January g, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



1 1 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — Parks and Park -planting ii 



Seed Distribution by the Agricultural Department 12 



Black Walnut in the West Pro/essor Charles A. Kejfer. 12 



Notes on the Tree Flora of the Chiricahua Mountains. — I. (With figure.) 



y. IV. Totnney. 12 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter ]V. Watson. 13 



Plant Notes 14 



Cultural Department: — Epig^a repens y. G. Jack. 15 



Achimenes. — IV IV. E. Endicott. 16 



Notes on Lilies F. H. Hors/ord. 17 



Leelia autumnaiis E. O. Orpet. 17 



Luculia gratissima, Euphorbia Jacquiniseflora, Eougainvillea glabra, 



PlajitsJiian. 17 



Chrysanthemums, Old and New y. N. Gerard. 18 



Correspondence:— A Winter Water-garden M. B. C. 18 



Recent Publications 19 



Notes 20 



Illustration : — Fraxinus velutina on the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona, 



Fig. 2 IS 



Parks and Park-planting. 



IF the word "park" in popular usage ever suggested a 

 group of well-defined ideas, it has in these later days 

 lost its distinctiveness, so that to one man it may mean 

 a country fair-ground, and to another a forest, a game 

 preserve, a field for athletic sports, a race-track, an 

 arboretum or a military parade-ground ; in' fact, it is 

 applied in a confused way to any space that is not roofed 

 over. This is a misfortune, for, when we are discussing 

 questions of park design or park maintenance, or inquir- 

 ing what are the true functions of a park, or what should 

 be excluded from it as destructive of its value, we must 

 have a clear idea of what it is and what it is for. We have 

 always used the word to indicate primarily a place where 

 the mind and body are refreshed by rural scenery. Of 

 course, a park will also furnish fresh air and sunshine, 

 opportunities for bodily exercise and rest, but beyond 

 these, and more important than these, is the refreshment 

 of mind which comes from the influence of beautiful 

 natural scenery. The paths and roads are not, therefore, 

 merely places to walk in or drive over ; their fundamental 

 use is to make the scenery of the park available to persons 

 on foot or in carriages or on horseback, so that they may 

 find that relief and repose which natural beauty alone can 

 bring to city-wearied senses. The value of a city park, 

 therefore, for a city population is greater or less according 

 as the poetic charm of its scenery is preserved and devel- 

 oped. It seems to be an admitted fact also that quiet, pas- 

 toral prospects have the greatest intrinsic value in enabling 

 us to resist the wearing influence of city life and recover 

 wasted mental energy, and it, therefore, follows that the 

 best work is not one in which the architectural features 

 predominate, or in which the planting aims to be highly 

 ornamental or decorative. In a paper published during the 

 past year at Vienna, called Der Park, by Franz Graf, there 

 is an instructive discussion on the quality of landscape 

 beauty required for a park, part of which will be found in 

 a condensed form in the paragraphs which follow. 



A park is more than mere woodland and field, but, 

 on the other hand, it is not a garden in the narrow 



sense of the word. The designers of parks invariably 

 fall into errors of disposition and treatment when they 

 forget this distinction. A park is not a garden, al- 

 though its mere extent is not the distinctive mark of the 

 difference between the two. There are large gardens and 

 there are small pai'ks, and the purpose of both is to awaken 

 pleasurable sensations. In achieving this end, however, a 

 garden is treated like a miniature painting. Flowers and 

 other materials which are in themselves minutely beautiful 

 receive loving attention in every detail. Such a garden 

 delights us with its color, enlivens us Vv'ith its perfume, cools 

 us with its shade, but here its service ends. A park picture 

 is drawn with a bolder hand, so that delicate work on de- 

 tails is dissipated and wasted. It must have something 

 more than sensuous beauty — broader and grander features 

 which make appeal through the imagination to the nobler 

 faculties. Years ago our ancestors caught the right idea when, 

 tired of the endless avenues and clipped trees of Lenotre, 

 they began in an imitative way to make copies of nature 

 in their English gardens by mingling grottoes and artificial 

 ruins and brightly colored dairy buildings vi'ith their 

 scenery. They aimed to simulate pastoral scenery, but 

 they overshot the mark, forgetting that a park is not a 

 mere imitation of woodland and field any more than it is 

 a series of formal fiower-beds. 



Of course, a park must be beautiful, for if it does not 

 speak to the eye like a picture it will not appeal to the 

 heart like a song ; and if it shows no refinement of taste 

 it falls far below the rank of what a forest, or meadow, or 

 a vineyard may happen to be. It is a happy accident 

 when a forest, which is treated in strict accordance with 

 the forester's craft, chances also to be striking from a 

 pictorial point of view, or when a meadow or vineyard, by 

 reason of the fortunate dispositions of its hills and valleys, 

 its foliage and its water, is beautiful as well as useful. 

 But the first purpose of a park is to secure these results 

 which in the woods and the meadow are happy accidents. 

 Not only is beauty essential to a park ; its whole value lies 

 in beauty. But it must be that serene and enduring beauty 

 which is embodied in its essential and permanent features, 

 and not merely the transient and superficial beauty of 

 floral embroidery. It must have dignity of expression, 

 and not mere prettiness. 



Again, although a park must be beautiful, it may be bad 

 art to crowd it full of plants and structures simply because 

 they are beautiful. We too often see a huddle of expensive 

 rarities which struggle with each other to reach the light, 

 and yet leave no reposeful spot for the eye to rest upon. This 

 is why stretches of turf and simple wood borders are more 

 refreshing as a spectacle to the weary than any collection 

 of oddities which excite the eye, rather than rest i-t, by their 

 glowing colors and conspicuous forms. This does not 

 mean that a park should have no beauty of detail, but in 

 the hand of an artist who wishes to produce an effect upon 

 the imagination, a few beautiful things, harmoniously 

 adjusted, mean more beauty for the whole than beautiful 

 objects in such profusion that they cannot be grouped into 

 any quiet and consistent picture. And since we aim at 

 permanent beauty rather than any transient impression, 

 this consideration alone explains why tender exotics, which 

 seem to shudder in a cold climate, and imported novelties, 

 which drag out a homesick life in exile, are not to be com- 

 pared with native Oaks and Pines, which rejoice in the 

 vigor of health, and grow more beautiful through years, 

 and even through centuries. 



This longevity of the noblest trees and their continued 

 growth in dignity an^ beauty suggest the thought that one 

 who creates a great park must plant for posterity. What 

 is called planting for immediate effect is usually a make- 

 shift, and, like other makeshifts, an expensive blunder. 

 Light is the life of plants, and as the whole plant is con- 

 demned to death if it gets no light, any part of it which the 

 sunbeams no longer reach is doomed. The advice to set 

 the sapling where it will have enough light when it be- 

 comes a tree is simple, but it is constantly disregarded. 



