May 15, 1895. 



Garden and Forest. 



199 



whicli has wandered here from Europe and is desirable for 

 tlie rockery because of its liardiness, its very early and pro- 

 fuse bloom, and the extraordinary duration of its time of 

 flowering. How it came here is a mystery, but it suddenly 

 appeared one spring in a neglected border and has held its 

 own ever since. It begins to bloom in March and thrives on 

 scanty soil. Saponaria ocymoides is a showy little trailer, also 

 from Europe, just beginning to open its small pink flowers. It 

 is useful and pretty when planted in a crevice of the rocks, 

 which it curtains with its delicate bloom. It is one of the little 

 plants to which we become greatly attached. Its near neigh- 

 bor, S. Japonica, does not bloom until July. 



Mertensia Virginica is now beginning to fade. This is an 

 admirable plant for massing. One can hardly have too much 

 of it in the wild garden, where its sheets of sky-blue are very 

 effective at a time when so few herbaceous perennials are yet 

 in bloom. We have planted large clumps of it at the foot of 

 the rocks, and here the wild Columbine nods to it froni the 

 cracks and crannies above, contrasting its red and yellow blos- 

 soms with the dainty azure of the Mertensia, and forming a 

 beautiful picture such as may often be seen in our native 

 woods. 



To-day, May the seventh, I plucked the first Rose from a 

 bush of Rosacinnamomea, the Rose Tangle, among the rocks. 

 Shepliei-dstown, w. Va. Danskc Dandridi^e. 



The Exhibition of the National Sculpture Society. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — The exhibition of works of sculpture in connection 

 with gardening art, now open in the Fine Arts Building, on 

 Fifty-seventh Street, is much more genuinely successful than 

 could have been expected. For one thing, less has been 

 attempted than we were led to believe would be the case by 

 the anticipatory circular issued some weeks ago and then 

 commented upon in the editorial columns of Garden and 

 Forest. No effort has been made to show, or even to sug- 

 gest, schemes of landscape-gardening, or even of naturalistic 

 gardening on a small scale ; and, of course, these were the 

 schemes least well adapted for treatment in a restricted and 

 covered space, with such plants as could be supplied in pots, 

 and without the possibility of using expanses of grass. And, 

 in the second place, in treating the formal gardening ideas 

 which alone have been attempted, architectural elements of a 

 more important and effective sort have been achieved than 

 one might have thought would be attempted for so transitory 

 a purpose. 



As deputies of the National Sculpture Society, the first care 

 of the projectors was for their own art. They wanted to 

 show, not the possibilities and the attractions of formal gar- 

 dening as such, but the essential service it can render as a 

 setting for works of sculpture and the architectural ele- 

 ments which are their natural, and often their indispensable, 

 accompaniments. They wanted to convince the public that 

 all kinds of statuary suitable for outdoor use might be more 

 artistically and effectively used than any of them are to-day in 

 this country, and especially that, with proper surrounduitjs, 

 works of an ideal character come into this category to a much 

 greater degree than we now realize. 



From this point of view, the fact that they had to make their 

 exhibition indoors was not as great a drawback as may be 

 thought. A circular which they have recently issued says 

 that this exhibition ought to suggest to the public " the possi- 

 bility of creating a purely American conservatory garden 



which will be a real home for sculpture a garden which 



could be kept covered with glass during five months of win- 

 ter by means of sections of glass frames, thus forming a con- 

 servatory, and which would be uncovered during the other 

 months of the year, thus forming an open-ai-r garden. Hith- 

 erto it has been argued that the severity of our climate made 

 the placing in gardens and parks of marble statues a useless 

 waste of money ; but this argument will no longer hold good." 

 And, indeed, the present exliibition shows what a delightfiil 

 jjlace miglit be created in this manner, while it suggests possi- 

 l)ilities of more extensive treatment on a larger scale out-of- 

 doors, when works in bronze, capable of resisting the effects of 

 our winter weather, might be employed, or roofed alcoves and 

 colonnades might ]jrotect more perishable materials. 



In the first gallery, which runs all across the breadth of the 

 Fine Arts Building, a series of clipped hedges, well disposed 

 in variously curving lines, cut off the corners of the rooms, 

 and supply niches and alcoves where statues are effectively 

 set. The steps which, opposite the entrance door, lead up 

 from this room into the small central apartment, are now 

 masked by a temporary balcony, with a handsome balustrade 



and llights of steps leading up to it from either side; and in 

 front of this balcony is a large flowerdsed, of complex but 

 symmetrical outline, which offers an excellent suggestion in 

 regard to the way that the effect of the porches and piaz/.as of 

 our country-houses might be improved by some semi-formal 

 transition between them and the lawn. 



