Landscape gardening is a branch of horticulture, the highest results of which may be attained by processes of a comparatively simple character—simpler, for instance, than those of kitchen or of floral gardening. Failure of success in it being oftener due to a halting purpose than to lack of science, of means, or of skill, this article will be chiefly given to establishing the definition and limitation of the general end proper to the art; some indications being incidentally presented of the manner in which, under the requirement of different individual tastes and different local conditions, it may be judiciously pursued.

There are two other branches of horticulture, which in ordinary practice are often so much confounded with that of landscape gardening that the reader may find it convenient to have them set apart from it at the outset. One of them is the cultivation of plants with special regard to an interest in their distinctive individual qualities. The other is the cultivation of plants (trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals) with a view to the production of effects on the principles commonly studied in the arrangement of precious stones, enamel, and gold in an elaborate piece of jewelry, or of flowers when sorted by colors and arranged for the decoration of a head-dress, a dinner-table, or a terrace. Whether, in any undertaking, one of these two leading motives or that of landscape gardening be adopted, it may be presumed that the result will satisfy that motive in proportion as it shall be followed to the end with singleness of purpose. We now turn, therefore, from the two which have been defined to [351] consider what, in distinction from them, the leading motive of landscape gardening may be.

Derivatively, the word “landscape” is thought to apply only to such a scene as enables the observer to comprehend the shape of the earth’s surface far before him, or, as we say in common idiom, “to get the lie of the land,” the land’s shape. Consistently with this view, it will be found, on comparing a variety of scenes, that those which would be most unhesitatingly classed as landscapes are distinguished by a certain degree of breadth and distance of view. Looking at the face of a thick wood near at hand or of a precipitous rock, we do not use the term. Pursuing the comparison farther, it will be found that in each of those scenes to which the word more aptly applies there is a more marked subordination of various details to a characteristic effect of the scene as a whole. As Lowell says, “A real landscape never presents itself to us as a disjointed succession of isolated particulars; we take it in with one sweep of the eyes—its light, its shadow, its melting gradations of distance.” But there are many situations in which plant-beauty is desired where the area to be operated upon is so limited, or so shaped and circumstanced, that the depth and breadth of a landscape scene must be considered impracticable of attainment. In America gardening is required for the decoration of places of this class many thousand times for one in which such restraining conditions are not encountered; and the question may be asked whether they must all be excluded from the field of landscape gardening, and if not, what, in these cases, can be the significance of the prefix “landscape”? As a general rule, probably, so many purposes require to be served, and so many diverse conditions to be reconciled, that the only rule of art that can be consistently applied is that of architecture, which would prescribe that every plant, as well as every moulding, shall bear its part in the “adornment of a service.” To this end, parterre and specimen gardening are more available than landscape gardening. But it may happen that where, with due regard to considerations of health and convenience, there would be scant space for more than two or three middle-sized trees to grow, there will yet be room for a great deal of careful study, and, with careful study, of success in producing effects the value of which has nothing in common with either of the objects of horticulture thus far defined.

