The Landscape Architect and the ClientDURING the last twenty-five years or so the builders of small and medium-priced homes have turned, with greatly increased frequency, to the professional architect rather than to the contractor-builder for help in designing their homes. The fact remains, nevertheless, that many home builders are not as yet landscape conscious. Far too many people still feel that, although they must have an artistically designed house and tastefully furnished rooms, all that is necessary in the way of a landscape setting is to plant grass all around and set out a few bushes, very small trees, or an evergreen foundation planting. This is particularly true in the smaller towns and cities throughout the land. The metropolitan centers, such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston, show a decided consciousness of landscape as an element in home beautification, even though this consciousness may not as yet have resulted in much great art. But in the smaller cities, the towns, and the villages less interest is shown in artistic development of the home grounds. Many of these towns have new sub-divisions where really good-looking houses, on ample lots, are being built, but the landscape arrangements, when not tacking entirely, are uninteresting and commonplace, to say the least. These homeowners either have failed to consider the pleasure to be derived from well-laid-out grounds or they have entrusted the work to the local nurseryman or florist. For this reason one finds, gracing the lawn of some charming Norman cottage, great circular beds of Cannas edged down with Salvia, put there, no doubt, because the mistress of the house professed a liking for red. Or one finds the dooryard of a neat Colonial house polka-dotted with specimen Blue Spruces, which the nurseryman may well have advised the owner to plant because he happened to have a large stock of them, and not necessarily because they were either beautiful in themselves or appropriate to the site. Then, too, one finds the most impractical arrangements of driveways, walks; steps, and the like things that would never have been built had the work been under the supervision of a trained person. back to garden planning home page... |
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