272 CITY PARKS. 



In actual practice, one park must, of course, be treated 

 differently from other parks ; but the lessons acquired by 

 considering one piece of work of this kind, must always be 

 helpful in carrying on other park- work. 



In order, therefore, not to weary the reader with the 

 enunciation of abstract principles, and detailing instructions 

 that do not always really instruct, I am going to ask atten- 

 tion for a few moments to what I consider the best well 

 advanced example of this kind of landscape gardening in 

 America, namely, Central Park, New York City. 



In considering Central Park, I beg leave to first intro- 

 duce a few lines from the pen of Mr. Calvert Vaux, one of 

 the originators of the essential artistic effect of the park. 



" The principal defect of the ground originally appro- 

 priated to Central Park was that it offered very few com- 

 paratively level tracts of sufficient area to make a definite 

 meadow-like impression on the eye. The ground is, for the 

 most part, broken, undulating, picturesque, and rocky ; and 

 this is, confessedly, a desirable quality for a park site to 

 possess, because it is a comparatively rare one. Most of the 

 large parks such as Hyde Park in London, the Bois de 

 Boulogne in Paiis, and the Phoenix Park in Dublin are 

 manifestly lacking in variety of natural surface ; and every 

 effort that art can make has to be resorted to for the pur- 

 pose of relieving at intervals the general monotony of 

 ground-line, which, in these parks, is the normal condition 

 of things. Under such circumstances, it is evident that 

 much can be done by planting trees of high and low growth, 

 in such relation to each other that the sky-line will be 

 agreeably diversified, while the level of the soil is but 



