282 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 386. 



thorn blooms ; from the arbor came the breath of the Grape 

 blossom as the long shoots waved in the summer breeze. 



The fairest of these gardens were unsymmetrical ones, 

 with winding paths that led Ijy unexpected turns to some 

 half-hidden bower wreathed in roses. Thither one strayed 

 with hands full of flowers culled in passing, and, looking 

 back along the path, saw arching sprays of color overhang 

 and intertwine ; and always there was perfume and wild 

 charm and lonely grace in unexplored corners, and to one's 

 dying day certain flowers, with their familiar odor, recall a 

 scene perhaps vanished forever, and the old garden rises 

 before the mmd's eye ever fresh and fair and fragrant. 



It is to be hoped that the taste for the renewal of these 

 old gardens, with their fanciful suggestions, will grow, 

 and that the vivid and practical young folks of the present 

 day may learn to take an interest in them, and permit a 

 little of the romance of the past to interweave itself with 

 their memories. It is possible that there may be fi revival 

 of what is now scouted as "sentiment," even in our dry 

 young Americans, who seem all for amusement and re- 

 form, and precious little for reflection and imagination. 

 For them a garden is a botanical curiosity rather than a 

 place for dreaming ; and, alas ! to many of them it is a 

 bore. It may be that the fault is in the lack of suggestive- 

 ness of the modern garden, therefore let us hasten to make 

 it once more the home of fancy and the graces like the 

 ones which in our maturity we turn to with affectionate 

 regret and loving memory. 



An old-fashioned garden appeals to the mind as well as 

 the eye, and whether formal or informal has about it some- 

 thing individual suggested by the mind of the owner. Its 

 very tangles have a meaning, and its stiffness a signifi- 

 cance. It is not one of many copies, but an expression, 

 and that is what the finest gardens must ever be. In them 

 one should read something of the characteristics of the 

 guiding intelligence which shaped them into being and 

 lifted them from mere conventional toys into works of art. 

 While the landscape architect can suggest the general 

 aspect of the grounds, the garden, which varies from year to 

 year with changing plants, should reflect the taste and even 

 whims of its owner, and in its general features take on 

 characteristics of its own and become something beyond 

 a mere show of curiosities. The plants of an old-fashioned 

 garden were beloved, and are still justly beloved, for beauty 

 and fragrance or for picturesque habit. He who would re- 

 store those gardens now, or establish worthy successors of 

 them, should still cherish such shrubs and climbers as will 

 give a perennial and familiar character to the whole scene, 

 and let the new and strange be mainly the embroidery 

 upon a garment of accustomed pattern. The arrangement 

 may vary, but the theme should be the same from year to 

 year, for what has been long an established fashion gains 

 the charm of habit. There should be nooks where one 

 loves to linger ; corners where one Rose has blossomed for 

 a score of years ; shady beds where one may seek for shy 

 wild flowers that have been brought hither from wood and 

 hedgerow. There must be stretches where seedlings of 

 all sorts, blown from the taller plants, will be sure to spring 

 up without the care of sowing. One learns where to go for 

 a flower in the dark, as for a book in a familiar bookcase, 

 when time has consecrated the garden's arrangement ; one 

 side of the grounds may suggest reflection, the other labor, 

 and room still be left for novelty and surprises. All this 

 takes consideration and requires work and time ; but the 

 garden-lover begrudges neither to the perfection of his 

 pleasance, and would value more lightly what cost him 

 less exertion. 



A large part of the charm of old gardens, as we have 

 said, arises not so much from their splendor and luxuriance 

 as from the affectionate toil and care they represent, which 

 hallows the ground to us who remember the toilers. Into 

 our modern grounds must be put the same thought and 

 supervision if they are to mean anything to our successors 

 or to bear real significance even to ourselves. Only by 

 entering into the spirit which created the old-fashioned 



gardens can we ourselves leave behind others which shall 

 be valued by future generations as those of a former day 

 are now. 



A Northern Forest. 



OUR illustration on page 285 of this issue gives a good 

 idea of the appearance of the forests which cover the 

 narrow bottom-lands of streams in the region between 

 the Rocky Mountains on the east and the coast ranges on 

 the west, and north of the forty-eighth degree of latitude 

 — a region which includes a large part of the interior of 

 British Columbia and portions of Idaho and Montana. 

 The tall spiral trees in the foreground of the illustration, 

 which is made from a photograph taken on the Thompson 

 River iii British Columbia, belong to a peculiar form of the 

 eastern Black Spruce, Picea Mariana, which on these 

 bottom-lands grows to its largest size, often shooting up 

 to the height of nearly two hundred feet a narrow pyramid 

 clothed to the ground with dark green fragrant foliage. 

 Alders and Willows form shrubby borders to these streams, 

 white with the melting ice of living glaciers as they start 

 bravely out on their long and troubled course to the sea ; 

 and a solitary Canoe Birch, a wanderer from the east, 

 sometimes enlivens the scene with its snowy bark and 

 slender graceful branches. Over the hills which rise 

 abruptly from the streams the forest spreads to the very 

 edge of the glaciers. On these hills the trees are smaller 

 than on the richer and moister bottom-lands, but their 

 variety is greater. By climbing to the timber line one may 

 see the Mountain Hemlock, Tsuga Pattoniana, the fairest 

 of all Hemlocks, two Firs, Abies amabilis and A. lasio- 

 carpa or subalpina, and Engelmann's Spruce, Picea Engel- 

 manni. These four trees constitute the principal part of 

 the forest, but with them at high elevations are scattered 

 individuals of the White-barked Pine, Pinus albicaulis. 

 Near the streams which flow from the glaciers the moist 

 ground is carpeted with thickets of Menziesia and with 

 Rhododendron albiflorum, a dwarf shrub which covers 

 itself at midsummer with pure white fragrant flowers. A 

 noble Aralia, Fatsia horrida, in great masses, with spine- 

 covered stems, enormous leaves and clusters of scarlet 

 fruit which recall the tropics, makes it hard to realize that 

 summer here lasts only a few weeks. Ferns, too, and 

 mosses clothe the ground with almost tropical luxuriance, 

 and many northern under-shrubs display their flowers 

 among the melting snows. Less varied in their composi- 

 tion than the great coniferous forest, nourished by the 

 moister air from the Pacific Ocean, and far less imposing 

 in the size of the individual trees, these interior forests 

 of the north have their own peculiar beauty, and for the 

 traveler from more southern lands the charm of novelty. 



The June Flora of a Long Island Swamp. 



ONLY those that have watched the gradual growth and 

 development of a field of wild ilowers can realize 

 the amount of enjoyment that can be derived from the 

 daily inspection of a few acres of marshy meadow-land. 

 Every visit reveals new beauties, and usually new plants, 

 that, no matter how carefully every foot of ground has been 

 gone over before, have escaped the rigid scrutiny of a 

 plant-lover's eye. The swamp that has been the source of 

 much pleasure and entertainment to me for three succes- 

 sive summers is situated at the head of a small pond, 

 where for a very short part of the winter the salt water pene- 

 trates, but it is, however, essentially a fresh-water swamp. 

 The spring that fills it starts in a low meadow, a short dis- 

 tance off, and grows rapidly into a little brook that spreads, 

 itself into a broad expanse of bog, widening here and there 

 into broader pools that harbor many a delightful water- 

 weed, till it ends half a mile away in deeper and clear water 

 in the pond. It is divided into three portions : a sloping 

 peaty meadow, that gradually becomes too soft and wet to 

 cross ; a long boggy stretch, principally filled with rushes ; 



