312 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 441 



May we not hope that Congress can be induced to take 

 such action as will make it possible to put a plan like this 

 to the test of actual experiment, and that the people can be 

 educated, not only to sustain the national legislature in 

 enacting such laws, but to demand their passage and 

 enforcement ? 



A Wild Garden. 



NO form of gardening gives greater and more lasting 

 pleasure than that which aims to naturalize wild or 

 garden plants in positions where they will appear to be grow- 

 ing naturally and without the intervention of the gardener's 

 art. As an illustration of what can be accomplished in this 

 way we published some weeks ago a view in Mr. W. 

 Bayard Cutting's garden at Oakdale, on Long Island, 

 showing the effects obtained by planting the Japanese Cle- 

 matis paniculata by the border of a pond embowered in 

 native trees and shrubs, and on page 315 of this issue is a 

 view of a wild garden at Auburn, New York, in which 

 Mrs. Herbert VVadsworth has succeeded in naturalizing the 

 common perennial Larkspur on the border of a small arti- 

 ficial pool fed by a natural spring. Although this garden 

 was only three years old when Mrs. Wadsworth took the 

 photograph which is reproduced in our illustration, the 

 Larkspurs have taken a firm hold of the soil and have 

 already spread more than twenty feet from the spot where 

 the roots were first planted. The native Water-lily dots the 

 surface of the pool, and its borders are gay with the flowers 

 of the Marsh Marigold, the Blue Lungwort, and of many 

 other native spring-flowering plants, and of Asters, Golden- 

 rods and Sunflowers in their season ; and from a miry bog 

 hole covered with sedges and coarse grasses a charming 

 little wild garden has been made. The original cost of 

 such a garden, except in intelligence and taste, is small ; 

 it costs little to maintain, and with a little care in removing 

 a few too vigorous-growing plants every year it will go on 

 increasing indefinitely in naturalness and beauty. 



Suburban Homes. 



NO movement for the improvement of suburban homes which 

 does not apply to the conditions prevailing in the aver- 

 age American suburb is likely to succeed. That is a defect 

 of Mr. R. Clipston Sturgis's article, recently discussed in your 

 columns, full as it is of valuable suggestions. Even if it applied 

 to American conditions it would touch but a fraction of our 

 suburban populations. It concerns a more distinctively rural 

 life, like that of our quiet country towns. In our suburbs it 

 would apply only to the homes of the wealthy or the very 

 well-to-do. 



Our suburbs are the overflow of great cities and comprise 

 three or four distinct classes of population. First in numbers 

 comes the artisan or laboring class, living there for the sake 

 of cheaper rents or the possession of their own homes. Then 

 comes another large class, consisting of clerks, bookkeepers 

 and upper-grade employees in city establishments. They 

 occupy humble but comfortable dwellings. A third class gives 

 to the more attractive aspects of suburban life their peculiar 

 tone, largely made up of city merchants or tradesmen, or men 

 receiving salaries running between $2,000 and $5,000 a year. 

 Greater cheapness of living, better air and more elbow-room 

 are leading considerations with this class. Fourth may be 

 reckoned the men of considerable wealth, whose tastes lead 

 them to rural life and who possess the conspicuous country- 

 seats to be found in nearly every suburban community. It is 

 chiefly to the third class that efforts at improvement must be 

 addressed. If successful here the force of example will be 

 likely sooner or later to prevail with the others. 