As an example, suppose a common village dooryard, in which are found, as too often there may be, a dozen trees of different sorts planted twenty years before, and that, by good chance, among them there is one, standing a little way from the centre, of that royal variety of European linden called Alba pendula. Trampled under by its coarser and greedier fellows, and half starved, youth and a good constitution may yet have left it in such condition that, all the rest being rooted out, sunlight given it on all sides, shortened in, balanced, cleaned, watered, drained, stimulated, fed, guarded from insidious enemies, its twigs will grow long, delicate, and pliant; its branches low and trailing, its bark become like a soft, finely-grained leather, its upper leaf-surface like silk, and its lower leaf-surface of such texture and tint that, with the faintest sunlight [352] and the softest summer breeze, a constant wavering sheen, as of a damask hanging, will be flowing over the whole body of its foliage. While it regains its birthright in this respect it will also acquire, with fullness of form and moderate play of contour, a stateliness of carriage unusual in a tree of its age and stature. If landscape gardening is for the time to take its order from this princess of the fields, and all within the little court made becoming with her state, the original level surface of the ground need be but slightly modified, yet it may perceptibly fall away from near her, dipping in a long and very gentle wave to rise again with a varying double curve on all sides. There cannot, then, be too much pains taken to spread over it a velvet carpet of perfect turf, uniform in color and quality. Looking upon this from the house, it should seem to be margined on all sides by a rich, thick bank, generally low in front and rising as it recedes, of shrubs and flowering plants; the preparation for which may have required for years a clean-lined border, curve playing into curve, all the way round. A very few plants of delicate and refined character may stand out in advance, but such interruptions of the quiet of the turf must be made very cautiously. Of furniture or artificial ornaments there must be none, or next to none, for even bodily comfort may willingly defer a little to the dainty genius of the place. They may well walk, for instance, a few steps farther who would take a lounging seat, put up their feet, and knock the ashes from their pipes. Yet a single Chinese garden-stool of a softly mottled turquoise-blue will have a good effect if set where a flickering light will fall upon it on the shady side of the tree. The rear rank of shrubs will need to stand so far back that there will be no room to cultivate a suitable hedge against the street. The fence will then best be a wall of cut stone, with decorated gatepiers; or with a base of stone it may be of deftly-wrought iron touched with gilt. By no means a casting with clumsy and overdone effort at feeble ornament—much better a wooden construction of less cost, in which there is a reflection, with variety, of the style of the house if that is of wood also, or if it is not, then something like a banister-rail of turned work, but with no obviously weak parts. The gateway being formed in a symmetrical recess of the fence nearly opposite the tree, the house-door being on the side, the approach to it will bend, with a moderate double curve, in such a way as to seem to give place to the tree, and at the same time allow the greatest expanse of unbroken lawn-surface. Near the gateway, and again near the corner farthest from it, there may be a small tree or a cluster of small trees or large shrubs, forming low, broad heads (dogwood grown in tree-form, sassafras kept low, or, to save time, the neat white mulberry), the tops of which, playing into that of the loftier linden on the right, will in time give to those sitting at the bay-window of the living-room a flowing sky-line, depressed and apparently receding along the middle. If there is a tall building over the way with signs, or which otherwise offends, and the sidewalk space outside admits, we will plant upon it two trees only, adjusting them, as to both kind and position, so that they will almost repeat the depressed line of the nearer foliage, at no greater distance than is [353] necessary to obscure the building. Quite hidden it need not be, lest, also, there should be some of the sky lost, banishment from the lower fields of the sky being a punishment that we should strive not to need. But let us hope that at the worst we have but our neighbor’s stable opposite, and that the tops of more distant trees may be seen over it; we shall then still be glad to have the chance of bringing up two trees, set somewhat farther apart than before, on the roadside, as their effect will be to make an enlarged consistency of character, to close in and gather together all that makes up the home-scene, and to aid the turf in relieving it of a tendency to pettiness and excitement which lies in and under the shrubbery.

Let a different theme be sung on the same ground. Suppose that it is an aged beech that we have found, badly used in its middle age as the linden in its youth—storm-bent, lop-limbed, and one-sided, its veteran trunk furrowed, scarred, patched, scaly, and spreading far out to its knotted roots, that heave all the ground about like taut-set cables. If we had wanted a fine-dressy place, this interesting object would have been cut away though it were the last tree within a mile. Accepting it, nothing would be more common, and nothing less like landscape gardening, than to attempt to make a smooth and even surface under it. Let it be acknowledged that fitness and propriety require that there should be some place before the house of repose for the eye, and that nowhere in the little property, to all parts of which we may wish at times to lead our friends in fine attire, can we risk danger of a dusty or a muddy surface. Starting from the corner nearest the tree, and running broader and deeper after it has passed it and before the house, there shall be a swale (a gentle water-way) of cleanly turf (best kept so by the cropping of a tethered cosset and a little play now and then of a grasshook, but if this is unhandy we will admit the hand lawn-mower). Now, to carry this fine turf right up over the exposed roots of the beech would be the height of landscape gardening indelicacy; to let it come near, but cut a clean circle out about the tree, would be a landscape gardening barbarism. What is required is a very nice management, under which the turf in rising from the lower and presumably more humid ground shall become gradually thinner and looser, and at length darned with moss, and finally patched with plants that on the linden’s lawn would be a sin—tufts of clover and locks and mats of loosestrife, liverwort, and dogtooth-violets; even plantain and sorrel may timidly appear. The surface of the ground will continue rising, but with a broken swell towards the tree, and, in deference to its bent form, hold rising for a space on the other side; but nowhere will its superior roots be fully covered.

