THE NATURE OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN: As An Art Form, A Craft, A Social Necessity

A theoretical and practical handbook for planners on land use and landscape architecture, emphasizing vegetation (Fairbrother's New Lives, New Landscapes, 1970, advocated the creation of tree belts) with notes on the relative merits of oak, lime, silver birch, crab apple and planting for best seasonal effects. The author frequently refers to the halcyon era of English late 18th century Romanticism, agreeing with its ideal that ""the true concern of landscape design was to express the genius loci"" -- unlike, for instance, the formal gardens of Versailles. Fairbrother rambles, however, and often falls into a nonsensical platitudinizing over the obvious (""it is in the making that a landscape must be dull, not in the finished design"") that all but buries her salient and original points (on scale, the element of time, human perception, using photography to assess the results, planning on paper).