September i8, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



447 



The Art of Gardening — An Historical Sketch. 



X. — Greece (Continued). 



T^ROM what has already been said with regard to the pau- 

 -^ city of descriptive writing of any kind among tlie Greeks, 

 it will be understood why it is difficult to divine just how their 

 gardens were disposed. That they were largely formal in 

 arrangement cannot be doubted. -Such was clearly the case 

 in public gardens like the Academy and Altis at 01ym]:)ia; and 

 the nature of the Greek mind, the way in which it conceived 

 all kinds of beauty, indicates that the art which entirely con- 

 ceals art could not have been its ideal even in the most pri- 

 vate pleasure-groimd. But by a Grecian orderliness and l)al- 

 ance we need not understand an Egyptian rigidity of design. 

 A certain measure of symmetry and architectonic dignity must 

 have been desired; but grace, too, was essential to the Greek, 

 and the symmetry he loved did not exclude variety. Even a 

 discreet degree of picturesqueness may well have added 

 charm to his garden effects, as is implied, indeed, by the fact 

 that grottoes were used no less than formal Ijasins in which 

 swans disported themselves. From the character of his other 

 works of art we may believe that he planted his trees now in 

 parallel lines, but now in well contrasted varied groups ; that 

 he never clipped them into imnatural shapes, and never ob- 

 jected to a graceful irregularity of growth if it did not pass into 

 patent eccentricity or combine in awkward ways with the om- 

 nipresent architectural forms. 



The favorite ornamental tree witli the Greeks was the Plane, 

 on accoimt of its thick, wide-spreading shade. The Pine and 

 the Cypress stood next in favor as garden-trees. Thefimereal 

 significance of the Cypress, recognized by all the ancient peo- 

 ples, as well as by the Orientals and Europeans of our day, 

 probably had its origin in Persia. Here it was believed that 

 the first Cypress came direct from heaven to Zoroaster, and 

 the tree was regarded with peculiar reverence as symbolizing 

 by its pyramidal shape the fiames which were worshipped as 

 themselves the emblem of the " principle of light." InGreece, 

 as elsewhere, the Cypress was constantly planted by tombs, 

 and was prominent along those suburban streets which were 

 lined with the monuments of the honored dead. But it was 

 thought no less appropriate for pleasure-gardens, where its 

 formal outlines harmonized well with architectural features. 

 It appears, too, that tombs were sometimes placed in gardens. 

 Lyciu'gus, the orator, is said to have been buried in a private 

 garden at Athens. 



The Oak was another favorite and sacred tree ; so, too, the 

 Poplar. The reverence bestowed upon the Olive, and its part 

 in the story of the founding of Athens, need hardly be referred 

 to. But it may be explained that Olives and fruit-trees of all 

 kil^ds were regarded by the ancients as garden-trees, and often 

 formed the temple grove. No such line as we draw to-day 

 was then drawn between useful and ornamental trees, or 

 even, it seems, between vegetables and flowers. Plutarch 

 even declared that the best way to show the beauty of Roses 

 and Violets was to plant them, for contrast, among Cabbages 

 and Onions. No shrub was more beloved in Greece than the 

 Myrtle and the Laurel, needed for many religious rites, and no 

 flower more than the Violet, the flower of Athene, the em- 

 blem of Athens itself, the " City of the Violet Crown." 



It is impossible to decipher from the curtness of contempo- 

 rary records just where or how flowers were grown for sale in 

 Greece, although mention is' made of their cultivation near 

 temples, and fiower-markets were held at stated intervals in the 

 squares of Athens. It was only in later days, however, that 

 they were profusely used. The simple taste of early times 

 desired no more striking ornament than a crown of leaves. 

 Coronals of flowers, says Pliny, were not employed until about 

 the looth Olympiad — B. C. 380. Nor at any time had the 

 Greeks a great variety of flowers. Roses, Lilies, Hyacinths, 

 Violets, and the blossoms of fruit-trees and shrubs were those 

 with which they were most familiar. 



By the time of Alexander, the Persian love for gardens and 

 parks, with many other forms of luxury, had obtained a strong 

 foothold among the Greeks, especially in their wealthy colo- 

 nies ; and wherever the conqueror's footsteps are followed we 

 read of admiration for the works of the Persians and of a de- 

 sire to imitate them in new constructions. When Harpalus 

 was left governor of the province of Babylon he was desirous, 

 says Plutarch, " to adorn the palace gardens and walks with 

 Grecian plants, and succeeded in raising all but the Ivy, 

 which the earth would not bear, but constantly killed."* 



*" But such digressions," adds Plutarch, " tlip impatient reader will be more 

 willing to pardon if they are kept within a moderate compass." The modern 

 reader would be less impatient it the compass had been wider ! Diodorus, by the 

 way, tells that when they were returning from India, where likewise the Ivy did 



When the city of Alexandria was laid out " in the form of a 

 plethrum or military cloak," its vast palaces and public build- 

 ings were surroiuided with squares and gardens to such an 

 extent that, buildings and grounds together, a third of the 

 space within the walls was absorbed. Dinocrates (or Dino- 

 chares) was the architect to whom the work was confided ; 

