Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Garden of the Villa of Castello.
THE GARDEN AS A PICTURE
Garden literature of to-day, as we allknow, does not confine itself merely toflowers, insects, and the weather, but isequally authoritative as to astronomy,cookery, philosophy, and even matrimony.Some quotations from old writings, however,come back over and over again, likethe burden of a song, and we have grown soaccustomed to them that we feel almost defraudedif a garden book does not open withthe first sentence of Bacon’s stately essay.These books have done much good in makingpeople realize that gardens are notpieces of ground kept solely for the delightof gardeners of the old school, who seem tohave spent their time in designing flower-bedsof intricate pattern filled with beddingplants so atrocious in color that a kaleidoscopeis Quakerish in comparison. Theyhave also taught the great essential of gardening,that in order to have good gardenswe must really care for the plants in themand know them individually as well as collectively.This is an important part of thetechnique of the garden-maker; he mustknow intimately the form and texture aswell as the color of all the plants he uses;for plants are to the gardener what his paletteis to a painter. The two arts of paintingand garden design are closely related,except that the landscape gardener paintswith actual color, line, and perspective tomake a composition, as the maker of stainedglass does, while the painter has but a flatsurface on which to create his illusion; hehas, however, the incalculable advantagethat no sane person would think of goingbehind a picture to see if it were equally interestingfrom that point of view.
The painter has another great advantageover the gardener, because, as he cannotpossibly transfer to canvas the millions ofcolors and shadows which make up the mostordinary landscape, he must eliminate so3many that his presentment becomes moreor less conventional, just as a playwrightmust recognize the conventions of the stage,and these limitations are taken for grantedby the public, whereas the landscape gardenerhas to put his equally artificial landscapeout in real light, among real trees, tobe barred by real and moving shadows.The garden designer has no noncommittalcanvas at the back of his picture, but mustbe prepared, like the sculptor, for criticismfrom any standpoint, and it would seem asthough most people were irresistibly drawnto look at a composition from its least attractiveside, as if, in a parallel case, they shouldcriticise only the backs of statues, all ofwhich are not so beautiful as that of theVenus of Syracuse.
The painter has yet another advantagehard to overestimate, in that his palette isreally in great measure the creation of hispersonal artistic temperament, expressedwith more or less variation in all that hedoes, while the landscape architect musttake the elements given him by nature asthe basis of his composition in each separatepiece of work;