458 



Garden and Forest. 



[September 25, 1889. 



cutting down the trees, and making a desert of its stretches 

 of greensward. The future of the city parks in this coun- 

 try is by no means secure — nor will it be, until the people 

 generally understand that these parks have a function to 

 fulfil which is quite as distinct as that of churches and 

 schools and libraries, and until it comes to be a general 

 and unquestioned belief that these pleasure-grounds are ab- 

 solutely indispensable to the well-being of those who are 

 subjected to the complex conditions of modern city life. 



Drives and Walks. — III. 



IN a preceding chapter we discussed the laying-out of a 

 road on a place where the lawn is large enough to be 

 crossed by it. When is this the case ? Only when the lawn 

 is so extensive tliat the drive will not be conspicuous froin 

 the house, or, at all events, from the principal side — when a 

 wide space in front of the house can be left undisturbed by 

 its intrusive, artificial line. That is to say, a drive should 

 really never cross a lawn, although it may divide one lawn 

 from another that can be treated as an almost independent 

 picture. As a feature in a picture a road or walk is always 

 to be deplored ; but as a frame which encircles a picture it 

 may be made inoffensive, and sometimes, with its bordering 

 plantations, actually advantageous. Too wide and open a 

 prospect is not desirable any more than one too cramped 

 and crowded ; while plantations are often needed to justify 

 the course of the road, they are also needed to adorn it to 

 the eyes of those who pass over it. Trees and shrubs may 

 explain its curvatures, and it may explain the presence of 

 shadowing foliage and attractive lower masses of green. Each 

 helps the other by giving it a reason for existence, and both 

 together may be beautifully brought into the middle distance 

 at the side of a landscape picture, framing the foreground 

 and affording glimpses, more attractive than a wholly unob- 

 structed view, into the landscape beyond. 



To preserve a wide expanse of lawn in front of a house is 

 in itself sufficient excuse for carrying the road to one side. If 

 a minor curve is justified by the wish to preserve a fine tree, 

 so a general deflection from the direct line of approach is 

 justified by the wish to secure that broad stretch of green 

 which is the most beautiful of all possible adjuncts to a 

 house, which is the indispensable foreground in any nat- 

 ural picture where utter wildness of aspect is not desired. 

 A carefully clipped and tended lawn is the first thing to 

 be secured where there is any comparatively level ground ; 

 where the house is anything but the simplest cottage, and 

 where the rest of the place is to be "kept up" by the 

 gardener's hand. If place and purse are so modest that 

 the expense of turfing and clipping cannot be incurred, then 

 a stretch of meadow left in its natural condition is essential ; 

 and in either case it is equally necessary that, to produce the 

 right effect of breadth and peacefulness, the grass should be 

 kept as free as possible from roads and walks. 



To secure a good lawn where it can be most enjoyed — to 

 keep the approach from cutting into two parts what ought to 

 be an harmonious picture opposite the chief windows — it is 

 best not to have the entrance front of the house and the 

 lawn front the same. Even though the highway may lie op- 

 posite the front where the lawn must be made, the approach 

 ought, if possible, to be carried to a door which lies in 

 another side. There will be no look of caprice in such an 

 arrangement, for where the front door is, there, of necessity, 

 the road must go. It will not suffice to carry the road to one 

 side, leaving an agreeable expanse of lawn, and then bring it 

 along close by the house to a door in the lawn-front. This 

 is a very cominon arrangement but a very bad one. If a 

 road crossing the lawn in full sight of the chief windows and 

 piazzas is offensive, still more so is a road rurming between 

 the house and and the lawn, forming a barren streak in the 

 immediate foreground of the picture, and preventing that 

 imion of the house-foundations with the grass which it is so 

 important to secure. Worse than anything else, however, is 

 the wide sweep we constantly see, where, between house and 

 lawn, a road returns upon itself. No one would ruin a fine 

 painted landscape by pasting a strip or great circle of gray 

 paper over the lower part of the foreground; yet this is just 

 what hundreds of owners do with strips and circles of gray 

 gravel in their natural landscapes. And how much pleasanter 

 is it for the foot to step from door or window or piazza di- 

 rectly to the grass than to be obliged to cross a stretch of 

 dusty or muddy road ! 



