines or along informal lines. The first would have straight paths, right rows in stiff beds, everything, as the name tells, perfectly conventional. The other method is, of course, the exact opposite. There are danger points in each.
The conventional placement is likely to look too stiff; the informal, too fussy, too wiggly. As far as paths go, keep this in mind, that a path should always lead someplace. That is its business to direct one to a decided place. Now, straight, even paths are not churlish if the result is to be that of a conventional garden. The danger in the curved path is an steep curve, a whirligig outcome. It is far better for you to stick to straight ways unless you can make a really beautiful curve. No one can tell you how to do this.
Garden ways may be of gravel, of dirt, or of grass. One sees grass paths in some very lovely gardens. I doubt, still, if they would serve as well in your small gardens. Your garden surface areas are so unique that they should be re-spaded every season, and the grass ways are a great trouble in this work. Of course, a gravel path makes a good appearance, but again you may not have gravel at your command. It is viable for any of you to dig out the path for two feet. Then put in six inches of stone or clinker. Over this, pack in the dirt, rounding it slightly toward the centre of the path. There should never be depressions through the central part of paths, since these form convenient places for water to stand. The under layer of stone makes a natural drainage system.
A building often needs the help of vines or flowers or both to tie it to the grounds in such a way as to form a proportionate whole. Vines lend themselves well to this work. It is better to plant a perennial vine, & so let it form a perpetual part of your landscape scheme. The Virginia creeper, wistaria, honeysuckle, a climbing rose, the clematis & trumpet vine are all most acceptable.
Close your eyes & project a house of natural colour, that mellow gray of the weathered shingles. Now add to this old house a purple wistaria. Can you see the beauty of it? I shall not forget soon a rather ugly corner of my childhood home, where the dining room and kitchen met. Just there climbing over, and falling over a trellis was a trumpet vine. It made pretty an awkward angle, an ugly bit of carpenter work.
Of course, the morning-glory is an annual vine, as is the moon-vine & wild cucumber. Now, these have their specific function. Oftentimes, it is necessary to cover an ugly thing for just a time, until the better things and better times come. The annual is 'the chap' for this work.
Along an old fence a hop vine is a thing of beauty. One might try to rival the woods' landscape work. For often one sees festooned from one decayed tree to another the ampelopsis vine.
Flowers may well go along the side of the building, or bordering a walk. In common, though, keep the front lawn space open and unbroken by beds. What lovelier in early spring than a bed of daffodils close to the house? Hyacinths and tulips, too, form a blaze of glory. These are little or no bother, and start the spring aright. One may make of some bulbs an exception to the rule of unbroken front lawn. Snowdrops & crocuses planted through the lawn are stunning. They do not interrupt the general consequence, but just blend with the whole. One expert bulb gardener says to take a basketful of bulbs in the fall, walk about your grounds, & just drop bulbs out here and there. Wherever the bulbs drop, plant them. Such small bulbs as those we plant in lawns should be in groups of four to six. Daffodils may be thus planted, too. You all remember the grape hyacinths that grow all through Katharine's side yard.
The place for a flower garden is generally at the side or rear of the house. The backyard garden is a beautiful idea, is it not? Who wishes to leave a beautiful looking front yard, turn the corner of a house, and find a dump heap? Not I. The flower garden may be laid out formally in neat little beds, or it may be more of a sloppy, hit-or-miss sort. Both have their good points. Great masses of bloom are attractive.
You should have in mind some feeling of the blending of colour. Nature seems not to consider this at all, & still gets wondrous results. This is because of the wonderful amount of her perfect background of green, and the infinitude of her space, while we are limited at the best to relatively small areas. So we should attempt not to blind people's eyes with brushes of colours which do not at close range blend well. In order to break up extremes of colors you can always use masses of white flowers, or something like mignonette, which is in result green.
Eventually, let us sum up our landscape lesson. The grounds are a setting for the house or buildings. Open, free lawn spaces, a tree or a proper group well laid, flowers which do not clutter up the front yard, groups of shrubbery these are points to be retrieved. The ways should lead somewhere, & be either straight or well twisted. If one starts with a formal garden, one should not mix the informal with it before the work is done.
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