CHAPTER IX PLANTING DESIGN --- PLANTS AS MATERIAL IN LANDSCAPE DESIGN The time element in planting design SCAPE DESIGN PLANT FORMS - Classes of tree forms and their uses in design Form the expression of mode of growth-Winter tree form-Form in topiary work - PLANT TEXTURE PLANT COLOR - Effect of character of leaves on foliage color -Range of foliage color - Restricted use of other colors than green - Effects of foliage color-Contrast of color in differentiation of units in design — Foliage color and aërial perspective - Use of "colored" foliage - Autumn foliage — Winter color, bark, and fruit - Color of flower - Practical difficulties of design in flower color - Circumstances harmonizing flower colors - Mass relation in flower color PLANT CHARACTER Species and character - Individual plant character Character and environment - Relation of plant character and landscape character "Expression " and character - Association and symbolism PLANTATIONS INCLOSING PLANTATIONS Outline, modeling, and treatment of informal inclosing plantations - Hedges - Low hedges and edgings - SPECIMEN TREES AND SHRUBS - TREE AND SHRUB GROUPS Composition of groups SHRUB BEDS-HERBACEOUS BEDS AND BORDERS-Flower beds as parts of a garden inclosed Arrangement of plants in relation to form of bed and form of plants Arrangement of plants in relation to time of bloom - Arrangement of plants in relation to color - Grouping of plants according to character- PLANTING AS SURFACE DECORATION Carpet bedding and parterres PLANTING IN RELATION TO TOPOGRAPHY RELATION TO ARCHITECTURAL STRUCTURES as transition between ground and structure Ground cover — Turf The architect, the sculptor, or the painter can create, within the Plants as limits of his material, practically any shape, color, or texture that he Material in Landscape may think of, and in his design there are no units other than those which Design he determines. The landscape architect, however, in designing in foliage, must for the most part choose those shapes, colors, and textures which already naturally exist. However completely his foliage masses and his flower beds are unified, they still are collections of recognizable The Time Ele- Planting individuals; and in many landscape designs individual plants are necessarily the essential elements of the composition, and must be so treated. Plants are living things: they grow from year to year, come to the height of their development, and die; they change their appearance with the seasons; the form of each expresses its particular racial inheritance and the accidents of its individual life. Plants have inevitably certain conditions of existence, certain requirements of soil, climate, and so on, and certain associations in our minds with other plants, with various uses, and with the places where they naturally are found. The landscape designer is not free, therefore, either economically or esthetically, to disregard the individuality of the plant material with which he deals. Through the growth of plants, the landscape designer has an opportunity which other designers have not: for although he may by sufficient expenditure produce in a short time approximately the effect which he desires, he may, on the other hand, with comparatively little expense set out small plants and trust to their growth to bring about in time the effect which he originally had in mind. Granted this element of time, the landscape architect has in vegetation a very plastic material with which he can produce masses of manifold shapes, and if necessary of great size. This advantage of the landscape designer brings with it a corresponding disadvantage: he cannot judge and change and perfect his design before it leaves his hand, as the sculptor does, often indeed his work comes to its perfection long after he is dead. He must therefore, with little aid from drawings and often with little aid from the present condition of the ground, be able to imagine his completed design and to foresee and take account of the changes through which his planting must go from its present state to its full expression. The landscape architect must consider the changes in the appearance of his plants during their whole growth as well as their cycle of seasonal changes, and he must either so arrange his design that it is consistently practical and beautiful at all times, or he must choose some particular time, some season of the year or some future year, when his design is to be at its best, and in designing have in mind the appearance of the plants at that time, neglecting to some extent their appearance before and after. Closeness of texture, symmetry of shape, similarity of plant to Relation of plant, may be continued for a long while under good maintenance, or Planting Design and quickly lost without it. Plants of varying robustness and speed of Maintenance growth may thrive together under good maintenance, but otherwise the stronger soon destroy the weaker. Plants may be set out close together for immediate effect, and good effect be later maintained if they be thinned at the appropriate time. If this future thinning cannot be relied on, either present or future effect must be sacrificed in the planting. Design will therefore often depend on the degree of maintenance that can be expected. The characteristics of plants, over which, as we have seen, the Plant landscape architect has little or no control, have inevitably a great in- Characteristics in Landscape fluence on the effect of any design in which vegetation is used as a Design material. The forms, colors, and textures offered by plants give to the designer certain opportunities, but also they set for him certain limits. The natural character of each plant, and the associations which in most men's minds cling to certain plants, give a plant a complex individuality, and make it by no means an easy thing to use in esthetic composition. The understanding of these characteristics of plant material constitutes no inconsiderable part of the skill of the landscape architect. Indeed, it is special knowledge like this which differentiates the landscape architect from other designers. In the forms