398 



Garden and Forest. 



[August 21, iS 



Place in Cambridge the same purpose is accomplished by a 

 low-terrace balustrade, half covered by creepers. 



" In grounds a little larger than the smallest, the securing of 

 some breadth of effect by means of grass should be attended 

 to next after the wall-plantings. If there is space enough to 

 get this openness and, at the same time, have some bushes 

 near the street line as well as next the house, so much the 

 better. Plant nothing which will grow to a size disproportion- 

 ate to the scene. Large trees on small lots are not only inap- 

 propriate, but they shade the ground excessively and make it 

 difficult to grow the indispensable ground-covering of shrubs. 

 Maintaining sufficient openness, plant shrubs also against the 

 naked fences, or grow climbers on them if space does not 

 permit of anything more. In large grounds give the house a 

 setting or background of appropriate trees. Where ,as in New 

 England, climate keeps deciduous plants lealiess half the year, 

 plant for effect in winter as carefully as for the summer ; use 

 all possible broad-leaved evergreens and all the cheerful fruit- 

 bearing and colored-stemmed shrubs, and for summer add 

 various sorts of foliage and bloom, but keep the whole scene 

 to its own appropriate style, admitting brilliant decoration only 

 in detail, and conspicuous single objects only rarely if at all. 

 If many flowers are desired, they should be grown in a garden 

 or in formal beds close beside the formal building. The per- 

 manent scene can be helped only in its details by the tempo- 

 rary beauty of bulbs and herl)s. 



"To appreciate that a house-scene depends for real effective- 

 ness upon its general design and not upon decoration, one 

 need only look upon some such ground as that of the Long- 

 fellow Place, before mentioned, where the planting consists of 

 two Elms supporting the sides of the house, creepers cover- 

 ing the balustrade at its base, and lilacs flanking the balustrade 

 and forming a hedge along the street-wall. The open space 

 of grass is well proportioned, and the whole scene is one 

 which, in its formal symmetrical style, is not surpassed for 

 effectiveness in all New England. Suitable general design is 

 just as effective in any other conceivable style." 



Among Oaks, Madrones and Redwoods. 



I HAVE just returned to San Francisco after a visit to that 

 portion of the Coast Range that lies between Austin Creek 

 and Russian River, in Sonoma County. From Cazadero, on 

 Austin Creek, eighty-nine miles north of San Francisco, I 

 drove about twelve miles east, over a mountain road of 

 wonderfully varied beauty, to Guei-neville, on Russian River, 

 and the Redwood forests there ; thence southwest along the 

 Russian to the mouth of Austin Creek, and up that stream to 

 Cazadero again, a total round of about thirty miles, and, all in 

 all, one of the most characteristic drives to be had anywhere 

 in the California mountains. 



The Azaleas were still in bloom in very large masses on 

 Austin Creek, near Cazadero. The Bohemian Club of San 

 Francisco have their summer camp here, in a grove of fine 

 Redwoods, on a " fiat" between the stream and the mountain. 

 The twenty acres of timber are valued at $20,000, and are a part 

 of the Montgomery estate of over 1,200 acres, on which no 

 Redwoods are to be cut for many years. Outside of this prop- 

 erty the waste and the ravages of fires are frightful. In al- 

 most every side-gulch are the remains of old lumber-camps. 

 A few men are working up the stumps for fuel for the railroad 

 company. In places the forest fires have destroyed the soil 

 and leaf-mould, leaving only the rocks, and even the hardy 

 Redwood sprouts have not survived. 



Ascending the mountain ridges east of the beautiful Red- 

 wood forests of Cazadero, the most striking features on the 

 summits are the groups of Oaks, both White and Black, and of 

 superb size and proportion. The way in which Oaks cluster 

 on the vast rock-masses that rise out of the mountain-tops 

 like ancient hill-forts is almost worth a separate paper. They 

 seem to crown old castle ruins or fallen Cyclopean walls, and 

 the form of the stratified rock-ledges adds to the illusion. 



The Madrone is one of the great features of this mountain 

 region. Hanging over a wild cafion was one whose trunk 

 girthed nearly twenty feet, and in spread of boughs it was 

 as large as a Valley Oak. Sometimes, for miles of travel 

 through the woods here, the scarlet Madrone stems, gleaming 

 under their broad green leaves, illuminate slope after slope, and 

 height after height. Stems of from half an inch up to five 

 or six inches in diameter stand in thickets with young Douglas 

 Spruce and Tan-bark Oaks in blossom. The color of the Ma- 

 drone, though a real scarlet at its brightest, begins in browns, 

 greens and yellows, and has more chameleon shades in sun 

 and shadow than any painter could hope to imitate. About 

 the base there are dark browns, streaked with yellows and 



dull scarlets when the thin husk of tlie outer bark falls apart 

 in veins or l)reaks off in flakes, till one can gather a handful 

 at the base of the tree. Below the beautifid crowns of leaves, 

 as large and almost as dark as the leaves of Magnolia grandi- 

 flora, the new wood is light, clear-hued green, yellowing 

 downward for several feet. Then comes the reign of a scarlet, 

 so delicate, so rich and firm and healthy, that one half believes 

 the remark of an old pioneer who was once lost at night on 

 these mountains. He said he " had to see his way by the 

 Mathrona stems ; they kep' the light an hour longer'n any- 

 thing else." 



