The Plan
If a landscape is a picture, it must have a
canvas. This canvas is the lawn. Upon the lawn, the artist paints with
tree and bush and flower as the painter does upon his canvas with brush
and pigments.
The opportunity for artistic composition
and design is nowhere so great as in the landscape garden, because no
other art has such a limitless field for the expression of its emotions.
The making of a good and spacious lawn,
then, is the very first practical consideration in a landscape. The
lawn provided, the gardener conceives what is the dominant and central
feature in the place, and then throws the entire premises into
subordination to this feature. In home grounds this central feature is
the house.
To scatter trees and bushes over the area
defeats the fundamental purpose of the place,--the purpose to make
every part of the grounds lead up to the home and to accentuate its
homelikeness. It is desirable to have a definite plan on paper for the
location of the leading features of the place. These features are the
residence, the out buildings, the walks and drives, the service areas,
the border planting, flower-garden, and vegetable-garden. It should not
be expected that the map plan can be followed in every detail, but it
will serve as a general guide.
To begin, you will need to draw a base plan
to scale. For most properties a scale of 1/8"=1' is workable; for small
properties or a particular area of a larger development 1/4"=1' may be
better. Graph paper with lines indicating a particular scale may also
be helpful.
You should include all the major features
of your property on your drawing such as existing walks, terraces,
outbuildings, trees, shrubs, drives, property lines, easements,
utilities, etc. After you have prepared the base plan you can place
tracing paper or tissue paper over the original plan to sketch possible
ideas and solutions to your landscape needs and problems.
Continued
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