Page:Report of the Park Board 1903.djvu/67

 and the other to be an open field for ball and other field sports; or the garden may be in the center of one half, leaving the other half to be partly a shaded lawn with a bandstand and partly a lawn for tennis and other quiet lawn games and partly an open ball field. The choice would depend upon the relative areas desirable to be assigned to the several purposes and upon whether neighbors should object to baseball and other somewhat noisy field sports.

FORMALITY AND INFORMALITY IN PARKS.
In designing all future improvements for the parks and parkways, the distinction between formality and informality, which is a radical one, should be constantly borne in mind. There seems to have been heretofore a good deal of mixing up of the two. The informal style of design should be adopted in almost all cases where there are natural woods, or where the topography is varied and irregular, and especially where it is rugged, and where it would be in bad taste or too expensive to improve the land in the formal style. When a drive or walk is laid out upon curving lines with the object of fitting the topography, it should be considered that the informal style has been adopted, and the introduction of straight pieces of drive or walk for no other reason than that it is easier for the surveyor and gardeners to lay them out and execute them, should be carefully avoided, since such straight lines are generally incongruous with the informal lines adopted elsewhere. Formal features may, however, be adopted in informal designs at particular places where the circumstances obviously justify it. About a building, for instance, the lines may properly be formal, the more so the more formal the architectural style of the building. The popular love of flowers and bright colors may be gratified in park designs, but it should always be done formally or informally in accordance with the style of the locality. Most gardeners, owing to the nature of the training which they have had, incline more or less unconsciously and almost inevitably to formality. Such gardeners should therefore either be kept out of informally-designed parks, or else their work should be directed by a superintendent having a wider grasp of the subject.

CARE OF SMALL PARKS AND SQUARES.
In the ordinary routine care of outlying parks situated at a considerable distance from administration headquarters, the principle of having a responsible man in charge instead of merely sending a man, or a gang of men once in a while to clean up, should be worked out in accordance with the means available. Sometimes a neighbor may be