LANDSCAPE GARDENING (ante). The word landscape implies a considerable range of perspective over nature, embracing gradations from a foreground to a middle and a far distance. A piece of decorated ground, or park, which has not such a view cannot be considered a landscape garden. There is an obvious impropriety in the con junction of the words landscape and garden, in their use when we mean simply the English or natural style in decorative gardening. The latter words cover the whole field, and should be substituted for landscape gardening. To garden, to lay out and plant, and make or mold such an extent of view as to create grand or extensive landscapes, is preposterous. As well seek to make artificial skies or oceans. Great and beautiful landscapes are without the pale of gardening arts; but decorative gardening may aid in producing charming bits of perspective in vegetation, made more pictorial by artful adaptations of the various elements of beauty which the garden artist may have means to employ, and thus make exquisite miniature or condensed landscapes. The term decorative gardening, however, even in. that case, is by far the truer name to apply to the art. As used in England, the term landscape-gardening refers to the natural and grace ful, in contradistinction to the formal and geometric, styles of gardening. The English, having originated and carried the former style to a perfection never before attained, the word landscape, which attached to that variety of decorated grounds, has served to mislead people into the idea that a good imitation of a piece of primitive nature is a refined piece of "landscape gardening." The charm of primitive nature is the absence of all evidence of art. The charm of decorative gardening is in the variety and puree eon of the art employed in improving, arranging. and setting pliant vegetation: so that the beautiful foliage and bloom of its summer growth shall be exhibited to the greatest perfection from the walls or roads made to traverse the ground; so as to make the most charming setting for the architecture and sculpture that may be needed for the comfort or delight of those who are to use the place, or to make a lovely foreground for a dis tant view. All the hints which a living observer of natural scenery may receive from a close observation of the effects produced, the play of light and shade and color, by the varied juxtapositions of ground surfaces, trees, grass, roads, and water, to enable him to reproduce on a limited scale the most pleasing effects he may see, and to avoid those features in the primitive picture which do not contribute to its pleasing effect—all these hints from nature constitute the elements of landscape gardening. But in order to be an art it must be associated with the evidence of human effort. A lovely bit of wild landscape, if it have but a path to a summer-house, or any other evidence that its beauty is dedicated to use as beauty. becomes a bit of landscape art by such evidence of its
appropriation. And the added features of art, as paths, walks, flowers, and lawn, that will heighten the beauty and the interest of that pretty scene, without marring its har mony, constitute the gardening art. As wealth and taste increase, the art naturally tends to great use of architectural accompaniments; as decorated steps, terraces, pavi lions, garden-houses, vases, fountains, bridges, etc., until the constructive arts are the principal, and nature's growths only their decoration. Then, it is architectural garden ing; none the less decorative, but certainly not landscape gardening. The formal park at Versailles, with its monotony of geometric angles, its breadth of barren gravel, its wealth of architectural and sculptural decorations, is a type of architectural and formal gardening on a great park scale. Roman and Italian villa gardens for 2,000 years have been examples of the more domestic forms of architectural gardening. Compared with the simple use of nature's materials in the English or." natural " style, the former are vastly more expensive. The latter is, therefore, to be recommended, for the reason that at limited cost very charming effects may be produced with grass, trees, and flowers alone; and it is far better to succeed perfectly with the use of these only, than to attempt a style beyond most men's reach. But when both taste and the means to gratify it are joined, much higher examples of decorative gardening may be produced by work ing after the Italian school.
The public parks of the United States (see Parks) now exhibit some of the best models of landscape gardening on a great scale. The cemeteries of nearly all American cities are also designed to produce pleasing effects in landscape gardening; and as far as such effects can be 'produced where numberless monumental tributes to the dead must necessarily be conspicuous features of the scene, they are the most beautiful art works of their kind in the world. In private grounds the development of taste in the United States, in what is called landscape gardening, but should be called decorative gardening merely, has been rapid; and although architectural gardening has received little of the study which its capabilities invite, the lovely surroundings of grass, trees, and flowers of American homes marks an advanced taste iu the arts of gardening. The principal American works on this subject arc A. J. Downing's "Treatise on Land scape Gardening," published 30 years ago, and a work by NIreidemeyer on decorative gardening on a scale adapted to suburban homes, F. J. Scott's treatise entitled "The Art of Beautifying Home Grounds." London's " Encyclopedia of Gardening" (English) is by far the most complete work of the kind extant; of greatest value to those who may intend to practice landscape gardening as a profession, but more particularly adapted to England.