PARK ADMINISTRATION 



in accordance with the requirements of the landscape development, is 

 a policy which will make true planting composition impossible. Also 

 the frequent method of resorting to planting as an eleventh hour 

 means of using up the tag ends of appropriations results inevitably in 

 " promiscuous " planting, a particularly obvious and odious feature of 

 park work. Such a condition of enforced planting is enough to upset 

 the digestion of any park system. It is too reminiscent of the old time 

 park officials who, pigging for personal credit, ruined many a park 

 in obtaining such newspaper notices as " Fifteen hundred new trees 

 planted in the parks this spring." 



Thirdly, there is a constant nagging by nursery firms to be given a 

 share of orders regardless of whether or not they can furnish the par- 

 ticular material which is desired for the planting projects on hand. 

 A designer, compelled either by fear of criticism or by pressure to so 

 govern his planting plans as to promote even distribution of orders or 

 to confine his planting lists to meet the commercial limitations of lame 

 duck nurseries, is placed under serious handicap. Also, an inferior 

 specimen is expensive at any price ; and the malpractice of accepting, 

 at a reduction, previously rejected stock renders planting design a 

 travesty. 



FURTHER RESTRICTIONS ON THE DESIGNER 



Fourthly, sentimental or protective demands are made that the 

 planting in American parks take into consideration the use of American 

 plants, on the basis that " naturalistic treatment is impossible without 

 making use of our native plants almost exclusively." This is a mis- 

 statement and a limiting condition. An examination of the plant 

 names in the average nursery catalogue reveals that fifty per cent, or 

 more of the material offered is of exotic origin. Whether it be home 

 grown or of foreign production is immaterial. Landscape designers 

 usually include such American varieties of plants as are suitable for 



240 



