Ground Turf slightly different colors, and of subdued hues; but all this is no excuse for the raucous color discords which we so frequently see in public gardens and parks and often too in private parterres, which may be avoided by any designer with a color sense, since the plants of which the beds are made are well known and their color is predictable with sufficient accuracy. It is perfectly legitimate that the shapes in this flat decoration should represent something, should have some significance and association of their own, but the associations of the different units should be reasonably congruous and the shapes and colors produced by these pictures or insignia in flowers must still form harmonious parts of the shape and the color of the whole design. Our parks are full of instances where the gardener was so much interested in each pictorial or emblematic composition for itself that his total design has in effect no unity except that of a museum of curiosities. In naturalistic scenes the use of low-growing ground cover is subject in a general way to the same considerations that apply to the tallergrowing shrubs and herbaceous plants, but the smaller materials give the designer an opportunity to display and enhance the modeling of the ground and at the same time to give an additional interest and to differentiate area from area by a choice of different and appropriate ground-covering plants. A bed of ferns may grace the foot of a rock, or a mat of partridge vine run over it, the darkness of a dell may be made deeper by a carpet of blue-green myrtle, a sunny open space may be made still brighter by the yellow green of moneywort. The choice of ground cover in naturalistic design is likely to be motived much more by suitability to the growing conditions and the landscape character than by considerations of the form relations of the areas differentiated by this planting. (See Plates 3 and 20.) The commonest ground cover throughout our works of landscape design in moist climates is turf. Having an inconspicuous texture and a most restful color, it subordinates itself to the surface which it covers. It serves as a harmonizing background against which flower beds, shrub masses, tree groups, or structures are relieved. (See Plate 30.) Together with paths, in formal garden designs, it makes a definite but subordinate ground work of the pattern in which the flower beds 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 Relation to 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 different 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. |