February 5, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



61 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 









Sargent. 



ENTERED 



AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE 



POST OFFICE AT NEW 



YORK, N. V. 



NEW 



YORK, 



WEDNESDAY, 



FEBRUARY 5 



1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — Gardening-Art in Public Parks. — Thinning Pine Forests. 61 

 The Problem of Heather in North America, 



Professor George Lincoln Goodale. 62 



New or Little Known Plants : — Picea Breweriana. (Illustrated.) C. S. S. 63 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 64 



Pans Letter D.Bois. 65 



Cultural Department : — Laelia anceps., John Weathers. 65 



Chives W.H. Bull. 67 



Lcelia albida F. Goldring. 67 



Notes from the Harvard Botanic Garden M. Barker. 68 



Preparation for Bedding W. H. Taplin. 68 



Cannas as Annuals G. 69 



Correspondence : — An Example in Tree-Planting C. H. Garfield. 69 



Worms in Violet Roots Professor B. D. Halsted. 69 



A Rare Butlonwood Professor J. T. Rothrock. 69 



Western New York Horticultural Society. — Annual Meeting at Roches- 

 ter. II 70 



Late Experience with Injurious Insects in Orchard and Garden, 



Professor J. A. Lintncr. 70 



Testing Varieties of Fruits C. E. Hunn. 71 



The Planting of School-Grounds J. J. Thomas. 71 



Recent Plant Portraits 72 



Notes 72 



Illustrations : — Picea Breweriana, Fig. 15 66 



A Branch of Picea Breweriana, Fig. 16 67 



Gardening Art in Public Parks. 



AT the meeting of the Society of American Florists in 

 Buffalo last August, Mr. William McMillan, Superin- 

 tendent of Parks in that city, read a paper in which certain 

 principles of the art of landscape-gardening were set forth 

 with care and clearness. It was held that, when dealing 

 with grounds of sufficient extent to have a distinctive land- 

 scape character, the motive of the work should be determined 

 by the dominant natural characteristics of the site. The 

 development of these characteristics in a fuller measure 

 should be accomplished by ' ' softening what is hard, clothing 

 what is bare, filling out what is meagre and enriching what 

 is beautiful, all in harmony with the original type." This 

 rule excludes what is merely novel or eccentric as incon- 

 gruous, and subordinates what is obviously artificial to 

 what is natural. Carrying forward this idea, it was argued 

 that beds of highly colored flowers and foliage plants, 

 however beautiful in themselves, might be disturbing in- 

 trusions when conspicuously set in a picture whose lead- 

 ing motive is one of pastoral tranquillity. This was fol- 

 lowed by some good-natured satire upon the taste which 

 preferred garish colors and startling contrasts, sports and 

 freaks and constitutional deformities in plants, rather than 

 delicate tints and normal forms. 



But "green pastures and still waters," which have been a 

 refreshment to the souls of the weary since the days of the 

 psalmist, are too tame for a taste educated up to an 

 appreciation of the value of floral novelties, and certain 

 correspondents of The American Florist have fallen foul of 

 Mr. McMillan's views as too crude and rude for advanced 

 gardening-art. What the people are hungering for, they 

 say, is splendor of color, which it is possible to obtain in 

 these modern days, thanks to the enterprise of seedsmen 

 and florists. Why go backward in garden-art to old-fash- 

 ioned shrubs and common flowers, when every catalogue 

 advertises novelties and rarities ? A long stretch of roll- 

 ing meadow, whose soft turf flows through open glades be- 

 tween scattered groups of trees until it is lost at last in the 

 shadows and mystery of a bordering wood — all this has 

 neither interest nor beauty to the critic who bewails the 

 absence of Coleus. To him it is "acres of dreary monot- 

 ony," nothing but "vapid green." 



So much of the controversy is given to introduce the 

 latest correspondent on the subject, who writes, with un- 

 usual grasp and insight, in The Florist for January 15th: 

 " Why not recognize two arts," he inquires, "each having 

 distinctive aims and principles, to both of which the name 

 of gardening is confusingly applied ?" The one, termed 

 landscape-gardening, deals with surfaces of some extent 

 in which the "lay of the land," the sky-line, the blue dis- 

 tance, the broad and permanent features of what we term 

 " scenery," are the fundamental elements. The other, or dec- 

 orative gardening, concerns itself with the ornamentation of 

 more contracted areas, and may properly be artificial, and 

 subject to modification every year, or oftener. The sepa- 

 ration between the two is not clear from a physical point 

 of view, since they deal with the same materials and em- 

 ploy the same material appliances and handicraft pro- 

 cesses. The essential difference between them will be 

 recognized from the statement that they address different 

 classes of sensibilities. A strictly ornamental arrangement 

 of plants or flowers may show such perfection of form and 

 color as to give keen delight and excite admiration. It is 

 beauty for its own sake. It is the expression of no senti- 

 ment, however; it has no inner meaning. On the other hand, 

 there is no lack of beauty in a natural landscape, nor in a 

 consistent work of landscape-art, but it grows out of some 

 more essential quality of the scene. It may be the cloth- 

 ing of sublimity, of grandeur, or of strength in repose. The 

 one addresses itself to the ©esthetic sense alone; the other 

 makes appeal, through the imagination, to the nobler part 

 of man's nature, and may move the profoundest feelings 

 of the human soul. 



While, therefore, the interest and value of both kinds of 

 gardening are admitted, it is plainly a difficult problem to 

 combine the two. This was the point originally insisted 

 on by Mr. McMillan, who explained that the motives of the 

 two might be conflicting, so that each would impair the 

 value of the other. That is, not only would the introduc- 

 tion of formal flower-beds, for example, destroy the repose 

 and unity of a glade or meadow, but the greensward and 

 irregular shrub-border make a setting so inappropriate for an 

 artificial design that its beauty of form and color would be 

 largely neutralized. The effect of the whole would be self- 

 contradictory. It would be a picture not only without 

 unity of purpose, but a denial in one feature of what the 

 remaining ones attempt to assert. Ordinary efforts, there- 

 fore, to unite the two will generally be faulty from an ar- 

 tistic point of view, not to speak of the practical difficulties 

 of maintenance, some of which were set forth in the quo- 

 tations from Mr. McMillan's address at Rochester, which 

 we published last week. 



It hardly needs to be said that the persons who appre- 

 ciate landscape beauty, and who recognize the superiority 

 of free natural treatment, or what is known as the park-like 

 treatment of extensive public grounds, have as keen a relish 

 for what is commendable in ornamental gardening as those 

 who seem to consider it the only kind of gardening worthy 

 of the name. Our belief is that the most refreshing an- 

 tithesis to the hard lines of straight and stony streets shut 

 in between high walls and to all the stress and pressure of 

 city life is found in the freedom and openness of simple, 

 broad, meadowy landscapes and spacious skies. And yet 

 we have given illustrations of many formal gardens to show 

 how effective they may be where skillfully planned and 

 adapted to their surroundings. Fit fields for work of this 

 sort are offered in most of our cities in connection with 

 public buildings and elsewhere. Along Riverside Drive, 

 in this city, where the foreground is limited by the parapet, 

 there is ample opportunity within this line for ornate embel- 

 lishment, statues, fountains and floral embroidery, and all 

 this would not detract from the impressiveness of the prospect 

 across the strong and silent river, with the forest-crowned 

 cliffs and noble sky-line beyond. This means that while 

 we would exclude ornamental gardening from places 

 where it cannot be displayed to best advantage, and where 

 it would clash with the design of other works, it is 