No one knows the beauty of the Broad-leaved Maples who 

 has not seen them in the mountain woods. In the lowlands 

 they are plain Maples, very fair and large, with brown trunks 

 and large green leaves. On the mountains they have lovely 

 white and gray stems, and grow tall and graceful in clumps 

 of from ten to a hundred, at the heads of well-watered gulches. 

 Indeed, the bark become at times soresplendent for color that 

 I am tempted to say that these trees rival the New England 

 White Birches, and to call them the California Birch-Maples 

 of the Coast Range. The Buckeye shows much of the same 

 gray-white mottling of the bark, but the Maple is far the finest 

 in general effect. 



There are one or two farms on the very top of the moun- 

 tain, and hay-fields, orchards, and vineyards extend across the 

 heads of the ravines, but there will never be any more tillage 

 here than now. The mountains are too steep and rocky. It 

 is chiefly deciduous growth on the heights, chiefly conifers in 

 the gulches, and it is a natural forest-land for miles on miles. 

 The more intelligent men in this region see and acknowledge 

 the necessity for strict forest-laws before it is too late, and I 

 am told that in the best forest-belts there is comparatively little 

 pasturage, and few cattle or sheep are kept here. The moun- 

 tains are too steep. If two hundred and fifty square miles of 

 this region, extending north and south, could be put under a 

 forestry commission, or some safe supervision, it would 

 secure the permanence of all the streams that head here, and 

 water a territory half as large as the State of Connecticut. 



Guerneville is an old lumber camp, but it is situated on 

 a broad, deep and beautiful river, one of the largest in 

 the state, next to the San Joaquin and Sacramento, and it 

 has an immense tributary country of valleys, lesser foot- 

 hills, and "land for the fruit-grower." All about it are 

 giant stumps of fire-swept Redwoods,, with orchards and 

 pastures among them. The original forest that stood 

 here along the Russian River was a magnificent one, but 

 there is hardly a tree left, nor any young growth. Men 

 are beginning to saw the great stumps off close to the 

 ground, and work up the wood for fuel and ornamental 

 veneers, even down to the larger roots. I am told that the 

 blackened stumps in this district are estimated to contain two 

 million feet of valuable and marketal)le Redwood. They are 

 dead beyond peradventure, and this is the best thing to do, of 

 course. But it makes a man heart-sick to see how clean the 

 sweep has been. Fifty of the largest trees left scattered over 

 the valley would have glorified Guerneville forages to come. 

 In the very streets stand stumps of trees that were thirty and 

 forty feet in girth and three hundred feet in height. 



The Guerneville "basin" extends east. At the head of 

 the litde valley Col. J. B. Armstrong, a prominent Ohioan, 

 who settled here after the war, owns 800 acres of as fine 

 Redwood as exists in the state. The best 400 acres of 

 this he will leave uncut, and dedicate it to public use in 

 some educational and permanent way that will preserve it 

 forever. I spent long enough in the heart of this primeval 

 Redwood forest to feel its almost unique value. It has 

 not been smitten by an axe, nor is it pastured. The forest 

 shows every type of Redwood growth : single' trees, clumps 

 of twos, threes, fours, and so on, up to circles of ten or 

 twelve, about the roots of some giant of an earlier genera- 

 tion ; seemingly solid walls of green banked against a ravine ; 

 open lawns, where tall Laurels and Oaks grow, slender as the 

 Redwoods themselves. The very side-sprouts that grow up 

 beside the Redwoods are as large as the pines of many other 

 countries. The largest tree I measured was forty-seven feet 

 in girth, and three hundred and twenty-five feet high. If Col. 

 Armstrong's plans are carried out, and this superb forest is pre- 

 served, it seems to me that it will prove in the future one of the 

 most valuable of gifts that the people of any American state 

 have received from a citizen. What form the gift will take, or 

 how its permanent value will be maintained, I have not asked. 

 Col. Armstrong loves his forest with a great and abiding love, 

 and he can be depended upon to secure its perpetuity for future 

 students, botanists, and lovers of trees. 

 Niies, Cai. Charles H. Shinn. 



