The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Landscape Gardening

The public park offers the only outdoor recreation room for very large numbers of city dwellers. This is not the place, nor is it necessary here, to argue that the hurried, worried city population stands in great need of such rest and recreation. It may be regarded as self-evident. One who looks about in any city park on any reasonably fair day will find how large a number of people have felt such a need; and he is much more likely to conclude that hundreds of others should have come to the park, than to think that those whom he sees have no business there. If one thinks about such things while he is in the park and sees the mothers with their babies, the girls and boys picnicking, the young people on their bicycles, the families in automobiles, and the hundreds of others of every age and estate relaxing from the stress of ordinary work, he must conclude that these people get some good out of it, which, in the sum total, pays a rich interest on the park investment.

By far the most important purpose which the park serves, however, is that of mental sanitation. The merest novice in city living knows how wearing upon the mind, and upon the nerve centers generally, are the din and hurry and unrest from which no one has immunity. When continually exposed to such conditions, the mind and the senses become dulled and dimmed. The senses need rest and the mind needs renovation. The man who does not bathe his body once a week is not thought respectable; yet no one blames him for letting his intellect go uncleansed for the space of a year. But as the mind responds much more quickly than the body to its environment, it demands the more frequent and thorough restoration. Many minds need thorough ablution,—disinfection. Every mind needs frequent rest and clarification. For these purposes nothing is better than rural scenery, quiet, and clean air. The quiet woodland shade, the cool greensward, the budding and blossoming flowers, have a powerfully refreshing influence which is felt by everyone, but underestimated by most of us. The problem of modern city life seems to be less the development of bodily perfections, than keeping the mind keyed up to the highest point of efficiency; and in the solution of that problem the open park ground must always prove a very important quantity.