CHAPTER VII LANDSCAPE DESIGN I. MAN AND THE LANDSCAPE Most of the earth is beyond the walls of buildings, and is untouched in appearance by the art of the sculptor or the painter. Yet the beauty of this outdoor world has an importance to man of the same sort as the beauty upon which his highest effort has been lavished in the arts of architecture and painting and sculpture. No one but a prisoner in a windowless house can escape being influenced by the beauty or ugliness of his outdoor surroundings. The appearance of the land and objects upon it, the effect upon the eye of their infinitely various and changing forms and colors and relationships, seen in connection with the sky and all that it contains, is what we call landscape. The meaning of the word is well brought out in Hamerton's phrase, that land belongs to its owners but the landscape belongs to him who beholds it. In this broad sense, the "landscape" of the world includes every sort of outdoor scene, in mid-ocean, in the heart of the city, or in the depths of the country. Whether we know it or not, whether we wish it or not, the landscape of the world, amidst which we live and move and work and play, continually affects the state of our nerves and our state of mind — in short, affects our happiness - by its beauty or its ugliness, by its infinite varieties of character. 1. MAN'S INFLUENCE OVER LANDSCAPE But the degree of good that one gets from the ever present landscape depends on two things. First, the keenness of one's perception of the beautiful qualities in landscape, a thing which can be readily developed by practice in observation and comparison. Second, the physical qualities of the landscape itself, qualities which depend largely upon the doings of man, as woodsman, farmer, gardener, builder, or in some fashion controller of the materials and forces of nature. For the appearance of the land and the objects upon it generally results from the control which man himself exerts over the materials and forces of nature just as truly and as completely as the sculptor controls the appearance of the natural stone which he shapes. There is not one of us who is not responsible in some degree for making or marring the landscape of our world, from the heedless one who befouls it with papers thrown to the winds or who drops a glowing match that sweeps the woodland with fire, to the engineer who remodels a whole country-side in pursuit of some deliberate economic aim, or the patient artist who devotes himself for years to perfecting the beauty of a single bit of ground. Whenever this human control over the land and the objects upon it is influenced by desire to make the resulting landscape more enjoyable than it would otherwise be, an element of artistry enters, which often attains the quality of a Fine Art. This art is most often called landscape architecture when practiced professionally. But it has gone by many other names, and as an element in other occupations it is a very ancient and wide-spread art; a very modest and unpretentious art for the most part, as when the plowman takes a simple pride in his clean and perfect furrows. The texture of a field well plowed in spring is as beautiful as any fabric from the loom; more subtly beautiful than the plowman often quite appreciates, but with a beauty that would not have been attained but for his pride in a job that not only is but looks well done. The beauty of the landscape in which the plowman's furrows form a part depends on many things besides the texture of his field and the rich coloring of the local soil in perfect tilth; such things as the shape and the size of the field in rela |