 and it was he who conceived the idea of carving Mount Athos 

 into a statue of Alexander " with a citj' in the right hand and 

 a reservoir of mountain streams in the left." Is such a 

 scheme entitled to be ranked among landscape-gardening de- 

 signs ? And if not, where shall we place it ? for it can hardly 

 be called engineering, since beauty, not utility, was the main 

 object in view. At all events it remains the most ambitious 

 idea that was ever conceived with regard to the adornment of 

 the surface of the earth. 



Lucian tells us that at Cnidos there was a great pleasure- 

 ground dedicated to Venus, where even " distinguished citi- 

 zens " enjoyed themselves on the verdant meadows, and 

 where the common people came in crowds on holidays ; and 

 he mentions its Cypresses, Planes and Myrtles. In Sicily, 

 where luxury went hand in hand with tyranny, gardening 

 seems to have been practised in an especially sumptuous 

 way. Dionysius of Syracuse had famous gardens where his 

 feasts were held ; one of the Hieros built a war-galley in 

 which the poop-deck was covered with earth and beautifully 

 planted ; and some modern writers have thought that the fa- 

 mous quarry-pits near Syracuse, where the Athenians per- 

 ished in agony, were afterwards planted as pleasure-gardens. f 



About 300 years before Christ, Kotys, King of Thrace, 

 " took his pleasure by a cool stream " in a forest through 

 which he had built " level roads." A hundred years later, 

 near Athens itself, Herodius Atticus possessed a villa sur- 

 rounded by large forests, which is spoken of by Aulus Gellius 

 in his Attic Nights ; and when Xenophon retired from his na- 

 tive country to Scillus, near Olympia, he erected an exact 

 copy, on a smaller scale, of the temple of Diana at Ephesus, 

 surrounded it with a similar "grove of cultivated trees bear- 

 ing whatever fruits are eatable at the different seasons," and 

 had spacious hunting-grounds in its vicinity. 

 New York. M. G. Van Rensselaer. 



Notes Upon Some North American Trees. — X. 



172. Myrsine Rapanea, Roam, and Schult. This plant 

 does not appear to assume anywhere in Florida an arbor- 

 escent habit, and there seems no reason for retaining it in 

 the American Silva. 



180. BuMELiA spiNOSA, A. DC. Professor Gray, in the 

 second edition of the "Synoptical Flora of North America," 

 reduces this so far as r,elates to the Texas and Arizona plant 

 to a variety oi Bumelia lanugiyiosa, — the var. rigida. 



182. Bumelia cuNEATA, Svv. The Florida and west Texan 

 tree, which has been referred to this species of Swartz, is 

 not, it appears (Gray, /. c. ), that plant; and Professor 

 Gray has, therefore, taken up for it Nuttall's name, B. an- 

 guslifolia (Sylva iii., 38, /. 93). Bumelia reclinaia, Torrey 

 (Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. ), not of Ventenat, a small tree of 

 the Rio Grande Valley (Havard in Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. 

 viii., 510) is referred to this species. 



Fraxinus cuspid.\ta, Torrey. This handsome Ash of the 

 section Ornus must find a place in the Sylva immediately 

 before Fraxinus Greggii. Often a shrub, especially towards 

 the northern limits of its distribution, in Texas, notably in 

 the mountain caiions ofChihuahua.it becomes a handsome 

 tree, with a trunk six to eight inches in diameter (C. G. 

 Pringle, in Garden and Forest, i., 142); and I have seen it 

 nearly of the same size in the neighborhood of Saltillo. 



189. Fraxinus Greggii, Gray. This species is abundant 

 on the high slopes of the Sierra Madre, near IMoiitere)^ 

 where it becomes sometimes a handsome small tree. Our 

 illustration upon page 451 of this issue, made from a pho- 

 tograph taken last summer by Mr. Pringle in these moun- 

 tains, will serve to give an idea of the habit of this tree 

 and of its surroundings on the Sierra Madre. 



not grow, Alexander and his bod\ -giiard made a long e.xcursion to see a mountain 

 whei'e it Hourished, and si>ent a day in Bacchic ecstasies and banquets, so great 

 was their pleastn'e at beholding it again — a statement which certainly implies a 

 strong love for the beautiful products of nature. 



f Franz von Lohci' : "Sizilicn und Neapel." For a description of the present 

 aspect of these quarries and their luxuriant vegetation see Symonds's " Sketches 

 in Italy and Greece." 