The average modern suburb is a depressing place. It gives 

 little promise of the results which have been predicted for the 

 much vaunted "suburban movement" as a relief from con- 

 gestion and other ills of city life. It promises, instead, to dis- 

 tribute those ills over areas so extensive as lo make remedial 

 measures increasingly difficult. In place of clean pavemenls 

 we have miles of ill-kept streets, muddy or dusty according to 

 the weather. Endless rows of cheap wooden structures stand 

 grimy with dust, and so absolutely stupid in their expression- 

 ess ugliness that it seems as if really intelligent people could 



not exist in them. These suburbs are the children of cheap 

 transit and real-estate speculation. The leading motive in 

 their creation is the sale of the greatest number of square feet 

 of land for the largest possible price a foot. Large communi- 

 ties are thus created overnight, as it were, entirely without 

 the proper civic equipments of a modern town. Beautiful rural 

 pastures are converted into human deserts. About New York 

 and Boston, for example, there are municipalities of this char- 

 acter which have not so much as a square foot of public 

 ground outside of the streets and the land occupied by school- 

 buildings. As homes for children the urban slum districts of 

 to-day, with their new and beautiful play-grounds and improved 

 tenement construction, will soon be preferable to them. Even 

 though in these districts the houses may be chiefly owned by 

 their occupants, the development of a really homelike life, 

 which must necessarily include beauty as a factor, cannot be 

 looked for among them. 



It is to the creation of new suburbs, therefore, that we must 

 chiefly look for improvement. To this end there would doubt- 

 less have to be a radical departure in the size and shape of house- 

 lots, the planning of houses, and, perhaps, to a considerable 

 extent the laying out of streets. So great a change would make 

 the reform one of great difficulty, although it might be too much 

 to say that it is impracticable for that reason. The force of 

 example has been so potent in other directions that it should 

 not be too much to look for eventual success. If a sufficient 

 number should once find the change desirable, the power of 

 example would in time secure its general adoption. 



What has already been accomplished in the way of subur- 

 ban improvement indicates that more radical changes should 

 be possible. The lines that have led to the present aspects of 

 our better class suburbs are fundamentally wrong in certain 

 respects, but, nevertheless, they have developed a great deal 

 that is good. The removal of fences from street and boundary 

 lines involved the overcoming of a conservatism that was 

 rooted deep in our domestic traditions. Yet the aspect of 

 openness, of spaciousness thus conferred, possessed a charm 

 so great that the force of example was powerful enough to 

 make it general in less than a generation, in spite of the 

 manifest objections to this practice. Therefore, a return to the 

 best that went with the loss of the old, while retaining also the 

 best that was gained with the new, should be possible as soon 

 as it can be shown how desirable it is. 



One inestimable thing that has been gained by this trans- 

 formation is the spirit of orderliness that characterizes our 

 better class suburbs and rural towns. The openness of aspect 

 that has been given to suburban grounds necessarily entails 

 careful attention. The lawn-mower has, therefore, become 

 almost as indispensable as the broom in the suburban house- 

 hold. This spirit has been carried so far as to produce a sense 

 of bareness in the unrelieved carpets of turf that are altogether 

 too common a feature. The vulgarity of the florid tapestry 

 carpet, so much in favor within, has too commonly set the 

 example for the ornamentation of the lawn carpet without, 

 with horrific combinations of color and design in the way of 

 bedding and foliage plants. But bad example and the lack 

 of good example are chiefly responsible for these errors in 

 taste, and there is evident in many quarters a gratifying ten- 

 dency toward the judicious employment of shrubbery in the 

 development of the house-grounds. 



Efforts at reform should be directed both toward a consid- 

 eration of what can be done under existing conditions and 

 what should be done toward the establishment of new condi- 

 tions. In addition to the desire for cheaper homes that car- 

 ries multitudes to the suburbs, there are also the still more 

 important motives of a desire for more agreeable and health- 

 ful conditions — purer air and sunshine, rural quiet and pleas- 

 anter surroundings in sight of grass, flowers, shrubs and trees. 

 These gains are all too frequently but temporary. The ten- 

 dency is toward their gradual effacement. The effort should 

 be to make them permanent. So far as the more undesirable 

 portions of our suburbs are concerned the sooner they are 

 entirely urbanized the better. The movement toward urban 

 amelioration, as witnessed in the improvement of congested 

 districts, may be depended upon for their betterment. For 

 the grade above this the outlook seems more hopeful. The 

 cost of suburban house-lots will probably always remain so 

 large as to make the extent of the average householder's pos- 

 sessions very limited. The problem is how to make the most 

 of these conditions. What can be done with the present 

 average lot ? A frontage of fifty feet and a depth of one hun- 

 dred feet is the standard size in many suburbs. A reduction 

 in depth and a corresponding increase in width would be 

 desirable. While this makes a lot of something less than an 

 eighth of an acre, the average suburban lot contains consid- 