Suppose that we are to come to this house, as it is likely we may, three times out of four from the side opposite to where the beech stands; our path then shall strike in, well over on that opposite side and diagonally to the line of the road; there will be a little branch from it leading towards and lost near the tree (the children’s path), while the main stem bends short away toward a broad bowery porch facing the road at the corner nearest the gate. The path [354] must needs be smooth for ease of foot and welcomeness, but if its edges chance to be trodden out a little, we will not be in haste to fully repair them. Slanting and sagging off from a ringbolt in the porch there is to be a hammock slung, its farther lanyard caught with two half-hitches on an old stub well up on the trunk of the beech. A strong, brown, seafaring hammock. There shall be a seat, too, under the tree of stout stuff, deep, high-backed, armed, and, whether of rustic-work or plank, fitted by jointing (not held together by nails, bolts, or screws). It may even be rough-hewn, and the more checked, weatherworn, and gray it becomes, without dilapidation or discomfort to the sitter, the better; here you may draw your matches and clean out your pipe, and welcome. We will have nothing in front to prevent a hedge, but must that mean a poor pretence of a wall in leafage? Perhaps it must have that character for a few years till it has become thick and strong enough at bottom, and always it may be a moderately trim affair on the roadside, otherwise we should be trespassers on our neighbors’ rights. But its bushes shall not be all of one sort, and in good time they shall be bushes in earnest, leaping up with loose and feathery tops, six, eight, and sometimes ten feet high. And they shall leap out also towards us. Yet from the house half their height shall be lost behind an under and out-growth of brake and bindweed, dog-rose and golden-rod, asters, gentians, buttercups, poppies, and irises. Here and there a spray of low brambles shall be thrown out before all, and the dead gray canes of last year shall not be every one removed. There will be coves and capes and islands of chickweed, catnip, cinquefoil, wild strawberry, hepatica, forget-me-not, and lilies-of-the-valley, and, still farther out, shoals under the turf, where crocuses and daffodils are waiting to gladden the children and welcome the bluebird in the spring. But near the gate the hedge shall be a little overrun and the gateposts over-hung and lost in sweet clematis; nay, as the gate must be set-in a little, because the path enters sidewise, there shall be a strong bit of lattice over it, and from the other side a honeysuckle shall reinforce the clematis; and if it whirls off also into the thorn tree that is to grow beyond, the thorn tree will be none the worse to be held to a lowly attitude, bowing stiffly towards the beech. Inside the gate, by the pathside, and again down by the porch, there may be cockscombs, marygolds, pinks, and pansies. But nothing of plants tied to the stake, or of plants the names of which, before they can command due interest, must be set before us on enameled cards, as properly in a botanic garden or museum. Above all, no priggish little spruces and arborvitæs, whether native or from Satsuma; if the neighbors harbor them, any common woodside or fence-row bushes of the vicinity may be set near the edge of the property to put them out of sight; nannyberry, hazel, shadbush, dogwood, even elder, or if an evergreen (conifer) will befit the place, a stout, short, shock-headed mountain-pine, with two or three low savins and a prostrate juniper at their feet. Finally, let the roadside be managed as before. Then, if the gate be left open not much will be lost by it; not all the world will so much as look in, and some who do will afterwards choose to keep the other side of the way, as it is [355] better they should. Yet from the porch, the window beyond, or the old seat under the tree there will be nothing under view that is raw or rude or vulgar; on the contrary, there will be a scene of much refinement as well as of much beauty, and those who live in the house, especially if they have a way of getting their work or their books out under the beech, will find, as the sun goes round and the clouds drift over, that taking it altogether there is a quality more lovable in it than is to be found in all the glasshouses, all the ribbon borders, all the crown jewels of the world.

The same will be equally true of the result of the very different kind of gardening design first supposed. We come thus to the question, What is the distinctive quality of this beauty? In each case there has been an ideal in view, and in each element introduced a consistent pursuit of that ideal, but it is not in this fact of consistency that we find the beauty. We term it landscape beauty, although there is none of the expanse which is the first distinguishing quality of a landscape. This brings us to the consideration that from the point of view of art or of the science of the imagination we may ask for something more in a landscape than breadth, depth, composition, and consistency. A traveller, suddenly turning his eyes upon a landscape that is new to him, and which cannot be directly associated with any former experience, may find himself touched as if by a deep sympathy, so that in an instant his eyes moisten. After long and intimate acquaintance with such a landscape it will often be found to have a persistent influence which may be called its charm—a charm possibly of such power as to appreciably affect the development of the character and shape the course of life. Landscapes of particular type associate naturally and agreeably with certain events. Their fitness in this respect is due to the fact that, through some subtle action on the imagination, they affect the same or kindred sensibilities. If in these dooryards there is something to which every element contributes, comparable in this respect to a poetic or a musical theme, as well, in the one case, of elegance and neatness, carried perhaps to the point of quaint primness, as in the other of homely comfort and good-nature, carried close to the point of careless habits, then the design and process by which it has been attained may lay some slight claim to be considered as a work of art, and the highest art-significance of the term landscape may properly be used to distinguish its character in this respect.

In the possibility, not of making a perfect copy of any charming natural landscape, or of any parts or elements of it, but of leading to the production, where it does not exist, under required conditions and restrictions, of some degree of the poetic beauty of all natural landscapes, we shall thus find not only the special function and the justification of the term landscape gardening, but also the first object of study for the landscape gardener, and the standard by which alone his work is to be fairly judged.

