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   The application of landscape design to the established farm and grazing properties is simple and direct. Although the designs are never repetitive but are of wide and fascinating variety, the principles of design are constant and essentially uncomplicated. The potential of each farm may be fully disclosed and design decisions reached in a matter of an hour or two's inspection with the owner. Only rarely would it take longer than two days. The marking-in of the design on the land with hundreds of pegs, may occupy only two or three days, and the practical constructions thereafter, be completed by the owner in a matter of weeks.

   Because the landscape designer works with only those who have an adequate appreciation of the concepts and the principles involved, all decisions are the owner's; it is his farm; the design is his and he knows there is no other like his farm. Now he will live and work with the landscape design, knowing that everything he does on the land adds to the enrichment of the soil and to the glorious maturity of the farmscape.

   Nature is the Master Designer. She is not slow and may be fast in Her appreciative reactions to good design, which is deeply satisfying and very flattering to the prideful owner.

   But the application of the same landscape design to a large city is something entirely different. There is no enthusiastically co-operative owner who knows well the entire landscape, but instead a multitude of city officials, who are interested and knowledgeable each in his particular segment of a vast and complicated undertaking. On the farm the boundary fence, at least, is correctly located and the homestead--the centre of administration and management--usually so. But the city doesn't even have a boundary and the centres of administration and management are either scattered with apparent abandon or, with less sense of practical reality, clustered together in overcrowded city canyons. They possess no related or designed location but simply occupy land which happened to be available at the time, or was cheaper, or occupied only by poorer, small and out-of-date structures.

   On the farm, only fences need be altered but in the city, great capital structures stand everywhere in the way. Even without any further considerations the thing appears impossible! What is there to do? Just what has always been done; give priority to the work which if not done is most likely to bring the city closer to a grinding halt or do the thing which public clamour demands should be done. And the clamour now is a command--clean up the bloody mess!

   The response of the establishment is predictable with certainty. It will do what it always does; create highly inefficient bureaucratic structures whose immediate interest will be their own elevation to power and permanence. They will have the one efficient department of Public Relations to convince the people of their necessity and efficiency. Since some aspects of pollution are nicely photogenic, the Public Relations department will soon have good 'before-and-after pictures' of success to add to the mess of words they will issue. Their attack will be on the dirty, the untidy and the smelly. The attack on pollution of the air will be against smoke, the most obvious but the least dangerous area. The attack on pollution of the water will be against the scums and the floating rubbish, again the most obvious but the least harmful. The smothering and dehumanising consequences of the lack of balanced unity in the landscapes and the approaching destruction of the whole environment will be ignored. The wide pollution of the soil which now ill feeds us, won't be thought of. How can such creations of the Establishment, attack the greatest source of pollution, the Establishment itself? So what is the answer?

   The major effort must be the design of City Forests on areas of land immediately outside the city, and the delivery to them, via pump and pipeline, of the effluents of the city.

   The effect of this measure would stop water pollution. It also would reverse the process of oxygen depletion caused by effluents which, wherever they go, destroy the balance of waterlife by over-stimulating the slimes, the scums and the algae. Over-stimulated to death--in their decay they use up the oxygen of the water to cause the death of myriads of small animals and great numbers of fish which likewise in their decay, further reduce the water's oxygen. These effluents effect the production of oxygen by the seas. They have already caused the death of great fresh water lakes.

   The indivisable pollutions of air and water can thus be attacked at the principal source.

   The next great influence for the benefit of city people may be what happens on the farms and in the redesign of country towns, both of which are simple and straightforward. The large populations of the cities can have great influence on the country whenever they choose to use it. This is the time for choosing, because the effect of the countryside in polluting the total environment is almost overwhelming. Since primitive pollution arises directly from population, the human equivalent of the stock numbers add up to a high population in the country. But as well there are the more insidious materials used on farms which, together with their counterparts in industry, are the most dangerous destroyers of the balance of the environment.

   The pollution problems of city and country cannot be separated, they are merely different aspects on the one great threatening catastrophe.

   Present large cities cannot be redesigned or altered quickly to substantially improve the efficiency and economy of city functions. It is too late for that. They are more likely to become less efficient and more costly until, if and when, they cease to grow. But growth could be stopped and a new city designed nearby, but divorced from the function of the present city, except for the joining of the two by roads, public transport and communications. Who. could doubt that this would be the best for the larger cities and for the great majority of their citizens? The provision of those facilities which now lag behind population demands could catch up. Progressively rain run-off water control could be applied in the more critical areas and the water added to effluent movements to the City Forests. Although the efficiency of the city operations are not improved immediately great environmental amelioration would be achieved. The city would cease to be a major contributor to environment destruction.