The American flower garden

Front matter

BookJU .

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BY NELTJE BLANCHAN

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Partnership Between Nature and Art . . i

II. Situation and Design 13

Chapter I

WITH praiseworthy zeal men devote their Hves to depicting nature with paint on canvas; other men as patiently toil to reproduce her beauty of form in bronze or chiselled marble; and, if they possess the vision of genius, all the world concedes both to be artists, however artificial the media for expressing their ideals, however lifeless their finished productions. But what of the man who no less faithfully devotes his days and nights to the study of nature and collaborates with her in the production of living pictures ? The landscape gardener, by uniting his imagination, artistic impulse and will to nature herself, utilising natural media for the expression of his artistic feeling, would seem to have gone a step beyond either the painter or the sculptor, yet why is the term artist so rarely, so grudgingly applied to him ? Is it not that, in the perfection of his art, he well-nigh obliterates the trace of it? For

" This is an art Which doth mend nature, change it rather, but The art itself is nature."

Even Shakespeare, with the majority, forgets to give the gardener his due, ascribing all praise to his silent partner.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, are paintings and statuary by artists whose names are household words in all civilised lands. Surrounding the museum is a great pleasure ground of exceeding beauty where millions of people find recreation and delight without even having heard the name of Frederick Law Olmsted. Few indeed suspect that they are indebted to his imagination and trained artistic sense for Central Park. By entering into a working partnership with nature he was enabled to transform a tract of unlovely land, interspersed with swamps, barren rocks and rubbish heaps, the last resort of squatters and goats, into scenes of non-natural but wholly naturalistic beauty; and the belief of the enraptured multitude that nature created them so, should be rightly interpreted as the triumph of Olmsted's creative art. Surely, the man who has wrought out on a vast scale so clear an artistic ideal with living pigments should be as fully entitled to recognition in the ranks of artists as the painter of a landscape on canvas that hangs within the museum walls. There is a small but increasing number of critics who count Olmsted the greatest artist America has yet produced.

Who remembers that Raphael, Giulio Romano and Michelangelo, among other great masters of the Renaissance, in the exuberance of their artistic genius, lavished it without stint upon the gardens of Rome and northern Italy ? Not content with designing palaces and churches and decorating them with carvings, paintings, frescoes and statuary within and without, not a few great Italian artists planned and embellished gardens which, after centuries, still remain masterpieces. But as gardeners these artists are well-nigh forgotten.

Like all creative workers, the gardener of the first rank must be endowed with a great imagination that can see clearly the ideal, which at first exists only in his brain. In planning the modest home grounds, as well as a vast estate or public park, he must peer far into the future, anticipate many years of toil and growth, and, with the inner eye alone, see the finished picture which may be actually completed by his silent partner long after he himself has turned to dust. Art is long and life is short indeed, too short, perhaps, for the realisation of even the simplest of his ideals. He rarely lives to enjoy the mature majesty of the oak he has planted; yet, from its acorn babyhood onward, through every stage of its growth, he sees clearly in his mind's eye its ultimate aspect.

Nature waited patiently through the ages for a partner Hke Luther Burbank to select, hybridise and bring to perfection her fruits and flowers. Without the help of the trained scientist her own latent possibilities would never have been realised. "Nature," said Aristotle, "has the will but not the power to realise perfection." That ideal is left for man to realise only by working in partnership with her, in harmony with her eternal laws. At last we begin to understand the paradox: she is commanded only by obeying her. Where nature and the scientific horticulturist leave off, the artistic imagination of the gardener takes up their work and composes pictures that are an emphasised revelation of natural beauty to eyes that have not the gift of the seer; living pictures of nature in perfecto which, but for his art, would never have found expression.

