April 12, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest 



161 



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 vork, n. y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



page. 



Editorial Article : — Some Uses of Formal Gardening i6i 



»' Botanical Notes from Texas. — VI E, N. Plank. 162 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan. — XI. (With figure.) C. S. S. 162 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. tVafsan. 163 



Plant Notes.: — Clematis indivisa. (With figure.) .... 166 



Cultural Department: — Notes from the Harvard Botanic Garden.. Af. Barker. 166 



Notes on Carnations T. D. Hatfield. 166 



The Best Beans C. E. Hutin. 167 



Winter Protection, E. P. Powell. 168 



The Forest: — The Forests of Ne-Ha-Sa-Ne Park in Northern New York ■*k68 



CoBRESPONDENCE : — Concerning Raspberries... S. .1. 169 



Tuberous Begonias... C. L. Alln. 169 



Daphne Mezereum John Dunbar. 169 



Phajus X Gravesii Robert M. Grey. 169 



Recent Publications 169 



Notes 170 



Illustrations ;— Gleditsia Japonica, Fig. 27 165 



Clematis indivisa, Fig. 28 167 



Some Uses of Formal Gardening. 



WE have endeavored to show in recent articles that 

 there is no essential hostility between the formal 

 and the landscape styles of gardening ; and that, although 

 each piece of ground should be treated according to some 

 well-defined scheme, it is impossible to exclude formal 

 elements altogether from any scheme, however naturalistic. 

 It has also been said that formal and naturalistic elements 

 may sometimes be so commingled that the result will 

 really belong to neither of the rival styles, but to a com- 

 posite style between the two. 



When grounds are quite small, the formal style, in some 

 of its phases, is not so difficult to manage well as the 

 other. And this is not the only reason why it should be 

 more often used in this country. We are not likely to have 

 many country houses so large and stately that they w^ould 

 justify' a return to the grand ideals of Le Notre, and be ap- 

 propriately surrounded by spacious formal parks. Nor are 

 such parks suited to American rural surroundings or to the 

 manners of living of even our idlest and wealthiest people. 

 But the great excuse for formality in gardens is the domi- 

 nance of other formal elements in a given locality ; and, 

 therefore, formal designs may rightly be used in small 

 pleasure-grounds, although they would not be adapted to 

 larger parks. In many American towns and summer colo- 

 nies of cottages or villas formal gardens might produce a- 

 much more satisfactory effect than is now attained by at- 

 tempts at creating rural landscapes in miniature. 



In a really rustic colony, where the houses are very sim- 

 ple and the encircling landscape has not been much altered 

 from its original estate, formal gardens, no matter how 

 small and simple, would be too palpably artificial. One 

 would not want to see even the square old New England 

 door-yard, with its Box-bordered beds, reproduced on a 

 Catskiir mountain-side under the shade of ancient Hem- 



locks, with a panorama of wild woodland scenery showing 

 beyond it ; nor, again, in front of a rough sea-side cottage 

 on the edge of a beach with its fringe of wild-growdng 

 shrubs, vines and flowers. But formal gardens, even of 

 boldly geometrical kinds, would not be out of place on the 

 main streets of our little towns, or the outlying villa-streets 

 of larger towns, or along the fine boulevards, with their big 

 "detached" houses, w^hich give special character to many 

 of our western cities, or in luxurious summer resorts like 

 Newport. At Newport especially the visitor must often 

 wish that some one had been gifted with the instinct to see 

 how charming and how individual his little domain might 

 be made by some regular method of arrangement. Of 

 course, we do not speak of the larger estates which are be- 

 ing established toward the rocky end of the promontory^ 

 or even of the more spacious of the grounds which border 

 upon the avenues. But scores of Newport houses, which 

 are called cottages, but, in reality, are large and dignified, 

 and sometimes very pompous villas, or even mansions, 

 stand in very small grounds ; and the smallness of these 

 grounds, combined with the self-assertion of the house, 

 points to some degree of formality as the right gardening 

 solution. 



What are these grounds to-day .? If their proprietors 

 have some taste, they are, perhaps, green little lawns, cut 

 by one or two lines of gravel and encircled by naturalistic 

 groups of trees and shrubs. Then they are pretty in them- 

 selves, but not dignified enough, not consciously artistic 

 •enough, to befit their place as adjuncts to a big,, cosily 

 house, or as foregrounds over which, from the house, one 

 sees the rigid lines of street and the symmetrical forms of 

 neighboring buildings. But, very often, no taste at all- has 

 presided over .their disposition, except a hunger for con- 

 spicuous plants as such ; and then they are hideous as 

 well as inappropriate — a huddle of trees in clumps and 

 showy shrubs and bits of grass, speckled with exotics re- 

 cently brought from the greenhouse and loudly confessing 

 their homesickness, or splashed with gaudy pattern-beds of 

 chromo-like vulgarity. The planter's one idea has been to 

 get! as much variety as he could within his narrow 

 limits. As a result he has entirely lost the unity which 

 alone can give value to variety ; his garden has no char- 

 acter, no individuality ; it is a place in which plants are 

 grown, but not a place which, as a whole, makes any im- 

 pression upon the eye, except to confuse and pain it. Nowhere 

 better than at Newport can we understand what Monsieur 

 Andre, the French landscape-gardener, meant w^hen he 

 wrote that most people's idea of gardening is "the clean- 

 ing up of spontaneous productions," followed by "the accu- 

 mulation of strange and dissimilar objects." This is to say, 

 that most people go to work in their gardens as they would 

 in their houses, if, after moving out all the old furniture, 

 they should bring in a bric-a-brac dealer's stock and ar- 

 range it as a bric-a-brac dealer prefers. Such a house would 

 not be fit to live in ; and many small gardens are, for the 

 same reason, not fit to look at. ■ ' 



Nor is true variety evident when, in a place like New- 

 port, we pass a long series of gardens in review. How 

 little their owners really care for them, or even for the 

 plants they contain, is clearly proved, not only by their 

 perpetual lack of design, but by the perpetual repetition of 

 the same small list of showy plants and flowers. Inside 

 their houses these people want an artistic general scheme, 

 worked out with features which shall not be exactly the 

 same as their neighbors'. Outside, they care nothing for 

 any plan, and want, apparently, to be in the fashion by 

 having precisely the same furnishings as the man next 

 door. It w^ould be pleasing, indeed, if a good, formally 

 disposed garden sometimes met the eye among those which 

 reveal no desire to follow any style that can be fitted with 

 a name. Even a bad formal garden would necessitate 

 some plan, some intention, some definite ideal. Andvyhefe 

 good results are almost entirely lacking, a visible good 

 intention would of itself excite some sympathy. 



When villa-grounds are large enough to demand a drive- 



