Editor's Introduction xli 



tainly Le Notre did not succeed. Calvert Vaux 

 was a trained architect originally, but his abid- 

 ing reputation is entirely based on his work as a 

 landscape architect in designing Central Park, 

 New York, and other great parks of a similar 

 character. Mr. Olmsted, perhaps the greatest of 

 our latter-day landscape architects, never at any 

 time undertook to assume the role of architect. 



On the other hand, it is doubtful whether any 

 eminent architect of the present day would as- 

 sume to lay out an entire park or country estate. 

 He does undertake to lay out gardens (called, it 

 is true, by Puckler "extensions of the house") 

 with a limited measure of success, for how can 

 he design a garden with intelligence, without an 

 intimate knowledge of plants which he rarely 

 has. A garden should be something more than 

 a problem of architecture. 



It may be claimed and is claimed by most 

 landscape architects that landscape architecture, 

 like all work which seeks to deal with live Na- 

 ture, requires unity of idea everywhere, and that, 

 with many differences, parks and gardens should 

 be considered fundamentally the same. In the 

 case ot both gardens and parks the landscape 

 architect deals with simple, open spaces, and in- 

 tricate, complicated, crowded spaces, with high 

 and low trees and shrubs, perennials and bedding 

 plants and grasses, each requiring artistic rela- 

 tions, one with the other. 



In reviewing the various designs of Puckler, 

 it is interesting to note that some of the excel- 