But unbridled imagination, without a true sense of proportion to hold it in check, might easily run away with his greatest opportunity. In his student days especially, and indeed throughout his life, he cannot study nature too closely; yet it may be that he will never find a single scene, however lovely in itself, that could be copied exactly and fit in with any of his plans. Detached from its large environment its beauty might be lost, its proportion destroyed by other surroundings; or the cost of reproducing it might be prohibitive, even if it were artistically possible. The gardener has first to familiarise himself with nature's "excellences," which she has scattered broadcast, and not less with the excellences of his art; to find his inspiration in them and then select from his storehouse of knowledge, eliminate, adapt, adjust, harmonise, and recreate, not only to the scale of his design, but to the measure of his own personal ideals, before he tries to produce either a large park-like, panoramic landscape or a little garden. His task is to create beautiful pictures, not to copy them. True art is never an imitation of nature, notwithstanding a popular belief to the contrary. Many landscape gardeners, headed by "Capability" Brown, have failed as artists because they could not perceive this fact. There is a vast difference between truth to nature and a servile copying of her.

The temptation to attempt too much is ever with the artist partner. Nature herself is so prodigal that a rich imagination, teeming with ideas, finds it difficult to reject her alluring example. Only a cultivated sense of proportion can save one from the common error of sacrificing the simplicity, unity and strength of the design as a whole to the embellishment of unrelated parts. Which is to say that no garden, no matter how charming in detail, is really good that is not good as a whole.

Especially are amateurs prone to set out only their pet plants without reference to the general effect, to select haphazard from the enticing catalogues such plants as are most cleverly described or illustrated, without reference to a well thought-out garden design. One part of the home grounds, having no relation whatever to another part, the main idea, on which more than half of the beauty of a place depends, is gradually frittered away on trivialities. Strange to say, a general working plan is the last thing most novices

TO LFNGTHEN DISTANCE AND ADD TO THE APPARENT SIZE OF ONe's GROUND WITH- OUT INCREASING TAXES, A VISTA THROUGH TREES OR VINE-ENCIRCI.ED COLUMNS IS THE LANDSCAPE GARDENEr's EXPEDIENT

Ill I 1 ()!■ TRKI.S K) A l.AWN, IIIH INTF RM RDI ATF- SHRUBlldWIRlNi; KIRKCRllUNl) MAKIi A SOl-TLV FLOWING LINK OF think of. Additions to the garden are made impulsively, and merely happen to be right or wrong. Every architect can tell you harrowing stories of how clients have quite spoiled the effect of some of his best houses through inconsistent, haphazard furnishings within and planting without. So every landscape gardener cherishes resentment against certain of his clients who, not having the knowledge or the inclination to look after their own gardens, turn over the care of them to ignorant labourers, whose power to spoil the best garden picture ever devised is practically unlimited. He justly complains that he is rarely permitted to retouch the picture after the first planting. Nature, however, never ceases trying her utmost to obliterate all trace of his art and the hired man does his worst; while the owner usually either leaves all to them or indulges in an annual orgie among the catalogues.

"Perhaps, I don't know good art," said a self-complacent lady at the Royal Academy exhibition, "but I know what I like."

"Madam," replied the withering Ruskin, "even the beasts of the field know that."

It is as necessary in the art of gardening as in theology to have a reason for the faith that is in us. Anyone may at least learn the principles of art out-of-doors and the technique of it, although, without the gift of imagination and a sense of proportion, form and color, one may never hope to become a great artist. But these gifts are by no means commonly possessed by the landscape gardeners of the present or any other day, much less monopolised by them. Expensive horrors are too often perpetrated on innocent soil by trained men who should know better. And it is conversely true that some delightful little gardens have been made by untrained amateurs, who nevertheless possess the natural artistic gifts. However, ignorance is never a help but a hindrance in any profession or calling, and poverty or self-conceit can be the only excuse for not getting the benefit of expert advice.

