“Landscape.”

“Anglo Saxon, landscipe. Scipe is the same as ship in friendship and means the state or condition of being.” “A landscape means a piece of the earth’s surface, and it is always understood that this piece will have a certain artistic unity, or suggestion of unity, in itself.”

Philip Gilbert Hammerton, Landscape Painter.

“Our art, to appear to advantage, requires some extent of surface, its lines should lose themselves indefinitely, and unite agreeably and gradually with those of the surrounding country.”

Andrew Jackson Downing, Landscape Gardener.

“The masses of light and shade, whether in a natural landscape or a picture, must be broad and unbroken or the eye will be distracted by the flutter of the scene.”

Thomas Whateley, (Observations on Modern Gardening.)

“The principles of landscape gardening we conclude to be derived from nature or developed by the principles of landscape painting.”

John Claudius Loudon, (Encyclopedia of Gardening.)

Ed. Am. Florist:—Can debate be profitable between friends who are agreed upon no premises; who take for granted what is not granted, and who use terms vital to the discussion, one in a different sense from the other? If not, a common understanding among all who are called gardeners as to how the following questions should be answered is much to be desired. Whatever will tend to bring us nearer to it is much to be desired.

1.   With what significance, under sound usage, is the word landscape to be prefixed to the word gardening? If “landscape gardening” means anything distinctive from “ornamental gardening,” for instance, what is the [766]essence of the distinction? What is the use, what the purpose, of landscape gardening in distinction from other gardening?

2.   Can that which is discriminatingly called landscape gardening, and that which is discriminatingly called ornamental gardening be fused together so that a given work may be regarded as a perfect combination of both? Is there, or is there not, a liability in attempting such a combination that the purpose of one will antagonize the purpose of the other and the result be confusion rather than fusion—disunity rather than unity?

3.   Have in mind a body of land, like the site of Fairmount Park, which is more than four square miles in area, of beautiful but highly diversified topography, with deep valleys and lofty hills, partly wooded, partly open, here divided by a broad quiet pond-like river, here by a brawling trout stream, its banks some times bold, craggy and sterile, sometimes flat, fertile and grassy. Suppose that from points within such a body of land, views are to be had miles away toward sunset, ending in wooded heights faintly blue in the distance. If landscape gardening, so called, has distinctive purpose, would it be more or would it be less becomingly applied to such a body of land than to a small body of simple topography, the site of the garden before the cathedral in New Orleans, for example, the Bowling Green in New York or the Public Garden in Boston? And how is it with ornamental gardening?

4.   Why should some pleasure grounds be described as parks and others as gardens? Does the term “park-like” mean anything that the term “garden-like” does not? If there is any distinction, what are the leading qualities of a garden other than those of a park?

The irreconcilable answers to such questions that must underlie the habits of mind of different men, equally intelligent, well informed and interested in the subject, may be inferred from two or three examples of the manner in which such men manifest their ordinary attitude toward it.

In October you printed a paper that had been read before the convention at Buffalo by Mr. McMillan, the gardener of a large rural park outside of that city. It assumed to present certain views of what was considered by the author to be properly called landscape gardening and the key to what he thought the significance of the term was probably expressed when he said that the “lay of the land’ is the groundwork of landscape gardening, these words meaning, I suppose, much the same as the words of my texts. The gist of the paper seems to be given when it says that in dealing with “any grounds of sufficient extent to have a distinctive landscape character, the general aim (of landscape gardening) will be to make a harmonious combination with the dominant characteristics which nature has already stamped upon the site. He (the landscape gardener) will seek a fuller or a richer development of the essential leading features, simply softening what is hard, clothing what is bare, filling out what is meager and enriching what is beautiful, all in harmony with the original type.” These sentences sufficiently suggest how the author would answer the questions that I have submitted.

[767]

Afterwards (December 1, page 184 and 186) you printed a review of the McMillan paper from the accomplished pen of “Observer,” who, while expressing warm personal regard and friendship for Mr. McMillan, undertakes to show that his views are “in many respects totally erroneous.” In combating them he refers to the slight degree in which he found himself interested in what he properly assumes to be a better exposition of Mr. McMillan’s view than could be given in words, namely, his park.

This park has two principle features, one is a slightly undulating plain of turf bordered by masses of wood, mainly natural, but here and there pieced out and connected by new plantings and interspersed with a few scattered trees standing singly and in groups with glades between them. Sheep and cows run at large in it, and looking across it in almost any direction the distance is so great that forms and colors blend together, and all detail on the opposite side is obscure. Its “masses of light and shade are broad and unbroken;” its lines “lose themselves indefinitely and unite themselves agreeably and naturally with those of the adjoining country.” No object calls for special admiration by itself. Nothing is obtrusive. There are roads and walks and a single group of low buildings, but they are kept so much behind trees and under their shadow that in a general view they are little seen. There is nothing, indeed, to be seen from many points but a broad, far-reaching stretch of partially wooded, slightly rolling pasture land. The other principle feature is a pond of forty or fifty acres with sylvan shores. This has been made simply by scooping the mire out of a swamp and filling the hole with water, so that the shores, except for a little additional planting, are pretty much what nature made them.

