With the right design, you may uncover places in your very own garden where you can see mountains, a lake, a view of the ocean, or a glimpse of a pretty town. If you are lucky enough to have a backdrop like this for your garden, there are many things you could do to enhance the overall effect.

Some garden fountains look particularly attractive against certain backdrops. For example, if your garden features a view of a mountain range, a more abstract fountain would fit quite well. If, however, there is a village-type background, a traditional tiered fountain would be more fitting.

Sometimes these exterior objects are of commanding importance; a house facing the ocean, for example. If this is the case, you might try to incorporate everything into a theme that will contribute to enhance the beauty or effectiveness of the chief object.

This means, of course, that everything you do will be subordinate to the object. If you tried to place anything in the garden that tries to draw attention away from the outside view, it would fail miserably, and look ridiculous. You will have to be careful in regards to these exterior views when arranging your plant groupings.

You need to make sure you are leaving open vistas along well-chosen lines. It would be smart to mark these lines on the plans first thing, and as the plans are developed it will be easy to make sure all obstructions are kept off of them. Not only that, but you must make sure everything is a safe distance away from the lines.

Motive, theme, and subject are all names given to the one principle, namely the principle that each work of art must have one idea. In high schools and colleges, students write papers with themes. This metonymy plainly signifies that the subject matter is considered the most important feature of the exercise.

Each essay must be written about one theme, and all irrelevant matter must be strictly excluded. The theme, subject or motive of one student's essay may be dairying, the tariff in politics, George Washington or golf. It could be anything at all, but if there is no theme then it won't flow.

This is exactly the same way that a musician uses themes. He calls them either themes or motives; sometimes he even speaks of them as subjects. In music, a theme is that central recognizable figure which runs throughout the whole composition, and the development of which is the chief concern to the composer. In painting, the use of themes or motives is as obvious as in literature. In all forms of art, themes are a vital necessity.

But what does a theme in landscape architecture look like? Would we know one if we saw it?

First of all, let us suppose that we have a park of 40 acres where white pine is the predominating growth. Good landscape design would immediately suggest that we make this species the chief feature of our development. We would need to cut out all of the scattering weed-trees and bushes that obscure the pines, or hinder their growth. We would also need to choose a favorite, and center the motive around that one tree. Finally we try to make the most of this motive by developing it in a variety of ways.

We could preserve a single specimen of old seed pine in one area. In another we could form a group of normal mature trees, and in a third we could show a broad mass of the young trees growing, with their soft, silky, gray-green foliage. Somewhere within this park we will need a dense stand of large trees, with a heavy carpet of needles beneath our feet, to enjoy the serene beauty of that special picture.
For a second example of landscape motive, imagine an estate through which runs a brook. We definitely want to make the most of such a gracious and fortunate feature. To do this, we would probably conduct our main walk or drive along the bank of the brook.

The walk would not exactly parallel the brook, but would sometimes approach the stream, sometimes fall back into the woods a little distance. At one or two s pecially chosen points it would cross the brook, and from these crossings probably the very best views would be seen. In one section, the brook would lie quietly, deep within the shadows; in another it would glisten in the sun. In one place it would tumble loudly over rocks; in another it would form a deep, still pool.

The brook would be our motive or theme, and our landscape gardening would consist in getting out of it as many beautiful pictures as possible, in as great a variety as circumstances would allow. We would thus have a variety of views with unity of motive.