Special emphasis needs to be laid upon the gardener's sense of proportion for the very practical reason that a design, no matter how excellent artistically, can give little pleasure to its owner unless it be carefully proportioned to the size of his purse. It is distressing to see neglected trees, starved shrubbery that cannot bloom, worm-eaten roses, weedy lawns and degenerate flowers because their owner, in attempting to do too much, could not aff^ord to care for them properly. Better a well tended little flower bed than an acre of disheartening failures. But is it not equally dis" tressing to see palatial houses set in the midst of cramped, confined and ugly grounds that have little money and no taste expended upon them? Long ago Lord Bacon observed: "A man shall ever see that, when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection."

In democratic America it has come to be thought an indication of social selfishness when much is spent upon the interior of a home, for the gratification of the family, to the exclusion of worthy adornment of the home grounds, in whose beauty every passer-by may share. A well-known architect, who is also an expert landscape gardener, stipulates, before taking a contract, that at least one-tenth of the cost of a suburban or country house shall be expended upon its proper setting. He argues both from the artistic and the altruistic points of view. Certain it is that the modest small homes and gardens which are his special delight possess rare unity and charm. He executes a picture complete in itself before he leaves his task.

The true artist out-of-doors must needs have a well developed

THE JAPANESE IRIS, UNLIKE THE GERMAN, DELIGHTS TO STAND WITH ITS FEET IN WATER. ITS LONG, SLENDER BLADES FIT CONSISTENTLY INTO TH^ WILD GROWTH OF REEDS AND SEDGES, AROUND PONDS. YOUR TRUE ARTIST DOES NOT SPOIL NATURE — HE TRAINS HER sense of form. He appreciates, as well as a Greek classicist, the value and the beauty of a line. His eye follows joyfully the contour of a range of hills, the flowing curves of a little river meandering through a meadow, bold masses of woodland and wild shrubbery, the sky-line broken by tree tops, a winding road climbing the hill-side, the bare beauty of an elm in winter, the jagged outline of a rock, the slender swaying stem of a reed. These he studies and adapts for a naturalistic garden.

But the study of art has also taught him the beauty of the circle and the ellipse in a classic garden, of straight avenues of trees and of clipped hedges, of vistas through long, parallel rows of vine-encircled columns, of the fountain, the mirror-like pool, the direct paths that do but emphasise the formality of the design, the broad velvety terraces, the box-edged parterres of gay flowers, the stately, columnar trees; and he knows that, if by employing these he can produce a picture in harmony with the architecture it surrounds and still gratify the aesthetic sense, he has fulfilled what Taine, in his "Philosophy of Art," declared to be art's mission.

In Japan there is a saying: "Let no one use the word 'beautiful' until he has seen Nikko." No Occidental should ever use the word, in connection with a garden at least, until he has seen the old classic gardens of Italy. Here, in this new country, where art out-of-doors is only beginning to be understood and appreciated, where there are so lamentably few standards of artistic excellence and where so many crimes are committed in the name of Italian gardens, it is small wonder that a popular prejudice against them exists. Without a proper sense of form on the maker's part, even a naturalistic garden becomes a chaos and a void.

There is a well-known American artist who has every quality essential for greatness except the colour sense. Indeed he is colour-blind. A master draughtsman of imagination and power, his work in black and white is at once his triumph and his limitation. With a passion to paint in colours, he dares not trust himself to use them lest they be the undoing of his reputation. Would that many gardeners similarly afflicted might exercise his self-restraint!

Some people there are, not artists, who have an instinctive colour sense, which, when applied to garden making, gives pleasure beyond any other gift. Celia Thaxter was one of these. Poppies, as she grew them in her garden by the thousand, outlined against the summer sea, were a vision of beauty that no one who saw them can ever forget. She had an unerring instinct that told her not only where to sow her seeds broadcast over the little island garden in the Isles of Shoals, but what coloured flowers, blooming in rapid succession and in crowds throughout the long summer, would so combine as always to make an harmonious whole. Childe Hassam's paintings of the lovely pageant have fortunately preserved the spirit of the sea-girt garden, which was as wild and free as the sea itself, and also the colour for which it is chiefly memorable.

