the scene is subordinate, like the centuries-old flowering cherry tree in the court of a Japanese temple. A similar composition might exceptionally be made of a magnificent group of flowering shrubs, a fine old oak tree, a weeping mulberry made into a summer house, standing in the midst of a small lawn, protected, and enframed by the boundary plantations. But so great dominance as this in composition is rarely assumed by a plant form. Specimen trees or shrubs in formal compositions are more commonly well used ranged in rows along a walk or road, standing sentinel on each side of a garden gate or an entrance walk, or giving strength and definiteness to the corner of a bed. In informal or naturalistic compositions, specimens may stand free just off a promontory of a border plantation or they may arise singly or in groups from a projection of the planting which must be emphasized or from an area of planting which must be diversified. In any case, whether in formal or non-formal design, their function is to draw attention to themselves and so to the place where they are, and they should be such and so situated that this attraction of attention makes for harmony and not for restlessness in the whole composition. (See Plate 6.)

Isolated groups of trees, shrubs, or herbaceous plants should be influenced in their position in the scene by the same general compositional considerations which we have just discussed in relation to specimen trees, but the group will have less individuality than the specimen, it will be larger on plan in proportion to its height, it can less afford to be very different in appearance from the rest of the composition, and it will therefore be found more often closely related to other groups and to the boundary masses, and playing a less individually dominant part in the composition. One reason for so much of the ugliness of "Capability" Brown's "clumps," was the fact that, occupying important situations, they did not have sufficient individuality of form to be worthy of their place.*

In naturalistic plantings, equally important with the considerations of pure composition is the consideration of natural relation of the speci

* "We have, indeed, made but a poor progress, by changing the formal, but simple and majestic avenue, for the thin circular verge called a belt; and the unpretending ugliness of the strait, for the affected sameness of the serpentine canal: but the great

Tree and

Shrub Groups

Composition of Groups

men or the group to the other plants in the scene. The springing up of young trees from wind-blown seeds of a parent tree, the transportation of fruits by birds, of nuts by squirrels, to shrubberies or woods to be concealed or eaten in safety, the tolerance of certain species of plants for the shade of others, the similarity in soil requirements of certain plants, and a thousand other combinations of circumstances arising in the economy of nature, tend to make certain groupings of plants repeat themselves in natural landscape. While some knowledge of the reasons for the origin of these natural groupings is a desirable possession for the designer, the groupings found in nature are so varied, so difficult in most cases to trace to their causes, that what the good designer really uses in his work is a feeling for congruities and incongruities of natural plant arrangement acquired through long experience, and amounting in effect to an instinct rather than to a number of reasons to be stated in words.

The interest and value which a group of trees or shrubs may have in a landscape will depend largely on the compositional relation of the individuals which make up the group. The main form of the group may well be decided by its relation to the whole scene: it may be rounded, or aspiring, or crouching, according to the purpose it serves in the total composition. But within these limitations it is possible to get great diversity without destroying the unity of the group. For instance, the pointed and aspiring forms of trees, particularly those that are symmetrically conical, will serve to accent a portion of a group, to dominate it, or to crown its highest part, in any case in very sharp contrast to such rounded or other less conspicuous tree forms as there may be, but not necessarily destroying the mass unity of the group. The composition of any group of plants will depend on the point from which it is seen, and, except for circular arrangements, will be different from each different point of view. As in all his compositions, then, the landscape designer must study his tree and shrub groups from those few points of view which are the most important, and he may consider himself fortunate if he achieves his results as seen from these points of distinguishing feature of modern improvement is the clump; a name, which if the first letter were taken away, would most accurately describe its form and effect."

Price, Essays on the Picturesque, 1810, v. 1, p. 244.

view, and escapes producing effects which are noticeably bad from other and subordinate points. The color, the texture, and the character and suggestion of a plant remain substantially the same in whatever aspect it is seen; moreover these characteristics may be predicted with considerable certainty even when the plants are set out at very small size, whereas the exact shape of the plant is to some extent a matter of accident. For this reason, these characteristics other than shape bear an importance in the designer's choice of plants greater than would be indicated by their effect in any given design.

A group of trees or shrubs should usually tell in the composition not as an undifferentiated mass but as a massed group of individuals, that is, as a composition in itself, in which the separate units are to some extent different and in which this difference is recognized in their arrangement. A group of two trees of approximately equal appearance is almost impossible to handle in composition except when it marks an axis which runs between the trees. Two trees in a group are much more likely to be effective if one is dominant and one subordinate, for example, one aspiring and dense in texture, the other rounded and loose, or one overarching and tall, the other low and spreading. Even at its best a composition of two trees is difficult to manage and the designer usually finds himself dealing in groups of three or more. A good group of three in a similar way will usually have one tree dominant and two subordinate, by whatever means of shape, color, or texture this may be accomplished. It may be said generally however that it is best to seek the shape composition first, and then to enhance, through an appropriate choice of their color and texture, the effects first given the separate plants by their shape. The greater the number of trees in an informal group, the less importance attaches to the exact location of each tree, and the more to the general simulation of a natural arrangement in the group as a whole.*

In shrub beds, as they are used in informal or naturalistic design, Shrub Beds the same general considerations of plant diversity and contrast hold

* For notes and diagrammatic illustrations of possibilities of grouping see, for instance, J. Major's The Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (London, 1852), the chapter, The Arrangement and Grouping of Trees, p. 151-162; André's L'Art des Jardins (1879), noting especially in the chapter, Plantations, p. 534-537 and

Herbaceous
Beds and
Borders

true which we have already discussed more particularly in relation to trees. In formal design, however, shrubs may be used merely as a material from which masses of man-determined form may be made, which may owe little of their interest to any variation in the character of the foliage of which they are composed. In the informal planting of a small estate the separate varieties of shrubs may be arranged in fairly definite segregated groups in the whole planting, just as flowering plants might be arranged in a bed, both for the mass effect of their peculiar characteristics whatever they may be, and because the designer is not averse to the man-made effect so produced. In larger and more naturalistic schemes, a blending of mass into mass is desirable, a use perhaps of plants of several different kinds intermingled in any given space to preserve the apparent naturalness of the mass of the plantation even at some sacrifice of crispness of minor effect.

their flowers.

Herbaceous plants in masses in the landscape have their primary importance through their most striking characteristic, In conjunction with trees and shrubs in informal or naturalistic border plantations, their comparatively loose texture and delicate form make them things to be backed and protected by the other coarser plant materials, but their brilliant flowers enable them to give a dominant interest to the recess in which they are set, which has already been marked, by its enframement, as the center of the composition. (See Drawing XXI, opposite.) When this kind of flower planting is designed, as it often is, to be seen at a considerable distance, the effects may be, as we have said, throughout more powerful, the separate masses of color larger, the plants themselves larger and coarser, than is the case in smaller-scale compositions.

As the eye commonly ranges along the more distant flower beds at an angle almost parallel to the ground, a mass of color to show any extent to the eye must have considerable extent on the ground in a direction measured away from the eye. This leads the designer seeking this particular effect to lay out his important flower masses more or less in elongated areas radiating from the important viewpoint, if this can p. 553, which pages are translated in article, Natural Grouping of Trees, in Landscape Architecture, Jan. 1917, v. 7, p. 83-87; also Meyer und Ries, Gartentechnik und Gartenkunst (1911), in chapter, Die Bepflanzung im Naturstil, especially p. 352.