322 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 228. 



of the young grass, the ethereal beauty of the Peach-blossoms 

 and Pear-trees departed and was succeeded by an exuberance 

 of teeming life in the woods and fields that seemed to call for 

 a corresponding joyfulness in the gardens. As my walks ex- 

 tended to long tramps and drives about the country and visits 

 of curiosity to other suburbs of Boston, I sadly missed the 

 English gardens. Had I never gone into the woods I might 

 have thought that this beautiful land, with its abundant sun- 

 shine, was one where flowers did not thrive. But the woods 

 had quite a different tale to tell. The variety of trees and 

 blossoming shrubs and decorative flowers — many of them 

 looking to me as if they had strayed from some garden — filled 

 me with ever-increasing wonder and delight ; and yet I knew 

 that the woods which were accessible to me did not give me 

 any adequate notion of the resources of Nevi' England wood- 

 lands. The few really charming gardens I saw only served to 

 increase my perplexity by showing me what might be done in 

 this favored climate, which seems to command the resources 

 of both the North and the South. I remember one garden in 

 particular, a bower of delight, with magnolias and fruit- 

 trees, standing about in beds of strawberries, and holding 

 up their crowns of blossom against a distant background of 

 picturesque White Pine, while clusters of English Primroses 

 nestled under the arch of a vine-covered trellis, suggestive of 

 Italy. The Wistaria grew as luxuriant as it ever does on the 

 shores of the lake of Como. The herbaceous borders were 

 broad bands of solid color and splendid growth, and all this 

 was planted on a slope that helped to give beauty to the per- 

 spectives, and was surrounded by a sturdy fence that made 

 the charm complete. This garden and a few others like it 

 were the luxuries of wealthy amateurs, it is true, but I do not 

 see why the same thing could not be worked out on a smaller 

 scale by less-favored mortals in suburban homes. 



At present the ideal seems to be grass and a few shrubs or 

 trees. A few words first as to this ideal. Such as it is, it might 

 be much more artistically treated than is now generally the 

 case. Even admitting that medium-sized suburban homes are 

 generally deserted during the summer, and that for them it is 

 well to have lawns, terraced or not, planted with some shrubs 

 and trees that require no special care in summer, and possibly 

 with a bed or two of spring flowers, it does not follow that 

 these shrubs and trees might not be selected with taste and 

 care. It ought to follow that people should put at least as 

 much care into the choosing and arranging, once for all, of 

 their shrubs and trees as into the choosing and disposing of 

 their furniture. One belongs to the house as much as the 

 other. An expensive house on a poor plot of land looks no 

 better than a bunch of choice grapes on a coarse platter. 

 Pretty surroundings, that give one something delightful to look 

 out upon at all seasons of the year, are as important for the 

 drawing-room as the furniture, and, indeed, if the question of 

 cost should be urged, I should say that a choice shrub or two 

 more in the garden, and a fashionable knick-knack the less in 

 the parlor, would decidedly improve the parlor. 



It has not seemed to me that many of the dwellers in sub- 

 urban homes held this view of the matter. I have not ob- 

 served that the women who go to art-schools, museums and 

 lectures with great assiduity, for the purposeof educating their 

 taste, have taken any pains to put the art-knowledge they have 

 acquired to profitable use in their gardens. Looking over 

 Japanese prints would teach them, if their own observation 

 had not done so, that a Peach-tree in bloom would look all the 

 better for having a background of White Pine, or that one or 

 two detached plants of Iris, showing the beautiful growth of 

 the flower, look better than a whole square patch of them, 

 while everything else that they really saw and understood 

 would be teaching them minor details about grouping and de- 

 taching, about line and color, which might all be applied in 

 their own gardens. There is no working palette more varied 

 and delicate than that offered to the garden artist by spring in 

 New England, with the tender pinks, pure whites and golden 

 yellows of the flowering shrubs and trees, the splendid dark 

 foil of the White Pines, all the golden and bronze greens of 

 the young leaves, and the gorgeous, distinct note of the Red 

 Maple. A woman with whom artistic tastes had become second 

 nature, and were no longer a mere fad, might, if she cared, 

 convert even her litfle fenceless plot of grass and shrubs into 

 a thing of beauty during the seasons of the year — spring and 

 autumn — that the family spend in their suburban home. 



A woman of artistic tastes would not long be satisfied with 

 mere grass and shrubs, especially if her grass was terraced. 

