April 29, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



171 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUHLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by . Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article ' — Park Work near Boston 171 



Some Native Ornamental Grasses. — II T. H. Kearney, Jr. 172 



Spring in the Pines Mrs. Mary Treat. 173 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 173 



New or Little-known Plants: — Rose, Mrs. Pierpont Morgan. (With figure.) 174 



Cultural Department :— Orchid Notes Robert Cameron. 176 



The Cultivation of Nepenthes G. IV. O. 176 



Flower Garden Work E. O. Orpet. 177 



Chrysanthemums. T. D. H. 177 



Earfy Spring Flowers . J. N. Gerard. 177 



Tulipa sylvestris.. iV. J. Rose. 178 



Correspondence: — Madison Square Again. (With figure.) H. A. Caparn. 178 



Early Wild Flowers in Southern California E. D. Sturtevant 178 



Early April in Southern California Imogene E. Johnson. 179 



R ecent Publications 179 



Notes 180 



Illustrations: — Fose, Mrs. Pierpont Morgan, Fig. 28 '. 175 



Proposed Plan of Madison Square, Fig. 29 178 



Park Work near Boston. 



IN 1893 the Legislature of Massachusetts passed an act 

 which enabled the cities and towns surrounding- Boston 

 to cooperate with that city in securing open spaces for the 

 use of the public, and the Metropolitan Park Commission 

 was created to select and control these spaces. To the 

 original Commission of Inquiry when it was making a pre- 

 liminary study of this great park system the landscape- 

 architect reported that long and continuous open areas, to 

 be of the greatest benefit to the whole population of the 

 metropolitan district, ought to be situated (i) on wooded 

 and rocky hills ; (2) along brooks and rivers, and (3) by 

 the shores of the Bay and the sea. This thought, sug- 

 gested by the geography of the district, has been steadily 

 adhered to, and all the reservations created by the Com- 

 mission belong to one of these three classes. In the report 

 of the landscape-architects for 1895, published not long 

 ago, it is stated that the areas now or soon to be controlled 

 by the Commission include more numerous large pleasure- 

 grounds than are governed by any public authority in 

 North America, with the exception of the Governments of 

 the United States and Canada. They comprise the Blue 

 Hills reservation, five miles long; the Middlesex Fells 

 reservation, two miles square ; Stony Brook reservation, 

 two miles long; Charles River reservation, including the 

 semi-public river-banks, five miles long ; the Mystic Valley 

 parkway, two miles long, and the Revere Beach reserva- 

 tion, three miles long. The development of a work of such 

 magnitude has more than a local interest, and the annual 

 reports of the landscape-architects, as they give a record of 

 the progress of the work and unfold the design, make a 

 series of documents of the highest value to all who are 

 interested in providing recreation-grounds for a large pop- 

 ulation. 



To descend to the details of the work reported during 

 the year just passed it is to be noted that the chief atten- 

 tion has been given to revising the boundaries of the pub- 

 lic lands. Commissioners who purchase land for public 

 use are not in the habit of making any serious study of 

 boundary problems, nor are they adequately equipped, as 

 a rule, to settle them intelligently, and therefore almost 

 every park in this country is disfigured or, at least, fails to 



produce the highest effect because details which are essen- 

 tial to its completeness have been omitted or some incon- 

 gruous feature has been included. It is not to be expected 

 that a park line which follows property lines between 

 private owners will include all that is essential and exclude 

 what is not essential to its highest value. A sad example 

 of this is to be found 111 our own city, where large park 

 areas have been purchased with their boundary lines estab- 

 lished by chance or, at least, without any serious study 

 of their actual significance. Considerable care was exer- 

 cised in the purchase of metropolitan park lands for 

 the greater Boston, and yet we find in the report of Messrs. 

 Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot that many amendments in the 

 boundaries of all these reservations need to be made. A 

 strip of land is added here to permit the construction of a 

 boundary road without injuring a row of fine trees ; a 

 winding tongue of land is added there to give access to 

 the same park from an important highway ; a triangle is 

 added here and a sliver of land is added there, an irregular 

 and useless tract is restored to its owner in another place — 

 in short, the whole ground has been subjected to a thorough 

 study, so that whatever is essential to the charm of the place 

 may be retained, and every facility for reaching it by 

 cheap and rapid transportation provided. 



Meanwhile it is to be noted that no haste is made toward 

 building substantial stone-filled and graveled carriage- 

 roads through the reservations. It is true there are road- 

 ways now existing and others which have been built under 

 the authority of local superintendents, and these, to a cer- 

 tain extent, have opened the reservations to the driving 

 public, but it is admitted that these roads do not exhibit the 

 scenery of the reservations as advantageously as it ought 

 to be exhibited and as it will be shown in the future, and they 

 possess bad grades and bad lines. Nevertheless, before a 

 comprehensive scheme of permanent roads can be studied 

 it is certainly better to adopt the plan of the Commission 

 and avoid all expensive constructions. The money availa- 

 ble for such wheelways is well devoted to the clearing out 

 of new walks and bridle-paths, and marking them with 

 guide-posts, until the completion of the study may make it 

 possible to give the permanent carriage-ways their best 

 location. 



These reports furnish salutary reading for all persons who 

 think that the sole, or even the chief, work of a landscape- 

 architect or a professional designer of parks is to make pretty 

 pictures of flowers, and grass, and shrubs and trees, or to 

 erect structures for merely ornamental purposes. Unfor- 

 tunately, too many landscape-gardeners have no more 

 elevated professional ideals than this. They do not recog- 

 nize the fact that true art is not the servant of some tem- 

 porary fashion, but something that is to endure, and must, 

 therefore, have a permanent basis in the necessities and 

 aspirations of human life. In these immense areas of 

 rugged hills and wooded slopes, sunny glades and spark- 

 ling watercourses, the greater Boston has acquired a prop- 

 erty in scenery which has a positive and inestimable value 

 for the health and refreshment of the people whose lives 

 must be passed in the noise and confusion and rectangular 

 ugliness which seem to be the essential conditions of life 

 in thickly crowded cities. It is evidently not the pur- 

 pose of the designers to trick out the noble features of 

 these northern landscapes with exotic vegetation or with 

 incongruous bits of architecture, but to restore and re- 

 tain, as far as possible, the original poetic charm of 

 the place, which is its essential value. Balustrades anil 

 terraces and parterres of flowers or any other artificial 

 ornaments are sorry substitutes for a real woodland walk 

 or a group of noble trees like the Waverly Oaks, or a lool< 

 over the restless sea. It is real nature and not affected 

 naturalism that soothes the city-wearied spirit and has a 

 genuine sanitary effect upon a mind harassed with busi- 

 ness cares. Among these wild hills and shady defiles and 

 extended views the active business man is furnished with 

 the most certain relief from that nervous exhaustion which 

 comes from the excitement and stress of city life, and the 



