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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



A FOREST TRAIL ADMITTING OF FINE DEVELOPMENT 



This trail at this point presents a problem in the art of landscape design. 

 The question is, should there be a vista opened on the right to some 

 point in the valley or is the mountain side in front the proper theme 

 for this outlook. 



IN THE WHITE RIVER NATIONAL FOREST, NEAR TRAPPERS LAKE 



It is rather interesting to note that the great conservation movement 

 which received so much public attention a few years ago has almost 

 unconsciously included an extended and enormously valuable conserva- 

 tion of natural landscape. 



More and better planning is needed in landscape development of National, State and County parks, monuments, forests 

 and other like public lands. Too often the landscape development of such areas is either incidental work for some man 

 already busy in other lines or is given into the hands of some one incompetent and incapable of developing the greatest 

 art values in these regions. Public laws govern the practice of medicine, of law and other professions. It is as criminal 

 to allow malpractice in the field of landscape work as in these other fields, and yet, because it does not touch pocket-book 

 or health, the public does not demand swift condemnation of quackery so often foisted on the public as landscape gardening. 



Landscape architects in charge of landscape design in our National, State and County playgrounds will give to the 

 Nation through proper preservation and presentation of natural features present beauty values greater than can otherwise be 

 realized. They will insure a working, living scheme which will have in it no lost motion due to ill-advised plans, and they 

 will in this one item, in the long fun, save the original cost of securing proper services. There will be no building of so- 

 called rustic developments which are often merely grotesque or of monumental concrete structures in rural settings where 

 they are not only out of taste, but represent a waste of valuable funds on inappropriate developments. Every step will be 

 towards a unified composition and every part of the scheme will function as well (or perhaps better) fifty years hence as 

 it will the day completed. 



Landscape architecture is a fine art In the field of greater landscape designing, so ably presented by Mr. Waugh 

 in this article, that art can return to the people the greatest scenic wealth of the Nation, enhanced and protected, and 

 furthermore, artistically and sympathetically presented to the public. What foolish economy it is to put money in on plans 

 made by other than competent artists. What .chances even those people who attempt to do landscape planning and are not 

 properly trained or experienced, take in ruining some exquisite bit of natural beauty with ill-advised developments. Con- 

 demnation of such practice and the institution of a demand from everyone for the best treatment of the best American 

 scenery should come at once. We owe it to ourselves, our neighbors and posterity. The article by Mr. Waugh but points the 

 way to some of the greater possiblities in this work and where it will lead. It means if properly trained landscape 

 architects be placed in this work there will be preservation, protection and artistic development of our great National play 

 areas so that the country will be a land of enhanced natural beauty and not one of desecrated and dissipated scenic values 

 lost because of ill-founded, over-zealous maltreatment of these values by someone serene in the belief that he is a "natural- 

 born" landscape designer and artist. Such heaven-gifted spirits do no more grow spontaneously than do so originate great 

 surgeons. Mr. Waugh has blazed the way and when that path is followed, the future is secure. Arthur H. Carhart, Editor, 

 Recreation Department. 