 A bare, terraced, grass-laid yard around a handsome house is a 

 double anomaly. Not only does a fine house call for fine 

 grounds, but any arrangement in terraces calls for a formal 

 garden. Many of these terraced yards have a strip of peren- 



nials along one of the walks, it is true, but one bed on one side 

 is not enough to carry out the idea of symmetry, irresistibly 

 suggested by the terraces and the straight gravel walk leading 

 from the sidewalk up to the house. The least one can do is to 

 accentuate this walk and the small terraces themselves by 

 shrubs or plants in pairs, either planted in pots or direct in the 

 ground, as the case may be, and large or small, costly or sim- 

 ple, according to the taste and means of the individual. For 

 wealthy suburban homes, where the people can afford to make 

 an arrangement with a florist, I can think of no more beauti- 

 ful June decoration than an avenue of the shrub Wistaria, with 

 its indefinable air of distinction. Indeed, in this favored clime, 

 there does not seem to be any kind of spring or early summer 

 plant, shrub or tree, that lends enchantment to other lands, 

 which is not available for purposes of gardening here, while 

 the native woodlands themselves are rich in varied and beau- 

 tiful growing things. But the passion for gardening, which 

 would run riot in all this abundance, does not seem to exist, at 

 least among the residents in the suburbs I have seen. Why is 

 this ? I wonder. Do not Americans love and appreciate their 

 own beautiful woodlands ? How can they see them without 

 loving them, and how can they love them without trying to 

 transplant some of all this woodland wealth to their private 

 grounds and add a new charm to their home-surroundings ? 

 Milton. Mass. Cealia Waern. 



Periodical Literature. 



The Forms of Trees. — I. 



The following extracts from a paper by Gustav Eisen, read 

 before the California Academy of Science on the 15th of last 

 February, and reprinted in part in the April issue of Zoe, are 

 interesting to all students of trees : 



" A traveler," he tells us, " from the arctics, or from the high 

 wooded mountains in any district of the world, cannot but be 

 impressed by the different forms which trees and shrubs as- 

 sume in the respective regions. Nowhere is this difference in 

 form more striking than between the trees inhabiting the Pine 

 region of the Sierra Nevada and those which grow on the lower 

 plains in the interior valleys." . . . 



" In the high Sierras, for instance, in that region below the 

 snow-line, where the Pines and Spruces dominate, we find 

 that almost every shrub and every tree resembles the other in 

 a general way. The trees are tall and erect, with a central un- 

 divided trunk, from which the branches slope down toward 

 the ground. The shrubs, again, are lowand depressed, spread- 

 ing out horizontally, forming dish-like masses, hugging the 

 ground instead of seeking the sky. A few thousand feet fur- 

 ther down in the region where the evergreen Pines and 

 Spruces have ceased, the trees as well as the shrubs begin to 

 assume a different aspect. The trees in this region are not so 

 erect, their branches are less sloping, their crowns extend fur- 

 ther, the trunks are often branching ; there is, in fact, a de- 

 cided difference in their general form. The shrubs, again, are 

 more erect and bushy, forming often dense masses, which 

 show little or no tendency to flatten out. 



" If we again follow the vegetation further down to the 

 plains the change in form is yet more pronounced. The trees 

 are here, as a rule, branched close to the ground, their crowns 

 are wider and spreading, the branches drooping and often 

 sweeping the ground. The general form, which in the higher 

 Sierras was that of an elongated pyramid, has here changed 

 and become globular. We may call these, respectively, the 

 Spruce form and the Oak form. In the higher mountains we 

 rarely meet with the Oak form, at least not in evergreen trees, 

 and on the plains the Spruce form is equally rare. There are 

 some exceptions to this rule, but they are few, and in no way 

 interfere with the theory which I will here set forth and en- 

 deavor to prove. Before we dwell upon the causes which 

 have been and yet are operating in creating and maintaining 

 these characteristic forms of trees, it is necessary to first con- 

 sider those causes which combine in effecting a change in the 

 form of trees generally. 



" Nearly every visitor to the wind-beaten and open sea-shore 

 has noticed the characteristic forms of trees and shrubs grow- 

 ing there. The shrubs spread close to the ground, the trees 

 lean toward the interior, their crowns spread out horizontally, 

 and their branches are thorny and knotty and continually bent. 

 Such a sight is common everywhere in exposed places. In 

 sheltered localities inland these same varieties grow upright, 

 their crowns become less horizontal, the branches less twisted, 

 and the same shrubs, which on the sea-shore hug the soil, 

 grow here straight and send out slender branches. Even to 

 the least observant the force that operates here and causes the 



