CHAPTER XII 



PARK ADMINISTRATION IN RELATION TO 

 PLANTING DESIGN 



LANDSCAPE designers frequently find themselves so hampered 

 by limiting conditions of park regime as to be unable to exhibit 

 their best ability in planting design. This situation proceeds from 

 several causes, many of which are blindly championed by engineer- 

 superintendents without intelligent comprehension of planting prob- 

 lems or by supreme officials whose connection with the park system is 

 for but a comparatively short time and who desire to express their 

 personality by immediate showy results at a minimum expenditure. 

 Planting policies are inaugurated without exact knowledge of condi- 

 tions or prescience of the dire consequences which must overtake plant- 

 ing design under such administration. The situation may be reviewed 

 as follows: 



First, many park administrators, on the ground of supposed 

 economy, endorse the maintenance of park nurseries. The danger to 

 park design from this source is almost incalculable. Design to meet 

 material is predestined to failure. A landscape designer who is com- 

 pelled by force of circumstances to shape his planting design to meet 

 such variety and quantity of material as may be "on hand " is facing 

 the downward path. No ideals of design can long survive an environ- 

 ment where the initial reason for new or additional planting is that 

 certain stock in the park nursery has reached a period of its growth 

 where it must be " put out." Planting design to meet planting 

 material is bound to be a fiasco. 



Secondly, the amount of planting in park work often is determined 

 not by exigencies -of design but by appropriation allotments and 

 balances. To make the planting meet exactly the amount of an annual 

 appropriation, instead of allowing the expenditure to be apportioned 



238 



