86 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



reaction against the formalized grounds of the Chateau and the Grand 

 Trianon — expressed still more definitely an attempt to seek relief 

 from the etiquette and repression of court life. Here, in peasant 

 dress, Marie Antoinette forgot, or played she forgot, that she was 

 queen of France. The theatrical farm buildings suggested as far as 

 might be a totally different life ; their irregular forms, ivy-covered 

 walls and thatched roofs, their informal setting of tree and pond, 

 were intentionally created to produce through their rustic style, their 

 naturalistic character, an effect as different as possible from the 

 formal setting of the rest of the life of the court. (See Drawing XII, 

 opp. p. 84.) 

 Design in In planning his work, particularly in its larger outlines, the land- 



Effects scape architect has need to remind himself that it is these effects, and 



not physical characteristics as such, which are ultimate units in his 

 design. An appreciation of this fact will sometimes enable him to 

 escape from a difficulty which otherwise might seem insurmountable. 

 It usually happens that a client expresses his desires in concrete terms, 

 often in very uncompromising terms indeed ; he tells the landscape 

 architect that he wishes certain definite objects in certain definite ar- 

 rangements. The landscape architect may know that such arrange- 

 ments of objects would be inevitably ugly. He should have the 

 power to look back of the definite objects proposed by the client and 

 to appreciate the large fundamental effect for which they stand in the 

 client's mind. This effect may well be worthy, and the designer may 

 hope to work out some other arrangement of objects which will pro- 

 duce the same desired effect, and so satisfy the client, — an arrangement 

 which shall be desirable also in other respects, and not open to the 

 objections which the designer finds in the client's original suggestion. 

 A client may, for instance, say that he desires to build, on the exposed 

 summit of a rocky and pine-clad New England hill, a replica of a cer- 

 tain long, low, flat-roofed, stucco Italian villa. The designer may know 

 that such a structure would be ugly in the given setting, and he may 

 find that what really appeals to the client in that particular villa is 

 not its form, but perhaps a certain effect of refined magnificence of 

 living. The designer may then be able to persuade the client that this 

 effect which he desires may be more cheaply, more beautifully, more 



