The Native Landscape Reader

“A Juniper Landscape” (1931)

140 From American Landscape Architect, November 1931, 16–20. *This method has been expounded by the present writer in The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening (Boston, 1917), 63; also in The Book of Landscape Gardening, 3rd ed. (New York, 1926), 44; and in Everybody’s Garden (New York, 1930), 39. †Miller, The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening (Urbana : University of Illinois, Circular 184, 1915). fRaNk a. waUgh a Juniper landscape (1931) Anyone with an eye for landscape beauty has sometime, perhaps frequently, been arrested by a hillside covered with old junipers . Such striking pictures are most abundant in the eastern seaboard states, from Maine to North Carolina, but they are also to be seen, with variations, in Michigan and the north-central states as far south as Tennessee. Altered to the famous juniper-pinyon association, they are also widely prevalent in New Mexico and Arizona. In brief, the juniper landscape is an unusually familiar one, as it is always arresting and often beautiful. The critical analysis of such a landscape type always presents important lessons to the landscape architect, for which reason we may now consider a few field notes. The practical purpose may as well be avowed at the outset. It is to discover whether this natural plant association offers any guide in the formation or modification of landscape pictures as practiced by the active landscape architect. One theory of landscape composition is that the designer shall select a “motive” and follow it throughout any given area, developing it in successive paragraphs or episodes.* There are, of course, several types of motives available to the landscape, but one of the most eligible lies in the thematic development of the native flora in its original associations . For purposes of clearer statement I have ventured to call these “ecological motives.” Just who first began to preach the use of ecological motives in landscape architecture it would be hard to say. Mr. Jens Jensen, of Chicago, certainly early had the idea and pled for it with fervor. Wilhelm Miller,† who made a good statement in print of the method, possibly derived his notions from Mr. Jensen. The most recent a JuniPER landsCaPE 141 and highly practical publication has been that of Misses Roberts and Rehmann.* To complete this review one must not fail to cite Willy Lange,† who, very early and with characteristic German thoroughness, made an extended exposition of the theory and the practice of landscape design founded on principles of ecology. Briefly stated, this particular tenet of this doctrine teaches that the landscape architect in developing a given area of landscape, especially when a definitely natural result is desired, should select a motive composed of the floral complex (or association) native to that area, or at least clearly adapted to the area. This complex will nearly always consist of ten to twenty species, of which two or three may conveniently be designated as dominants, since they are the most conspicuous and generally important. There will then be six or eight secondary species, of considerable importance, but clearly subsidiary to the dominants. Often there follow in turn several tertiary species, inconspicuous or incidental , but worth planting in a small way. Last, there may even be other species more completely negligible, of no importance whatever, but not so inimical to the picture as to require exclusion. Such a complex of dominant, secondary , and tertiary species is obviously capable of infinite development in ever changing compositions, the typical character of the association being clearly retained in each new variation. These successive combinations may be spoken of as paragraphs or episodes in the development of the leading motive. The methods by which each paragraph is to be developed to its climax , how the transitions from paragraph to paragraph are to be made, how the most effective order of paragraphs is to be determined —these are technical problems of great interest and importance, but aside from the main point in the present study. The examination of concrete details in which we are here engaged was made on two adjoining low hills in Amherst, Massachusetts . These hills support a quite remarkable stand of junipers, both the red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) and the common juniper (J. communis). The soil is built upon granite bedrock, heavily glaciated and covered with glacial till mixed with gravel and large coarse stones. It is well drained and dry. The hill which we shall designate as “A” slopes to the southeast; hill “B” slopes to the southwest. On “A,” the common juniper...