There are those who will question the propriety of regarding the production of the poetic beauty of natural landscape as the end of landscape gardening, on the ground that the very term “natural beauty” means beauty not [356] of man’s design, and that the best result of all man’s labor will be but a poor counterfeit, in which it is vain to look for the poetry of nature. Much has been written to this effect; with what truth to the nature of man it will be well cautiously to consider.

It is to be remembered, however, with reference to landscape effect, that nature acts both happily and unhappily. A man may take measures to secure the happy action and to guard against the unhappy action in this respect with no more effrontery than with respect to the production of food or protection from lightning, storm, frost, or malaria. He need not take the chance that a certain thick growth of saplings will be so thinned by the operation of what are called natural causes that a few of them may yet have a chance to become vigorous, long-lived, umbrageous trees. Knowing how much more valuable a very few of these will be in the situation, with the adjoining turf holding green under their canopy, than the thousands that for long years may otherwise occupy it, struggling with one another and barring out the light which is the life of all beneath them he may make sure of what is best with axe and billhook. The ultimate result is not less natural or beautiful when he has done so than it would have been if at the same time the same trees had been eaten out by worms or taken away, as trees sometimes are, by an epidemic disease.

On the other hand, there are several considerations, neglect of which is apt to cause too much to be asked of landscape gardening, and sometimes perhaps too much to be professed and attempted. The common comparison of the work of a landscape gardener with that of a landscape painter, for example, easily becomes a very unjust one. The artist in landscape gardening can never have, like the landscape painter, a clean canvas to work upon. Always there will be conditions of local topography, soil, and climate by which his operations must be limited. He cannot whenever it suits him introduce the ocean or a snow-capped mountain into his background. He cannot illuminate his picture with constant sunshine nor soften it by a perpetual Indian summer. Commonly, he is allowed only to modify the elements of scenery, or perhaps to bring about unity and distinctness of expression and suggestion in a locality where elements of beautiful landscape already abound, but are partly obscured or seen in awkward, confusing, and contradicting associations. This is especially likely to be the case in undulating and partially wooded localities, such as in America are oftenest chosen for rural homes. Again, the artist in landscape gardening cannot determine precisely the form and color of the details of his work, because each species of plant will grow up with features which cannot be exactly foreknown in its seed or sapling condition. Thus, he can see his designed and imaginary landscape only as one may see an existing and tangible landscape with half-closed eyes, its finer details not being wholly lost, yet nowhere perfectly definable. Still, again, it is to be remembered that works in landscape gardening have, as a general rule, to be seen from many points of view. The trees which form the background, still oftener those which form the middle distance, of one view must be in the foreground of another. [357] Thus, the working out of one motive must be limited by the necessities of the working out of others on the same ground, and to a greater or less degree of the same materials. Finally, the conditions of health and convenience in connection with a dwelling are incompatible with various forms of captivating landscape beauty. A house may be placed in a lovely situation, therefore, and the end of long and costly labors of improvement about it prove comparatively dull, formal, and uninteresting. What is lost is a part of the price of health and convenience of dwelling. The landscape gardener may have made the best of the case under the conditions prescribed to him.

It has been said that landscapes of a particular type associate naturally and agreeably with certain events. It is to be added that the merit of landscape gardening consists largely in the degree in which their designer has been inspired by a spirit congenial to elements of locality and occasion which are not, strictly speaking, gardening elements. The grounds for an ordinary modest home, for instance, may desirably be designed to give the house, gardens, and offices an aspect of retirement and seclusion, as if these had nestled cozily down together among the trees in escape from the outside world. The grounds of a great public building—a monument of architecture—will, on the other hand, be desirably as large in scale, as open, simple, and broad in spaces of turf and masses of foliage, as convenience of approach will allow, and every tree arranged in subordination to, and support of, the building. The grounds of a church and of an inn, of a cottage and of an arsenal, of a burying-place and of a place of amusement, will thus differ, in each case correspondingly to their primary purpose. Realizing this, it will be recognized that the choice of the site, of the elevation, aspect, entrances, and outlooks of a building for no purpose can be judiciously determined except in connection with a study of the leading features of a plan, of its approaches, and grounds. Also, that in the design of roads, walks, lakes, and bridges, of the method of dealing with various natural circumstances, as standing wood, rocks, and water; in a determination of what is possible and desirable in respect to drainage, water-supply, distant prospects to be opened or shut out, the avoidance of malaria and other evils,—all these and many other duties are necessarily intimately associated with those of gardening (or the cultivation of plants) with a view to landscape effects.