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This landscaping lesson continues with the principle of unity and the best way to establish that unity. And that is by having a theme or one motive that connects all your landscaping. Our author does a much better job describing it than I can, so on to the lessson.

Lesson Two Part Three

Every worthwhile work of art has a subject, theme or motive. In landscape gardening the term motive is perhaps most eligible, though all three words mean the same thing. Everyone is familiar with the theme or subject in literature, and those who have studied music should understand what is meant by a musical theme. It is also reasonably clear that any painting must have some sort of subject.

It is somewhat difficult however to state exactly what is a landscape gardening motive. Let us illustrate by saying that a park at Niagara Falls could hardly do anything else than exhibit the Falls. That would necessarily be the theme or motive. So a more commonplace park running along a mile of some minor stream would nevertheless find the stream beautiful, would strive primarily to exhibit the beauties of the stream - would in short adopt the stream as its motive. That park would be the story of Paint Creek or Duck River just as truly as “Hamlet” is the story of Hamlet.

It is impossible here to expound the principles upon which landscape motives are chosen and worked out. It may be barely suggested that, as a rule, in each landscape tract of land developed the selected motive is presented in a series of paragraphs or episodes. In each paragraph some different treatment is given to the motive. For illustration let us imagine four paragraphs of the Paint Creek motive suggested above. In the first picture we might see the rapids with the water singing over the stones; at the second paragraph we might see flat quiet water with stately beech trees reflected from the opposite shore; at the third paragraph we might cross the stream over a bridge getting a long view down the channel toward a distant hill; at the fourth paragraph, at the bend of the creek, where the old Indian camp used to be, the park maker might introduce two or three Indian tepees, always of great pictorial value, and these would serve to recall the history and legends of Paint Creek.

Analogy

The pupil in high school or college will find the analogy between rhetoric and landscape gardening particularly suggestive at this point. He has been taught to write essays, compositions or “themes.” He has been taught the demands of unity - has learned to stick strictly to one subject. At the same time he has been taught to give the subject varied treatment, sometimes serious, sometimes witty, sometimes statistical, sometimes poetic. Finally he has been taught to treat his theme paragraphically. Each paragraph must have a quality of its own but it must first of all bear directly upon the theme in hand. Landscape gardening and literature come very close together in all these points.

Exercises

1. Select some piece of landscape gardening in the immediate vicinity, preferably the best example available. Examine this critically with respect to unity and variety. Indicate exactly where unity has been gained and where it has been lost; also where desirable variety begins to be undesirable. It is important in this exercise to discover the maximum of good. Much emphasis should be placed upon defects.

2. Select some tract of park or comparatively wild land in the vicinity. Study this with care endeavoring to select a landscape motive most natural to the tract. Define this motive in writing. Then project three to six separate episodes or paragraphs, describing just where and how the several episodes might be developed.

To get more from this lesson, try to give the landscaping exercises a try. We will certainly give it a shot over this weekend and maybe even post here how we did. Then again, maybe not.