434 



Garden and Forest. 



[September h, 1889. 



immense stretches of stave-timber in the United States ; 

 as some of the very best of it is not yet within reach of the 

 railroads, but the vast increase of wine-production in Cali- 

 fornia, and the fact that good stave-timber cannot be found 

 now anywhere in any quantity, except in our Southern 

 states, must have an influence upon the value of southern 

 hard-wood lands, and must in time destroy the forests of 

 Oak in these states, as it has in Virginia and in the valley 

 of the lower Ohio River. 



Drives and Walks. — I. 



IT is generally thought that in planning a country-place, 

 whether large or small, the main thing to be considered is 

 the situation of the house. Aspect and prospect — the way the 

 house will look to the passer-by or the approaching visitor, 

 and the way the landscape will look from its windows and 

 piazzas — are supposed to be considerations of such paramount 

 importance that the choice of a site may well be made and the 

 house constructed before anything else is arranged. Important 

 considerations these are indeed, yet there is another of quite as 

 much importance — one which must, indeed, be borne in mind 

 from the outset, if aspect and prospect themselves are to be 

 satisfactory in the end. This is the arrangement of the various 

 drives and walks which run through the property. Conve- 

 nience as well as beauty dictates that the position of the house 

 and its dependencies should not be fixed until this arrangement 

 has been mapped out. 



If the grounds are large, and their surface is not perfectly 

 flat and uniform, it may easily happen that the site which 

 seems best to the architect is one where the relative positions 

 of the high road and the entrance-front will be such that no 

 good approacli can be designed. For an approach to be good 

 there must be an easy turn-in from the high road ; the grade 

 within the gate must be as gentle as possible ; there must be 

 no sharp turns, dangerous alike to meeting vehicles and to 

 bordering turf ; the house must be well displayed to advanc- 

 ing eyes.; the ground must not be so intersected by the line of 

 gravel as to interfere with a beautiful arrangement of its parts, 

 and this line must not be a disagreeable object from the 

 house. Too often in the approach not one of these necessi- 

 ties is fulfilled, although all might have been fulfilled had the 

 house been properly placed. Sometimes even a change in 

 position, so slight that it would not have perceptively altered 

 either aspect or prospect in general, would have made all the 

 difference between a good approach and a bad one. It is folly, 

 we know, to force a landscape-gardener to lay out a straight 

 road where a curved one would look better, or a curved road 

 where a direct one would be more sensible, and therefore 

 more beautiful ; to compel him to run it over a hillock which 

 it might encircle, or down into a hollow and up again when it 

 might pass to one side ; to give him no convenient access to 

 the high road except at a point where turning-in is awkward ; 

 to forbid him to take in a good point of view which niight 

 easily be shown from the drive, or to show disagreeable ob- 

 jects which might be concealed. And yet it would be easy to 

 point to many new places where just such necessities have 

 been forced upon the landscape-gardener by an error in the 

 placing of the house, or where, to avoid them, he is com- 

 pelled to spend a large amount of money, and perhaps to 

 injure the general effect of the place, in altering the configura- 

 tion of the ground. When the position of the principal en- 

 trance relative to the high road and to the varieties of surface 

 in the ground is fixed, there is nothing left for him but to do 

 the best he can with his approach ; this often means some- 

 thing very different from the best that might have been done ; 

 and upon the character of the approach may depend the suc- 

 cess or failure of the place as a whole. 



In places of any size a curved entrance-drive is better than 

 a straight one. Naturally, there may be a case when a wide 

 straight avenue can, with advantage, be made in a direct line 

 through a great estate and leading to a house the architectural 

 majesty of which demands a very dignified approach. But 

 such cases rarely, if ever, occur in America. As a rule, what 

 we call a large place is not large according to English ideas, 

 at least in so far as the ornamental groimds are concerned ; 

 and a house which we consider stately, an Englishman would be 

 apt to call merely picturesque. Almost without exception, 

 therefore, wide straight approach roads are inadmissible in 

 this country except in public parks ; a curved road is better, 

 because less pretentious, easier to build and to drive upon, 

 unless the land be perfectly flat, more beautiful in itself, more 

 harmonious with the character of our buildings, and less strik- 

 ingly artificial. 



