DECORATIVE USE OF WATER 



easily be avoided by providing adequate facilities for water sports for 

 the children. The circumstance is often used as an objection to water 

 basins in parks, several of the fountains in the Savannah parks being 

 kept turned off for that reason. Unconventional as it may seem, if 

 fountains are of value in that respect, what is the harm of their being 

 used for paddling by the children if nothing of park value is 

 destroyed in such use. The fountains may thus both promote health 

 and give pleasure. 



COMPOSITION AND ARRANGEMENT 



In, the introduction of water in parks, the same rules of design will 

 follow as were pointed out in Chapter III. Whatever its size or form, 

 the water feature, to appear rational, must relate very definitely in its 

 placing to the general lines of the park plan. Informal water should 

 compose pictorially with the park scene of which it is made a part. 

 A fountain appears to best advantage when used to accent or em- 

 phasise some radial or focal point of the design such as may occur at 

 the intersection of formal walks or at the end of promenades or vistas. 

 This is not an sesthetic distinction but a precept, for a fountain illogi- 

 cally placed will inevitably appear errant and astray. A striking 

 example of a fountain motif placed contrary to reasons of design 

 exists in a little town in Massachusetts, the birthplace of the author. 

 Within the Common of this town, shady and felicitous, there is placed 

 a bronze fountain, slightly out of scale and character with the park but 

 especially noticeable in the irrelevancy of its location. A townsman 

 tells the curious visitor that the fountain was placed there so as to 

 come directly in front of a certain house facing this Common, the home 

 of the donor of the fountain, who made its placement a condition of 

 the gift. A professional adviser would immediately have recom- 

 mended against the acceptance of a gift invalidated by such a restric- 

 tion. The townspeople, however, have found a quainter way of ex- 



218 



