May 6, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



181 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED 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-OFFICK AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles — The Need of an Efficient Park Service 181 



Proposed Forest Reserve in Minnesota 181 



Clematis panicuiata in a Wild Garden. (With figure.) 1S2 



The Tannins of the Palmettos Henry 'Irimble. 182 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 183 



Plant Notes 1S4 



Cultural Department : — Vegetable Garden Notes IV. N. Craig. 184 



Seasonable Work IV. H Taflin. 186 



Spring-flowering Plants E. O. Orpet. 187 



Flower Garden Notes T. D. Hatfield. 187 



Helleborus orientalis. Anemone ranunculoides N. J. R. 188 



Pitcairnia R. Cameron. 188 



Correspondence: — Potato Blight L R.Jones. 188 



Recent Publications 189 



Notes 190 



Illustration : — Clematis panicuiata in a Wild Garden, at Westbrook, Long 



Island, Fig. 30 185 



The Need of an Efficient Park Service. 



NO matter how carefully a park may be designed or 

 how completely it provides for the wants of all 

 classes of the community, it must fail, of course, to 

 serve its highest purpose unless the details of the plan are 

 intelligently carried out. Skill in construction and mainte- 

 nance is just as essential as sound common sense, cre- 

 ative faculty and refinement of taste in the design. 

 In works of any magnitude it is impossible for the 

 designer to do more than give general directions to the 

 men in charge of the different branches of construction, 

 and he must trust to their knowledge to interpret sympa- 

 thetically the maps and drawings and other data furnished 

 for their guidance This is equally true as regards main- 

 tenance after the work of original construction has been 

 accomplished. In a large system of parks like that of 

 Boston or New York it is not possible for the superinten- 

 dent to do more than pay a hurried visit to some of them 

 once a week. A head foreman in charge of a park 

 of considerable size can at the best spend but a small part 

 of any day with each of the gangs of laborers under 

 him. It is, therefore, plain that unless every foreman, be- 

 sides the ability to manage men, has a thorough knowledge 

 of every detail of the work going on under his control, 

 there is no assurance that the park is growing along the 

 lines marked out by its creator. Indeed, it is certain that 

 his plan will be marred and his purpose defeated. 



Of course, there must be an organized body of skilled 

 gardeners in every park — men who know how to plant and 

 prune, who have a knowledge of the essential laws of 

 plant growth, who are familiar with the ways and habits of 

 different species of trees and shrubs and herbs, so that the 

 place that each one is to fill is understood. In some Euro- 

 pean countries it is not difficult to secure trained gardeners, 

 but every one who has an estate to manage here knows 

 how difficult it is to find them. It may be doubted whether 

 any park in a city of considerable extent in the United 

 States is adequately equipped in this line. But, besides 

 gardening proper, there is much park work, such as 

 repairing walks and roads, working among trees and 

 shrubs, grading and sodding and matters of that sort, 

 which requires a familiarity and skill in their details, and 



this skill only comes from long practice under careful su- 

 pervision. Efficient park officers, from the superintendent 

 down, and an organized corps of workmen who can be 

 trusted always to do the right thing at just the right time are 

 plainly essential to the proper maintenance of any park 

 which has a design to grow up to and well-considered 

 plans for making its charms most easily available to 

 visitors. 



Let us suppose that this truth had been realized by the 

 commissioners who controlled and managed the New York 

 parks thirty years ago, and had been held steadily in 

 view by their successors. They would not only have 

 always had a competent landscape architect and a general 

 superintendent of executive force, adequate training and 

 experience in his profession and a sympathetic appre- 

 ciation of the artistic side of the work, but by a system of 

 selection and promotion among the subordinates they 

 would have had at disposal a thinking machine prepared 

 to set itself to work at any moment and ready to meet any 

 emergency. The history of the parks here, however, and 

 it is paralleled, no doubt, by like experience in other cities, 

 shows that they have been under the control of an ever- 

 changing board of commissioners, most of whom have had 

 little intelligent interest in parks or park management. 

 Instead of clothing the superior officers with power and 

 then holding them responsible for their subordinates, it has 

 been the practice of the commissioners to look with jealousy 

 on every exercise of independent authority by these officers 

 as a mutiny against the supreme power of the board. 

 Until very recent times the great bulk of the force has been 

 selected by the political chieftains in the different wards, 

 and too often the men, as soon as they had become suffi- 

 ciently experienced to be useful, have been replaced by 

 others who had no training whatever. All these facts are 

 so well known that they sound like a tale of little meaning, 

 but when we think of the square miles of park property 

 owned by this city from Pelham Bay to the Battery and 

 realize how its possible value can be depreciated by falling 

 into unskilled hands, the subject of securing efficient park 

 service is certainly worth the attention of the public-spirited 

 people of the city. 



A few days ago a visitor to one of the most beautiful and 

 picturesque of our new and undeveloped parks noticed a 

 gang of men turned loose by the wayside and pruning 

 shrubbery with brush hooks. Not far from this was a 

 blazing bonfire under a group of young Hemlocks. One 

 slight puff of wind might have carried the flames into the 

 dry foliage, and even if the wind did not come the heat 

 from the fire would in a few moments have destroyed a 

 dozen trees. Fortunately, there was authority at hand to 

 arrest the progress of the flames at once, and on inquiry it 

 was learned that this portion of the park was in charge of 

 a new and highly recommended foreman who, on his own 

 responsibility, was "clearing up things" in this wild 

 fashion. It is stated, too, on authority that in all the force 

 there is not a sufficient number of skilled foremen to 

 place in independent charge of the different parks to carry 

 on the ordinary spring work which must be done every year. 

 One result of this lack of persistent and intelligent care is 

 that there are parts of Central Park where the plantations 

 already seem past their prime. 



May we not hope that when the long-prayed-for millen- 

 nium of municipal reform arrives every member of the force 

 of our city parks, from the executive head down, will know 

 just what ought to be done and how to do it, and that park 

 commissioners will allow their employees to vote as they 

 please, but will hold each man to rigid account for the 

 special work he is selected to do. 



After the almost unparalleled destruction of property 

 and of life by forest fires in Minnesota less than two years 

 ago it is hardly to be wondered at that the new law against 

 these fires in that state is the must effective <>f all that have 

 been enacted in the various states of the Union. Hut tin- 

 advocates of sound forest policy in Minnesota have 



