February io, 1892. 1 



Garden and Forest. 



61 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



I'UIiLISHED 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. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — Parks for Growing Cities 6i 



Protection of Public Forests 62 



The Boston Metropolitan Park Movement Sylvester Baxter. 62 



Colonial Summer-houses. (With figures.) John De Wolf. 63 



Notes of a Summer Journey in Europe. — VI J. G. Jack. 63 



Notes on Cone-bearers of North-west America.— I ... J. G. Levuiwn, 64 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watsmi. 66 



Cultural Department : — New Chrysanthemums y. N. Gerard. 67 



Potting Ferns IV. H. Taflin. 67 



Growing Early Strawberries O. W Blacknall. 68 



Early Peas Professor \V. F. Massey. 68 



Lithospermum prostratum .T. D. H. 68 



Correspondence : — In the Shore Towns of Massachusetts. — VI. . J. B. Harrison. 69 



Forests aud the Flow of Streams — An Eighteenth Century Opinion F. S. 70 



Meetings of Societies : — ^The Western New York Horticultural Society. — II 70 



Our Autumn Foliage Win, liTcMiVan. 70 



How to Obtain More High-grade Fruit George T. Powell. 71 



The Toxicology of the Copper Compounds when Applied as Fungicides, 



Professor D. G. Fairchild. 71 



Notes '- 71 



Illustrations; — Colonial Summer-houses, Fig. 12 65 



Parks for Growing Cities. 



THE article by Mr. Baxter in another column referring 

 to the proposed metropolitan system of parks for 

 Boston has more than a local interest. Our rapidly grow- 

 ing cities will all be compelled, sooner or later, to face the 

 problem of providing ground for public use, and the 

 sooner the problem receives careful study the more per- 

 fectly and economically can the necessities of cities in this 

 matter be met. There is no longer any need of argument 

 to prove that ample and convenient open spaces for public 

 resort and recreation are essential not only to the pleasure 

 and comfort, but to the physical health and the mental and 

 moral growth of the people. This is universally admitted. 

 Twenty-five years ago the case was different. Men of high 

 professional repute in this city, even as late as seven or 

 eight years after the act to create Central Park had 

 been passed, argued that additional pleasure-grounds 

 would only offer more space for riot and disturbance ; that 

 no police force could preserve decency and order in such 

 broad areas, where the lowest denizens of the city would 

 congregate ; that no gentleman would ever visit the park 

 or allow his wife and daughters to go there. 



No man in his right mind can now be found who har- 

 bors opinions of this sort. The park questions with which 

 public-spirited men now concern themselves are, how to 

 secure enough land, how best to adapt it to public use, and 

 how to maintain and administer it most effectively for that 

 end. These questions are growing more urgent because 

 of the rapid increase of our urban population as compared 

 with that of the whole country. In some states there are 

 actually fewer people on the farms than there were ten years 

 ago, and the cities now contain more than half of our en- 

 tire population. This tendency is likely to be stronger for 

 years to come, and the abandonment of the country makes 

 it more necessary to supply the town with some of the 

 country's advantages. In most cases the expansion of our 

 cities outstrips prophecy, and [outlying districts are swal- 



lowed up before any preparation is made for their future. 

 Before any one realizes that a park may be needed the 

 lands have become so valuable that the cost of any area 

 spacious enough to give the city visitor a sense of enlarged 

 freedom is appalling. The danger of delay in this matter 

 is illustrated by the example of the cluster of large cities 

 in New Jersey, just across the Hudson. Neither Newark, 

 Jersey City, Elizabeth nor Paterson has any park worthy 

 of the name. No doubt, it would pay even now to acquire 

 land within reach of the centres of population in all of 

 these cities, but had this been done twenty years ago a 

 comparatively trifling e.xpenditure would have been needed 

 and the investment would have been paying liberal re- 

 turns in the comfort, health and business prosperity of their 

 population. If action is delayed twenty years longer there 

 is little hope that any adequate provision for public pleas- 

 ure-grounds will be made here until the cities are forced 

 to demolish solid blocks of buildings to make room for 

 grass and trees. 



Nearly thirty years ago, in their report on the design of 

 Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, Messrs. Olmsted, Vaux & Co. 

 indicated on a map the beginning of a road from the south- 

 ern entrance of the park, and made a suggestion that it 

 should be a shaded pleasure-drive, and practically an ex- 

 tension of the park. Without laying down the course of 

 this parkway, the designers stated that the ocean-beach 

 would be its natural terminus, and it was added that a 

 similar road might be carried through the rich country ly- 

 ing back of Brooklyn until it could be turned without 

 striking through any densely occupied ground so as to 

 reach the shore of the East River at Ravenswood. From 

 this point, over high bridges thrown across the narrow 

 straits into which the river is here divided, the parkway 

 could be carried through a broad street directly into Cen- 

 tral Park, beyond which was to stretch a system of sylvan 

 roads leading to the northward. Such an arrangement 

 would enable a man to drive in half a summer's 

 day through the most interesting parts of Brooklyn and 

 New York, their most characteristic suburbs and both of 

 their great parks, with the long stretch of the Hudson, the 

 Palisades in the middle distance, and the mountain-range 

 in the background for a prospect at one end, and the foam- 

 ing breakers of the Atlantic at the other, a:rd "the whole 

 might be taken in a circuit without crossing the same 

 ground, and would forin a grand municipal promenade 

 hardly surpassed in the world for extent or continuity of 

 interest." If this project had been promptly carried out 

 that drive might have been taken now under trees of stately 

 proportions. It is hardly possible now that any compre- 

 hensive scheme of this character, or like the one outlined 

 for the greater Boston, can ever be adopted by the cities in 

 New Jersey ; but there has been a time when a system of 

 parks and parkways might have easily been designed to 

 link together the heights of Bergen, the Palisades and the 

 Orange Mountains. This could have been done without 

 occupying as large a park area, in proportion to the size 

 and probable population of the combined cities in the year 

 1900, as London has to-day. 



In many cities it would not be possible to secure a con- 

 tinuous line of parks and parkways, but there are many 

 other advantages of a single plan on a comprehensive 

 scale. All the varied wants that are supplied by open 

 spaces can be met in this way alone. Every large city 

 could have its ample tree-bordered avenue for festal meet- 

 ing and procession, its zoological and botanic garden, its 

 parade-ground, its children's playgrounds, with places for 

 public meetings and ceremonies, music and fireworks, not 

 to speak of sequestered gardens and broad, simple pastoral 

 scenery, besides special features which the peculiar condi- 

 tions of each city might offer. It is encouraging to know 

 that the movement in Boston has begun before the oppor- 

 tunity for this magnificent provision'for the future is lost. It 

 is to be hoped that this example will be infectious, and that 

 many other cities will arouse themselves to take decisive 

 action in a similar direction. 



