PARK AND CEMETERY 
167 
he practiced was based mainly upon two considera- 
tions. 
“In the first place, the term was used by its orig- 
inator, Shenstone, to mean exclusively informal or 
picturesque gardening in contradistinction to formal 
or architectural gardening, and has been more or less 
generally so used ever since. Within Shenstone’s life- 
time landscape gardeners sprang up who made a prac- 
tice of designing gardens and other pleasure grounds 
exclusively in this informal manner, then newly come 
into fashion in England, partly through its own excel- 
lence and partly through reaction from the puerile 
excesses of formal garden design in the early eight- 
eenth century. It was not long, however, before men 
of breadth and ability, like Repton, engaged mainly 
in the practice of such informal design, and there- 
fore called ‘landscape gardeners,’ began to realize that 
formal design had its own proper function and ex- 
cellence, and began to use it under certain circum- 
stances. But the loose extension of the term ‘landscape 
gardening’ to include such works was and is a serious 
twisting of its original meaning, and tends to a con- 
fusion of mind and a mixture of aesthetic motives. 
“Now, the art which Mr. Olmsted practiced was by 
no means confined by arbitrary limitations, whether 
of fashion or personal prejudice, to the use of purely 
informal motives. He did not think it necessary to 
apologize for making formal designs ■ where he felt 
them to be appropriate, as those who professed to be 
‘landscape gardeners’ had often done.' His art was 
that of ‘arranging land for use with regard to the 
beauty of its appearance.’ Where the conditions made 
a formal treatment appropriate, it was adopted with- 
out hesitation, as in the Court of Honor at the World’s 
Fair; where the conditions made an informal treat- 
ment appropriate, that was as readily accepted and 
as consistently carried out, as in the lagoons and 
wooded island of the World’s Fair; and the two kinds 
of motives were not jumbled and confused. He liked 
to call a spade and spade, and he had to much respect 
both for Shenstone’s term, ‘landscape gardening,’ and 
for his own wider art, which included that and more, to 
adopt it as a designation for his profession. 
“In the second place, the term ‘landscape gardener' 
carries within itself two ideas, which are distinct and 
often contradictory. A garden is strictly a place engirt 
or inclosed, set apart, highly cultivated. A landscape 
is but the appearance of such part of the face of the 
earth as falls within the view, and it almost necessarily 
implies something of freedom and spaciousness. Many 
a beautiful landscape, peaceful, quiet and free from 
obtrusive evidence of man’s elaborate control, has been 
painfuly defaced by the would-be beautifier, who 
thrusts into its midst such garden elements as beds of 
geraniums or rare and striking shrubs or clipped 
bushes and paths of stonework. On the other hand, 
many a cozy and secluded garden has been bereft of 
its charm by well intentioned ‘opening out’ to the view 
and throwing down of the barriers that were its most 
essential element ; and many another containing rare 
and striking plants which might with orderly arrange- 
ment be very attractive is reduced to a state of mere 
confusion by the attempt to make an informal ‘land- 
scape’ of it, when each element cries aloud for indi- 
vidual attention. The confusion of mind which leads 
to such results has been fostered not a little by the 
term ‘landscape garden,’ and for this reason also Mr. 
Olmsted was disinclined to use it, and disinclined even 
to use ‘landscape gardening' without caution. 
“Seeking for a name that would not be open to these 
objections, he adopted the title ‘landscape architect,’ 
either of his own motion, translating the term from 
the French, architecte paysagiste,’ or because the Cen- 
tral Park commission happened to give him that title 
when appointing him and his partner, Vaux. Etymo- 
logically the term was sound, for ‘architect’ means but 
‘master workman,’ and no more fitting name could be 
found for him than ‘master workman of landscapes.’ 
“That the meaning and intention of the name have 
been often misunderstood is unfortunately true, and 
the connotation which it conveys to many people that 
a landscape architect is but an architect of buildings 
who meddles with the landscape is most regrettable. 
Granting that the title is unsatisfactory, Mr. Olmsted 
still felt that it was less so upon the whole than ‘land- 
scape gardener,’ and he looked in va'in for a better. 
“A name for the profession coined from the Greek 
topos, a place, a locality, a piece of the earth’s surface, 
which appears in the word ‘topography,’ meaning the 
art of delineating the surface of the earth and what it 
bears, would be admirable in its etymology. The old 
Latin word topiarius from this root was precisely the 
‘man who lays out places,’ who shapes and controls a 
locality, just as the topographer delineates it. But, un- 
fortunately, the connotations of any such term would 
be even more misleading than those of ‘landscape archi- 
tect,’ because ‘topiary,’ derived from this root, has been 
degraded in English to refer merely to one of the me- 
chanical operations of the Roman topiarius, namely, 
that of clipping bushes into hedges and geometrical 
and fantastic forms. 
“On the whole, since ‘landscaper’ and ‘landscapist’ 
have a rather barbarous sound, and have been already 
applied to landscape painters, there does not appear 
to be any betetr resort than ‘landscape architect,’ and it 
is generally used by those in this country who are en- 
deavoring to practice the art in which the way was 
led by the late Frederick Law Olmsted.” 
