STTLES OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



59 



of planting and broken by two or three free-standing trees. (See Plate 

 6.) Such an arrangement need make no attempt to imitate the natural 

 forms which have inspired it. It may be obviously man-made and may 

 contain arrangements of plants and flowers not native, but the design 

 may still suggest free landscape by the natural character of the plant 

 material and its informal arrangement, and may still thus in its small 

 compass be a more restful thing to its suburban owner than any purely 

 formal design might be.* In small lots of irregular shape this informal 

 design has an additional advantage, namely, that it is possible to sub- 

 divide the area into the necessary functional units and to group them 

 with the least possible waste of space, thereby leaving the maximum 

 space for such uses as, for instance, a lawn which gives by its open area 

 some sense of extent to the design. 



From the nature of the case this work on small properties, usually 

 with no possibility of great expense for a trained designer, has fallen 

 often into unskilled hands, and what should have been suggestion of 

 natural beauty has degenerated into meaningless undulations of shrub 

 beds and meanderings of paths very similar to unfortunate examples of 

 the landscape style in Europe. When designed and maintained by 

 persons of taste, however, this style, even in a very small area, can be 

 treated in a way not essentially different from the symbolic work of the 

 Japanese, and it can be, in the same way, a work of art. 



The modern landscape architect has in the examples of the styles Study of 

 of the past a treasury of inspiration and information to aid him in his S«y/^x 

 present work ; but he should study these styles not as an archaeologist, 

 not as a copyist, but as a workman providing himself with tools for 

 future original use. He should endeavor to see how in each case the 

 designer met a particular and individual problem; he should feel a 

 brotherly and human interest in the way his predecessor has adapted 

 means to ends ; and he should thus get from an example in any style 

 some inspiration for his own work, however different its circumstances 

 may be. More specifically he studies each style to determine the 

 essential effects of each ; to learn what esthetic ideas may best be ex- 

 pressed through the medium of its typical forms ; and he familiarizes 



* See the article by F. L. Olmsted, Sr., in Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia, under 

 the heading Landscape Gardening, ist (1876) and later editions. 



