3 o8 



GARDENING. 



July 



construction of parks that they have 

 secured most artistic results. This, how- 

 ever, is exceptional. 



The ideal park commissioner should be 

 a person who represents the highest intel- 

 ligence of thecommunity.a person having 

 refined tastes, who has traveled enough 

 to be familiar with the best examples of 

 park design, a person having a full appre- 

 ciation of nature in all phases, one who 

 in every respect is a cultivated man, 

 broad enough to appreciate and sympa- 

 thize with the needs of the whole com- 

 munity and with sufficient force of 

 character to prevent any one element in 

 the community from gaining an undue 

 advantage over another; an honorable 

 and public spirited man who will not use 

 the position to gain personal or political 

 advantage. He should be able to present 

 in a convincing manner before legislative 

 bodies the needs of the people as recre- 

 sented by public parks. He should be a 

 man who is able to appreciate that a 

 well designed public park is a work of art 

 which is to grow into its full beauty only 

 in years and which can be wholly ruined 

 by injudicious changes. 



He should be a man of sufficient leisure 

 to allow him to devote at least a portion 

 ofhistimeto the parks under his care, 

 not so much to personally superintend 

 actual work, but to assure himself that 

 his ideas or those of the consulting land- 

 scape architect are carefully carried out. 



The office of park commissioner should 

 be unpaid and honorary; it should be 

 unpaid so as to obtain the services of 

 gentlemen who consider the honor con- 

 nected with such a position sufficient 

 reward for their services; it should be un- 



paid so as to make it undesirable to pro- 

 fessional office-seekers. 



A park being a living, growing thing 

 designed with an object in view than can 

 only be realized in years should be con- 

 tinuously under one management, hence 

 the offices of park commissioners, and 

 especially the positions of park employes 

 should be of long terms and should be 

 free from the control of politics. Every 

 encouragement should be given to park 

 employes to increase their efficiency so 

 that from their own ranks competent 

 persons ma}' be developed and educated 

 tor higher positions, especially as they are 

 familiar with the growth of the parks and 

 all local conditions connected therewith. 



A park is to remain a possession of the 

 people for all time, and as the measure of 

 its perfection is to be determined by the 

 thoroughness of its preparation, a park 

 commissioner should see that all work is 

 done in a thorough manner; all work 

 should be fully completed before improve- 

 ment on a new portion of a park is com- 

 menced. What is finished should look 

 finished, and what is incomplete should 

 rather be in its first, rough condition than 

 to appear half finished. 



It should be the duty of park commis- 

 sioners to see that the people's pleasure 

 grounds are made readily accessible, both 

 to the poor and to the rich, especially the 

 former. The humble buj;gy or light 

 vehicle of the tradesman carrying his 

 whole family should be as welcome as the 

 stately carriage of the banker. All should 

 feel that they are part owners of the 

 parks. Visitors should he given the 

 utmost freedom consistent with the pres- 

 ervation of plantations and structures; 



PYRUS SPECTABIL1S FLORIBUNDA SCHE1DECKBRI1. 



they should not be required to "Keep Off 

 the Grass" everywhere. 



Policemen should not be permitted to 

 assume a threatening and aggressive air 

 with a great display ot club and undue 

 authority. The}- should nevertheless be 

 vigilant to protect and to act promptly 

 and judiciously in removing objectionable 

 persons and in preventing dangerous 

 play or fast driving or bicycling. 



Visitors should have a sense of abso- 

 lute security while in the park. They 

 should be encouraged to have a sense of 

 ownership in the park, and to quickly 

 resent any acts on the parts of visitors or 

 employes that interfere with the comfort 

 and pleasure of others. 



Park commissioners should give every 

 proper inducement to encourage people to 

 use the parks freely for picnics or private 

 parties; most of all should this be the 

 case with the pupils of our public and 

 parochial schools. Especial privileges 

 should be granted as well as assistance 

 given to them in planting trees on Arbor 

 Day, thereby planting into their young 

 hearts the love of trees and the beauties 

 of nature generally. 



Indeed it is happily a growing custom 

 in our country to thus encourage little 

 children to plant trees in parks and other 

 suitable places on Arbor Day, and too 

 much can hardly be said in support of 

 this idea The child becomes associated 

 with that tree, so to speak; becomes 

 interested in its growth and development; 

 learns thereby to love trees in general and 

 to carefully observe their interesting 

 peculiarities and characteristics. Nothing 

 softens and broadens the human mind so 

 much as observation and love of nature 

 in all its phases, and so we teach our 

 children not to destroy flowers or inno- 

 cent animals, and it has long been con- 

 sidered as an excellent form of early 

 education to interest them in gardening. 

 So with the Arbor Day theory, the child, 

 if it possesses any imagination at all, 

 must feel its own life and career to be 

 more or less associated with the tree to 

 which it put spades full of earth and 

 watered for the first time. That child 

 will like to frequent the place where the 

 tree grows. His own life is bound to 

 that of the tree, as it were, and through 

 the vicissitudes of existence they pass 

 closely connected together. Indeed, it is 

 a beautiful idea— this of the children 

 practically celebrating Arbor Day — full of 

 poetic imagery and the foundations for 

 thoughtful philosophic considerations of 

 life in all its phases. It is an idea that 

 should take root and spread like the tree 

 itself. 



The parks of the great English metropo- 

 lis have aptly been called "the lungs of 

 London" and too much stress can hardly 

 be laid upon the all important fact that 

 through the parks the poorer classes of 

 city denizens can learn to meet nature 

 face to face. All that mental helpfulness 

 of trees, blue sky, green grass, flowers and 

 every other characteristic of our Eternal 

 Mother, can at least be shown them in 

 miniaturein the parks, and who can be so 

 thoughtless as to suppose that any day 

 passes without some over-worked, pov- 

 erty-stricken, life-despairing soul going 

 back to the over-crowded, heated slums 

 that are his only home, nearer to happi- 

 ness and partial content forthe breath of 

 a purer and nobler life that a visit to the 

 parks has vouchsafed him? 



Everyone knows that park commis- 

 sioners are unpaid, their positions being 

 purely honorary, however, hardworking, 

 if they are faithful to their duty. But for 

 them a high recompense lies in the con- 

 sideration of the pleasure that their 



