are the dominant areas. In naturalistic design it reveals, more than any other material, the form of the ground which it clothes, and being more than any other ground cover resistant to the damage from trampling feet, it has come to be the chosen surface of the open spaces of our parks and estates. (See Plate 33.) The desirable fineness and smoothness of its texture will depend on the refinement of finish of the design, and the amount and expense of upkeep thereby entailed will depend on the intensity of its use. The effect of an English lawn before some wellkept great country house is worth the century of care which has brought it to its perfection. In an outlying metropolitan reservation, or before a summer cottage on the rugged Maine coast,* a grass area cut but twice a year, and resembling a pasture rather than a lawn, might well be not only less expensive but also more appropriate and beautiful. In the smaller naturalistic scenes where the ground surface as well as the planting masses may be modeled by the designer, there are certain relations of ground form and form of planting mass which the landscape architect will seek. In larger landscapes these relations will also be valuable, but they are obtainable by the choice and location of the planting rather than by the more expensive grading changes in the surface of the ground. A mass of planting usually looks best if the ground slopes slightly up to its foot. A base may be thus given to the planting mass and a sequential relation suggested between the planting and the open ground on a small lawn, with a change of ground elevation of only a few inches. In larger schemes this may be a greater undertaking, but sometimes where the ground surface rounds over and slopes down in a place where the designer would prefer that at least for a few feet it should remain level or slope up, the difficulty may be overcome by placing lower shrubs where the ground surface still maintains a satisfactory modeling, and then behind these, at a lower level, larger shrubs or trees which shall carry the line up with their surface and not down with the now concealed surface of the ground. Similarly an elevation which is too slight to bear its part in the design may be increased by planting, which may be highest on top of the knoll, lowest where it merges into the flat; and thus very considerable effects of * See Charles Eliot's Anglomania in Park Making, an article reprinted in Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect, p. 215–218. (See REFERENCES.) Planting in ground modeling may be produced in the inexpensive material of plant foliage. Here, as always where planting is used to screen out some undesirable thing from the composition, the winter effect must also be considered, and if this is important either very close-growing deciduous plants or else evergreens should be used. When the knolls and hollows are small, and consequently the planting plays a proportionally more important part in the design, the scale relation of planting to topography must be particularly studied, so that it may explain the topography and not obscure it. A little hill might be made more effective by a planting of hawthorn, but quite dwarfed by a grove of elms. In large compositions where the actual height of any tree-planting which might be made would add but little proportionally to the height of the hill which is to be planted, the form and character relation, rather than the relation of size, between the planting and the ground becomes proportionally more important, although in any naturalistic design it is to be considered.* A sharp-pointed and craggy hill may perhaps best be crowned or accented with trees of aspiring form; a round and gentle hill might have upon its top an irregular and crouching mass of roundheaded deciduous trees which carry their branches close to the ground. * Cf. Plant Character and Landscape Character, p. 165. (See Drawing XXII, on p. 184.) Many other less obvious form relations in composition between plant and ground are of course possible, but often some economic exigencies of the design will fix the form of the planting, and its esthetic relation to the topography will be rather one of character. * The planting which borders the shores of a natural or naturalistic Waterside pond should bear in design much the same relation to the water surface Planting that planting surrounding an open naturalistic lawn might bear to the surface of the turf; and the pleasant relations of accented promontory, enframed bay, and free-standing island are much the same in each case. (See Plates 4, 26, and 32.) The line between water and land however is a more important thing in the composition than the line between turf and shrubbery. This is partly due to the flatness of the water surface which necessarily meets the shore everywhere in a definite line, but largely due to the reflection of the shore in the water. The planting which stands on the brink shows practically its whole form in reversed reflection; the planting standing back from the shore shows its tops only, and in the case of a small pool or in any other circumstances where the observer looks down at any considerable angle on the surface of the water, objects standing at any great distance back from the shore are not included in the reflection, a fact which gives to planting directly on the shore-line a special importance in the scene. Particularly where the surface of the water is quiet, both the real shore and its reflected counterpart must be considered in the composition. An overhanging white-barked birch tree might not be, alone, too striking an object