Decembek i-i. 1897 



The Weekly Florists' Review. 



191 



A Basket of Orchids. 



visible till you reach it. At the end of a 

 walk or in a recess among the evergreens, 

 were many summer houses, but never 

 obtrusive, never a feature of the land- 

 scape — a resting place " For talking age 

 and whispering lovers made." Some, the 

 interior of wliich were shells collected 

 from the neighboring sea shore, others of 

 the cones of many conifers, another with 

 the split wood of the hazel and other 

 native trees and shrubs. 



In some quiet nook, seen only as you 

 passed, were pieces of statuary. Speak- 

 ing of statuary, even in a most natural 

 pleasure garden, it is admissible in cer- 

 tain places. The noble trees, the banks 

 of shrubbery, the well kept grass, the 

 charming views, these are the important 

 features of true landscape art, but the 

 statue of an eminent man and perhaps 

 friend, or the marble figure of a goddess of 

 w.-ir or peace or love may find its place in 

 some quiet corner. It should be so situ- 

 ated that you hear the marljle figure say, 

 " I am here, you can admire me if you 

 choose, " not " here I am, you can't get 

 by without seeing me. " One of the 

 most flagrant instances of how not to do 



it is in our own beautiful park. But a 

 few feet from the most picturesque part 

 of the main park on the most thronged 

 carriage drive, and close to the gravel 

 road, stands the inartistic head and 

 shoulders of that king of nielod}-, Mozart. 

 Our good German citizens did a worthy 

 thing in having the statue executed, but 

 where it stands is as unpicturesque as a 

 scarecrow in a cornfield. 



As we approach the garden proper we 

 will walk down "the outside walk," 

 usuallv called so because it was one of 

 three roads or paths which ran for per- 

 haps 150 yards straight and parallel, one 

 of the few bits of road out of miles that 

 were straight. The north was a carriage 

 drive, the middle a path, called the sand 

 walk, used by the workmen of ihe gar- 

 den and gamekeeper journeying from 

 one game preserve to another. The west 

 path was used bv sightseers. These 

 three roads were divided by but a few 

 feet, yet such was the judicious planting 

 that pedestrians in either were perfecth- 

 invisible to those in another save in one 

 spot, where for a length of perhaps 

 seventj'-iive feet, shrubbery of many 



kinds was cut down to a height of about 

 five feet, giving a view from either path 

 east or west of the surrounding park and 

 woodland. In all the many thousands of 

 trees and shrubs and the hundreds of 

 species I cannot recall with this excep- 

 tion a single instance where a tree or 

 shrub was uuitilated to conform to any 

 grotesque or formal shape. Cutting out 

 and thinning out there had to be and 

 sometimes on a large scale, but done 

 with .such care and skill that no one 

 would suppose a knife had been used. 



Little scenes and views, as I have at- 

 tempted to describe, give one a very 

 erroneous idea of the size of the place. 

 Ask a visitor, when he had completed a 

 round of the pleasure grounds and gar- 

 den, how many acres he had walked 

 over. He would say one hundred ; it 

 was but thirty. This effect could not 

 have been attained had it not been 

 for the help of the park, which on all 

 sides surroundeil the garden. The park 

 was rented to a tenant farmer, but not to 

 be ploughed up ; to be used for hay or 

 grazing onlv. The park with its solitary 

 statelv oaks, or sombre pines, or clumps 

 of trees and flocks of sheep, was just 

 about the same as the principal part of 

 our American parks. Man had done lit- 

 tle to embellish it. Nature had done 

 most. 



Don't you think, reader, that the archi- 

 tecture of the majority of our parks has 

 been a little too much in one groove? If 

 a park is surrounded with buildings, in 

 other words the city has grown around 

 it, nothing can be more pleasing or rest- 

 ful than the imitation of nature, or 

 green fields and woods reproduced, with 

 but the slight help of the landscape gar- 

 dener. But where a park is built on the 

 outskirts of a growing town, and especi- 

 allv where that town is surrounded with 

 river scener\- and green woods and fields, 

 is not a little more of the artificial ad- 

 missible? Will it not be appreciated 

 greatly by the citizens who pay for it ? 

 I am not advocating anything so formal 

 or set as the Italian garden, yet some- 

 thing a little more of a departure from 

 our countrv fields and woods would sure- 

 Iv be appreciated, at least until the city 

 had grown so large that a view of trees, 

 shrubs and grass filled the souls of all and 

 nothing more was desired. Parks are 

 built first for amusement and pleasure, 

 second for education. To afford pleasure 

 for the masses is the primary object, to 

 the wealthy of less consideration for 

 pleasure is always at their hand. 



I must say good bye to pleasure grounds, 

 but before I do, let me remind the old 

 bo\-s, who were brought up in such 

 scenes, what a paratlise it was for us boys 

 to collect birds' eggs. Our city boys 

 know nothing of our native birds and 

 too few of the country lads have limited 

 their ornithological knowledge to the 

 black bird, the blue bird, the gray bird 

 and a few other feathered friends, who 

 are know-n only by the color of their 

 plumage. I believe we knew seventy- 

 five species of thirds and when we found 

 the nest we knew the bird who built it. 

 The nightingale's lovely nest with its 

 chocolate colored eggs, always in a bank 

 in some dense underbrush, was as well 

 known as the missel thrush, who always 



