330 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



increase the reputation of the designer than to spread a knowledge 

 of design. 



It is not desirable that a landscape architect should advertise his 

 professional wares in the direct way that a merchant might adopt who 

 had goods to sell. In the same way it is undesirable even to place a 

 "card" in a magazine or newspaper with any self-laudatory remark; 

 and indeed there is considerable feeling in the profession, as there is in 

 the kindred profession of architecture, that it is undesirable to insert 

 even a professional card with the landscape architect's address. There 

 are two points which the landscape architect should consider in this 

 matter : the effect of this advertising on his own professional standing 

 and its effect upon the reputation of his profession generally. 



" A society should discourage any one of its members from doing anything 

 for his personal gain which would be a loss to the society at large. In the 

 case of advertising by landscape architects such a loss would be most surely 

 caused by any statement by an individual practitioner which would lead the 

 public to believe that he was untrustworthy, or unduly money-seeking, or 

 possessed of bad taste ; because these would be cardinal faults in a landscape 

 architect, and the public would inevitably judge the rest of the members of 

 the society by what they knew of one. 



"No one would deny that, from the point of view of the American Society 

 of Landscape Architects, any individual advertisement was bad which made 

 the practitioner out to be blatant and self-satisfied, or entirely commercial in 

 his view of his profession. On the other hand, a dignified statement of un- 

 doubted facts as to the good work of a practitioner could do the Society no 

 harm. But even such a statement sounds better when not made by the prac- 

 titioner himself. A great difficulty in the case of the landscape architect lies 

 here : that the primary qualification of a landscape architect is his good taste, 

 and a man's own statement that he has good taste plainly bears little weight 

 with any one else. It is this fact which has been largely the cause of so much 

 writing and showing of pictures of completed work by architects, and, to a less 

 degree, by landscape architects. This practice enables the practitioner to 

 give the prospective client a chance to determine for himself whether he ap- 

 proves or not of the practitioner's taste." * 



It is true that the public is not as yet sufficiently informed as to 

 where to go to obtain the services of a skilled landscape architect. It 



* From Editorial The Ethics of Professional Advertising written by H. V. Hubbard, 

 in Landscape Architecture ^ Oct. 191 6. 