But as all roatls and walks are palpably artificial, no matter 

 how they may be designed or of what material they may be 

 composed, it is not good art to make too palpable an effort to 

 conceal the fact. The real reason for the existence of the 

 drive — its utility — should always be acknowledged to the eye 

 as well as practically secured. This means that, though the 

 api^iroach is curved, it shoukl not circle about to an excessive 

 degree, irrationally increasing the distance that must be trav- 

 ersed before the house can be reached, and, when its course 

 is overlooked from the house, wearing an unmeaning, wan- 

 dering look. English writers on landscape-gardening often 

 deplore the fact that in the effort to make a display of magni- 

 tude in the estate or to show various effective points of view, 

 an approach has been so laid out that it is positively irritating 

 to the visitor ; when he thinks he is near his destination he 

 finds himself carried away again, and sometimes this process 

 is repeated several times. In addition to the pretentiousness 

 and inconvenience of such an arrangement it injures the place 

 as a whole, for there is no more fundamental principle in the 

 art of gardening than that the fewer the roads and walks the 

 better, and the shorter their course, consistent with conven- 

 ience and good lines, the better, too. A line of gravel is not 

 a beautiful object in itself, it is conspicuous on accoimt of its 

 difference in color from the surrounding verdure ; and wher- 

 ever it comes it cuts a landscape composition in two as with 

 a knife. Its virtue lies in being at once as useful and as in- 

 conspicuous as possible. 



Old Mission San Jose Gardens. 



CALIFORNIA has but few old gardens, althougrh the Bidwell 

 grounds at Chico, the Fox Nurseries at San Jos^, and 

 some of the old Oakland and Sacramento homesteads date 

 back to the early fifties. Still older, belonging to a different 

 regime, are the old Mission gardens of the last century. Some 

 of these are still kept up ; others have fallen into decay, but 

 all are full of a tropical beauty of their own, because the Palm, 

 Olive, and the Vine so much predominate. One old estate, 

 within thirty-five miles of San Francisco, combines in a remark- 

 able degree the charm of the Spanish gardens of the eighteenth 

 century, and the charm of the early American gardens. I refer 

 to the Gallegos grounds, near the Mission San Jos6, planted 

 chiefly by the Beards and Elsworths, thirty and forty years 

 ago. 



The estate of Juan Gallegos includes six hundred and forty 

 acres of vineyard, besides large orchards and extensive pas- 

 tures. The twenty acres or so that immediately surround the 

 old mansion show as fine a lawn and landscape of native trees 

 as can be found in California. Besides this, there are some 

 trees which were planted by the Mission padres, old Pears and 

 Olives of sixty years groM'th. There are avenues of Figs, and 

 groves of Olives and Oranges, all large trees in full-bearing. 

 There are many Palms, large Pines, and choice specimens of 

 deciduous trees. On the hill slopes, east of the plateau, at the 

 base of Mission Peak, where the home-grounds are situated, 

 is an old avenue of Spanish-planted trees. Pears and Olives of 

 nearly a century's growth, which rank among the finest relics 

 of Mission gardens left in California'. 



E. L. Beard, a man of great al;ility and energy began farming 

 in Santa Clara Valley at this old Mission in the days of '4g-'5o. 

 He established a nursery here in 1852, sending an agent to 

 the Atlantic states for seeds, scions and young trees, which 

 were taken to California by way of Panama. In 1853 the 

 ordinary price of a one-year-old Cherry, Peach or Pear tree 

 was five dollars, and those who bought, and set out orchards, 

 found that, in 1857 and 1858, the fruit brought twenty-five cents 

 and more per pound. Mr. Beard, and his step-son, Henry 

 Elsworth, developed an orchard and wheat-farm which exten- 

 ded over an area of two thousand or more acres, in and about 

 the Mission San Jose. Their homestead tract, wliere plantings 

 of ornamental trees began early in the fifties, was the tract that 

 is now the heart of the Gallegos estate. We have seldom had 

 farmers on the Pacific coast who showed the intense love of 

 beautiful trees that Mr. Beard always did. His groves were on 

 rich, well-watered and sunny slopes. To these he brought 

 specimens of nearly all the native conifers of California, and 

 of many of our finest deciduous trees and ornamental shrubs. 

 His eastern connections enabled him to secure, and he planted 

 here, all the Spruces, Firs and Pines, to be had in eastern 

 nurseries. He also had Australian and Japanese correspon- 

 dents many years ago, and planted Acacias, Japanese Persim- 

 mons, and other imported trees, ten years before anyone else 

 had them. He ])lanted a great many Olives and Oranges in 

 groves and avenues ; large Fig groves, and many Palms. 

 Chestnuts, Walnuts, and other nut-bearing trees were grouped 



