CHAPTER I 

 INTRODUCTION 



Definition of Landscape Architecture — Its province — Its development as 

 A separate profession — Its requirements of the practitioner — His 

 preparation — His opportunities and rewards. 



"Landscape architecture is primarily a fine art, and as such its most Definition of 

 important function is to create and preserve beauty in the surroundings of Landscape 

 human habitations and in the broader natural scenery of the country ; but it 

 is also concerned with promoting the comfort, convenience, and health of 

 urban populations, which have scanty access to rural scenery, and urgently 

 need to have their hurrying, workaday lives refreshed and calmed by the 

 beautiful and reposeful sights and sounds which nature, aided by the land- 

 scape art, can abundantly provide." * 



Man obtains from his environment tw^o things which he desires, The Province 

 usefulness and beauty, and all material progress in civilization has °^^^^i"ffil^/^ 

 consisted in his modification of his surroundings to serve these two 

 needs. Very early in his history he shaped the economic changes 

 which he made in the earth's surface so that they gave him also an 

 esthetic satisfaction. This satisfaction was due in great measure to 

 the fact that the changes were obviously man-made ; they bore wit- 

 ness that he had impressed his ideas on the stubborn natural material. 

 Much later in his development — almost, it might be said, in modern 

 times — came the period when man, instead of being isolated and 

 overpowered in the midst of wild nature, found himself cramped and 

 oppressed by the works of his own hands, and sought relief in the esthetic 

 pleasure to be derived from landscape which expresses not man's will 

 but the operation of natural forces. 



* From letter of President-Emeritus Charles W. Eliot to the Editors of Land- 

 scape Architecture, October, 1910, vol. i, no. i, p. 40. 



B I 



