September 6, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



371 



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, SEPTEMBER 6, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — Tender Plants in Public Parks 371 



The Distribution of some Forest-trees in the Southern States. ZJr. C. Mohr. 372 



Dwarfing Plants in Japan Henry Izawa. 373 



Plants on the Pribyloff Islands James M. Macoun. 373 



New or Little-known Plants: — Lilium giganteum. (With fig;ure.). y. S?-_ya?(;K. 373 



Cultural Department : — Notes on Russian Fruits T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 374 



Grapes in North Carolina Professor W. F. Massey. 374 



Preparatory Work W. H. Taplin. 375 



How to Grow Vigorous Carnations C. H. Allen, yj^i 



Garden Notes..'. J. N. G. 377 



Cassava for Bedding Professor W. F. Massey. 377 



Correspondence : — The Meehan Nurseries and the Trees of Germantuwn S. 377 



Orchids at North Easton, Massachusetts T. D. Hatfield. 378 



Nature's Landscape-gardening in Maine Beatrix Jo>tes. 378 



The Columbian Exposition: — The Front Esplanade of the Horticultural 



Building Professor L. H. Bailey. 379 



Notes 380 



Illustration : — Lilium giganteum in Yarmouthport, Massachusetts, Fig. 57. . . . 376 



Tender Plants in Public Parks. 



AT a session of the late Horticultural Congress in 

 ^^ Chicago, Mr. William MacMillan, Superintendent of 

 Parks in Buffalo, read an essay on the "Improvement and 

 Care of Public Grounds," which, if we may judge from an 

 abstract which we find in The Florists' Exchange, was a 

 production of uncommon merit. Of course, in a discus- 

 sion which covered such a broad field, only statements of 

 the most comprehensive kind can be made, and it seems 

 to us that if the paper could be expanded into a small 

 treatise, where general rules could be illustrated by special 

 examples, it would have a permanent value. The teach- 

 ings, so far as we can judge by the extracts, are almost 

 entirely in harmony with views which we have heretofore 

 expressed, and if it were our purpose now to enforce any 

 of them, we could do no better than to quote them ver- 

 batim in Mr. MacMillan's vigorous language. 



What we have to say, however, has been suggested by 

 the discussion which followed the paper, in which Mr. 

 Robert Craig, of Philadelphia, one of the most capable and 

 cultivated florists of the United States, seemed to take some 

 exception to the tone of the essay. A careful reading of 

 Mr. Craig's remarks, however, will convince any one that 

 there is no serious difference of opinion between the speaker 

 and the commentator. Mr. Craig had a good word for 

 formal gardening; but the speaker had already said that 

 where architectural features are used the structural charac- 

 ter of the place might be emphasized by artificial planting, 

 and in urban grounds of comparatively small area there 

 were conditions where planting ought to be based largely 

 on formal architectural lines. Mr. Craig spoke of the natural 

 desire for color, and, in some cases, of high color ; but the 

 essayist had shown his appreciation of the same fact by his 

 advice to use, even as features of the general landscape, 

 plants with brilliant autumn colors and bright fruit, and by 

 advocating besides this the preparation of a distinct section 

 where a special display of color could be made with flowers 

 and foliage. Mr. Craig's desire for a profuse use of flowers 



had been anticipated by Mr. MacMillan, who had strongly 

 urged the abundant use of flowering herbs in addition to 

 trees which flower, and to shrubs which flower still more 

 abundantly, the only condition being that, where they are 

 used as aids in the production of broad landscape-effects, 

 they shall be naturally disposed, and not forced together 

 in uncongenial companionship. The fact is, that men who 

 have a genuine appreciation for natural beauty, as is evi- 

 dently the case with both Mr. MacMillan and Mr. Craig, can 

 find some place in their scheme of planting for all the 

 brightness and beauty of the floral kingdom. 



Perhaps it will not be denied that inasmuch as dwellers 

 in cities whose days are confined within walls of stone, 

 who are compelled always to walk on straight lines and 

 turn square corners, who never see more than a little patch 

 of blue overhead, bounded by a sky-line of cornices and 

 chimneys, need something for their highest refreshment 

 which is the exact antithesis of these conditions. The 

 primary purpose in large city parks should, therefore, be 

 to furnish broad rural scenery, with spacious skies and 

 irregular tree and shrub borders which emphasize with 

 their haze and obscurity the idea of distance, and so delight 

 the visitor with a sense of enlargement and freedom. The 

 introduction of flowers or color into such a scene is un- 

 questionably proper where it does not destroy the effect 

 of the scenery. There is many a place where our wild 

 flowers could be naturalized with telling effect in parks, for 

 they would be in perfect harmony with the scene. Very 

 beautiful and appropriate, too, and beautiful because ap- 

 propriate, would be the naturalization in the tall grass of 

 such exotics as the Poet's Narcissus and blue Scilla cam- 

 panulata, while the effect of shrub borders could often be 

 heightened if there could be seen against them in their 

 season the tall spires of Foxgloves and other flowering 

 plants. 



What Mr. MacMillan contends for is that "garden finery 

 and fancy foliage" should not be introduced where the 

 intention is to produce a simple rural scenery, because the 

 introduction of bedding-plants and the like are altogether 

 out of harmony with the spirit of the place. They not 

 only mar it by their intrusion, but with such surroundings 

 they do not even themselves show to good advantage. 

 This fitness which enables the different features of any 

 passage of scenery to combine harmoniously and helpfully 

 is the cardinal point in planting. Many kinds of flowers 

 and shrubs may be properly excluded from a landscape, 

 because these plants, although good in themselves, are 

 inappropriate and incongruous. Rising rather abruptly 

 from an arm of one of the lakes in the Central Park there 

 is a rocky slope which is meant to represent a bit of wild 

 nature. No one could object to the crimson of Cardinal- 

 flowers, or the purple of Loosestrife down by the border of 

 the lake in such a scene, or to the orange glow of a clump 

 of Asclepias tuberosa higher up, or to many another flower- 

 ing herb quite as striking in its hue. A clump of Pteonies 

 is no more brilliant than any of these, and yet every one 

 would feel that it struck a false note, if introduced here, 

 simply because it is only known as a garden-flower and 

 we have never seen it growing wild in such a position. 

 The same would be true of a Lilac-bush on the border, not 

 because it is objectionable in form or color, but simply 

 because we know this, too, as a garden-plant only, and it 

 would be a denial at the point where it stood of what is 

 meant to be asserted everywhere else in the scene. Mr. 

 MacMillan would probably be the last man in the world 

 to expel flowers and color from his landscapes; what he 

 objects to is a prominent display of any object or element 

 or feature which would be out of character with the gen- 

 eral tone of the landscape. 



But while there is abundant room for flowers, for color, 

 and for formal planting in parks and gardens, there is one 

 objection to the use of tender bedding-plants in large city 

 parks to which Mr MacMillan alluded. Landscape-effects, 

 which are made with the simplest material, are constantly 

 growing in interest, as the shrubs and trees develop their 