in the composition, but it might prove so when reënforced by its reflection beneath. A low bank of shrubbery which in itself was not sufficient boundary for a river surface in a certain landscape might be quite enough for its purpose when doubled by its image in the water. As the line of sight of the observer rises from its point of reflection on the water surface to where it strikes the further shore, any overhanging planting and any deep shadows within the plants on the water's edge will tell with their full effect. On the other hand, a low and shelving shore, and particularly a shore grown with reed and sedge that conceals the water's edge, will be diminished and obscured in reflection. * For Rock Planting, see Chapter VIII, p. 147. Planting in Planting as Often the designer may judiciously somewhat accent all the effects of his shore treatment because the observer is kept at a distance by the foreground water-surface, but if there is boating on the water the conditions may well be reversed, and the planting may then be arranged to be inspected close at hand. In its relation to architectural structures,* planting bears its part in landscape composition in these ways: it enframes, limiting the composition of which the structure is the dominant object and concentrating attention upon the structure; it leads up to the structure as a subordinate mass to a dominant one, -"tying the structure to the ground," as the phrase goes; and it decorates, perhaps paneling the face of a structure with chosen patterns of green, perhaps changing the texture of parts of the façade from that of stone to that of leaves. A building may be entirely embowered in trees or ensconced among them (see Drawing XXV, opp. p. 196, and Drawing XXVI, opp. p. 198); a small house may be actually completely canopied by a great tree; but more commonly the enframement of a building by trees is an effect best seen from some one point of view, a point of view usually in which the trees are nearer to the spectator than is the house. (See Drawing XXIV, opp. p. 192.) An overarching tree like an elm is particularly effective for this purpose, because it not only bounds the composition on the sides but to a considerable extent upon the top, and its spreading shadow upon the ground may inclose the view at the bottom as well. But enframement only upon the sides is often effective in landscape composition, and even trees like Lombardy poplars may serve as satisfactory enframement for a building. Though a tree may form the boundary of a definite and recognizable composition of which a house is the dominant object, still the whole shape of the tree will be seen in relation to the shape of the house in the broader landscape, and the shape harmony of these two objects in the composition cannot be ignored. A building however is so utterly differ ent an object from a tree in form, in texture, in association, that it is quite idle to attempt to predict for an unknown case whether the relation between house and tree should be that of similarity or that of contrast. There are cases, that is, where a round-headed oak would be * Planting in relation to roads is discussed under Roads, in Chapter X, p. 223. the appropriate tree to form a part of a setting of a low building of level skyline; there are also cases, however, where a group of Lombardy poplars would better serve this purpose in the composition. The span of a bridge* is necessarily somewhat bounded and enframed by its abutments when it is looked at along the reach of water which it crosses, but the compositional strength of the masses on each side between which the bridge springs can be much increased by planting which rises well above the level of the bridge. (See Plate 32.) Such planting serves also, of course, as pictorial enframement for the bridge itself. The best outlook from the bridge is presumably up or down the stream from well out upon the bridge-span, and these same plantations will give some sense of enframement to this view as well. Transition between Ground and Structure Planting may concentrate the attention upon a structure by converg- Planting as ing lines in perspective, as where an allée of trees leads to a building or to its entrance; in this case there is also enframement of the principal object in the view. (See Drawing XI, opp. p. 82.) In the relation of minor planting masses to a building, two effects are commonly sought: first, to fix the attention upon some important part of the building, as where a shrub mass is placed on each side of and leading up to a door, a French window, or perhaps a gabled end or pavilion of the house; and second, to make a sequential connection between the horizontal lines of the ground and the vertical surface of the building. (See Drawing XXIII, opp. p. 190, and Drawing XXVI, opp. p. 198.) Where planting is carried out from the corners of a house, such an arrangement serves also in a way as enframement and foreground for the façade of the house between the two corner plantings. The appearance of the house may be greatly improved by a simple shrub planting, but in modern American practice, particularly on smaller places where often little skill is employed in the design, the planting of shrubs about the bases of buildings, for these purposes, for decoration, or merely from a restless desire to take away every effect of bareness, has been considerably overdone. Some buildings, notably perhaps the Tudor country houses, are at their best when their walls rise clear from the clipped turf or the paved terrace. (See Drawing VI, opp. p. 48.) A woodland cottage might look well if * Cf. Chapter X, p. 216. |