March 20, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



II I 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



rUBl-ISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Offich : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW VORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Article :— Sculpture in Garden Art m 



Hoiiev Locust in the West Professor Charles A. Keffer. 112 



Tlie European House Sparrow in America H. C. Oberholser. 112 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 113 



Plant Notes: — The Cherokee Rose. (With figure.) 114 



Cultural Drpartment :— Lilies E. O. Orpet. 115 



Cannas T. D.Hatfield. 116 



Cut Flowers tor Summer IV. H. 'laplln. 116 



Phajus grandifolius Robert Cameron. 117 



A Few Annuals. — III J. N. Gerard. 117 



Celosias l\'. Downs. 117 



Correspondence : — The Hardiness of the Rose Crimson Rambler S. .'\. 117 



Some New Hybrid Roses J. N. Gerard, i iS 



Market Flowers in Private Gardens R. .4. IViy/nau. 118 



Tasminum nudiflorum Joseph Meekafi. 118 



Forest Fires in Minnesota H. B. A. 119 



R ecent Publications irg 



Notes 120 



Illustration : — A Flowering Branch of the Cherokee Rose, Fig. 18 115 



Sculpture in Garden Art. 



DLIRING the month of May an artistic spectacle of a 

 novel sort will be set before the people of New York. 

 The National Sculpture Society will then hold its second 

 annual e.xhibition in the spacious galleries of the Fine Arts 

 Building on Fifty-seventh Street. It v\'ill not be confined 

 to works recently produced, or to American works exclu- 

 sively, but will include a retrospective collection, and, 

 therefore, even as regards the sculptor's art alone, will be 

 novel and ought to be exceptionally attractive. But the 

 most interesting announcement is that the purpose of the 

 exhibition will be "to show the possibilities ot combining 

 sculpture with flowers and plants in both natural and for- 

 mal gardening and in interior decoration." To this end 

 the services of Mr. N. F. Barrett, landscape-engineer, and 

 of Mr. Thomas Hastings, architect (of the well-known firm 

 of Carrere & Hastings), have been secured to prepare the 

 designs for the arrangement of the galleries and to super- 

 intend their execution, while Messrs. Pitcher & Manda will 

 supply the plants which their schemes will require. 



It is believed, the circular of the Sculpture Society adds, 

 that the tendency of such an exhibition will be "to en- 

 courage a larger use of sculpture in the embellishment of 

 the villas and houses of America, and to give a new and 

 powerful impulse to the production of ideal sculpture 

 throughout the nation." Both these aims are, indeed, 

 worthy ones. Even cultivated Americans often regard the 

 sculptor's art as valuable merely for the making of portraits 

 or of monumental memorials in which portraiture plays a 

 prominent part. They appreciate its peculiar commemo- 

 rative utility, but either wholly ignore its role as a minis- 

 trant to the love of beauty, or consider this distinctly sub- 

 ordinate to what may be called its biographical function. 

 Or, at the best, they admire classical works, consecrated 

 ' by the verdict of time, and covet reproductions of them for 

 private or public enjoyment. The cases are rare when the 

 art, as practiced by living masters, is sympathetically ap- 

 proached from its purely aesthetic side. This is proved in 

 our streets and parks, as well as in the interior of our houses 

 and public buildings, although, as has been more than 

 once said in these pages, even those classes of our popula- 



tion which have the least education are quick to appreciate 

 the fact if a commemorative statue is unusually successful 

 from the assthetic point of view. 



In the time of our grandfathers a wider feeling for the 

 beauty of statuary seems to have existed in this country. 

 But the taste of that time was as childishly crude as its con- 

 fidence in itself was childishly frank. Indoors the result 

 was a profusion of foolish sentimental figures and models 

 of Trojan's Column and the Leaning Tower of Pisa — often 

 brought home as trophies from an Italian tour — of tomb- 

 like, clumsily carved white marble mantelpieces, and of 

 huge alabaster urns which looked like receptacles for the 

 ashes of past generations — all being placed where it was 

 supposed they would show to the most striking advantage, 

 without much thought whether or no they would harmonize 

 with their surroundings, whether or no they would increase 

 or decrease the general beauty of the interior. And out- 

 doors the result was urns and figures of the same sort 

 placed in the same independent fashion, and accompanied, 

 perhaps, by iron dogs or deer, wildfowl or wild beasts, 

 supposed either to give dignity to the approach they 

 flanked, or, more cunningly set amid the plantations, to 

 afford the chance observer the high delight of a momentary 

 belief in their vitality. As knowledge and taste have 

 grown among us, puerilities like these have disappeared, 

 or they survive only in isolated localities, or as piously 

 preserved, with smiling tolerance, out of respect to some 

 bygone kinsman. But, as yet, things of a better sort, dis- 

 posed in better ways, have seldom come to take their 

 place, and it is a place which should by no means be left 

 empty. The sculptor as well as the painter should play 

 his part in decorating and furnishing the interiors of our 

 public and private buildings, and the sculptor as well as 

 the landscape-artist and the gardener should help to adorn 

 their surroundings. But in the one case, as in the other, 

 two things should be considered : the intrinsic beauty of 

 the sculptured work, and, in its character and its placing, 

 its appropriateness to its environment. One of the most 

 important lessons taught by the Chicago Fair was the noble 

 decorative significance of the sculptor's art, and it was 

 taught so emphatically because nowhere had the sculptor 

 been allowed to feel that he could work in independence of 

 his brother artists. Already we see the effect of this lesson 

 in the increased amount and excellence of our architectural 

 sculpture. And the coming exhibition, if artistically suc- 

 cessful, may do much to assist us to a knowledge of the 

 value of idealistic sculpture for outdoor use and of the 

 proper ways of using it. 



Fully to display the sculptor's decorative power, formal 

 gardening schemes need great avenues of trees and great 

 stretches of water, giving room for the introduction of 

 stately or graceful figures in symmetrical array, for noble 

 lengths of balustrading and fountains of monumental size. 

 Nothing of this sort could, of course, be attempted within 

 four walls, even were the vast interior of the Madison 

 Square Garden to be the chosen area, and even did all the 

 horticulturists in America contribute of their products. 

 And with regard to naturalistic schemes the case is similar. 

 In such schemes the sculptor can never play a dominant 

 part, as he may in certain portions of formal schemes, and 

 even his part as a docile assistant is rather narrowly lim- 

 ited, and should be played with the greatest care and dis- 

 cretion. Nothing is more certain to injure a naturalistic 

 gardening scheme of broad character than the presence of 

 the smallest piece of sculpture inappropriately placed ; 

 and, as the Pare Monceau, in Paris, proves, even French- 

 men have conspicuously sinned in this respect, admirably 

 though they use works of sculpture in more formal pleasure- 

 grounds like the Luxembourg and the Tuileries Gardens. 

 We note with regret, by the way, that the Sculpture So- 

 ciety's circular speaks of its exhibition as including "an 

 exhibition of landscape-gardening." In art, as in every- 

 thing else, it is important that words be used with preci- 

 sion, lest confusion of thought arise from verbal in- 

 accuracy ; and it would be a very confused thought, 



