October 30, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



431 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribunk 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, OCTOBER 30, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — Special Attractions in City Parks 431 



Tlie Floatin,^ Gardens of Mexico. (With figure.) Charles H. Coe, 432 



Foreign Correspondence; — The "Spot" Disease of Orchids IV. IVaison. 433 



New or Ltttle-known Plants: — Kaltnia cuneata. (With fij^urc.) C. S. S. 434 



Plant Notes 434 



Cultural Department; — Some Good Chrysanthemums T. D. Hatfield. 436 



The Meadow SaftVons N, J.' Rose. 436 



Winterino; Aquatics W. Tricker. 436 



Ela^a^nus longipes, Citrus trlfoiiata J. P. 437 



LeonotLS Leonurus T. D. Hatfield. 437 



Corre'^pondence ; — Small Conservatories S. A. A. 437 



The Chautauqua Grape Belt L. J. Vance. ^-^Z 



The Lily, Melpomene C. L. Allen. 438 



Color Bands on the Apple G. Harold Powell. 439 



R ecent Publications 439 



Notes 440 



Illustrations: — Boats on La Viga Canal, loaded with vegetables and flowers, 



Fi.e;. 59 433 



Kalmia cuneata, Fig. 60 435 



Special Attractions in City Parks. 



A VALUED correspondent writes to say that in his 

 opinion the view we take of the functions and uses 

 of city parks is too narrow to meet all the wants of the city 

 population. He agrees with us that broad pastoral scenery 

 is especially restful to people whose every-day life is 

 passed within rigid and rectangular city conditions, but 

 after all, people want something more attractive than the 

 beauty of natural scenery to allure them where they can 

 have the benefit of sunlight and fresh air. He thinks, for 

 example, that the menagerie in Central Park is the most 

 useful feature of the park, because the grounds are con- 

 stantly crowded with children, who would never see the 

 park but for this attraction. He adds that if there is any 

 considerable portion of the population who would be 

 drawn to the park by any floral spectacle, or by games or 

 amusements of any sort, he would introduce these features 

 at any cost. In fact, he would value any adjunct to a 

 park according to its effectiveness in drawing people out of 

 their houses and into the wholesome air. 



It would require a long article to make a comprehensive 

 discussion of all these points, but, taking up the first sug- 

 gestion, it may be worth while to say that if we consider 

 the health and comfort of the animals the present site of 

 the menagerie is bad, because it lacks a sunny exposure, 

 and while the cool sea breezes are shut off from it in sum- 

 mer by a ridge, it lies open to the coldest winds of win- 

 ter. Besides this, it has neither a running stream nor pond 

 which can be kept fresh, and. it has a hard, impermeable 

 subsoil instead of one that is open and easily drained. But 

 suppose the open north meadows offered an ideal site for a 

 zoological collection in so far as the health of the animals 

 was concerned, the fundamental objection would still 

 remain that this smiling landscape would better serve the 

 purpose for which the park was originally set apart by the 

 city, than if it were occupied by an attractive collection of 

 animals. It is true that even now the menagerie grounds 

 are often crowded, but a Punch and Judy show, a minstrel 

 entertainment or many other exhibitions would draw still 

 greater crowds and cost less money. If it were the primary 

 purpose of a park to furnish the people with different forms 

 of amusement it would have been cheaper at the outset to 

 have taken many small spaces in different parts of the city 



instead of one large area in the centre of the island. Sixty 

 small amusement parks, each one covering two city blocks, 

 could have been distributed throughout the city, and they 

 would have covered no more land than was taken for 

 Central Park, and this plan would have required little clos- 

 ing of streets or interruptions of traftic. 



For amusement purposes alone, then, it would certainly 

 have been unreasonable to condemn for park-space an area 

 comprising more than ten thousand building lots, to shut 

 up twenty miles of streets and to divide the east side of the 

 city from the west as completely as if a river flowed be- 

 tween them. The only justifying reason for taking so 

 much land in a body was to secure breadth of view and 

 spacious scenery. It is not a fancy, but a recognized truth, 

 that such scenery has a genuine value in helping the dwell- 

 ers in cities to resist the wearing influences of town life 

 and to recover the mental energy thus wasted. Of course, 

 a rural park furnishes pure air and a space for exercise, but 

 the charm of scenery is its highest value, and it is more or 

 less useful according to the degree in which the rural spirit 

 of the place is preserved and developed. Now, it is possi- 

 ble to conceive of a park which contains open areas suffi- 

 ciently spacious to give broad landscape effects and yet 

 can supply room in the shelter of the wooded portions 

 around these spaces for a zoological collection which miglit 

 not in any way obtrude upon the scenery. But the open 

 meadow-space in Central Park is scant, and it was gained 

 at enormous cost by blasting out projecting ridges of rock 

 and covering them with soil. Trees were planted on the 

 borders of these openings to give them a refreshing park- 

 like effect, and yet the great defect of the park is its lack of 

 broad, tranquil views. Every rod of open meadow which 

 has been created should be scrupulously cherished. There 

 can be no question that any of the grassy stretches of Cen- 

 tral Park are much more useful now than they would be if 

 converted into fields for special amusements, and flie park 

 will be better than it now is when the menagerie is moved 

 to some ampler space in one of the new parks north of the 

 Harlem River. 



With regard to the general subject it may be said that 

 children's playgrounds and playhouses, provisions for 

 music and skating and boating, as well as for tennis and 

 other games, have been provided in public parks, but 

 where most successful they have been introduced inci- 

 dentally, and not as essential features, and they have con- 

 stantly been held subordinate to the controlling motive of 

 the design. In the same way an aquarium or a zoological 

 garden or a botanical garden would be well placed adja- 

 cent to a park, provided it is steadily kept in mind that the 

 object of a museuiPx and the object of a park are com- 

 pletely distinct, and that it is impossible to combine the 

 two so that they shall have unity of purpose. 



So long as this rule is kept steadily in view it is not diffi- 

 cult to add features which may have special attractions. 

 It would not interfere with the scenery, for example, and, 

 indeed, it would heighten its detailed interest if as many 

 as possible of the wild flowers which grow in the region 

 about a park should be introduced in certain of its woods 

 or shrub borders or open spaces. This feature would be of 

 use to students of botany in city schools, and it might in- 

 spire the young with a desire for investigation in larger 

 fields. Again, it might add to the attractiveness of some 

 of the smaller meadows of a park if their bordering shrubs 

 were selected with special reference to their flowering sea- 

 son. That is, Qiie opening might present the leading 

 shrubs which flower in early I\Iay, and another those 

 which flower two or three weeks later, so that a series of 

 gardens would be coming to their best in succession. 



Where there is a great park system, like those of Chicago 

 and Boston, large groups might be made of one shrub or tree 

 which while in flower would be sufficiently conspicuous 

 to attract visitors, and when out of flower they need not 

 interfere with the general landscape-effect. Of course, 

 such a scheme could not be used to any extent in so small 

 a place as our Central Park, although some secluded ravine 



