September 4, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



351 



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, SEPTEMBER 4, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Article : — The Archilectural Attack on Rural Parks 351 



Why Certain Hickories Died. {With figure.) Professor John B. Sviith. 352 



Foreign Correspondence: — Notes on Orchids ...^- iV- iVatso^. 354 



New or Little-known Plants : — The American White I^irciies. (With figure.) 



C. S. S. 355 



Plant Notes 355 



Cultural Department:— Carnation Notes IF. JV. Crai^. 357 



The Garden in Late Summer J. N. Gerard. 357 



Rosa Wichuraiana G. IV. Oliver. 353 



The Faxon Squash //. G. />. 35S 



Two BlueHovvered Annuals G. IV. O. 35S 



Correspondence ; — The Flower Garden at Wellesley T.- D. Hatfield. 35S 



Rluis Poisoning D. P. Penhalla^v. 35(3 



R ecent Publications 359 



Notes 360 



Illustrations : — Section of bark of Hickory, showing galleries made by borers. 



Fig. 49 • 353 



Betula populifolia >; papyrifera. Fig. 50 35D 



The Architectural Attack on Rural Parks. 



THE dedication of the Battle Monument in Prospect 

 Park, Brooklyn, last week, recalls a letter to the Park 

 Commissioner of that city by Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, 

 the official landscape-architect of the Brooklyn parks. The 

 views e.xpressed are of such general importance that we 

 quote a part of the letter : 



We can hardly avoid the feeling that there is an unfortunate 

 tendency to crowd Prospect Park too much with statues, 

 monuments and other architectural structures, which are 

 introduced more because they are interesting or desii'able in 

 themselves than because they make the landscapes of the park 

 more beautiful or more natural and refreshing. It is difficult 

 to object very strongly in any particular case, because the in- 

 jury done to the landscape is not very great. It is not easy to 

 make people understand why it is a disadvantage to the park 

 to introduce interesting and, perhaps, handsome works of 

 art, but you can readily see that if the tendency continues, and 

 more and more monuments and architectural features are 

 introduced, the time will come when the beautiful, quiet, rural 

 landscape of the park will be to a great extent marred, and tlie 

 park made to resemble a confused and fussy-looking garden, 

 or the best of our rural cemeteries. Certainly it would seem 

 to be a wise policy for a park commissioner to discourage, 

 rather than encourage, the introduction into the landscapes of 

 a beautiful rural or semi-rural park of such architectural and 

 sculptural decorations. Appropriate sites could be found for 

 any number of monuments in the public squares and small 

 parks of the city, where they would appear to advantage, 

 would enrich formal or garden-like grounds, and would not 

 injure broad landscapes. 



Mr. Olmsted goes on to state that an appreciation and 

 love of the broad and simple landscapes of Prospect 

 Park has been developed in the minds of intelligent 

 citizens of Brooklyn, and many of them realize that, 

 although bridges and roads and walks are necessary, they 

 are, nevertheless, real intrusions on tlie scenery, and exist 

 for the sole purpose of making the scenery available. Others 

 who enjoy the landscapes have not analyzed their feelings 

 to discover the foundation reasons for their delight in 

 the park, and, therefore, their sensibilities are not shocked 

 when it is proposed to introduce monuments or statues or 

 architectural decorations which really detract from the 

 beauty of the landscape. They make no protest because 



they do not realize what destruction is threatened, and this 

 is why Mr. Olmsted is absolutely correct when he states 

 that his most important duty as professional adviser is to 

 protect the landscape of the park from injury and en- 

 croachment. 



As to the special case referred to, if the monument erected 

 to commemorate the valor of the Maryland troops in the 

 Battle of Long Island adds to the beauty of Outlook Hill, 

 and if the surroundings of the monument add to its impres- 

 siveness, there can be no objection to its location. But since 

 the ground on which it stands does not seem to be in any 

 way identified with the part which the Maryland soldiers 

 took in the battle, the site of the monument is not justified 

 by an)' historical association. The argument, that the 

 event celebrated was one of such importance that the charm 

 of the most conspicuous portion of the park could justly be 

 sacrificed to secure some worthy memorial of it, is utterly 

 fallacious. No monument has a right to exist anywhere 

 unless it is a creditable work of art, and the noblest work 

 of art is misplaced if it is destructive of the natural beauty 

 which the people have inherited. There is no essential 

 conflict between the two, and any lesson of patriotism 

 which the shaft is intended to teach could be delivered with 

 greater force if it stood where it would harmonize with its 

 surroundings. 



But it is not any particular act or work which we wish to 

 criticise, but rather to speak of the tendency against which 

 Mr Olmsted makes such strong protest. When Central 

 Park was designed, some of the original commissioners 

 insisted that a broad avenue should enter the park at the 

 middle of its southern boundary and be carried straight 

 through to the reservoir, and many of the newspapers ad- 

 vocated the scheme. The idea was to construct some 

 festal gathering-place like a Spanish alameda, or a spacious 

 formal promenade like those in southern Europe, where 

 there can be no turf and where natural scenery is made 

 subordinate to stately architectural effects. The projectors 

 of this scheme were inspired by a feeling that the proper 

 field for the recreation of a city population should be a 

 place where urban art was intensified and aggrandized, 

 and not a place where scenery of a rural or pastoral char- 

 acter prevailed ; and there is a certain reasonableness in 

 such an idea. A pastoral park is restful because it oft'ers 

 the direct antithesis of the conditions furnished by the rigid 

 lines of city streets. But throngs of men and women in 

 holiday mood and holiday attire on some spacious plaza — 

 the recognized place for public greeting — is also a refresh- 

 ing change from jostling crowds on business streets, where 

 each man is absorbed in his daily work. But there is no 

 excuse for any vacillating compromise between these two 

 leading motives. We can conceive of a park in which the 

 chief features are architectural, but we cannot impose such 

 features upon a park naturally treated without detracting 

 from their effectiveness and destroying the original charm 

 of the place. And yet it is pretty evident that there is a 

 school of artists in this country — artists, too, who are stren- 

 uous, and even fanatical, in their views — who have little 

 appreciation of natural scenery, and who, therefore, feel 

 disposed to transform all the city parks which have been 

 planned with regard to their natural beauty into a field for 

 architectural display. Some of these men are distinctly hos- 

 tile to the motives upon which our pastoral parks have been 

 designed, and they are constantly aiming to modify them 

 on principles that are at war with those that prevailed 

 when they were laid out. There are so-called architects 

 who would ev^i now be willing to take such a park 

 as Franklin Park, in Boston, and Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, 

 and transform them into meaningless incongruities — 

 hybrids between what was originally aimed at and what 

 a French architect early in this century would have 

 essayed, introducing some sentimental passages to mimic 

 nature, and making these mere interludes to effects like 

 those produced at Versailles. These men, as we have 

 said, are strong in conviction, confident, enthusiastic, and 

 that they are able to accomplish much is seen by the readi- 



