72 Xan^scape Hrcbitecture 



The trouble is, that the designers of our country places 

 are oppressed, perhaps unconsciously, at the present day 

 by a false kind of erudition and their work too often 

 lacks personality. "All art speedily declines so soon as 

 it ceases to be continuously re-created, so the present 

 must in the last resort shape its own life. Its relation 

 to the past is not something fixed and given; it has 

 always to be ascertained anew. The present will always 

 mould its conception and judgment of the nature of 

 the past by its own conviction of the value of the work 

 it is doing." Thus speaking from the point of view of 

 a landscape architect, the past is by no means a finished 

 story. It is always open to the present to discover, 

 to stir up something new in it. "Even the past is still 

 in the making." 



In order to realize what has been given to the land- 

 scape architecture of the present day to enable it to 

 reach a higher plane of development than ever before, 

 let us survey the present condition of the art. We will 

 find that we have a broader basis for its practice, more 

 vigour of movement, an exhaustless profusion of con- 

 structions and examples for our consideration; in ad- 

 dition we are securing a clearer insight and a more 

 balanced judgment; finally we are gaining an incen- 

 tive to follow up for ourselves the clue that has been 

 transmitted to us, a call to co-operate actively in the 

 great undertaking of creating landscape-gardening work 

 of high character. 



Nobody can deny that in the modem renaissance 

 of landscape gardening and its evolution and adapta- 



