74 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Value and 

 Preservation 

 of Character- 

 istic Scenery 



ing the natural characters which he is producing at a somewhat reduced 

 scale, and this may be successfully done if the growth of the vegetation 

 be watched and kept within bounds, if certain less hardy plants desir- 

 able for the total effect be protected from the encroachments of their 

 faster-growing and stronger neighbors. If the care and skill necessary 

 for this upkeep are not to be forthcoming, then the designer must choose 

 a landscape character perhaps less interesting, but which at least may 

 be kept approximately in its correct expression with the amount of care 

 that will actually be afforded. And this simpler thing well done will 

 be infinitely preferable to the ineffective and shabby confusion which 

 would result from the more ambitious design in its neglected state. 



As man has increased on the face of the earth, as he has irrigated 

 and tilled the deserts, as he has destroyed the forests to make his 

 buildings and in their stead placed his farms and his cities, the amount 

 of actually wild landscape has decreased, and in our time it is decreas- 

 ing at an enormously accelerated rate, so that the unhampered expres- 

 sions of nature's forces which were once the common, almost the 

 inevitable, environment of man, remain only in inaccessible and inhos- 

 pitable places, and even there they are rapidly passing away before the 

 blind destructive forces of man's enterprise. A possession of inestim- 

 able value to mankind,* which once was so common that it went un- 

 heeded, is now becoming in our country so rare that we are beginning 

 to appreciate its preciousness ; and the responsibility rests upon us, 

 especially upon our landscape architects, as it has never rested upon 

 any generation of men before, to see to it that the scattered remnants 

 of natural character and natural beauty, which we still have left to us, 

 are preserved for the recreation and Inspiration of the generations to 

 come. (See Frontispiece and Plates 7 and 14.) This is not a duty 

 that can be put upon the shoulders of our successors : the destruction 

 of this natural beauty is imminent; unless it is definitely controlled, 

 it is inevitable; and once destroyed, once put into the possession of 

 man and adapted to his uses, this beauty in its highest manifestations 

 is destroyed forever, and no late repentance, no expenditure of money, 

 however great, will bring back to our successors what we can now so 



* Cf. F. L. Olmsted, Sr.'s, remarks, p. no flf., of his Public Parks, 1902 reprint. 

 (See References.) 