Standing on the balcony and looking through the central 

 room (where no gardenesque work has been attempted) we tret 

 a beautiful view into the big Vanderbilt Gallery, which has 

 been utterly transformed from its usual aspect. This crneat 

 square room is now divided into three unequal parts^'fthe 

 largest being the middle pcytion) by high walls, seemingly of 

 marble, which run from the entrance nearly to the opposite 

 wall of the room, where they are connected by a tall Ionic 

 colonnade. The walls are some eight feet in heiglit, with sev- 

 eral massive piers which rise higher and are surmounted"^ by 

 ornamental plants (chiefly Palms) in huge pots and vases. On 

 each side the wall retreats into a circular niche, filled by a 

 fountain of running water, over which presides a statue of a 

 child, appropriate in character to its place ; and in front of 

 each wall, likewise leading the eye toward the colonnade, runs 

 a row of Tree-ferns, fifteen feet high, growing, of course, in 

 tubs. Through the colonnade, the entablature of which is 

 formed by a beautiful bas-relief by Mr. Herbert Adams, des- 

 tined to adorn the Baptist Church on Washington Square, we 

 see a lofty hedge of green, and against this stand three vvhite 

 statues, each opposite to one of the inlercolumniations, 

 and being thus effectively enframed to the eye ; and these 

 statues have been carefully selected for their simple dignity of 

 outline — for a sort of semi architectonic character thoroughly 

 appropriate to the use to which they are put as complements 

 of the architectural scheme. 



All the architectural elements are constructed of white plas- 

 ter, in the same way, I suppose, that the work of buildin"- the 

 Chicago Fair was done ; but they look solid and marbledike, 

 and they are so handsome in themselves, alike in their propor- 

 tions and their simple details, and so well adapted in scale to 

 the room in which they stand, that I found that people who had 

 not previously seen the room supposed, of course, that they 

 were permanent features. The success achieved in this direc- 

 tion seems all the more remarkable when we remember that 

 the organizers of the exhibition had possession of the galleries 

 for less than a week before the opening day. The work was 

 directed, I understand, and the designs made, by Mr. Thomas 

 Hastings, of the architectural firm of Carrgre & Hastings, as- 

 sisted, of course, by the counsels, the taste and the practical 

 help of many other members of the Sculpture Society. 



Messrs. Pitcher & Manda have lavishly aided these gentle- 

 men by supplying them with the plants needed for the carrying 

 out of their scheme. Of course, its horticultural elements 

 must not be too strictly judged for the quality of appropriate- 

 ness, either as regards the special service to which some of 

 them are put or their effect as a whole. Under such condi- 

 tions, not the best possible, but only the best available, plants 

 could be utilized, and this must be borne in mind when esti- 

 mating the result. The many hedges, some of which are very 

 tall, are not growing, liut manufactured, hedges, composed of 

 branches of the Red Cedar, Juniperus Virginiana. But these 

 have been so skilfully set and supported and bound together 

 that the deception is not apparent even when they stand in 

 such a way that both of their sides are visible. The Tree- 

 ferns, which form, as it were, a natural colonnade, leading the 

 eye up to the marble one, are beautiful specimens, nearly'alike 

 in height ; and many of the Palms and similar plants wh'ich fill 

 the great pots and vases on the piers of the wall and of the 

 balcony balustrade in the first room deserve equal praise, 

 while the pots and vases themselves are often very beautiful. 

 Among them one fancies that he recognizes individuals that 

 figured upon the New York Building at the Chicago Fair, 

 which, it will be remembered, was decorated with such plant 

 receptacles, specially imported by Mr. McKim,from Sicily, if I 

 am not mistaken. 



The beds of hardy herbaceous plants contain interesting 

 specimens in flower, and. although they are grouped as har- 

 moniously as is possible under the conditions, lew of them 

 can be considered appropriate settings for the works of 

 art they support. Some small deciduous trees, just com- 

 ing into leaf, add a touch of refinement to the general elfect, 

 although they do not accord very well in character with their 

 troi)ical neighbors. Some collections of Orchids, massed on 

 shelves in the corners of the rooms behind the hedges, are 

 even less well suited to their places, although they are well 

 worth examination on their own account. Other specimens 

 of Orchids have been suspended from the trunks of the trees, 

 and Stag-horn Ferns and Pitcher-plants have been attractively 



