March 27, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



145 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED /tH SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



EonoRiAi. Ariicles : — The Improvement of Villages. — Pruning Shrubs. — 

 Organizing for Forest Preservation. — The Practice of Landscape- 



Gardenlng. — Tree Growth in California 145 



The Art of Gardening. — An Historical Sketch, IL— Egypt. 



Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer. 147 



The Cedar of Lebanon (with illustrations) 147 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 150 



CuLTUKAL Department : — Asparagus for the Home Garden W. F. Massey. 150 



Primroses T. D. Hatfield. 151 



Orchid Notes F. Goldring. 152 



Galanthus Elwesii. —Ornamental Grasses. — Astilbe Japonica aureo- 



reticulata E. O. Orpct. 152 



PlantNotes: — Berberis Lycium George Nicholson. 152 



Principles of Physiological Botany. XIII Professor George Lincoln Goodale. 153 



Correspondence 154 



Recent Publications 154 



Periodical Literature 155 



Notes 156 



Illustrations : — A Cedar of Mount Lebanon, Fig. loi 149 



The Cedars at Wilton House 151 



The Improvement of Villages. 



A LADY interested in the development and improve- 

 ment of her town, and recently appointed one of 

 the managers of a newly organized Village Improvement 

 Society, writes to ask in what way she can best exert 

 her influence to further the aims \vhich the founders of 

 the Society had in mind when it was created ; or, in 

 other words, what she and her associate Directors can 

 do to improve the sanitar)^ condition and the appear- 

 ance of the town. It is situated in New England not 

 far from one of the smaller cities, and it has long 

 been famous for its rural beauty. The township is large, 

 and contains a number of villages. A part of the popu- 

 lation, living at one extremity of the town, is almost exclu- 

 sively devoted to manufacturing, while other parts are 

 occupied by the expensive villas of many summer resi- 

 dents. The population is unusually heterogeneous. The 

 increase of the manufacturing population and the influx 

 of persons seeking summer homes have had the inevita- 

 ble result; and the improvements of recent years, to use a 

 familiar, but not always a very appropriate, expression, 

 have destroyed a great deal of the rural and sylvan charm 

 which once made this, town beautiful, and desirable as a 

 place of residence. The inhabitants, naturally, are now 

 anxious to do something to restore the lost beauty, or, 

 at least, to preserve that which remains, and to adopt 

 some general scheme of improvement suited to the 

 changed conditions of the town and to the changed 

 requirements of its inhabitants. It is not, of course, 

 practicable, or within our sphere, to give a specific plan 

 of improvement for any particular town or property ; and 

 all that is expected of us in this particular case is some 

 general statement calculated to provoke discussion and the 

 consideration of the general principles which seem to 

 underlie the whole question of rural town-improvement. 



The object of the founders of Village Improvement Socie- 

 ties is clearly to improve the sanitary condition of towns 

 and their general appearance, and in this way to improve 

 the well-being of the inhabitants, and then to elevate their 

 intelligence, stimulate their love of Nature and develop 



their artistic feelings. The first requisite for the accom- 

 plishment of this purpose is to secure for the people of the 

 town an abundant supply of pure water and a good system 

 of sewerage-removal for the villages and for the isolated 

 dwellings. These are the principal requisites for insuring 

 the health of a community. This being accomplished, the 

 preservation of natural scenery and rural beauty, the im- 

 provement of roads, the planting of shade trees, the deco- 

 ration of public squares, the beautifying of school-grounds 

 and the surroundings of railway-stations, the removal of 

 obnoxious and unauthorized advertisements, the practice 

 of thrift and neatness, should all in turn occupy the 

 attention of the officers of the Improvement Society. 



No one will deny that these things are necessary and 

 important, or that a town in which such matters are 

 carefully looked after is a much better place to live in 

 than the ordinary American village. But how can these 

 improvements be brought about } How is an independent 

 body of industrious, public-spirited and intelligent indi- 

 viduals to make themselves felt in the administration 

 of the affairs of a large town } It is evident that 

 they must rely upon some method of more general 

 application than those adopted by societies of this charac- 

 ter in small country towns, in which a few men and 

 women are permitted to plant trees at their own expense, 

 and to see that no injury comes to them after they are 

 planted. For this is what the Village Improvement So- 

 cieties meant in their early days in many small New Eng- 

 land villages. 



The executive committee of a society, however large 

 its membership, could hardly operate with any prospect 

 of success in a thickly populated town covering many 

 square miles of territory by any direct personal process ; 

 and it seems to us that its only chance of success lies in 

 its ability to impress its ideas upon the community 

 through the education of public sentiment. A society 

 working independently — that is, undertaking to improve 

 a town, or any part of it, at their own expense — would find 

 themselves at once in conflict with the local town officials, 

 and this conflict of authority would necessarily injure 

 their efficiency and usefulness. The sphere of such a so- 

 ciety to be really useful must be educational, and must 

 depend on the increased intelligence of the communit)^ for 

 obtaining from the town officers and from the citizens 

 themselves the improvements good taste and the highest 

 interests of the town demand. The directors of a society 

 will find more than enough to occupy their time if they 

 approach the subject from this direction, and they will 

 find, too, that progress based on popular intelligence will 

 be more permanent and more satisfactory than if it is the 

 result of isolated individual effort. 



The first duty of the officers of the society to which we 

 have referred is to raise from their public-spirited fellow- 

 citizens a good round sum of money, for education and 

 reform cost money ; having secured this, let them begin 

 an educational crusade against popular ignorance and 

 indifference to everything connected with public health, 

 convenience and taste. Let them combat this ignorance 

 and this indifference in every way in their power — by the 

 diffusion of sound advice through the press and by special 

 publications, through the lips of clergymen and school- 

 teachers, by popular lectures, and by all the other methods 

 which, once set in motion, have never yet failed to quicken 

 the pulse and stimulate the intelligence of the American 

 people. 



This is the way, and the only way, in which an individ- 

 ual or an association of individuals in one of our com- 

 munities can make its influence felt in a lasting manner. 

 And this is the advice we offer to our correspondent. 

 Make yourself and your co-workers educators in the first 

 place, and then censors ; and when anything is done in 

 your town which is calculated to injure it or the welfare 

 of its inhabitants, let the fact be known in such a wa)^that 

 there can be no mistake about it. Your influence will in- 

 crease and spread, and gradually but surely you will ac- 



