3o6 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



although their design may be treated in a naturalistic or at least 

 informal manner, as may the design of a promenade, still are obviously 

 of man's making rather than of nature's, are places for crowds rather 

 than for mere neighborliness or for solitude, and therefore are best 

 treated as a separate unit in the park design. Indeed in most cases 

 the design of promenades, at least, is best treated in a frankly formal 

 manner. 



The recreations of riding, driving, and motoring, and often of walk- 

 ing, have their very considerable effect on the design of the park on 

 account of the construction of roads or paths.* 



These various recreations, though each is Individually desirable, 

 will interfere with each other in different degrees, and they are by no 

 means all equally desirable from the point of view of the number of 

 people who may engage in them per unit area of land employed. Golf, 

 for instance, takes a very large amount of land and comparatively 

 few persons can play at the same time on the same course, while the 

 course is rendered dangerous to any one who might venture upon it for 

 any other purpose. A golf course, therefore. Is likely to prove an in- 

 advisable use of ground except In a park not as yet intensively used, 

 or on a piece of park property which can properly be set aside for this 

 purpose alone. Archery also requires a space to itself while It Is being 

 carried on, but since It is seldom practiced in any park for more than a 

 few hours a day it Is usually possible to meet the danger by proper 

 policing of the area, which at other times is open to general use. Coast- 

 ing, tobogganing, and ski-jumping, though they may be carried on by a 

 few people with no particular danger or supervision. If they are partici- 

 pated in by great crowds must be supervised and confined to definite 

 localities properly prepared. At some inconvenience to the players, 

 tennis may be played with no apparatus except courts marked out upon 

 the ground and removable nets. A group of tennis players on an open 

 park lawn would be considered by most people an Interesting rather 

 than an Incongruous feature, and when the piay is over nothing need 

 remain but the lines of the courts upon the turf. (See Plate 33.) 

 Such tennis courts are hardly fit for the most scientific play, but dirt 

 courts with back-stops belong in a playfield and not in a landscape park. 



* See later in this chapter. 



