PARK AND CEMETERY. 200 
THE BROAD FIELD OF THE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 
Landscape Gardening is the art of 
improving grounds for use and en- 
joyment with due regard to beauty. 
Landscape gardeners should be 
educated in architecture, civil engi- 
neering and horticulture; in archi- 
tecture, because all works of land- 
scape gardening should be designed 
or planned in a way analogous to 
that in which buildings are planned 
to combine utility with beauty; in 
civil engineering, because to plan the 
improvement of ground involves sur- 
veys, topographical maps, draughting 
of plans, profiles, cross sections, 
drainage and masonry plans, specifi- 
cations and other technical training 
such as civil engineering; in horticul- 
ture (including arboriculture), be- 
cause almost every landscape garden- 
ing design calls for either trees, 
grass, shrubs, vines, hardy and ten- 
der plants or some or all of these. 
To many it seems unreasonable to 
place, in the education of landscape 
gardeners, a training in architectural 
design ahead of a knowledge of civil 
engineering and of horticulture. It 
is true that most of the time of arch- 
itectural students and practitioners 
is taken up with matters that would 
be of comparatively little or no use 
to the landscape gardener, but in the 
absence of adequate means for thor- 
oughly educating landscape garden- 
ers in the aesthetic side of their pro- 
fession, a training in architectural 
designs is at present the best available 
for the purpose. It must not be in- 
ferred that architects can easily prac- 
tice landscape gardening. The fact 
that they appreciate certain funda- 
mental aesthetic principles, no more 
fits them to practice landscape gar- 
dening than landscape painting or 
any other art to which those princi- 
ples apply. It is certainly better that 
most architects should confine them- 
selves to architecture. 
Civil engineers should not be too 
much elated by the statement that a 
.good knowledge of and experience in 
certain branches of civil engineering 
is more important in the education 
of landscape gardeners in the ability 
to design well than horticultural 
{Read before the Congress of Horticulture, James- 
town Exposztio 7 i, Norfolk, Va., September 2 r, 
TQ07. by John C. Olmsted, Landscape 
Architect, Brookline, MassJ 
knowledge. Indeed such a claim may 
seem paradoxical when we call to 
mind how many obtrusively ugly 
works of civil engineering there are 
in all parts of this country, and on 
the other hand how much horticul- 
turists are concerned with beautiful 
flowers and garden plants. 
The reason whj' a certain kind of 
engineering knowledge is more im- 
portant to the landscape gardener 
than horticulture, as a means of de- 
veloping his general designing abil- 
ity, is that it has to do with larger 
and more complex problems of fitting 
land for human use. 
The ability required to successfully 
design important municipal, railroad, 
river, canal and harbor works and 
other extensive plants involves a ca- 
pacity for investigating physical and 
human and financial conditions, re- 
quirements and limitations and for 
evolving a logical solution of each 
problem which is similar in a general 
way to the capacity possessed by suc- 
cessful architects. Engineering 
schools do more to educate that ca- 
pacity than the ordinary methods of 
educating horticulturists do. 
The most essential aesthetic re- 
quirement of conspicuous works of 
civil engineering is that they should 
accomplish their purposes in an ap- 
propriate, pleasing and satisfactory 
way — not that they should be made 
pretty by means of ornament applied 
as an after thought. 
The main object of this paper is to 
call the attention of horticulturists 
to that particular idea — the impor- 
tance of the aesthetic and beautiful in 
their general form and main features 
before they are ornamented with 
mere decorative detail. 
Aesthetic ideas are difficult to ex- 
plain without illustrations. 
Among large constructions, we find 
a general regard for good appearance 
has always controlled ship builders. 
They made many mistakes, from a 
scientific point of view; they did not 
always make fast ships; they com- 
pelled sailors and passengers to sub- 
mit to unnecessary inconveniences; 
but they strove always for such 
beauty of form and outline of hull 
and fittings, rake of masts, taper of 
spars, cut of sails that sailing vessels 
have always been the delight of art- 
ists. And how conspicuouslj’ absent 
is all surface decoration and applied 
ornament ! 
It is shocking to imagine the hid- 
eous job the engineer of an elevated 
railroad would make of an order to 
build and rig a steel sailing ship, if 
he should entirely ignore the tradi- 
tions of ship building and use stock- 
dimension rolled steel beams, bars, 
angle irons, tubes, rods, and so forth, 
as he uses them in his elevated rail- 
road trusses and columns and brack- 
ets! How much simpler and cheaper 
it would be^ for the deck of a ship to 
be straight from bow to stern and 
to pitch straight from center to sides 
like a flat tin roof! Yet all the de- 
mands of the shrewd owners for 
economy, and all the- power of com- 
petition were unable to make ship- 
wrights for countless generations 
build a ship that way. They knew it 
would be ugly and they wouldn’t do 
it. 
The beauty of the typical sailing 
vessel is a good illustration of the 
superiority of beauty of form and 
proportion, of graceful adaptation to 
useful purposes over a purely scien- 
tific and economical but ugly general 
form superficially decorated. Let us 
hope that investors and public opin- 
ion will more and more encourage 
civil engineers to take to heart this 
great aesthetic principle that visible 
structures should be beautiful in 
form whether there is superficial dec- 
oration or not. 
If a knowledge of horticulture and 
its allied crafts and sciences is to be 
regarded as less essential to the land- 
scape gardener than a training in gen- 
eral architectural designing and in 
certain selected branches of civil en- 
gineering, it is not intended thereby 
to belittle the importance of a prac- 
tical knowledge of hardy trees and 
