LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Development of 

 Landscape 

 Architecture as 

 a Separate 

 Profession 



The province of landscape architecture is to guide man's modifica- 

 tion of the landscape so that he may get the greatest possible esthetic 

 satisfaction of one or both of these two quite different kinds. The 

 resulting beauty might be, at one end of the scale, that of the formal 

 surroundings of a palace — architecture in natural materials to show 

 man's magnificence — or, at the other extreme, that of a woodland 

 solitude — apparently an age-long natural growth — a place of rest 

 from all the works of man. 



In this new province, there must be a new type of designer. In 

 producing the formal setting of a palace, the landscape architect's 

 equipment may indeed difi"er from that of the architect only in his 

 knowledge of plants and what effects can be secured with them; in 

 reproducing or in intelligently preserving a natural woodland, however, 

 the landscape architect must have a knowledge of nature's processes, 

 a familiarity with nature's materials, a sensitiveness to the natural 

 beauty of rock and wood and water, which does not form the pro- 

 fessional equipment of any other artist. 



When a new profession has come to be recognized, or when an old 

 profession has been separated into several branches, the fundamental 

 cause for this subdivision of field has always been the same : the dis- 

 covery of so many new facts, or the increase in importance of so many 

 known facts, that one man cannot master them all. With the handling 

 of a newly segregated field of fact will come the acquisition of a new 

 technique, the elaboration of theory in some new direction, even the 

 growth of a new technical language, which also take time to master. 



This is what has happened in the case of landscape architecture. 

 Within comparatively recent years, there has come a general recog- 

 nition of the value to the public of designed and organized cities, and 

 of parks, reservations, and other out-of-door spaces, and a greatly in- 

 creased interest in private pleasure-grounds of various kinds. There 

 is now an efltective demand for designing skill using as materials ground 

 forms and vegetation, and for designing skill in the arrangement of 

 landscape and architectural forms — streets, parks, buildings, — in 

 larger unities, for public use. 



This demand has been met by the rise of a separate profession, 

 because the materials and technique of this new field are not those 



