Samuel Parsons

"Ossian Cole Simonds (1855-1931) was one of the country's earliest and most important landscape architects, the progenitor of the "middle-western movement" of landscape design. He laid out college campuses, arboretums, estates, parks, and the much admired Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. He was also an influential teacher, author, and founder of university programs in landscape architecture, and the only midwesterner among the eleven charter members of the American Society of Landscape Architects.". "First published in 1920, Landscape-Gardening presents Simonds's carefully conceived and still timely ideas about an approach to landscape design in which nature is both partner and model. In eighteen well-illustrated chapters, he addresses the design of many different types of landscapes - from residences to parks to school grounds - and recommends an approach based on respect for natural systems and acceptance of stewardship responsibility."--BOOK JACKET.

"This handsomely assembled volume consists of a manuscript title-page, table of contents, and the mounted leaves of twelve varieties of Japanese Maple (Purple Leaf, Blood Leaf, etc.); two varieties of Sycamore Maple, as well as the Ash-leaved Maple and the Red Colchicum Maple; and four Oaks (Golden, Silver, Purple, and Cut-leaved). Each leaf or frond is carefully mounted for the most illustrative effect and neatly identified in manuscript by its common name in the lower margin. The Latin names for each appear in the table of contents. While Parsons doubtless created this volume for professional reference purposes, one senses in it as well his passion for the forms of foliage, and, in his statement of his profession on the title-page, a certain degree of pride in his work in an emerging field that did much to improve the health and quality of life of urban Americans."--bookseller James L. Arsenault and Company.