It is not a simple matter to so plan a garden as to have no clash of colour in it any day of the year. The pink phlox, that should have finished blooming before the orange marigolds next it opened a bud, perhaps prolongs its bloom because of unseasonably cool weather, and the eye with a sensitive colour nerve behind its lens turns quickly from the sight. Flaming Oriental poppies do not always have an acre of greensward separating them from the June roses. It should be impossible to include both at a glance. The eye that can tolerate a magenta petunia an)rwhere will doubtless not object to it in an iron vase next to a scarlet geranium where it usually appears; nor will such an untrained eye weep when a purple Jackman's clematis spreads its royal bloom against a red

The Partnership between Nature and Art n

brick house, or when masses of reddish purple bougainyillea blossoms fairly scream at the scarlet poinsettias in a tropical garden. But, by careful selection in the first place, by instant removal where two colours in juxtaposition offend, by the introduction of green and white peacemakers among the warring flowers, harmony can be maintained and it must be else there is no repose, no "content in a garden."

" Tliere is no such thing as a style fitted for every situalio7t; only one who knows and studies the ground well will ever make the best oj a garden and any ' style ' may be right, where the site fits it. I never see a house the ground around which does not invite plans jor itself only." — W. Robinson.

''All rational improvement of grounds is, necessarily, founded on a due attention to the character and situation oj the place to be improved; the former teaches what is advisable, the latter what is possible to be done; while the extent oj the premises has less influence than is generally imagined; as, however large or small it may be, one of the fundamental principles oj landscape gardening is to disguise the real boundary." — Repton.

Chapter II

ONE reason why English gardens are so wonderful to us Americans is that successive generations, perhaps for hundreds of years, have been lovingly and intelligently at work upon them, each striving to adorn the main design in some new detail before passing over the inheritance to the next heir. At the sight of the surpassing beauty of Old World country estates, as contrasted with our raw, new, mushroom homes, that are rarely lived in by two generations, one is almost persuaded against his better judgment that inheritance through primogeniture and entail must be the proper method. Perhaps we may be wise enough some day to achieve the same ends by more just means, consistent with republican, not monarchic, conditions. Instead of endowing our oldest sons, the heirs-apparent to our little thrones, we may endow the homestead itself — who knows? — just as we endov/ hospitals and colleges to insure their future maintenance. Happy the children who are brought up in a little world of beauty and who may one day hope to inherit it all — the well grown trees, the velvety lawn, the established vines and shrubbery — all the cumulative results of love's labour. Certainly, unless one may work for permanence in the garden there can be little incentive in this country toward the best art out-of-doors.

It is, of course, expecting too much that the site of the house should be chosen solely with reference to the best conditions for its garden. We place our homes, as a general rule, not where there is good, rich loam, not where fine trees are already established and the situation is sheltered, but where the house will be convenient to the railroad station, the school, our friends, or the golf links; or where a special bargain in real estate may be had, or where the greatest number of windows will command the finest views, or where the prevailing summer breezes will sweep through the living-rooms, or where they will be protected from winter winds, or where the sunshine may pour health into them, or where perfect drainage and a water supply are best assured. These and a hundred other practical reasons may dominate the selection of a building site. Relying upon the bounty of nature to provide embellishments for every spot on earth man has yet decided to live upon — and she has plants for every place and purpose — we have been too apt to ignore the garden's claims until the eleventh hour and to concentrate all our thought, oftentimes all our money plus a mortagage, upon the house itself, leaving little or nothing for the setting of the home picture, in which, after all, the house should be merely the most important detail.