of trees and shrubs and herbaceous plants with which Plant Forms the landscape architect deals there is a very great variety. The forms are similar only in the fact that they are all the expressions of the growth of the individual plant, and that they are all more or less symmetrical on a central axis. From the physical necessities of their growth, plants are balanced forms, either a mass of foliage upon a central stalk, or a number of separate branches diverging more or less consistently from the vertical, and forming a typically symmetrical mass of leafage as each twig and leaf equally seeks the light. Almost any free-standing plant, not distorted by some unusual influence, will be, therefore, as far as shape goes, an individual and self-sufficient object in the composition. The same general considerations as to the use of these forms in composition apply equally to all kinds of plants, but with herbaceous plants, *See discussion of herbaceous border and flower beds later in this chapter. Classes of Tree Forms and their Uses in Design and to a less degree with shrubs, their greater interest lies in their flower, and they are more often planted in masses where their individual shape is of little account. We shall discuss therefore the shapes of trees only, but whatever we discover about them can be applied, in a general way, as well to shrubs and herbaceous plants. In their main outline in the case of deciduous trees particularly when this outline is filled in by foliage - the shapes of trees may be thought of in certain classes, which are perhaps more worth discussion than others for us because they are more common in this country or because they have more definite use in design. There are those trees which are low, rounded, crouching, broad at the base, and which tend to form an undulation rather than an object in the distance; and those which, while round-headed, stand high, perhaps on a considerable trunk, and arrest the attention as separate objects through the break that their upstanding forms make with the skyline. Some of these rounded trees, like the horse-chestnut before it reaches old age, carry their branches close together, well covered with leaves, no branch protruding far beyond its fellows, so that the whole tree presents a fairly even surface with little interest of detail of foliage mass and little play of light and shade. Such trees may be used in formal rows or where a single heavy free-standing specimen is desired, or to give a greater density and solidity to a projecting point of a group of other trees. Most of the rounded trees have more variation in the subordinate forms caused by their branch arrangement. They may be less strikingly individual, but they blend better with other members of a tree group, and they have a more sustained interest in their play of light and shade and texture. Some trees are conical in shape. They draw the eye not only through their mass but through the convergence of the attention on their pointed top which, as it were, contains the essence of the expression of the whole tree. Some trees with a vertical trunk, but horizontal branches, form a broad-based cone, composed of rhythmic repeats of similar branch masses, a characteristic particularly exemplified by the Rocky Mountain blue spruce. Such a tree, on account of this subordinate formality of its branch arrangement, as well as on account of its definite conical shape, has a distinct and striking individuality. Some conical trees are fastigiate, with vertical branches held close to the trunk, forming almost a column or an exclamation point, like the Lombardy poplar. A conical tree can be used as an individual specimen, or as one of several specimens formally disposed, but it is more difficult to treat than almost any other tree as a component of a larger planting in which the individual trees are intended to subordinate their shape to that of the whole foliage mass. There is the tree of the shape of a vase or a fountain, the notable example being the American elm, which attracts the attention less by its mass than by the expression of its growth, and which casts considerable shade without occupying any great space of ground. Then there are trees of a weeping or pendulous habit of branching which tends to lead the eye downward, in direct contrast with the conical forms. Also there are many irregular forms like that of an old pasture white pine, characteristic, but more a matter of character than of describable shape. Each species of tree, growing untrammeled, tends to assume its Form the particular typical form, and each species of tree has one form in youth, Expression of Mode of one at maturity, another in old age.* All trees, each after its kind, Growth are influenced in their form by the amount of nourishment they find in the soil where they grow, by the shade conditions caused by competition with other trees and by the force of the wind. All forms of trees are made by the forms and disposition of their subordinate parts, of branches and sprays in relation to the trunk; they are a manifestation of the method of growth of the tree, and a record of the circum * "Of form it may, furthermore, be said that a tree is not well understood until it is understood in all the stages of its growth. The typical shape of a young tree often differs very greatly from the typical shape of the same tree at maturity, and this again from its typical shape in old age; and, in planting, regard must be paid to the question whether an immediate effect or a long-postponed effect ought to be most considered. For example, a tree set in isolation on a lawn in full view from the house ought to be beautiful in youth and at the same time give promise of beauty (perhaps of a different kind but still appropriate) in later years; whereas in planting a belt or wood in the distance, the principal trees should be so chosen that they will look better and better the older they grow, while present effect may be chiefly considered in others which are destined to be cut as development progresses." The Artistic Aspects of Trees, IV, in Garden and Forest, vol. I, p. 373. (See REFERENCES.) |