August 28, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



341 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, Nsw York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article ; — The Treatment of Small Seashore Places 341 



The Social Use of Gardens John De Wolf. 342 



Notes on Western New York Woodlands. — I Re:'. E. J. Hill. 342 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter /K Watson, -i^^i 



Plant Notes : — The Hazels. (With figure.) J. G. Jaok. 344 



Cultural Department: — Fighting the Elm-leaf Beetle S. .-l. 346 



Transplanting Kalmia latifolia . .G. W. O. 347 



The Coral-trees N. J. Rose. 347 



Notes on Bedding Plants W. H. Tafiiin. n?, 



CauliHowor for Winter William Scoll. 34 S 



Rosa rugosa N. R. 348 



Correspondence : — Peach-growing in Nebraska Professor Fred W. Card. 348 



Plant-breeding Luther Burbatik. -^^q 



Plant-breeding Once More Professor E, S. Goff. 349 



R ecent Publications 34g 



Notes 350 



Illustration : — Corylus rostrata. Fig. 48 345 



The Treatment of Small Seashore Places. 



WE recently said that more intelligence and self- 

 restraint should he shown in planting; the grounds 

 of summer villas and cottages ; and that, when these quali- 

 ties are generally developed, our small places will be much 

 more beautiful, as exemplifying the fundamental virtues of 

 simplicity and fitness. Nowhere will this truth be more 

 conspicuously shown than in the aspect of our seashore 

 villas ; for nowhere is local character more marked than in 

 seacoast localities, and fitness, therefore, more imperatively 

 demanded in the work of man ; and, as a rule, nowhere is 

 simplicity more sure to be the quality most desired. 



Of course, seashore situations vary much among them- 

 selves. There are some, as on the sandbanks of Nantucket, 

 where the rough, wind-swept, semi-barren natural aspect 

 of the spot could hardly be entirely overcome by art even 

 with a vast e.xpenditure of pains and money. Here, a sim- 

 plicity so great that it need hardl}^ be called art at all seems 

 prescribed. Here it is best to do as little as possible — 

 to aim chiefly at a moderate degree of neatness, to plant 

 only a few hardy vines to relieve the nakedness of the 

 house itself, and to content one's love for beauty with the 

 splendid panorama of the ocean itself. From situations 

 like this the range is wide, up to those beautiful, varied, 

 rocky and tree-clad regions, rough as compared with valley 

 countries, yet rich in lu.xuriant undergrovvths of shrubs, 

 creepers and flowers, which form a great part of the north- 

 ern New England shore, and to those others, lying along 

 more sheltered coasts, like those of Long Island Sound, 

 which may have almost, yet not quite, the same character 

 as though they were not near the salt water at all. 



In each of these good taste decrees that the local lead- 

 ings of Nature should be followed by man in his attempts 

 at improvement. Where Nature's plantations are lu.xuriant, 

 luxuriance may be the planter's ideal ; where she is parsi- 

 monious he should content himself with adding a little more, 

 and not endeavor to make his place look as though he 

 would have preferred to live where she had worked in 

 quite a different mood. Even if, in such situations, he 

 succeeds in growing garden trees and flowers better 

 than might have been expected, and even if, intrinsi- 

 cally considered, they are well disposed, still he may not 



achieve genuine success ; for even pretty plantations may 

 look as inappropriate and inartistic, in a region naturally 

 devoid of much vegetation, as would a treeless place in the 

 Connecticut valley. If a planter protests that he joves 

 luxuriant vegetation, cannot live comfortably without 

 much shade and many garden flovi^ers, and dislikes the 

 open, airy, empty look characteristic of many stretches of 

 seashore, then the only answer is that he had better settle 

 in some other spot. 'The real lover of Nature sees that 

 these breezy seashore stretches have a beauty of their own 

 which can easily be spoiled by man's tampering hand, 

 but cannot really be transformed into beauty of another 

 kind. And it is pleasant, once in a while, to find an in- 

 stance where this beauty has been perceived, respected and 

 enhanced, instead of being denied and spoiled, by the 

 owner of a summer house. 



We have in mind just now two summer villas of an ex- 

 pensive class which stand next one another on a beautiful 

 reach of seacoast near one of our largest New England 

 watering-places. The outlook is south-easterly, and the 

 coast line is formed by long, smooth, sloping shelves of 

 reddish rock, strewn with picturesque bowlders, over 

 which the waves break in magnificent masses. Where the 

 adjoining soil has not yet been improved it shows stretches 

 of flat meadow, or of old pasture-land bearing scattered 

 rocks and growths of low shrubs and vines. Where it has 

 been improved, many varieties of taste are revealed, many 

 differences in treatment may be noted. But the two con- 

 tiguous places to which we especially refer exhibit the 

 extremes of intelligent self-restraint and of unintelligent 

 self-indulgence, in both architectural and gardening art. 



In one, the house, which stands quite close to the rocks, 

 is ver}' large, but long and low, as it should be to harmo- 

 nize with the level lines of ocean and shore, and is devoid 

 of the strongly accentuated features which are over-con- 

 spicuous in such situations ; its roofs are red and its walls 

 are of gray weather-colored shingles ; and it is covered 

 with vines, chiefly Japanese Ivy and Honeysuckle, and 

 set closely about with shrubs, to a degree which suffices to 

 bind it agreeably to the soil and prevent any look of bare- 

 ness, and yet does not destroy its architectural character or 

 give it the air of being smothered in foliage. With this 

 exception nothing has been done to the place (which con- 

 tains some twelve or fifteen acres) except to plant vines 

 also along the low stone wall that divides it from the high- 

 way, and to cover its slightly rolling expanse, here and 

 there broken by low masses of rock, with well-kept grass. 

 No result could be more simple ; but in such a situation 

 it is beautiful. It shows as plainly as the most elaborate 

 plantations the careful guardianship of man, and it satisfies 

 the mind as well as the eye, proving that those who 

 vi'rought it appreciated the chief attractions that Nature 

 had bestowed upon the spot — its magnificent outlook over 

 the sea, and its openness to refreshing breezes, so temper- 

 ing the sunshine that the shade of trees is not required. 



Adjoining this we find a place rather larger in ex- 

 tent, vvhere the ground is much more broken and rocky, 

 and where, in consequence, a still higher, because more 

 picturesque, degree of beauty might have been attained by 

 a suitable method of treatment. But here the house is 

 lofty as well as large, and is contorted vidth eccentric fea- 

 tures. Every part of the place is cut up with paths and 

 shrubberies, clumps of trees, flower-beds and small archi- 

 tectural constructions, and even the stable looks as though 

 it had tried to be a little mediaeval castle. Not far from 

 the highroad ris^s a huge rounded rock ; by its base 

 runs the approach to the house, and on the other side 

 of this a stone turret has been built, which assists the rock 

 itself to support an ornamental iron gate. Moreover, a 

 stairway climbs around the turret, and a bridge has been 

 thrown across, above the gate, from the turret to the rock, 

 thus producing a purposeless structure as ugly in effect as 

 it is aimless in conception. And between this structure 

 and the highroad, along both sides of the driveway, are 

 crowded plantations of hardy flowering plants — a flower 