But if there is to be a union of the house and the landscape into which it obtrudes — a happy marriage between the house and the garden — the help of the artist-gardener is needed most of all before the house is started, I had almost said before the land is bought. For it is the design of a place as a whole that is the main thing, whether the size of the picture that is to be wrought out is reckoned in miles, acres, or square feet. If the home-maker cannot afford to execute the whole plan at the outset, it is all the more reason that he should possess such a design and proceed methodically to do what he can, year by year, to execute it permanently, rather than waste his money on costly experiments. A rich man can afford to make mistakes; he cannot. Moving soil, for example, is surprisingly expensive. A cart-load of it dumped

THAT IT MAV GIVE THE MOST PLEASURE TO BUSY PEOPLE, THE GARDEN SHOULD UK CONVENIENTLY NEAR THE HOME. ONLY BY LIVING WITH IT ON INTIMATE TERMS CAN ITS BEAUTIES BE FULLY REALISED IN DIFFERENT LIGHTS AND ATMOSPHERES on a lawn looks but little larger than an ant-hill, and the equivalent of a landscape architect's fee might be easily wasted in an unintelligent disposal of the top soil alone. A plan which involves annual upheavals and repeated efforts upon the same piece of land and the incessant care of a skilled gardener, is a very poor plan indeed for a man of modest means. Skyrocket effects of coleus, geraniums and other bedding plants from the florist are rarely desirable in any case, but usually the novice's first undirected efforts are to get them. All plants require some attention, but not necessarily annual attention; certainly not annual renewal. A permanent planting of hardy shrubs and perennials has all the artistic qualities and the practical ones as well. Since it takes years for newly planted trees to look thoroughly at home, delay in setting them out means a needless prolonging of the raw, uniinished state of the place. The era of vanity — or was it parsimony? — when every man presumed to be his own lawyer, his own doctor, or architect, or garden designer, is happily being superseded by an age of specialists whom the wise consult more and more.

It goes without saying that the professional gardener to be chosen should be practical as well as an artist — one who has had too much experience with growing things to advise planting elms on a dry, sandy hill-top or tea roses near Quebec. Enormous sums have been wasted on rhododendrons alone, through attempting to grow in this country imported foreign hybrids which soon give up the struggle for existence in our uncongenial climate; whereas lasting and equally beautiful effects may be produced from hardy hybrids of our native rhododendron race. Costly mistakes are made annually in planting yews and certain other European evergreens. Manchuria and Siberia, with climatic conditions similar to our own, are likely to yield far more valuable treasures for the lawn and garden than the continent of Europe, where we have looked too long, not only for models of design, which may be sometimes desirable, but for the plants to execute them, which most often are not.

Where is that nurseryman's catalogue so frankly honest that the novice may learn from it what not to buy ? It is safe to say that millions of dollars worth of plants die for the lack of intelligent selection, planting, or care. Decidedly, for economic reasons as well as artistic, we Americans are sorely in need of more disinterested, expert advice. But beware of the adviser who has an axe to grind. There are some excellent men connected with nursery establishments of the highest class, but the frequent tendency is to retain "landscape gardeners" of little or no artistic training whose real business is to sell plants for their employers. Naturally the temptation is to load the client with as much stock as possible, regardless of its value to the general effect of his place. "Plant thick; thin quick," is a popular saying in the trade. The disinterested professional, with no commercial connections, makes it his business to secure for his client the best stock that may be purchased anywhere in the open market and at the lowest price. Likewise beware of the landscape gardener who does not insist upon studying the garden problem on the land where it is to be worked out; who would attempt to furnish a design from a few photographs of your grounds at his office desk, or copy another garden that he made successfully elsewhere. Ninety-nine chances out of one hundred it will not suit your place; perhaps not a single feature could be transferred to advantage. It is easier to copy than to originate, but rarely satisfying either to the aesthetic or to the moral sense.

The architect of the house, who very often essays the rSle of designer of its suroundings, that the effect of his work may not be spoiled by his chent, usually lacks a knowledge of plants, without which there can be no lasting success. Such knowledge can be had only by years of special study and experiment, quite beyond the attainment of most professional architects. The landscape gardener on the other hand, very often lacks the needful knowledge of design, apart from the naturalistic treatment of very large park-like areas. He may know a great deal about plants, how to choose and how to grow them, but usually he knows very little about the principles of art and design, or how to treat the land adjoining buildings. The natural landscape he understands, and his usual endeavour is to bring its purely informal lines right up to the purely formal lines of a building, with disastrous results from the artistic view-point. Happily there are not a few well-rounded men, however, trained in design as well as horticulture, who are lifting the art of gardening in this country to a higher plane than it ever before attained here. And more will be forthcoming when their value is more generally appreciated.

