PREFACE 



WE mean this book to present a general conception of landscape 

 design which may enable a designer better to determine for himself 

 the relations of the objects and ideas with which he is dealing, and better 

 to prepare and use in a decisive way, in the individual problems of his 

 profession, the natural aptitudes and acquired knowledge which are the 

 tools of his trade. The book may also serve as a general introduction 

 to the subject for those whose interest in it is purely that of apprecia- 

 tion and enjoyment of landscape designs and of natural landscapes. 



The rapid growth of landscape architecture as an independent 

 profession has been very recent. Nearly all the trained men in the 

 field are giving their energies to active practice rather than to theoriz- 

 ing or to writing. It is natural, therefore, that the bulk of the de- 

 tailed printed information on construction and planting which the 

 landscape architect uses should have originated in the older fields of 

 architecture and engineering and horticulture, that the discussions of 

 general esthetics should have little specific reference to the problems 

 of the landscape architect, and that, while there have been many books 

 on special problems and special aspects of the field, there should have 

 appeared up to this time no book, treating generally of landscape 

 design, adequate to the modern development of the subject and of the 

 profession. 



This book is not a compendium of useful information as to the 

 practicalities of landscape construction, though such a book is much 

 needed ; nor is it primarily a book of pictures of completed work to 

 which the designer may go to see how problems similar to his own 

 have been met before. It is emphatically not a book of rules which 

 are supposed automatically to produce good design if religiously fol- 

 lowed ; there are no such rules, and no esthetic theory is final. We 

 make no attempt at any original contribution to the subject of general 



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