359 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
the subject he has in mind. But hav- 
ing done this he has a free field for 
his imagination to work upon. The 
design of a park, on the other hand, 
must usually be based on more or less 
controlling topographical considera- 
tions. For instance, if the local scen- 
ery led to the location of a park in a 
ravine, the boundaries should include 
both sides of the ravine and land 
enough on the top for a boundary 
street; if it is a small lake, the boun- 
daries should include a suificient bor- 
der of land around the lake for the 
framing plantations and boundary 
street; if it is a view commanding a hill 
the boundaries should be far enough 
below the summit to prevent obstruc- 
tion of the view by trees which may 
grow or houses which may be erected 
on adjoining properties, and so on. 
Such obvious requirements are fre- 
quently disregarded in selecting the 
lands and in determining the boun- 
daries of parks and parkways. 
It is as necessary for good effect 
for a park to be surrounded by streets 
as for a public building of monument- 
al design to be on ground so sur- 
rounded. 
A border plantation is usually an 
essential feature of a park. It frames 
and completes the park landscapes and 
excludes incongruous and ugly things 
outside the park from the beautiful 
things in it. 
Within their framing border planta- 
tions, park,= vary so much in what 
they include that generalization is 
hardly possible, but in most cases a 
properly designed park wdll have vari- 
ous parts developed for different pur- 
poses and in different styles. 
There will often be a large section 
of a park devoted to a great meadow, 
another section devoted to a lake, 
another devoted to rough woodland 
scenery, another devoted to a con- 
servatory with gardenesque treatment 
of its surroundings, another section 
may be devoted to a zoological, gar- 
den, another to a botanical garden, 
another section may be devoted to 
popular amusements requiring more 
or less apparatus, fences, shelters and 
artificial constructions. The beauties 
which should characterize each sec- 
tion should be constantly kept in 
mind. It is to be presumed that those 
sections in which the landscape is the 
main consideration should be as near- 
ly natural as possible. It seems suffi- 
ciently obvious, therefore, that park 
woods should not be planted as regu- 
larly as orchards, that park lakes 
should not be shaped to a succession 
of straight lines and that park mead- 
ows should not be graded to perfect 
planes, surrounded by formal terraces 
and bordered by rows of trees; but 
many equally inappropriate and artifi- 
calizing things are done upon parks 
without any real necessity owing to a 
common confusion of ideas and to a 
defective artistic appreciation or to 
positive bad taste. 
Even without the cultivated taste 
of an artist, the use of a trained in- 
telligence in a conscientious effort to 
design and explain a comprehensive’ 
plan will do much to make clear what 
should and what should not be done 
m each of the main subdivisions of a 
park. The absence of such a general 
plan or a failure to comprehend and 
follow it will result in the hodge- 
podge of incongruities too often seen 
in parks. The portions which should 
be natural are often artificialize'd un- 
necessarily by gardening operations or 
by the introduction of buildings, foun- 
tains and all sorts of artificial orna- 
ments, while the portions which 
might, in harmony with the uses to 
which they are put, be improved and 
decorated in a formal style are too in- 
formal. On the other hand, in the 
portion of a park actually devoted to 
extensive and conspicuous formal 
beds of tender plants and flowers, the 
drives and walks, lawns, shrubberies 
and tree plantations will often be 
strikingly informal. A general plan 
may provide places where the beauties 
of formal beds of tender plants and 
other gardening features may be en- 
joyed individually and collectively and 
places where those which are incon- 
gruous with each other may be sepa- 
rated by a S3"stematic arrangement of 
plantations, which, while forming con- 
trasting or harmonious backgrounds, 
separations, enclosures, screens and 
the like, yet will themselves form part 
of a complete whole. 
The failure to have and to follow a 
well studied, comprehensive general 
plan has resulted , in making many 
parks little better than a miscellane- 
ous jumble of conflicting and incon- 
gruous incidents. There is an anal- 
ogy between parks and buildings 
which 'illustrate the need of combin- 
ing variety into a harmonious whole. 
It is well recognized that the exterior 
of a house should be designed as a 
harmonious whole. It is also obvious 
that the exterior walls of a house en- 
close various rooms devoted to vari- 
ous purposes and that the materials, 
colors and decorations of these rooms 
would be quite out of harmony if 
each room showed these things on the 
outside walls of the house. So, too. 
in park designing there may be a long 
stretch of tree masses of irregular 
shape and varying tints of green cor- . 
responding to a house wall, and de- 
signed to harmonize with the meadow I 
or lake which it frames, while the op- 
posite face of the same mass of trees 
may be planted to harmonize with i 
some entirely different section of the 
park, such as a formal garden or a 
mall upon which buildings or statues | 
are to face, or it may be faced with ! 
the special horticultural varieties of 
trees and shrubs which are developed 
by the nurserymen and prized by the 
gardener for their artificiality of form, 
odd-shaped leaves, peculiar color of 
foliage, conspicuous flowers, or their 
decorative effect in masses. A clipped 
evergreen hedge thirty feet high 
might be an ugly enclosure of an in- 
formal lake, yet it might be a most 
effective and suitable background for 
a collection of palms or to shelter an . : 
aviary from cold winds. :: 
Unfortunately it seems . to happen | 
very often that a park is first im- 
proved mainly with a view to provid- i 
ing the beauties of landscape and aft- 
erwards has sprinkled over it every 
sort of thing which people are be- . 
lieved to admire. The usual result is 
analogous to the effect of the interior 
of a curiosity shop as compared with 
the library of the home of a family 
of good taste. The shop is a hap- 
hazard collection of objects many of 
which may be very beautiful but 
which do not unite with others to 
form a beautiful and harmonious 
whole, while in the home library each 
object is carefully selected and placed 
both with regard to the purpose of 
the room and with regard to the ef- 
fect of each object seen in connection 
with its surroundings. 
The designer of a park should as- 
sign proper places for sundrj" things 
for a variety of purposes and must 
meet many limitations and practical 
requirements always with the beauty , 
of the whole as well as of the parts 
in mind as the prime consideration. 
For instance, if a meadow is to be 
provided as a prominent landscape 
feature because of its usefulness for 
strolling and for field sports, it must 
constantly be borne in mind that the 
beauty of a meadow consists in its 
breadth and simplicity, in its smooth, 
continuous green sward and in its nat- 
uralness. Many things are done to a 
park meadow in direct contravention 
of these obvious characteristics. Its 
breadth is broken by conspicuous 
drives and walks, its simnlicitj^ is 
(Continued on. page X) 