But if, for any sufficient cause, one may not employ disinterested, expert advice, one may at least proceed in the artistic spirit along reasonable lines, acquiring by patient study of one's own peculiar problem the knowledge necessary to solve it, and so enjoy one's self all the fun of garden making. Then, indeed, the garden becomes one's very own and best beloved. It is not, or should not be, a matter of capricious taste, but a matter of reason and the affections. Principles of composition govern its making, it is true, as surely as they do a painting in oils; nevertheless the application of those principles to each individual garden problem should be as various as the gardens themselves that each may possess its own distinctive features and charm. Personality reflected in a garden may be its chief attraction. Better a craving for the ideal carried to a "fine lunacy" than the coldly correct, impersonal art of an unimpassioned hireling. It were happiness indeed if, when the time for garden making comes, Art

"shall say to thee: ' I find you worthy, do this thing for me." "

Before daring to proceed with a single detail on the place, study your piece of land as a whole from every point of view. Map it out on a large sheet of tough paper. Draw it to scale, if possible. Show its elevations and depressions and respect these as far as may be when you come to grade rather than attempt the expense and achieve the ugliness of reducing the land to a monotonous level like a billiard table. Every plot of ground, like every human face, has an individuality to be emphasised rather than obliterated. If your place is not a small one, divide the map into several enlarged sections for special study and treatment. This book can help you with only one section, the area to be pictorially treated. It concerns itself with the flower garden only, not with forestry, road-making, the vegetable garden, orchard, vineyard, poultry yard, or any other utilitarian subject, however important, that may engage the home-maker's attention. But the flower garden, of many types, is broadly interpreted to include the lawn and the trees and shrubs suitable for it, because these contribute so immeasurably to the garden picture that no really good one can be made without them. In the succeeding chapters the artistic principles that should govern each style of garden and the directions for its making will be given for the benefit of the novice with aspirations.

On the chart of the garden area put arrows to indicate the direction of objects of beauty or interest, such as a fine view, a vista through the trees, a gigantic pine, or a mirror-like lake toward which attention should be directed. Put crosses where unsightly objects need to be screened or planted out; but first make very sure that what you have considered an eye-sore may not be transformed into an object of beauty. Consider deepening the dismal swamp into a pond for a water garden; covering the dead tree with a mantle of vines instead of chopping it down; making an alpine garden among the rocks instead of blasting them out.

Think well before locating the house, even on paper, and include the drive or path by which it is to be approached in your calculations. Many a house has been completed before it was discovered that the only route left to it approached from the worst possible point of vantage, or spoiled the chances for a good broad lawn, or necessitated too steep a grade, or cut the garden picture in half.

Oftentimes considerable planting may be done on larger grounds than suburban lots before the house is built, but only on the area outside of the building operations, where the carpenter's, plumber's and painter's horses will not feast upon the tender new growth or strip off the bark from your favourite possessions. As soon as the design of your place has been mapped out, a list of such trees, shrubs and hardy perennials as will be needed to execute it may be made. Do not try to collect a museum of plants; avoid freaks of variegated foliage, exclamation points of colour, strange exotics that look out of place in our American landscape, and the beguiling novelties of the catalogues. Personally visit several reliable nurseries if possible, make your own selections and see them tagged with your name. Choose well-grown, vigorous stock at a fair price rather than the puny disappointments that, alas! are what tempt so many because they are erroneously considered cheap. Many a man, intensely practical in his own business, will give his order to the lowest bidder among competing nurserymen and waste years looking at sickly, struggling or dying trees, shrubs and perennials about his home rather than invest a little more money and get satisfaction and joy from the start. Poor stock is dear at any price.