14 



Garden and Forest. 



[January 9, 1889. 



soon as he thinks of building — as soon as he consults his 

 architect, or even sooner — he should consult his landscape- 

 gardener. Each artist is equally needed, whether the 

 scheme be great or small, and the chief need is that they 

 should work together from the very outset. The landscape- 

 gardener should be the first to speak, though the architect 

 may be the first to act, and within certain limits should 

 throughout be allowed the controlling voice. It is for the 

 advantage of both, and therefore doubly for the interest of 

 the client, that such should be the case. When a land- 

 scape-gardener is called in after the house is finished, he 

 too often finds that it is impossible to do the best that 

 might have been done for the grounds. But he often finds, 

 as well, that the best has not been done for the house 

 itself. A building that is conspicuously placed is not of 

 necessity well placed, although it often looks as though its 

 designer had thought so. Only the trained landscape- 

 gardener can tell what may be done to a spot to improve 

 it as a building site. If he understands architecture as he 

 should, he is at least as competent as an architect to say 

 where, under existing conditions, a building will look best; 

 and if he understands his own art, he is far better able to 

 decide where it should be placed in order that the outside 

 world will look well from windows — the most important 

 of all considerations to its owners. Moreover, he alone 

 can understand the suggestions of the site with regard to 

 the laying out of approaches and the placing of minor 

 buildings. His advice may be very helpful to the archi- 

 tect in deciding the question, What sort of an architectural 

 design will best suit this locality ? And when the locality 

 has a very distinct expression, or when he desires to give it 

 such an expression, then the architect is bound at least to 

 consider his intentions. An architect ought to be willing 

 to make great personal sacrifices if it can be proved that 

 great benefit to beauty or convenience in the general result 

 of his work and his fellow-artist's will result; but rarely 

 will such sacrifices be required. Very often such slight 

 modifications of the architect's wishes as even the stub- 

 bornest spirit would not object to making, may result in all 

 the difference between a well laid out place, with 

 convenient approaches and dependencies and beautiful 

 views, and a botched place, the owners of which, if they 

 have eyes to see, will be perpetually tormented by the 

 thought of what might have been. Even a different ar- 

 rangement of two or three windows, a different allotment of 

 two or three rooms to their special purposes, may A^astly 

 increase the pleasure which the owner will take in his 

 home ; and when an architect is an artist, he will be quick 

 to see the fact if another artist points it out, and quick to 

 feel how his design can be adapted to a necessity which, 

 unassisted, he might never have divined. Moreover, with 

 regard to certain things of a purely architectural sort, the 

 landscape-gardener should be allowed to speak in a very 

 emphatic voice — if, we repeat, he understands architecture 

 as he is bound by the canons of his own art to understand 

 it. All architectural features which come in close contact 

 with natural features — piazzas, terraces, external stairs, 

 steps and seats, summer-houses, boat-houses, bridges, bal- 

 ustrades and boundary walls — should, whenever possible, 

 be built with his assistance. 



This, then, is the way a landscape-gardener's services 

 should be sought. Send for him first of all, even though it 

 is but a villa on an acre of ground that you mean to build; 

 ask him where your house had better stand, w^here is the 

 best place for the main entrance, the piazzas, the stable, the 

 gates, the dog-house, even ; if the grounds are larger, ask 

 what architectural style seems to him most fitting, where 

 on the plan the chief rooms should stand, what views their 

 windows should command ; then send for your architect, 

 let them devise and decide together and work together till 

 the work is done. If they are both of the right sort — and 

 there are many of the right sort in our country to-day — 

 they will not greatly disagree ; or if they do at first, they 

 will find a scheme of mutual compromise and eventual har- 

 mony ; and you will run a far better chance of getting a 



good house and a good place than if they had worked sep- 

 arately — the architect building his house without knowing 

 where it might best be placed or how best surrounded, and 

 the landscape-gardener coming in afterwards to find, per- 

 haps, that no chance was left him to assist the house or to 

 do his own work well. 



The possession of a remarkable tree even in communi- 

 ties from which better things might be expected, has little 

 influence upon its owner when a few dollars are placed in 

 the balance against it. The Salem Gazette and other papers 

 of Essex County, Massachusetts, have recently made an 

 appeal for the life of a remarkable Walnut-tree which grew 

 near the house of the late Ben Perley Poor, Indian Orchard 

 Farm, near Newburyport. The tree, which was a very 

 large one, with a trunk circumference of some twelve feet, 

 was considered by Mr. Poor to be an English Walnut, but 

 while the general habit and foliage were those of that spe- 

 cies, the nuts were almost identical in appearance with 

 those of the common Butternut, and suggested that it was 

 a hybrid between the English Walnut and one of the 

 American species. Such hybrids are not unknown, and 

 there are two or three well-established instances of their 

 existence in Europe. This tree was large, broad-branched 

 and stately. For years it had been the pride of its owner, 

 while its botanical peculiarities made it one of the most 

 interesting trees in New England. The man who had nur- 

 tured it all his life was dead. It contained a few hundred 

 feet of valuable lumber, and so, in spite of a general 

 protest, it has been sent to the saw-mill. 



Bamboos. 



A VIEW of the entrance of the Botanic Garden at Pera- 

 denia, in the Island of Ceylon, appeared in one of 

 the early numbers of the first volume of Garden and 

 Forest. Among the most striking features of this garden 

 are the clumps of giant Grasses which serve to illustrate 

 the present issue. The one in which the base only of the 

 stems appear is the great Bamboo of Penang {Dendrocala- 

 mus giganieus), of which the shoots, eight or nine inches 

 through at the base, attain a height of a hundred feet. The 

 second illustration represents a clump of the Java Giganio- 

 chloa atter, a plant hardly less stately than the last. Ernst 

 Hackel, in his "Visit to Ceylon,'' thus describes the strik- 

 ing appearance of these plants: "If on entering the gar- 

 den we turn to the left towards the river (the Mahavili) and 

 follow its beautiful banks, we see from afar enormous 

 green thickets of Bamboo, more than a hundred feet high, 

 and as many wide, bending their mighty crowns like huge 

 waving plumes of some giant's helmet over the river and 

 the path, bestowing shade and coolness on both. As we 

 go nearer we see that each of these bushes consists of sev- 

 eral — often sixty to eighty — tall, cylindrical stems, each 

 from one to two feet thick. They grow closely crowded 

 together, like the creeping stems of a Rush." The rapidity 

 of the growth of the stems is astonishing. They appear 

 during the rainy season — that is, during the months of June 

 and July — and are said to grow sometimes at the rate of a 

 foot in every twenty-four hours. 



The Bamboos, of which some 180 species, divided 

 among eighteen genera, are now known, are widely and 

 generally distributed through the tropics of both hemi- 

 spheres. A single species [Bamhusa vulgaris) is cos- 

 mopolitan, being found in both the old and new worlds, 

 although General Munro, the author of the classical 

 monograph of these plants, was uncertain if it was 

 known anywhere in a truly wild state. Some genera are 

 strictly American and others are found in the East only. 

 Arundinaria, which furnishes the only Bamboo which 

 grows spontaneously within the limits of the United States, 

 is represented in both hemispheres, reaching to great ele- 

 vations in the Himalayas, while a representative of an 

 allied genus, Chusquea, first makes its appearance at an 

 elevation of 13,000 feet in the Andes, and 2,000 feet higher 



