THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 



The love of country life, apart from farming, is slow in grow- 

 ing in the normal development of people. It is the by-product 

 of prosperity, which brings a certain degree of leisure and of those 

 spiritual values which delight in peacefulness and in order and in 

 the harmony of line and color. It becomes the yearning of large 

 numbers when the standard of culture and taste rises considerably 

 and when urban conditions become increasingly more difficult and 

 antagonistic to physical and economic well-being. With country 

 life comes the introduction of all forms of out-of-door sports 

 contributing to mental and physical vigor, the familiarity with 

 nature and its compositions, the desire to make one's surroundings 

 attractive as well as useful. It generates, in other words, the 

 appreciation of landscape design. 



In the last thirty years all this has grown in America to a magic 

 extent as shown by the number of suburban and country places, 

 garden cities and country clubs constructed and by the growth of 

 a vast literature in books and magazines devoted to country life 

 and to house and garden architecture. It has made possible the 

 establishment and recognition of a profession trained in and 

 dedicated to the art of landscape design, which celebrates this 

 month the twenty-fifth anniversary of its organization. It has 

 promoted the garden club movement, which, from modest begin- 

 nings has spread all over the country and culminated with the 

 formation of the Garden Club of x\merica. Finally, it has fostered 

 the appearance of well organized schools of landscape design in 

 the universities, and definitely established landscape architecture 

 as one of the fine arts represented in the highest institution of 

 the country, among the Fellowships of the American Academy in 

 Rome. 



Of the work accomplished in garden design in the period of 

 time under consideration we shall presently speak. It would be 

 absurd to think that progress has been uniform and constant. 

 The rapidity of the movement itself has prevented it by encourag- 

 ing all sorts of people to enter the field, from the well meaning 

 layman carried away by enthusiasm, to the calculating exploiter 

 with goods to sell. But, on the whole, common sense is gaining, 

 restraint follows upon the advance of taste and every good piece 



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