July 6, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



313 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Officb: Tribune Building, Nhw York. 



Conducted by 



Professor C. S. Sakgent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 1892, 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editokial Article :— Simplicity in Landscape-art 313 



A Bit of Wild Nature in Pennsylvania. (With illustration.) 



Professor \V, A. Buckhoui. 314 



A Manufactory of Roses Henry de Vilmorin. 314 



Late June in the Garden Mrs. Danske Dandridgc. 315 



The Mutual Influence of the Stock and the Graft A, A. Crazier. 315 



Fruit Trees in Flower E. P. Powell. 316 



New ok Little-known Plants :— Jacobinia magnifica. (With fissure.). . . ir. W. 317 

 Gladiolus Armeniacus 7. N. Gerard. 31S 



Cultural Department:— Notes on Shrubs y. G. Jack. 318 



Indoor Work in July IV. ir. Taplin. 319 



Actinidia poly^ima - £". O. Orpet. 320 



The Garden in June J.N. Gerard. 320 



The Importance of Microbes in the Cultivation of Plants. . E. G. Lodemati. 321 



Correspondence : — New England Country Houses Mrs. J. H. Robbms. 321 



A Foreigner's Impressions of America.— Ill Cealiii Waern. 321 



Periodical Literature :— The Forms of Trees.— I Gustav Eiscn. 322 



Notes 323 



Illustrations :— Jacobinia magnifica. Fig. 56..., 317 



Lumbering in Bear Meadows, Centre County, Pennsylvania, Fig. 57 319 



Simplicity in Landscape-art. 



ONE thing that used to strike the traveler in Europe 

 with a sense of novelty was the look of cultivation 

 about the railway-stations, and few things in this country 

 bear greater evidence of the advance in civilization among 

 us than the improved aspect of these public thoroughfares. 

 In fact, everywhere in the east we are conscious that the 

 air of raw newness, of uncombed carelessness, is begin- 

 ning to yield to the demand for order and comeliness of 

 arrangements. The idea that system may be applied to 

 even very limited portions of ground is gradually making 

 way, and people are beginning to consider not so much 

 what they shall plant as how they shall plant it so as to 

 produce the best effect. 



There is a taste for beauty latent among our people 

 which thirsts for guidance, and only needs good examples 

 to develop it properly. They eagerly seize upon such ad- 

 vantages of instruction as are afforded, and show their de- 

 sire for new light in various ways. The village improve- 

 ment societies are a step in the right direction, and the 

 well-kept door-yards in small New England towns, the 

 trig and thrifty air that pervades even the humblest homes, 

 show that there, at least, the new ideas have taken root, 

 and are ready for evolution. What is most needed now is 

 to train and educate this love of the beautiful and befitting, 

 by setting authoritatively before the public evidences of 

 the right way to produce good effects in the management 

 of trees and shrubbery, and to make public resorts serve to 

 emphasize the important truths of simplicity and unity in 

 design. 



We do not have the advantage here of free access to the 

 gardens and parks of royalty and nobility, as European 

 peoples do, to educate our understanding. Such examples 

 as the public has had in old times to copy have not always 

 been of the best. There have been no great gardens like 

 those of Versailles and of Luxembourg thrown open to 



everybody on festival days ; it is only within the last 

 tvvciity-tlve years that carefully planned parks have been 

 accessible to the million, and that cities have decorated their 

 pleasure-grounds with shrubs and flowers. How eagerly 

 the people seize upon these advantages, how jealously 

 they guard their rights to them we all know ; but not every 

 one recognizes the educational value of these well-kept 

 open spaces, nor do we perhaps grasp the full force of the 

 reiining effect that the contemplation of good landscape- 

 gardening has upon the minds of the masses, who are im.- 

 perceptibly led by it to understand the value of composi- 

 tion in the arrangement of growing things, and thus are 

 taught a lesson in beauty. 



To love beauty is far easier than to know what beauty 

 is. The most beautiful things are not, as many people 

 think, within easy grasp of the understanding. Beauty of 

 an unfamiliar kind does not always seem beauty at the first 

 glance. It has to educate us to understand it, open our 

 minds to its preciousness, and lift us to the higher level of 

 its charm before we begin to recognize it. The Hermes 

 and Aphrodite of the Greek mean nothing to the Australian 

 black fellow, nor do they appeal profoundly to any un- 

 trained intelligence, for perfection in the human form is 

 unfamiliar to the average eye, accustomed to look alone 

 upon the face for beauty, with its ideas of figure outline 

 warped by the conventionalities of fashion. 



The greatest objects in nature — even Niagara itself — is 

 disappointing to the visitor until he has dwelt for a space 

 upon its borders, and has learned the full terror of its 

 majesty. Day by day the torrent grows more imposing, 

 its ceaseless roar more impressive, the sweep of foaming 

 water more turbulent, the crisis of the great fall more tre- 

 mendous. It is so with the glories of a mountain-region. 

 One's first glimpse of the Alps may be awe-inspiring or 

 commonplace, according to the atmosphere, but it is only 

 a long sojourn among mighty hills that fully reveals the 

 power they possess over the soul of man. No superficial 

 view can reveal their secret. Alone with the humming of 

 bees amid the Alpine roses, with snowy peaks upon peaks 

 rising needle-like against the blue, and lonely eagles soar- 

 ing slowly into the upper ether, one feels a stirring within 

 him as of wings, and becomes conscious of that inward 

 bursting of bonds which denotes mental growth. Then 

 the mountain speaks to man, and the favored mortal learns 

 a new lesson of beauty. 



The truth, well established in literature, art and music, 

 that any new departure has to create a taste for itself be- 

 fore it can be accepted, is equally recognizable in land- 

 scape-gardening, which may justly be ranked among the 

 higher arts, since he who takes nature for his theme uses 

 trees and flowers for his pigments, and is the greatest of 

 all painters. What seems the easiest, and yet is perhaps 

 the hardest to learn of all, is the lesson of simplicity. To 

 accumulate is the natural instinct of man ; to overcrowd 

 both house and land ; and yet neither within nor without 

 does quantity produce quality, and the higher one's artistic 

 sense develops, the more does he value space as an element 

 of dignity and loveliness. The true value of a picture is 

 best obtained when it hangs alone upon a wall. The 

 beauty of a precious vase is lost in the confusion of a cab- 

 inet. The Venus of Milo, standing solitary in her curtained 

 alcove in the Louvre, is more impressive than the gallery 

 of other Venuses which leads up to her shrine. So may 

 one obtain the strongest effect for a group of trees, or 

 for one giant specimen considered by itself, if they are 

 left to stand alone, in one great sweep of lawn, which 

 shall emphasize by contrast every noble curve, every up- 

 lifted bough, and produce one salient point in a lovely 

 picture. 



A mass of foliage in a shrubbery, forming one continu- 

 ous and graceful line of varied shades of green, inter- 

 spersed with sprays of blossom, is finer than a spotted 

 effect of numerous isolated bushes, however beautiful in 

 themselves. A group of plants in a garden all of one kind 

 is usually better than a mixture of different plants. A 



