146 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 214. 



to tillage. A hundred acres of upland and swamp were 

 covered with a natural growth of hard wood, Pines and 

 Soft Maples, the remainder of the estate being overlaid by- 

 dry glacial drift, clothed with scanty herbage and occasional 

 clumps of stunted Blackberry-bushes. Early attempts at 

 cultivating this land had exhausted whatever fertility it had 

 ever possessed, and the free range of cattle over it for gen- 

 erations had prevented trees from springing up to cover its 

 naked surface and replace the forests of Pine which should 

 never have been cleared from it. 



The dwelling-house was placed by Mr. Olmsted, who 

 was asked to prepare a scheme for laying out the estate, on 

 a rough stone terrace built to receive it on the steep bank 

 of the lake, and the drives as they appear on the plan were 

 constructed under his directions. The beauty of the situa- 

 tion and the charm of the native woods on the sides of the 

 old moraine in the north-eastern part of the estate had been 

 the prime motives which induced Mr. Phillips to choose 

 this particular site for his country home, but this once de- 

 termined on it became necessary to develop some scheme 

 for the economical treatment of the large area of poor land 

 which could not be tilled except with large annual expendi- 

 tures of money, and which could never be made into satis- 

 factory and productive farming-land. It was evident that 

 if the agricultural efforts of the owner could be confined to 

 the good land that better results could be obtained than 

 could possibly follow any effort to convert a larger part of 

 the estate into a farm, and under Mr. Olmsted's advice 

 this view was adopted. A tract of low, wet, rich soil, 

 about forty acres in extent, in the north-west corner of the 

 estate, and just north of the barns as they are now located, 

 was thoroughly drained and made one of the best and 

 most productive fields in Massachusetts. It remained to 

 determine the destination of such portions of the remainder 

 of the estate as were not already covered with trees. It 

 was soon apparent that there was but one course to follow, 

 and that was to cover it as rapidly as possible with such 

 varieties of trees as grow naturally on poor soil, and so 

 avoid the expense of annual tillage or the annual harvest- 

 ing of unprofitable crops of scanty grass. 



Mr. Olmsted's idea was to convert the whole estate, with 

 the exception of the arable land in the north-west, into a 

 more or less open forest, in the midst of which the manor- 

 house should stand like a forest-lodge in an oasis of kept 

 grounds confined to its immediate neighborhood and en- 

 circled by the boundaries of the terrace ; and although this 

 plan has not yet been entirely carried out, all the opera- 

 tions of late years have been made with the idea of gradu- 

 ally extending the plantations over the whole of the dry 

 uplands. The first plantation was made in 1880, and the 

 area now planted is about seventy-five acres. A number 

 of varieties of trees were tried, principally European Larch, 

 the Scotch Pine, the Austrian Pine, the Norway Spruce, the 

 White Pine, the Douglas Fir and the Canoe Birch, but 

 of late years White Pines have been used almost exclu- 

 sively, about sixty thousand having been planted since 

 1883. The Larch has grown very rapidly, making trunks 

 a foot in diameter in twelve years, and are as thrifty and 

 as promising of long life on the shores of Lake Wenham 

 as the Larch on Mr. Henry G. Russell's estate, described 

 last year by one of our correspondents ; they are not as 

 tall, however, as the Canoe Birches, which have grovim on 

 this soil with remarkable vigor, indicating the value of this 

 tree, one of the best timber-trees of our northern forests 

 to plant on light gravelly soil. The Douglas Spruce 

 has grown rapidly, too, and vigorously, and there is every 

 indication that it will reach a large size on this soil. The 

 Colorado variety of this noble tree, which is certainly one 

 of the most promising of all exotic conifers introduced into 

 the north Atlantic states, can be seen in greater numbers on 

 the Phillips estate than anywhere else, different individuals 

 displaying a remarkable diversity of habit and a great va- 

 riety of shades of color. White Pines increase in height 

 from one to four feet every year ; and the appearance of 

 the young plantations indicates that, for covering the 



sterile hills of New England in spite of insects which at- 

 tack and often deface it, this is the safest and the most 

 profitable tree to plant. 



We feel that an estate like this, managed intelligently on 

 a system conceived and developed with the view to the 

 best permanent economic results is an object-lesson of real 

 public importance ; any well-planned and prudently con- 

 ducted experiment which directs public attention to the 

 possibility and advantage of using lands not otherwise 

 valuable in a way to secure a fair profit to their owner 

 helps to establish and enlarge the prosperity of the 

 state. 



Here in America carefully prepared schemes for the im- 

 provement of country estates generally die with the person 

 who makes them, and his efforts and expenditures are too 

 often lost, but a better fate has attended the Phillips Place, 

 which fortunately has passed into sympathetic hands, and 

 is administered with intelligence, energy and steadiness of 

 purpose, and with the determination to develop and perfect 

 the well-considered plans of its original owner. 



The Great Madrofia of San Rafael. 



SOME months ago there appeared in this journal (vol. 

 iii., p. 509) an account of the California Madrofia 

 (Arbutus Menziesii), and a portrait of a fine specimen 

 which had grown to a great height in the forests of north- 

 ern California ; in the present issue we are able to repro- 

 duce a photograph of the trunk and principal branches of 

 the famous Madroiia-tree which grows on the slopes of 

 Mount Tamalpais, in the grounds surrounding the reser- 

 voir that supplies the town of San Rafael, in Marin County, 

 with water. It is the largest of its race of which we have 

 any record, one of the most marvelous trees now standing 

 on this continent, and, from its position within the bounds 

 of a carefully preserved piece of public property, one of the 

 few really great trees of the country which may be expected 

 to continue for many years to astonish and delight the lov- 

 ers of nature and to live out its natural life. What the age of 

 this tree is no one can conjecture ; it has already attained 

 a height of more than a hundred feet ; the branches cover 

 in one direction the span of seventy-five feet, and of ninety 

 feet in the other direction, and the mighty trunk girts 

 twenty-three feet at three feet above the surface of the 

 ground. 



For these measurements and for the admirable photo- 

 graph from which the illustration has been made, we here 

 offer our thanks to Mr. E. W. Woods, of Sancelito, Califor- 

 nia, an enthusiastic lover and student of trees. 



Color in Rural Buildings. 



'npHE use of color on the exterior of buildings is a subject to 

 ■'■ which in recent years American architects have given 

 much attention. Foreign examples of strongly colored or 

 polychrome work, both ancient and modern, have been seri- 

 ously studied ; the particular characteristics of our climate and 

 atmosphere have been considered ; and it has been recognized 

 that in America, where the air is clearer and the light more in- 

 tense than in northern Europe, very marked effects of exterior 

 color can be used with good results. 



The pale gray stone almost universally employed in Paris is 

 admirably suited to local atmospheric conditions. Every 

 ■painter knows that the atmosphere of northern France con- 

 tains moisture enough to make a soft grayish envelope for 

 all terrestrial objects, and to give the sky a soft and rather 

 pale tone ; and the so-called Caen stone of Paris is neither too 

 white nor too dark to fit well into the scheme which the great 

 colorist, Nature, has laid out. In Holland and England, where 

 the air is still more moist, the deep red so commonly used for 

 roofs is equally appropriate, coming out well against the heavy- 

 skies and harmonizing with the strong dark greens which much 

 dampness produces in foliage and grass. But go to the south 

 of France and to Spain and Italy, where the air is clearer, the 

 light niore forcible, and the sky bluer, and you will find that 

 the best colors, and those most generally employed, are vivid 

 yet light — chiefly whites and yellows, which, as a painter would 

 say, have the same "value" as the clear bright greens of the 



