216 THE NEW GARDENING 



rather than the purposeful to the dowager lolling along 

 in a carriage, the lounger airing dogs, rather than the 

 athlete. 



M. Maeterlinck has written : " The great fault of all 

 our municipal gardeners is their dread of the tree. They 

 seem to forget that, at the bottom of man's heart, amid 

 his obscurest, but most powerful instincts, reigns his 

 boundless yearning for the primeval forest. You really 

 abuse the innocence and the credulity of the town-dweller 

 by offering him, instead of the heavy shadows for which 

 his nature longs, paltry clumps of verdure, flowers in 

 rows and worn-out grass that reminds him but too 

 closely of the threadbare carpet of the bedroom whence 

 he has just escaped in vain. A surface of a quarter of an 

 acre thus arranged is nothing more than a wretched, 

 dusty hearthrug. Plant it with beautiful trees, not 

 parsimoniously spaced, as though each of them were an 

 object of art displayed on a grassy tray, but close together 

 like the ranks of a kingly army in order of battle. They 

 will then act as they were wont to act in the native 

 forest. Trees never feel themselves really trees, nor per- 

 form their duty, until they are there in numbers. Then 

 at once, everything is transformed : sky and light recover 

 their first deep meaning, dew and shade return, silence 

 and peace once more find a refuge." 



Eloquent words, yet tinctured by an idealism that 

 obscures the practical needs of the proletariat. The 

 parks of great groups of the trees beloved of the Belgian 

 litterateur the Hornbeam, the Elm, the Beech, the 

 Lombardy Poplar, the Pine, the Lime, the Chestnut and 

 the pollarded Plane such a park is the park of wealthy 

 people who in the winter, when it is leafless, desert it 

 for the sunny South. 



The park of the people should by all means have its 



