62 



Garden and Forest. 



[February 6, 1889. 



growing things take shape, although these are incidental 

 stages, and the completed picture may be quite another 

 thing than that out of which it is evolved. But, as in the 

 growth of every organism, there are periods where ugli- 

 ness temporarily prevails, especially in its beginnings; so 

 it is in the creation of a landscape. In more advanced 

 stages, also, there may be moments when the beauty of 

 the scene might, for the time being, be heightened by 

 making some change in the plan, but it would be at the 

 cost of a lasting mutilation of the whole. To judge a 

 painter's work while it is in progress, and to demand 

 changes, because some effect of underglaze, for instance, 

 that was intended to heighten the beauty coming from 

 succeeding brush-strokes, chanced to be distasteful, would 

 be the height of folly. But in the work of the landscape- 

 maker effects equally transitory are more slow in pass- 

 ing, and are likely to become the pretext for demanding 

 a change on the part of the ignorant or misunderstanding. 



Therefore an essential thing in the administration of a 

 public park is to provide some means by which the faith- 

 ful execution of the original design can be assured. 

 A public park, in order to be well administered, should 

 have a management of the most permanent character 

 possible. In Germany are to be found the best public 

 parks in Europe, and a leading feature of German munici- 

 pal government is its stability. While the power comes 

 directly from the people, and the form is, therefore, fully 

 as democratic as ours, there is in all departments a per- 

 manency of tenure for all officials, from the mayor down, 

 equal to that prevailing habitually in our private busi- 

 ness corporations. The result is, a continuedly harmoni- 

 ous administration of public works by competent and 

 experienced men that assures the most economical and 

 satisfactory results. 



The adoption of such a system with us would be hardly 

 practicable until experience had taught us the unsatis- 

 factoriness of our present methods by more severe lessons 

 than have yet been received. It seems possible, how- 

 ever, to attain a permanency of park administration in 

 another way. There is an increasing tendency to intrust 

 the management of public libraries, museums and like 

 institutions to boards of trustees, incorporated bodies 

 independent of the city government, but still public insti- 

 tutions sustained by public support. The parks of a city 

 can as appropriately be administered in this way as can 

 a public library or art museum. They form an institu- 

 tion by themselves, sanitary, educational and aesthetic in 

 nature, and it is equally important that they should be 

 kept free from the complications and uncertainties of local 

 poHtics. The customary park commissions, although often 

 admirably constituted, have the great drawback of a liability 

 to sudden, and, perhaps, complete change of personalit)^ 

 Under such conditions the best results could hardly be 

 looked for, and it is something of a wonder that our 

 parks have been maintained as well as they have. Under 

 well organized boards of trustees, like that, for example, 

 which has built up the Boston Public Library, and has 

 made it the most successful institution of its kind, we 

 might hope for an escape from many of the dangers now 

 attendmg park administration. 



The Artistic Aspects of Trees. — VI. The Lombardy 

 Poplar and the Weeping Willow. 



GOOD taste is required for the grouping of all kinds of 

 trees if the results are to have the harmony which is 

 the only quahty that, in the long run, can satisfy the eye. 

 But if this is true of trees in general, it is doubly true of 

 those which are eccentric in form or color, like the Lom- 

 bardy Poplar, the Weeping Willow, the White Birch or 

 the Purple Beech. 



No tree has a more marked individuality or is more 

 effective in the right place, than the Lombardy Poplar, but 

 no tree looks worse when wrongly placed. If its con- 

 stitution were more vigorous it would be well adapted to 



street planting when the street is narrow, because with it 

 a certain amount of verdure can be secured without too 

 great an interference with sunshine. But the slender 

 shadow it casts renders it, on the other hand, ill adapted 

 for roadside planting where shade would be grateful. 

 Nevertheless, as planted by the highways of Belgium, 

 France and northern Italy it has dignity and beauty. Its 

 stiff, aspiring form brings more accent into such wide, level, 

 featureless landscapes than would the round, umbrageous 

 forms of other trees. This gives no warrant, however, for 

 planting it along winding roads or in mountainous or 

 wooded districts. Nor does it appear well in isolation, un- 

 supported by a long straight line of its fellows or by lower 

 masses of foliage; nor when planted in groups; nor yet 

 when its sharp top is seen rising here and there at random 

 out of a wood. One- or two Lombardy Poplars carefully 

 set in a plantation just where they are needed to relieve 

 its general softness and to break the sky-line with a touch 

 of vigor and emphasis, are often most effective. On the 

 border of the lake in the Central Park, not far from its 

 western extremity, are two or three tall Poplars standing 

 on a little promontory. Their effect is admirable, and no 

 other tree in just this spot would have so good an effect. 

 But perhaps the best place of all for the Lombardy Poplar 

 is among other trees beside a low cottage. In many Eu- 

 ropean villages it is thus seen, and in many beautiful 

 pictures it gives dignity and individuality to a composition 

 which, without it, would be tame and commonplace, for 

 the tree is almost as effective in its own little scene as a 

 village spire in the larger scene of which it forms a part. 



Wholly different in character is the Weeping Willow, and 

 yet its unusually pliant, drooping expression makes it as con- 

 spicuous as the rigid uprightness of the Poplar itself. As soon 

 as it comes before the eye, it presents a striking contrast to 

 the simple dignity of those trees which determine the 

 general character of every landscape. Easy of cultiva- 

 tion, rapid of growth, not particular about soils or sit- 

 uations, and putting forth its leaves very early in the 

 spring ; attractive, too, to many eyes by reason of its 

 super-sentimental air, the Weeping Willow has been 

 planted everywhere, and opportunities do not lack, in 

 nearly every country, for estimating its fitness to this 

 situation or to that. Nevertheless, it is hard to say in 

 what situation it looks best. It has not nobility enough 

 to stand by itself, and it does not group harmoniously 

 with any other tree. Once in awhile in a Japanese 

 picture we see a small Weeping Willow planted by a cas- 

 cade, which has a charming effect. This is because the 

 lines of the falling water harmonize with its own, and be- 

 cause, so to speak, the cascade seems to give the tree an 

 excuse for its abnormal habit. To group it with round- 

 headed trees means contrast without harmony, and this 

 is still more emphatically the case if there is substituted for 

 soft, deciduous foliage, the stiffer, more horizontal forms 

 of conifers. In a street its pendulous weakness conflicts 

 disagreeably with the rigidity of architectural lines ; and 

 even when we think a great Weeping Willow looks well 

 drooping over and protecting a rural cottage, we cannot 

 but decide that some other tree would look better, ex- 

 pressing still more clearly the idea of protection through 

 its greater sturdiness. A cottage with a Weeping Wil- 

 low beside it looks better than a cottage bare of fo- 

 liage ; but an Elm or a Maple of equal size would replace 

 the Willow to very great advantage. But the spot most 

 often chosen for the Weeping Willow is one where it may 

 droop over a stream or a sheet of placid water. Perhaps, 

 however, this is the very place where its faults are most 

 manifest. A Willow is, indeed, very often the best tree 

 that can be chosen for the border of a stream or lake, but 

 not a Weeping Willow. All the virtues of this tree — the 

 delicate character of its spray, the tender, pallid color of its 

 leaves, and their twinkling, airy grace— are possessed by 

 other Willows which are free from its defects. The 

 White Willow of Europe, for instance, now thoroughly 

 naturalized in our Northern States, is much more individual 



