Editorial JVote 
American Park and Improvement Society . 
The preliminary program for the annual meeting 
of the American Park and Outdoor Art Association 
gives prominence to the important matter of its pro- 
posed merger with the American League for Civic 
Improvement, under the title of the American Park 
and Improvement Society. This merger, which all 
will hope to be consummated at the forthcoming meet- 
ing to be held at St. Louis, Mo., June 9-11, will make 
more effective the work of both societies, the most 
difficult part of which they have not yet reached to 
any extent — the improvement of village and rural 
outdoor appearances and conditions. The new title 
is most certainly an attractive one, yet it loses for 
the merged associations certain of the features of each 
which the separate titles conveyed, and which more 
clearly defined their special fields of work. The pro- 
gram for the coming meeting is a very attractive one, 
as befits the place and occasion, and the opportunities 
for study and the appreciation of what is meant by 
art out of doors, as will be seen in the civic exhibits 
and landscape gardening of the Exposition, and what 
has been accomplished in a public way in St. Louis 
itself, should encourage the largest attendance ever 
witnessed by the two associations. 
^ * * 
The Advantage of Prepared Plans . 
All experience with the “hit or miss” method of 
performing public works is decidedly against it. 
Wherever a public park, cemetery, schoolyard or other 
kind of outdoor improvements is proposed, no actual 
work should be undertaken, in the vast majority of 
cases, before well-considered plans have been matured, 
put to paper, and everything decided upon. It is not 
in every case necessary that the funds should be on 
hand to complete the work, because, with properly pre- 
pared plans, it can be carried out progressively as 
means are provided, and still the final outcome be all 
that was originally contemplated and the result all 
that could be desired. On the other hand, improve- 
ment work attempted without formal consideration 
and planning is, in the nature of haphazard scheming, 
subject at any time during its progress to changes and 
suggestions utterly incompatible with desired results, 
and where the completion is often an entire depar- 
ture from the original intention. Another important 
suggestion in connection with the above is the advan- 
tage of employing competent men to design and fur- 
nish plans for such improvements. It will, of course, 
entail the payment of liberal fees, which, however, 
are not, under any circumstances, wasted ; the plans 
will be complete and ready for use ; they will show 
what the work is and how results are to be secured ; 
the material to use and the methods of using it ; and, 
above all, they will inspire confidence in the under- 
and Comment. 
taking and attract public sympathy and co-operation, 
from the fact that competent advice and training has 
been called upon for its best. It will obviate the pos- 
sibility of a bungling, inharmonious creation, alike 
discreditable to its promoters and the community. 
^ ^ 
The Ohio Tovonship Park c Bill. 
A11 important bill has recently become a law in 
Ohio, by which the people of their own motion may 
unite all municipal corporations, and all territory, not 
within any municipality, in the township in one park 
district, and establish one or more parks for all, at 
the common cost of all. It also provides for the in- 
dependence of the township park board ; it levies its 
own taxes, issues its own bonds, locates parks after 
advising with competent landscape architects, and it is 
in fact an independent arm of the government, hav- 
ing exclusive control of the department of parks for 
the township. The law does not interfere in any way 
with any city or village park ; each municipal cor- 
poration may establish, maintain and control its own 
parks as before. Great credit is due to Mr. Volney 
Rogers, a park commissioner of Youngstown, Ohio, 
for this bill. The necessity for public parks is rap- 
idly becoming apparent for the country districts, and 
for obvious reasons ; moreover, a township park prop- 
erly designed and cared for, should be a power in edu- 
cating country people to the desirability of improving 
their farm “dooryards.” Further, it will permit the 
preservation of natural or historic beauty spots, which 
ought to be preserved and cared for. Other states 
should interest themselves in some such legislation. 
* 
Another Plea for the Lavon Plan. 
In this working season, and with the multitude of 
old cemeteries to be remodeled and many new ones 
contemplated, it is always timely to urge the advan- 
tages of the landscape or lawn plan of modern ceme- 
tery practice. There is no reason whatever why any 
additional sections or additions to the older grounds 
should be permitted to perpetuate the disorder and 
lack of beauty of the past, but every new cemetery, 
new sections or additions to the older ones, should be 
laid out with a view to landscape art as a goal ; no 
streets, roads or alleys should be allowed to detract 
from the beauty of a section as in the old style ; but 
lawns and shrubs and trees, limited memorials and 
unobtrusive stone-work, natural beauty and educated 
taste, should all combine to make the new order of 
things a means of imparting peaceful contemplation 
and hopeful inspiration to all interested in the ceme- 
tery. It will give large returns to employ competent 
service to prepare plats and planting plans for all con- 
templated improvements or additions to any of our 
older cemeteries, and such a course would work won- 
ders with the average rural burial grounds. 
