August 26, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



34i 



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-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — Various Motives for Gardening 341 



The Destruction of the Nation's Forests 341 



The Necessity of Planning Charles Eliot. 342 



The Wild Gardens of the Sierra Charles H. Shin //. 343 



New or Little-known Plants: — Lonicera hirsuta. (With figures.) 344 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 345 



Cultural Department:— Funkia9 Robert Cameron. 347 



Autumn-flowering Bulbous Plants T. D. Hat/ield. 347 



Orchid Notes E. O. O. 348 



Correspondence : — Two Good Trees for California Planting H. G. Pratt. 348 



The Forest : — The Burma Teak Forests. — IV Sir Dietrich Brandts. 348 



Notes 35° 



Illustrations : — Lonicera hirsuta. Fig. 45 344 



Lonicera hirsuta X Sulhvantii, Fig. 46 345 



Various Motives for Gardening. 



WE have just received a letter from a valued corre- 

 spondent in which he says that he cannot under- 

 stand the insistence of Garden and Forest upon planning 

 and planting for general effect. He delights in his garden, 

 but his pleasure is not associated in any degree with the 

 landscape as he understands it. He loves plants, he appre- 

 ciates the beauty of flowers, he enjoys their companion- 

 ship and he reads with interest everything that is said 

 about new or old ones which any way broadens his knowl- 

 edge of their habits and helps him to cultivate them more 

 successfully. He finds abundant comfort in gardening of 

 this kind, but he sees nothing to attract him in landscape- 

 gardening-. No doubt, this statement represents the inner- 

 most feeling of many people who take a genuine interest 

 in horticulture, and it is often expressed to us in one way 

 or another. With people of this taste and temperament the 

 garden exists for its plants, and the plants are not grown 

 for the sake of the garden. That is, a garden in this view r 

 is a place where a collection of plants is carefully attended 

 and enjoyed for their individual beauty and other interest- 

 ing qualities, and with no purpose of forming, in connec- 

 tion with the house, any picture which is to be studied and 

 enjoyed as a whole. Perhaps the majority of all who are 

 interested in gardens sympathize with the view of our cor- 

 respondent, and they find a real pleasure, and pleasure of 

 a most refining and refreshing kind, in their practice. It 

 is our belief, however, that they might do all this, and at 

 the same time gain a new and ever-growing satisfaction if 

 they gave thought to the general modeling and arrange- 

 ment of the whole scene as well as to its individual 

 details. 



No doubt, the word "landscape" is something mis- 

 leading when the term landscape-gardening is applied to 

 small areas, but, then, we have no phrase to take its 

 place. In the design of a village plot we may have 

 nothing to do with the material that was in Lowell's 

 mind when he said, "A real landscape never presents 

 itself to us as a disjointed succession of isolated par- 

 ticulars, its lights, its shadows, its melting gradations 

 of distance.'' In ordinary use, the word "landscape" 



conveys an idea of some spaciousness — a foreground, 

 a middle distance and a distance — but, nevertheless, it is 

 possible even in a limited space to carry out a scheme 

 which as a whole makes a distinct and consistent ap- 

 peal to the eye and to the imagination. Such a gar- 

 den must embody and express some idea which the 

 observer can feel and appreciate. It may be made a 

 type of coziness or of simple homelike restfulness or of 

 inviting hospitality or even of studied elegance, but to 

 achieve such a result is not easy. Nevertheless, a moder- 

 ate-sized house-scene may be a genuine work of art 

 which displays the creative touch of genius. This only 

 comes to pass when the true artist discovers the hidden 

 poetry of the place, and knows how to handle and adjust 

 all his material to give the theme its full and complete 

 expression. 



Landscape-gardening of this type is much more than the 

 arrangement of plants and trees so as to exhibit harmo- 

 nies of form and color. It is possible to make beautiful and 

 effective arrangements without attempting any such expres- 

 sion as we have alluded to, and yet the arrangement of plants 

 solely for the sake of their form and color may be truly 

 artistic. It requires the same kind of skill which groups cut 

 flowers into effective bouquets or arranges them into effec- 

 tive table decorations, or which creates a charming mosaic 

 pavement out of bits of different-colored stone. No doubt, 

 our correspondent, who loves each plant as an individual, 

 will understand that he can enjoy his Ascension Lilies and 

 his Delphiniums just as thoroughly as he now does if they 

 were planted together, so that each would heighten the 

 beauty of the other, or he can appreciate in what exquisite 

 harmony his white and yellow Eschscholtzias dwell together, 

 or how the attractiveness of his white and scarlet Poppies 

 is emphasized when under a glowing sun they are seen 

 against a mass of dark foliage. Whatever name is given 

 to the art which achieves such pleasing combinations it 

 certainly is worth study, and it brings with it a high order 

 of pleasure. Without it there can be good formal arrange- 

 ments in connection with architecture, no success in regu- 

 lar planting which ought to be an essential feature in many 

 small and geometrical areas. This kind of art differs, per- 

 haps, from what we generally know as landscape-art, in 

 that it appeals more directly to the aesthetic sense and can 

 hardly be said to move the emotions. 



Now, the man who loves his plants for their own sake 

 may still arrange them so as to make an effective display 

 of form and color, or he may subordinate them to the cre- 

 ation of a landscape picture which expresses some idea, 

 some inner meaning, but no one can justly find fault with 

 him if he goes on as he is now doing and enjoys his plants 

 simply for what each one is to him. His garden will be 

 a constantly increasing solace and refreshment and he will 

 take a keen delight in it. It is gardeners of this sort who 

 make a personal acquaintance with their plants and by an 

 intimate study of them discover all their secrets, their habits 

 and even their whims. They find something new every 

 morning, something to invite study or admiration. They 

 are the men who become our ablest instructors in all points 

 of culture. Mr. Olmsted has somewhere called this art- 

 specimen-gardening, to distinguish it from parterre-garden- 

 ing and landscape-gardening proper. 



A member of the New Jersey Forestry Association asks 

 us for an approximate estimate of the number of acres of 

 timber-land still owned by the National Government. 

 Unfortunately, we have no information on this point 

 which is sufficiently accurate to base a guess upon. Aside 

 from the forest reservations the Government may possess 

 so-called forest-lands to the extent of twenty-five million 

 acres or of twice that amount. This area is passing into 

 private hands and vanishing at the rate of a million acres 

 a year, or, perhaps, two million, no one knows. The 

 stumpage value of the timber stolen every year may be a 

 million dollars, or more, but no one knows. No one knows 



