AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

 By Prof. F. A. Waugh, Amherst, Mass. 



Delivered before the Society, February 20, 1909. 



The art of landscape gardening is now well established in Amer- 

 ica. A considerable number of professional landscape gardeners 

 serve a constantly widening circle of clients. Courses of instruction 

 in landscape architecture are offered at several universities. The 

 laity begin to understand what landscape architecture means, and 

 from the body of past ignorance there begin to emerge the forms of 

 public ideals. A new and higher standard of public taste is being 

 raised. 



At this point it becomes important that we should take a survey 

 of the situation. We should consider what progress has been made. 

 We should measure carefully what has been accomplished. We 

 should scrutinize present standards to see that they are just, and if 

 they are we should try to make them operative in a larger field. We 

 should examine critically all the work within our reach to know its 

 merits and its weaknesses and if possible to catch its meaning. We 

 should acquaint ourselves with the leading artists in this field and 

 with their work in order that we may estimate and appreciate 

 everything good. If possible we should discover and point out the 

 tendencies of the times in landscape gardening. We want to know 

 what is going on, and how, and why. It is worth while to ask the 

 question whether in landscape architecture we have achieved any- 

 thing worthy of our time, anything responding to the spirit of the 

 twentieth century, anything distinctive, representative, national, 

 American. 



For this is precisely the question I seek to raise. My subject is 

 not "Landscape Architecture in America," but "American Land- 

 scape Architecture." The former subject is quite worth while, 

 but it leads straight to the latter. We ought to study whatever 



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