In these last paragraphs we find another reason why, as was 



said in a former paper, the house should not be planned or 

 placed until the roadways have been mapped out. A want of 

 consideration in placing the main entrance may easily ruin the 

 chance, not only for a good approach, but for a good lawn as 

 well. Neither architect nor owner can always tell where it 

 will be best to make the lawn any more than where it will 

 be best to run the roads. The front-door is the end of 

 the approach, and not to consult the landscape-gardener with 

 regard to its position is to strike, without his consent, the key- 

 note which must govern his whole arrangement. 



What has been said with regard to the length of roads ap- 

 plies also to their width — the less there is of them in either 

 direction the better. A drive where vehicles meet should be 

 wide enough to allow them to pass without danger to them- 

 selves or the borders, but anything in excess of this should 

 be studiously avoided ; and if a turning-place must be pro- 

 vided near the house, the oval should be made as narrow as 

 convenience will allow, or the road should be carried around 

 a plantation of some sort. Here again, however, the planta- 

 tion should not be a flower-bed. It should not look as 

 though it had been put in to fill up a sweep which had 

 been made too large ; it should not look as though it 

 existed because of the road. The road should look as 

 though it took the encircling curve because there was an ob- 

 stacle to its turning short upon itself which it was desirable to 

 preserve. And the exact character of this obstacle should be 

 regulated by surrounding things, and especially by those 

 which lie opposite the door. If it is well to shut out some- 

 thing unattractive, then a shrubbery or low-growing tree may 

 fill the space ; or, if it is well that the eye should have free 

 passage, then a tree with higher branches may be chosen. 



A Cypress Avenue at Verona. 



'"PHE avenue of Cypress trees shown in our illustration, on 

 ■^ page 464, forms the most conspicuous feature of the gar- 

 den of the Villa Giusti, in the city of Verona. The villa itself, 

 a Renaissance building, is not of great architectural impor- 

 tance, nor are the gardens very extensive, covering, perhaps, 

 an acre and a half of ground. But they are beautifully laid 

 out in the true Italian style, and there is nothing in all Italy 

 finer in its way than this Cypress avenue. The trees are prob- 

 ably some four hundred years old, and most of them are in 

 fine condition, although one of those shown in the picture 

 died a few years ago. At the end of the avenue is a series of 

 marble terraces, each affording a more beautiful view than 

 the last of the lovely, ancient city with its wide river, Roman 

 amphitheatres and soaring mediaeval towers. Beyond the 

 balustraded top, as we see, still other Cypresses are planted. 

 In Goethe's "Italian Journey " he speaks with enthusiasm of 

 the situation of the Giusti gardens and of their unrivalled 

 Cypresses, and fancies that the pyramidally-clipped Yews of 

 northern Europe may have been imitations of such admirable 

 natural forms. Yet the Romans had clipped the Cypress itself 

 to form " verdant walls " in their gardens, and cut it into the 

 most fantastic shapes — representing, for instance, fleets of 

 ships and hunters following their prey. 



The genus Cupressus includes a number of species which 

 are natives of southern Europe, Asia, Mexico and California ; 

 and the vernacular name "Cypress" is also given to other 

 coniferous trees which are not true Cypresses, the most fami- 

 liar example being Taxodiuin distichum, the deciduous or Bald 

 Cypress of our southern states. The tree shown in our illus- 

 tration is the best known of all the true Cypresses. It is the 

 one constantly referred to by ancient authors and constantly 

 used in modern poetical imagery — the symbol of grief, gloom 

 and death, as the Oak is of strength, the Laurel of triumph, 

 and the Myrtle of festivity. It is Cupressus sernpervirens, pe- 

 culiar for itsfastigiate or pyramidal shape. Its branches grow in 

 an upright direction close to the stem, giving the tree a tapering, 

 pointed outline, which is even more conspicuous among trees 

 of ordinary habit than the shape of the Lombardy Poplar. The 

 branchlets, growing in frond-like forms, are set thick and close 

 together, and covered with very small, smooth, shining, scale- 

 like leaves of a dark yet yellowish-green. These are ever- 

 green, remaining on the tree for five or six years. The cones 

 are oval, about two inches in length, and borne singly on short 

 stalks. The usual height of the Cypress in its native homes — 

 Greece and the islands of the Archipelago, Turkey and Asia 

 Minor — is fifty or sixty feet, although it sometimes grows to a 

 height of 100 feet. It is hardy in the southern counties of 

 England, yet flourishes in Algerian gardens. Nor is it par- 

 ticular as to situation, growing sometimes in moist river-bot- 

 toms and sometimes on dry rocky precipices. Its best devel- 

 opment occurs, however, "in soils which are deep and sandy. 



