USES OF NATURAL AREAS 



d 



of public areas is a considerable part 

 of the regular work of the profession. 



President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot 

 of Harvard University, at the meeting 

 of the American Society of Landscape 

 Architects, Boston, 1911, made the 

 following remarks: 



If I were asked to mention the most 

 important public movement of the last 

 twenty years, I should say it was the 

 movement to obtain for all classes of 

 society — indeed, for the entire popula- 

 tion — better means of health, rational 

 enjoyment, and real happiness. Much 

 sympathy has been expressed in these 

 later years for the unhappy condition 

 of large elements of the population. 

 Something more than economic remedies 

 must be found for the great evils which 

 beset modern society, and particularly 

 for the diseases, physical and moral, 

 which are caused by congestion of popu- 

 lation. This profession is called upon 

 to deal with all these problems of con- 

 gestion. You must take account of the 

 desires and hopes, tastes and purposes 

 of the population to be relieved; and 

 these sentiments and emotions will all 

 be found to be closely related to that 

 pursuit of happiness in which a free 

 people is always engaged in accordance 

 with their tastes and inclinations. 

 . . . The Declaration of Independ- 

 ence declares that all men have a right 

 to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 

 happiness. Now it is the pursuit of 

 public happiness which, I think, should 

 be the main standby of this profession 

 in urging the public to use the landscape 

 art, to seek its benefits, and to employ 

 its artists. 



But the preservation of natural 

 beauty is not the only object sought 

 in saving the untouched tracts. Not 

 that their beauty is not a sufficient 

 object in itself, but other factors, not 

 less important but simply less apparent, 

 can be justly ascribed. The training 

 of the landscape architect begins not 

 only with pictorial composition and 

 practical design, but also with the 

 study of plants, of soils, of bodies of 

 water and of all the great natural forces 

 and influences that have shaped and 



given character to the physiognomy 

 of the land and its vegetation. Now 

 the original sources of the literature in 

 all these vast fields of special sciences 

 have come from the many investigators 

 who have utilized the natural areas 

 not as an accessory to their mode of 

 study but as the supreme fundamental 

 basis of all determinations. Unlike the 

 investigators in other than the so-called 

 "Natural Sciences" whose laboratories 

 are often merely specially equipped 

 ordinary buildings, these workers 

 must depend on all out-doors for their 

 laboratories and particularly on the 

 few portions of the earth's surface still 

 remaining as an original record of the 

 earth's history. The plea of this work 

 is that these original tracts are so 

 rapidly becoming modified that steps 

 should be taken to save their destruc- 

 tion before too late. From the stand- 

 point of the landscape profession their 

 loss would be not a mere sentimental 

 misfortune, but a real catastrophe 

 reaching into every branch of science 

 which contributes to the development 

 of landscape study. 



From these great sources of natural 

 beauty comes all our inspiration; from 

 them comes the unlimited store of fine 

 examples teaching us the arrange- 

 ment of our materials; from them comes 

 the lesson of growth, development and 

 natural strife that shows the way to 

 a permanent landscai)e; and finally, 

 from them comes the suggestion to the 

 layman of the value of beauty and the 

 desire for it in the surroundings of 

 human habitations. It is not enough 

 that we grow fine floral displays, well- 

 clipped hedges and smooth lawns. \\c 

 must bring to the most humble cottage 

 in all parts of the land at least a sug- 

 gestion of nature's charm, power and 

 delicacy, the inspiration for which, 

 unless these natural preserves are 

 secured, will disappear for all times in 

 spirit and in fact. 



