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Landscape gardening
in a door-yard often verges upon the ridiculous. The proprietor,
having read the standard authors, or visited a few large country
residences, is seized with the rural fever, and determines to
try his hand at improving his own place. He forthwith draws up a
plan, with its winding walks and roads, its summer-houses,
pines, oaks, magnolias, flower-patches, and what not. Large
package of trees and shrubs and vines are ordered from the
nursery, and groups and masses and screens are set out all in a
grand way. The work looks very fine to the owner; but to any
discerning eye that stops to forecast the future, the little
plat looks crowded and overburdened before it is half planted. A
few years roll by, and how does the place look to everybody? It
is one great confused mass of foliage, the trees overgrowing
each other, and killing out the grass and shrubs beneath. Even
the planter himself is dissatisfied, and wishes he had never
meddled with landscape gardening.
The obvious
lesson from cases like this is that in small places only a few
trees should be planted. These should be set along the
boundaries, near the gates, and at wide intervals over the
surface. Calculate their spread for twenty years or more to
come, and plant accordingly. It is often said, we are aware, the
trees may be set close together at first for immediate effect,
with the design of removing a portion of them when they become
crowded. This is all very well if that intention is faithfully
carried out; but in most cases it is not. The owner dislikes to
cut down the trees which he has planted, or he neglects to do so
until they have grown up tall and gaunt, like those of a forest.
Some
beginners dot their lawn over with new-fangled trees, or crowd
it with vases and statuary, or arbors, rustic seats and
rock-work, or they throw it into jolting terraces, or cut it up
into flower-beds in arabesque patterns. I remember a lawn of
moderate dimensions in which there are six cast iron vases, two
lions, four dogs, four female figures representing the Seasons,
besides several other works in terra-cotta. This is the
classical run mad. On the same street is another lawn, much
smaller, in which a great number of the new weeping trees are
huddled together. This is nature made awry, and the distortion
makes the beholder uncomfortable. A single specimen of these
oddities may sometimes be set on the side of a lawn, for
variety, and just to show what nature and art can do, but more
than one is too many.
If
landscape gardeners would always bear in mind that generally the
simplest airs have the richest harmonies, that simplest subjects
make the grandest pictures, and simplest designs make the most
pleasing pleasure grounds, we would not be offended by so many
strained, formal and unnatural garden effects. If they would use
simpler lines and curves, and pay greater attention to fixing
the places for permanent trees, they would produce much more
charming effects. In small pleasure grounds avoid straight
lines, in kitchen gardens avoid curves.
The
Horticulturist Magazine, 1865
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