public parks 285 



indispensable to the purpose in view that of re- 

 lieving the visitor from the city than any other 

 available feature. The site of the park being natur- 

 ally very broken and largely composed of masses of 

 rock, the extent to which the meadow-like surface of 

 pastoral scenery could be introduced in the plan was 

 limited. It was then, first of all, required that such 

 parts of the site as were available and necessary to 

 the purpose should be assigned to the occupation of 

 elements which would compose a woodside, screening 

 incongruous objects without the park as much as 

 possible from the view of observers within it. 



" Secondly, of the remaining ground it was required 

 to assign as much as was available to the occupation 

 of elements which would compose tranquil, open, pas- 

 toral scenes. 



"Thirdly, it was required to leave all of the yet 

 remaining ground to elements which would tend to 

 form passages of scenery contrasting in depth of 

 obscurity and picturesque character of detail with 

 the softness and simplicity of the open landscapes." 1 



The artistic necessity in park landscape gardening 

 of having types of effect persist in some kind of size and 

 form and colour everywhere; the one general effect 

 among many, the grass space, the lake or pool surface, 

 trees, shrubs, and flowers around, even a colony of 

 flowers, a flower bed, if you will, all repeating in a hund- 



1 Second Annual Report to the New York Park Department, 

 Olmsted & Co. 



