98 



Garden and Forest. 



[February 27, 1889. 



of natural beauty as no money could purchase and no art 

 could presume to imitate." 



Mr. Carl Schurz is well known as an ardent advocate 

 of change in our national policy in many matters con- 

 nected with the tariff, taxation and trusts, and yet in 

 his recent address before the Commonwealth Club of this 

 city, he declared, as the result of his deliberate judgment, 

 that the forest problem was more important in its ulterior 

 consequences than were other economical questions. "If 

 I had the power," he said, "to choose for the country be- 

 tween an immediate reduction of tariff duties on the one 

 hand and the introduction of an effective forest policy on the 

 other, I should say, ' Let the people be burdened a little 

 longer by protected interests, for at a future day they can 

 change their system and retrieve their losses,' rather than 

 let the destruction of our forests go on at the present rate, 

 for that destruction may bring on a train of disaster from 

 which the country may never recover. " It is not the pur- 

 pose of Garden and Forest to take part in the discussion of 

 questions which divide the political parties of the country. 

 The words of Mr. Schurz are quoted to invite attention to 

 the estimate of the paramount importance of the national 

 forest problem made by a man who has some knowledge 

 of European forests, and who, as Secretary of the Interior, 

 has been in a position to gain special information as to the 

 wanton waste of the timber on our public domain. 



The movement to preserve the celebrated prehistoric 

 ruin of Casa Grande, in Arizona, deserves to succeed, 

 and as there appear to be no antagonistic interests, 

 it ought to be an easy matter to secure the requisite Con- 

 gressional action. Fortunately, the structure stands on a 

 "school section," and the territory of Arizona could be 

 compensated by the cession of another section of the public 

 land. Casa Grande stands in the midst of a region that 

 was extensively cultivated under irrigation by the ancient 

 inhabitants, and, after centuries of fallowness, it is now 

 coming under cultivation again by similar means through 

 modern enterprise. It is a rich soil, well adapted to semi- 

 tropical horticulture, and the preservation of this ancient 

 monument will add to the attractiveness of the section. 

 The movement to save Casa Grande originated with Mrs. 

 Mary Hemenway, of Boston, to whose public spirit 

 science and philanthropy are already deeply indebted. 



The Terrace Garden at Wellesley. 



THE Terrace Garden at Wellesley, Massachusetts, 

 which is shown in the illustration on p. 103, is 

 by far the finest example of an ' ' Italian garden " with 

 clipped trees and hedges that exists in America. Indeed, 

 so far as we know, it is the only important example of 

 this style to be found here. In the year 1851, we may 

 read in Downing's " Landscape Gardening," Mr. H. H. 

 Hunnewell, of Boston, selected a portion of an old family 

 estate of many hundred acres on the bank of Wellesley 

 Lake, and laid out a country place of some two hundred 

 acres, about forty of which were devoted to ornamental 

 grounds in the vicinity of the house. These forty acres 

 consisted of a "flat, sandy, arid plain which . . . was 

 more or less covered with a tangled growth of dwarf 

 Pitch Pine, Scrub Oak and Birch, all of which were cut 

 down and plowed up." The ground was then prepared 

 for planting, a nursery was established for which the stock 

 was chiefly imported from England, and the place quickly 

 assumed a cultivated and promising aspect. " The house 

 . . . was then built, having ... on one side a fine ex- 

 tent of simple and dignified lawn, and on the other a 

 French parterre or architectural garden with fountains, 

 bordered by heavy balustrades, surmounted at intervals by 

 vases, with steps leading through a series of terraces to 

 the lake, a fine sheet of water of about a mile in extent 

 having a peculiarly varied and beautiful outline. From 

 this French parterre stretches off on the right the ornamen- 



tal or English pleasure-grounds, a part of the same view. 

 . . . From this we pass along the lake to the Italian gar- 

 den. . . . To Mr. Hunnewell we believe is due the merit 

 of having first attempted to clip our White Pine, and the 

 result shows that it bears the shears quite as well as the 

 Hemlock or Yew; though in this garden are equally suc- 

 cessful specimens of clipped Norway Spruces, Balsam Firs, 

 Arbor Vitae, the English Maple, the Beech, and Scotch Firs. 

 From the Italian garden we cross the avenue into a wood 

 through which winds a walk, planted on either side with 

 a very extensive and satisfactory pinetum, containing all 

 the rarest and newest Conifers and evergreen shrubs, which, 

 with the slightest protection from the winter's sun, seem 

 to thrive exceedingly well. Among other features of this 

 place . . . are various vistas through different avenues 

 planted for this purpose — some of Purple Beech, others of 

 White Pine — all of which will in a few years become very 

 interesting and effective." 



The editor of the second edition of Mr. Downing's works 

 wrote thus in 1858, when the place had been in hand but 

 seven years. Its success was already so well established 

 and its beauty so great that he could take it as his text 

 for declaring that "if two places of the same size were 

 commenced the same day by persons of equal taste, 

 knowledge and means, one a wood and the other a naked 

 plain, at the end of ten years the naked plain would be the 

 finer and more satisfactory." 



Although his description dates from thirty years ago, it 

 might be couched in the same words, though with in- 

 creased emphasis, were it penned to-day. During the in- 

 tervening years Wellesley has remained in Mr. Hunne- 

 well's hands, and his reputation among American horticul- 

 turists is so wide-spread that there is no necessity here to 

 explain that the place has constantly received the most 

 loving and skillful attention. It is indeed a wonderful 

 place to have been wholly created in less than forty years, 

 and no stronger evidence of its owner's devotion to it 

 could be cited than the way in which the Italian garden 

 has flourished. Perfect results are absolutely necessary if 

 topiary works are to be anything but ragged and hideous de- 

 formities. To fail to produce absolutely symmetrical, full 

 and luxuriant forms is to spoil the trees that Nature had de- 

 signed, and leave nothing but ruins in their stead. But at 

 Wellesley there are no failures and no ruins. A great 

 variety is shown in the formal shapes as well as in the 

 species of trees selected ; but in each case the form has 

 been admirably attained, and the species has been made 

 absolutely docile beneath the shears. It is hard to say 

 which tree gives the best result, clipped thus to a smooth 

 wall of green ; but the White Pine, most interesting from 

 its novelty in such a shape, is, perhaps, paramount also in 

 soft delicacy and beauty of surface. This, in its natural 

 estate the most picturesque of our native trees, seems the 

 tenderest and most charming when it assumes the form of 

 a solid mass of foliage. The hedge to the left of the fore- 

 ground in our picture is of Hemlock, while the White Pine 

 shows in the dark tree, cut into three stages, near its ex- 

 tremity. The hedge with the conical masses rising from it 

 that leads away from the centre of the foreground is of 

 English Beech ; another White Pine, again cut into several 

 stages, shows near the broad walk by the lake, and the 

 slender pyramidal trees on the second terrace are Norway 

 Spruces. Admirable results, strange as it may seem, have 

 been obtained by clipping the European Larch, which had 

 not before been used in this way. In early spring the 

 compact masses of pale, tender green of this tree are par- 

 ticularly charming. The immediate vicinity of the lake 

 and the classic shape of the boat-house give somewhat the 

 illusion of a real Italian scene, and its effect as one comes 

 upon it in the midst of characteristic New England scenery 

 is very striking. Whether it is an entirely harmonious 

 effect — whether such a garden is a thing to be desired in a 

 rural situation in America— is a question that may be left 

 to individual tastes to decide. Such gardens certainly 

 should not be used everywhere or very often ; but those 



