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

Landscape Gardening

Many people feel obliged to cater to this taste, even though they regard it as childish. But it should be said that the disproportionate notice which such objects attract in a public park is not a safe measure of the satisfaction they give. Many visitors are benefited by the fresh grass and the cooling shade who do not notice the lawn and the trees; while those who exclaim most loudly over the wonderful Chinese puzzles in coleus are not helped by them in the smallest degree. Such vociferous features of park ornamentation may be very fairly compared with the crying evils of billboard advertising. When once begun, there is no excess to which either one may not be compelled to go.

Landscape Reservations

When automobiles came in, the park idea, like many others, expanded rapidly. In former times city parks were kept, at least in part, for the preservation of natural scenery where it would be within reach and sight of all citizens. In later times, with greatly improved transportation, practically all citizens are able to go out of the town and visit the landscape where it still remains comparatively untarnished.

This growth of the park idea is indeed curious and perhaps symbolic. At first only little open squares were saved within the city where neighbors could sit in the sun and visit with one another. Then parks were made, still inside the city limits, where grass, trees, water, and flowers made a bright and welcome change from brick walls and asphalt pavements. As time passed the parks grew rapidly larger and more pastoral in their character.

Presently the more progressive cities began to acquire "county parks," meaning yet larger areas lying further out and kept in still wilder conditions.

But now the demand is for state and national parks; and this demand implies still larger parks with still wilder landscape and fewer of the flower beds, merry-go-rounds and other "improvements" of the old-style city parks. The great system of public landscape reservations now being rapidly built up is in fact something quite different from the city park systems; and the problems raised are also different, whether considered socially or from the standpoint of technical landscape architecture.

Several types of reservations have already been developed. These differ considerably in their legal status and administration, but they all agree in the very essential quality of conserving the native landscape and making it available for public education, health and recreation. In some of them these objects, important as they are, are only incidental; in others they are dominating. It will be well to recapitulate these holdings.