LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



tect's design be recorded in some fairly permanent form. He should 

 therefore acquire not only facility in oral statement, but also ability in 

 the expression of his ideas by drawings, in plan, elevation, and perspec- 

 tive, and in written reports to his clients, and detailed specifications 

 for the execution of the work. 



To carry his design into actual construction, the landscape architect 

 must deal with men as a business man. He must be able to impress the 

 desirability of his designs on his clients, to organize his own office and 

 field assistants, and to handle the contractors with whom he deals. 

 This ability must be plainly more the result of innate force and prac- 

 tical experience than of any theoretical instruction. 



Preparation Any one who endeavors to make himself an efficient landscape archi- 



Profession ^ ec ^ w ^ nave to acquire creative power in two ways : he must accumu- 

 late a store of facts and he must develop an ability to organize this 

 experience, to analyze his individual problems, and to attack the solu- 

 tions of these problems in such a logical way that at the end he may 

 be convinced that he has arrived at the best solution possible for him 

 under the given conditions. While practical experience will provide 

 a man with a store of facts, only long practical experience can tell him 

 what facts are most significant and how they may be best related. 

 Here lies the greatest value of systematic instruction in a school. A 

 man may thus learn, from the experience of others, a system of or- 

 ganization which may greatly help him in evaluating and interpreting 

 f his own experience, and he may learn at the same time a method of 

 approaching his problems which will save him from a considerable 

 number of the wasteful mistakes inevitably made by any undirected 

 beginner. Doubtless when he is finally settled in his professional life 

 his methods will be his own, but good schooling should save him years 

 of experiment and should give him a broader outlook on his work than 

 he would be at all likely ever to acquire, without schooling, in the 

 pressure of professional activity. But instruction in a school alone 

 will not fit a man for independent practice. It is almost always desirable 

 that he should serve an apprenticeship under some established practi- 

 tioner, so that his ideas may be first put to the test of actuality under 

 the guidance of practical experience. 



Throughout his life the landscape architect must be a student of 



