September 25, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



381 



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 25, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE, 



Editorial Articles : — Landscape Art in Ihe Military Parlvs 3S1 



Germany's Forestry Policy 382 



Notes on Western New York Woodlands.— II Rn: E. J. Hill. 382 



.■Vutumnal Changes in Leaves. — 1 yiisttis Watson Folsoin. 383 



New or Little-known Plants :—Acfave Utaliensis. (With figure.) 384 



Plant Notes 384 



Cultural Department: — Gardening in North Carolina. ./'r.y'*'-^-^'"' ^^'.F. Massey. 3S5 



Bulbous Plants J. K. Gerard. 3S6 



Flower i^arden Notes IV. N. Craig. 387 



Two Good Grapes E. P. Po-.vell. 387 



Solanum Wendlandi E. O. Orpet. 387 



Keeping Pears, Plant a few Winter Pears Ediuin C. Fowell, 388 



Correspondence : — What Shall We Do with the Bird5'i..Fro/essiir Fred W. Card. 38S 



Notes from Santa Barbara F. Franceschi. 388 



Notes from the South-west Lora S. La Mance. 389 



Rhus Poisoning.. R. A. 389 



Myrosma cannaefolia (Calathea myrosma) y. N. Gerard. 389 



R ecent Publications 389 



Notes, 390 



Illustration : — Agave Utahensis, Fig, 53, 3S5 



Landscape Art in the Military Parks. 



EjT week we spoke approvingly of some suggestions in 

 The Century in regard .to the construction and admin- 

 istration of the great national military parks which have 

 been lately acquired by the Government. The first of 

 these suggestions was that "Every commission should 

 avail itself of the advice of the best landscape-architects so 

 that park-like effects may be retained as far as may be con- 

 sonant with the more practical objects of the reservation." 

 One of our correspondents expresses strenuous dissent from 

 this recommendation. He says that the idea of decorating a 

 battlefield with garden finery is altogether repugnant to his 

 feelings, and he adds that the work of the gardener is too 

 petty to be tolerated in a place like this, where the grandeur 

 of the natural scenery is more than matched by the moral 

 grandeur of the event which this reservation commemo- 

 rates. What with, the monuments and historical tablets 

 and lines of stone to mark the position of the soldiers, there 

 would be, in his view, altogether too much art of one kind 

 or another in the park, and he insists that what we want is 

 more of nature — and nature without any artificial orna- 

 ments ; certainly we do not want any gardener to dress 

 up the landscape for visitors. 



Beyond question the feeling which inspires this objection 

 is a worthy one. The mistake is that the objector has no 

 adequate appreciation of the true functions of an artist in 

 landscape. Here are fifteen square miles of the Chicka- 

 mauga battle ground, besides several outlying points which 

 have been purchased, and which are to be made accessi- 

 ble for thousands of people, and all this is to be practically 

 inhabited in the future by attendants and visitors which 

 will increase in number as time rolls on. It is absurd to 

 suppose that the face of the country will not be interfered 

 with in some way by the constructions that are needed and 

 l)y its continued occupation by man. Of course, the rivers 

 and mountain ridges will always be there, and so, per- 

 haps, will the forest, but the entire surface must be in 

 constant process of change, and the problem is how to con- 

 trol and direct the unsleeping forces of nature and the per- 

 sistent influence of man so that they will work together to 

 preserve and develop the scenery of the great park in 

 accordance with its real spirit and original meaning. 



In the first place, there must be roads and paths for 

 transportation. It is very clear that if an engineer is em- 

 ployed to make these roads his professional duty would 

 lead him to consult, primarily, convenience and economy 

 in construction, and the same might be true of the shelters 

 and other necessary architectural work. Suppose, how-, 

 ever, the design were in charge of an artist who not only 

 appreciates scenery for its full value, but who by long 

 practice knows why it is beautiful or sublime, and who is 

 able to analyze it and judge which are its essential elements 

 to be saved at all hazards. It is very plain that the land- 

 scape would suffer less mutilation under such conditions, 

 since in all his efforts the leading purpose of the designer 

 would be to preserve and develop that undefinable charm 

 which appeals directly to the imagination. Again, such an 

 artist instinctively apprehends the points of view from 

 which the scenery makes its most impressive appeal. He 

 would plan, therefore, to lead the spectator by pleasant 

 approaches to where some inspiring prospect bursts 

 upon his view, or where through opened vistas his eye 

 can feast on well-composed pictures from which every- 

 thing that distracts and belittles is shut out by a frame of 

 foliage. 



But, more than this, the country, if left absolutely alone, 

 is undergoing perpetual transformation. Not only will 

 trees be growing up — they will be dying. The mold will 

 be washing down from the slopes and the mountains will 

 grow more sterile as the valleys are enriched with booty 

 from the hills. The competent artist in landscape will 

 have a plan to guide all these forces in the direction of 

 preserving the poetry of the scene. For e.xample, if soil 

 and leaf-mold are placed in pockets on the face of these 

 almost perpendicular cliffs and appropriate seeds and plants 

 are set therein just as nature does whenever she has time 

 and opportunity, the characteristic appearance of such a 

 place can be preserved forever, and even enhanced. A 

 similar care in the woods can keep the trees in con- 

 stant vigor, and along the raw road-borders trees and 

 shrubs and herbs can be introduced that will harmonize at 

 once with their surroundings, so that in a season or so 

 foregrounds could be produced which nature would require 

 a score of years to develop. 



Work of this sort, we are aware, is not generally consid- 

 ered landscape-gardening. Our correspondent evidently 

 considers that the field of landscape art is confined to mak- 

 ing smooth lawns and bordering them with Golden Elders, 

 Kilmarnock Willows and Purple-leaved Plums, with, per- 

 haps, a beautiful pattern bed of Coleus and Alternanthera 

 in the middle. Now, a true landscape-gardener does not 

 consider a place trivial simply because it is small, and even 

 the surroundings of a modest country house may bring out 

 some of his clearest thoughts. Nor is his vi^ork entirely 

 constructive, as it sometimes is, as, for example, in Central 

 Park, where pastoral landscapes were absolutely created 

 by blasting out a place for them from sterile ridges of rock. 

 But it is quite as much the function of the true artist to pre- 

 serve and develop and display to the best advantage as it 

 is to create, and our great military parks will not be what 

 they should be if they are turned over to an engineer to 

 construct the roads, while every state and regiment is 

 allowed to design its own monuments and select their posi- 

 tion. It is very evident that if left to such chances the 

 entire park scheme in every instance will be broken into 

 fragments, not one of which has any jiroper relation to or 

 coordination vi^ith the remainder. Not only w^ill all sense 

 of historical perspective be lost, but there will be no unity 

 of purpose, nothing but groups of conflicting elements 

 which assert in one place what is denied in another. 



Beyond any question, each one of these parks should 

 have. a plan, an intelligent design to begin with and an 

 ideal toward which it can grow for all time to come. No 

 man of taste would ask to have anything foreign or fanci- 

 ful imported into such work, but every one would take 

 satisfaction in knowing that all the native beauty of the 

 spot was to be unfolded under the charge of some real 



