342 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 444, 



how much timber the flocks and herds destroy, nor how 

 much is annually burned up. We do know that every year 

 corporations and individuals are acquiring title to hundreds 

 of thousands of acres of forest-land which should be kept 

 in forest forever. We do know that there are no laws to 

 properly protect our forest. We do know that even the 

 inadequate laws on the statute-books are not enforced. 

 We do know and we have known enough for years to 

 make our neglect of this great property, with all its benefi- 

 cent possibilities for the future, a national disgrace. Cer- 

 tainly the Forest Commission which is now in the field 

 ought to be able to make a report which will stir the coun- 

 try and drive those who make and administer our laws to 

 some efficient action. 



The Necessity of Planning. 



THE daily work of the architect and the landscape- 

 architect is popularly supposed to consist in orna- 

 menting lands and buildings so as to make them appear 

 beautiful. Rooms may be inconveniently and awkwardly 

 shaped, but they can be "beautified" by rich furniture and 

 upholstery. Whole buildings may be irrationally planned, 

 but they may still be made " artistic" by means of mould- 

 ings, carvings and mosaic. House grounds and college 

 grounds, private gardens and public parks may be sense- 

 lessly, as well as ineffectively, arranged, but they may still 

 be glorified by yellow and purple leafage. In short, "The 

 world is still deceived with ornament." 



On the other hand, although all seekers for the truth 

 concerning beauty have discerned elements which defy 

 analysis, such special students have nevertheless deduced 

 from the visible and historical facts a whole series of fixed 

 principles, which are quite as surely established as any of 

 the other so-called laws of nature. Among these, perhaps, 

 the most important is this, that "in all the arts which serve 

 the use, convenience or comfort of man, from gardening 

 and building down to the designing of the humblest utensil 

 which it is desired to make beautiful, utility and fitness for 

 intended purpose must be first considered." It is to be 

 remembered that this is not theory but law. As a matter 

 of fact and experience satisfying beauty is not won unless 

 the law of nature is obeyed. 



That faithful and well-reasoned planning for the accom- 

 plishment of purpose is necessary to the success of the 

 work of architects of buildings is now generally understood. 

 "A plan" is a skillful combination of convenience with 

 effectiveness of arrangement. " A design " is made up of 

 plan, construction and outward appearance, and by no 

 means consists of the latter only. Indeed, the external 

 aspect of a structure depends directly on the mode of con- 

 struction, the construction depends, in turn, on the plan, 

 and the plan on the purpose in view ; with the result that 

 the whole appearance of the building inevitably and natu- 

 rally expresses this purpose. 



If it be true that expression, character, and even beauty 

 are thus most surely won, in the case of buildings, by 

 keeping decoration subsidiary and designing with purpose 

 in view from the start, it is equally true of all the wide 

 field of architecture, using the word in its broadest imagi- 

 nable sense. "Architecture, a great subject, truly," says 

 William Morris, " for it embraces the consideration of the 

 whole of the external surroundings of the life of man ; we 

 cannot escape from it if we would, for it means the mould- 

 ing and altering to human needs of the very face of the 

 earth itself." A bushy pasture or a smooth green field in 

 forest-clad New England is as truly a product of human 

 handiwork as a green meadow in treeless and dusty Utah, 

 yet each is beautiful, and neither owes a particle of its 

 beauty to decoration. The English deer-park, with its 

 broad-spreading trees, or the church-yard, with its ancient 

 stones and yews, the typical Yankee farm with its low 

 buildings and great Elms, or the Live Oaks and quaint 

 structures of the plantations of Louisiana, these and all 

 similarly interesting landscapes are interesting, not because 



they have been decorated, but because they are strongly 

 characterized and highly expressive. Their moving beauty 

 is the natural product of straightforward work for the 

 adaptation of land and landscape to human needs and uses. 



Believing these things, it will be impossible for us, when 

 a tract of land is newly dedicated to some special purpose, 

 be it that of a suburban lot, a railroad-station yard, a new 

 village, a country-seat or a public park, to stand by and 

 see it thoughtlessly laid out and then, perhaps, turned over 

 to the decorators. We shall insist on premeditation and 

 careful fundamental planning, knowing that therein lies 

 the best, if not the only, hope of happy results. Once pos- 

 sessed of faith in that law of nature in accordance with 

 which beauty springs from fitness, we shall be ready to 

 agree that, when purpose is served, formal gardens, recti- 

 linear avenues and courts of honor are not only permitted, 

 but commanded. On the other hand, we shall be equally 

 strenuous in demanding studied planning and adaptation 

 to environment and purpose in the laying out of whatever 

 work may need to be done to make the wildest place of 

 private or public resort accessible and enjoyable. Positive 

 injury to the landscape of such places can be avoided only 

 by painstaking, while the available resources of scenery 

 can be economized only by careful devising. So with the 

 whole range of problems which lie between these ex- 

 tremes. No work of man is ever successfully accomplished 

 without taking thought beforehand ; in other words, with- 

 out planning. 



And, strange as it may appear, opposition to such plan- 

 ning for effective results will not, in practice, be found to 

 come from those who attempt decoration only because 

 they know not how else to attain to the beautiful, just as 

 the literary class in China ruinously opposes change of any 

 kind, so there is with us a comparatively small, but influ- 

 ential, body of refined persons, far too well educated to be 

 "deceived by ornament," who most unfortunately, though 

 unintentionally, assist in the triumphs of ugliness by 

 blindly opposing all attempts to adapt land and landscape 

 to changed or new requirements. Enjoying the pleasanter 

 scenery of their surroundings as it exists — certain shady 

 roads, or some lingering fields or farm-lands — these esti- 

 mable people talk of "letting Nature alone" or "keeping 

 Nature natural,'' as if such a thing were possible in a world 

 which was made for man. No, the "moulding and alter- 

 ing" of the earth goes forward of necessity, and if those 

 who ought to be leaders will not help to guide the work 

 aright, the work will surely be done badly ; as it is, in fact, 

 done badly in the neighborhood of all our great towns. 

 To refuse to exercise foresight and to adapt to pur- 

 pose in due season, is simply to court disaster. Instead 

 of hanging back, it ought to be the pride and pleasure 

 of these very people to see to it that proper plans are 

 seasonably laid for the widening of roads so that fine trees 

 shall not be sacrificed, to see to it that electric-car tracks 

 shall be placed only in suitably selected and specially 

 arranged streets, that public reservations of one type or 

 another shall be provided in accordance with some con- 

 sistent general scheme, and that such reservations shall be 

 saved from both decorative and haphazard development 

 by the early adoption of rational and comprehensive plans. 

 There is needed a little less selfish contentment in the 

 the doomed landscape of the present, a sharper sense of 

 responsibility to the future and a living faith in that law of 

 God, in obedience to which everything which is well 

 adapted to use and purpose is sure to be interesting and 

 expressive, and if not beautiful, at least on the way to be. 



Brookline, Mass. CllarleS Eliot. 



If you would make acquaintance with Ferns you must forget 

 your science and approach them as something strange, and 

 with no introduction from a learned man. Nothing is easier 

 than to find out the position of the fruit dots, or the character 

 of the indusium. But if you are to be affected by Ferns, if they 

 are to amount to anything, signify anything to you, be another 

 sacred scripture and revelation to you, helping to redeem your 

 life, this end is not so easily accomplished. — Thoreau. 