This is what Mr. McMillan may be assumed to mean when he speaks of finding the groundwork of landscape gardening in “the lay of the land.” Observer speaks of it as acres of dreary monotony. He thinks if what he saw is to be called gardening that it compares with the gardening with which he is familiar as “the rude figures and crude paintings that mark the dawn of art” rank by the side of “the Venus de Medici or the Transfiguration of Raphael.” He notices that scarcely any use has been made in Mr. McMillan’s park of the immensely varied resources of splendor in color that modern scientific and commercial enterprise has recently provided. He saw no rarities, no nouveautes. Even the shrubs and perennials were as old fashioned as a last year’s bonnet. His conclusion is that in what Mr. McMillan advocates under the name of landscape he is trying to lead a “retrograde movement,” a return to the gardening of a primitive stage of civilization.

What do you suppose Mr. McMillan thinks of these comments? May he not be imagined saying to himself: “My friend does not appear to have understood what I meant by landscape, and he is judging operations for the improvement of the natural scenery of a body of land, within which one can have views more than a mile in length, by standards which might be applied, if not to a conservatory opening out of a drawing room, to an urban garden a stone’s throw across, formed on made land and surrounded by tall buildings.”

[768]

Take another case. In your issue No. 103, page 163, another gentleman, reviewing the same McMillan essay, describes a similar experience. There was nothing in the Buffalo Park, he says, that was worth to him the five cents which it cost him to see it, but he recognizes, as “Observer” can not, that it is possible to apply to such a work another standard than that which he is habituated to use. He does not question that “from a landscaper’s point of view” it may have some interest. What do these words imply? How does a “landscaper’s” point of view differ from another man’s—say a florist’s? There is an article in a recent number of your esteemed contemporary, Garden and Forest, that may throw some light on the point—the landscaper’s point. The writer of it is describing the recent “improvement” of a park in Paris, which, for one of its limited area, formerly had, he says, a certain degree of landscape beauty. Of late it has been attempted to combine with this beauty a share of ornamental beauty. The manner of the attempt is explained as follows: “Trees are encircled by flower beds, and even isolated exotic plants which are placed near them—as if they were not obtrusive enough in themselves—are surrounded in the same way. A tuft of pampas grass, which would be far better away, is rendered doubly bad by its ring of geraniums, or a wide-leaved palm overshadows a circle of crimson coleus.” The result is apparently thought to be that landscape unity is destroyed by the ornaments, while the ornaments are displayed at great disadvantage because of the presence of objects and conditions which, left without ornaments, were adapted to give the place a distinctively landscape charm.

Would the following be a much exaggerated statement of the difference between the point of view thus exemplified, and that apparently occupied by those who are of Observer’s way of thinking? Observer regards gardening as an “art,” in the sense that painting is an art and sculpture another art, each having distinctive aims, each having distinctive principles. It would be better to say that there are really two arts, each having distinctive aims and principles, to both of which the name gardening is applied and is apt to be confusingly applied. To distinguish one from the other the prefixes landscape and ornamental or decorative, are sometimes used. How do they differ? If a man blind and deaf from birth were to ask how the art of music and the art of painting differ, a part of the answer would be that they respectively appeal to different emotional sensibilities. So, to explain how the two arts differ that are called by the name of gardening, it may be said that works of landscape art are addressed to one class of human sensibilities, works of ornamental gardening to another. Just this is pre-supposed when one says that a certain passage of landscape may be pleasing to those who are sensitive to landscape, but that he himself is not so, and to him it seems only dull and monotonous.

But one not used to think of landscape gardening and ornamental gardening as different arts, may ask, if they are so, how they happen to have a name in common? A full answer would include the result of some historical [769]inquiry, but, for the occasion, it may be sufficient to say that, regarded from the physical and superficial rather than the metaphysical, spiritual and essential point of view, which latter is the point of view of art, (that is to say of poetic design, motive or purpose to affect the imagination), they are not to be clearly separated, both having largely to do with the same class of materials and both largely employing the same class of mechanical appliances and handicraft processes in dealing with those materials. The common name witnesses this fact, as smith in coppersmith and in silversmith testifies of men of different trades both working in metals, with common appliances and common methods.

There were, a year ago or more, as I remember, two short articles in the American Florist from which it might be inferred that you, Mr. Editor, were rather inclined to take some such view as has thus been suggested of the difference between landscape gardening and ornamental gardening. One was a discussion of certain observations upon landscape gardening, so called, that had appeared in the Century magazine; the other a reply to a correspondent, presumably qualified for ornamental gardening, asking how he could best proceed to make himself a landscape gardener. In both you referred to landscape gardening much as you might, I think, if you regarded it as an essentially different art from that of ornamental gardening.

Before fully adopting such a view, I should be glad, as I am sure that many others would, to see a better presentation than I yet have of the reasons that prevent it from being more generally accepted.