THE ESTATE 273 



to be served and the limitations of the site and materials have been 

 clearly kept in mind throughout. 



This decision as to the possible adaptation between circumstances Choice of Site 

 and ideals is the decision which must first be made in those cases where ■f°'' '^^ £^(^te 

 various alternative sites are being considered for an estate. Here the 

 landscape architect may be of great service to his client by helping the 

 client to determine, more definitely than he could do alone, what 

 actually are his essential requirements which must be permanently 

 satisfied by any place which he chooses, and what are the ways in which 

 these essential requirements may be met. There are certain economic 

 requirements which must be met by any piece of land chosen, — health- 

 fulness, water supply, a certain minimum of room and accessibility, 

 and so on ; and then there are others which may vary according to the 

 client's desires. For instance, if natural freedom and some suggestion of 

 wildness are ver}^ desirable things to a client, he might choose either an 

 open hillside pasture or a piece of partly open low-lying pine forest as 

 his countr\' property ; but if a distant view seemed also very desirable 

 to him, the second piece of land would probably be eliminated from 

 consideration. If there is any wide range of choice among a number 

 of alternatives, it usually facilitates a decision categorically to determine 

 the essential requirements, to arrange them roughly in order of impor- 

 tance, and to judge the various pieces of ground under consideration 

 according to the completeness with which they meet these requirements. 

 Once having chosen a piece of ground, however, it is well If possible to 

 be motived by its characteristics and to seek to produce only those 

 effects which can be produced well under the circumstances. To revert 

 to our former example, It would probably be unwise to choose the open 

 pasture and proceed to transform It Into a grove, or to choose the grove 

 and try to transform it Into a meadow. 



The question of expenditure for purchase, construction, and upkeep 

 will lie back of all these decisions. Whether the client's property 

 shall be a large countr}- estate, a suburban estate, or a house lot will 

 usually depend primarily upon his purse ; but this choice once made, 

 whether unwillingly or not, should be adhered to consistently like the 

 choice of any effect. The designer should keep his treatment in 

 scale with his problem, not attempting to make a country estate out 



