OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 65 



the builder that enough of forest, meadow, sunlight and water have been found to save 

 from extinction and to preserve for present necessity something of the beauty and life- 

 giving qualities of the original forest mantle, the original meadows and early pastures, the 

 pure waters and the untroubled horizons of the first civilization. 



A VISIT TO PARIS 



By HAROLD A. CAPARN 



(Meetine of November 14, 190S) 



WHEN we get beyond the province of the landscape architect and into that 

 of the architect we must be able to meet him on his own ground, and, if neces- 

 sary, step well over the half-way line, to take his point of view and discuss 

 with him in his own language; for, as the office of the landscape architect is to compose 

 all the materials on the territory under his control, the house, as one of the details of 

 the composition, should bear tokens of the suggestion of the landscape architect, or at 

 least of his approval. We do not, necessarily, have to be able to build a house, but at 

 least we should be able to criticize it. 



I lived very close to the Luxembourg Gardens, and in times out of hours I found 

 a great deal of amusement and some instruction in observing things there. The one thing 

 that struck me was the admirable order in which the Paris parks and gardens were kept, 

 and the orderly behavior of the people who used them. Of course, the poeple in the Lux- 

 embourg Gardens go there in very large numbers at most times, and in immense crowds 

 on Sundays and holidays. They never appear to stray from the walks or places provided 

 for them to walk on, and they actually seem to be able to regard grass as a piece of pure de- 

 coration, just like a piece of tapestry or a flower-bed — not a thing to be walked upon. From 

 my experience in this country, everybody thinks it must be walked upon, and any attempt 

 to fence it off, or to put up a "keep-off-the-grass" sign, is an infringement of public rights. 

 I suppose, sometime, we shall educate our public up to conforming to the same idea. 



One thing I remember, in the Luxembourg Gardens and in all the parks of Paris 

 and wherever I went, was their way of using the flower-beds and bedding plants, partic- 

 ularly in the naturalistic parts of the park. I suppose it is popular, maybe beautiful, 

 but I don't think everybody in this room would think it entirely beautiful. They make 

 beautiful lawns and they keep them beautifully, and everything is trimmed as neatly as 

 possible; then they make a sort of tumor in the lawn, and put a flower-bed on it always 

 of the same oval shape, and very often planted with great ingenuity and variety of material 

 in bedding plants. That is the point that struck me as rather out of character with the 

 usual French good taste and instinct for what is appropriate. 



The Luxembourg Gardens are interesting for many reasons, partly because they 

 give examples of almost every phase of gardening as it is looked at by French eyes. There 

 are formal gardening and informal gardening, terraces, balustrades, steps, statuary, trees 

 planted in the quincunx arrangement, avenues trimmed to a vertical line to two-thirds 

 the height of the trees, and nearly everything you can think of. I can hardly think of any- 

 thing, in a general way, that is not to be found there. There are long beds in front of the 

 palace which are used, not for the sake of the flowers, but like friezes or bands of pure 



