November i6, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



541 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED 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. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — Landscape-art as a Profession 541 



A Museum Specimen of Sequoia (^[igantea. (With figures.) 541 



Public Forests and Public Parks 542 



Notes of a Summer Journey in Europe. — XVII % G. Jack. 543 



Notes from West Virginia Mrs, Danske Dandridge. 544 



Plant Notes : — Dendrobium formosum giganteum O, 544 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. IVaison. 545 



Cultural Department: — The Grape Season E. IVilUains. 546 



Lettuce as a Greenhouse Crop IV. S. Turner. 548 



Potting Soils O. O. 549 



Correspondence : — Echoes from Madison Square Garden y. N. G. 549 



A Rare Plantain H. P. Kcyes. 550 



Exhibitions : — Boston Chrysanthemum Exhibition 550 



Chrysanthemums at Philadelphia 551 



Notes 552 



Illustrations : — Felling a Sequoia gigantea in Fresno County, Cal., Fig. 92 546 



Stump of Sequoia gigantea, on land of the King's River Lumber Com- 

 pany, Fig. 93 547 



Landscape-art as a Profession. 



FEW vt^eeks pass in which we do not receive a letter or 

 two inquiring what inducements are offered by the 

 profession of landscape-gardening- to a young man who is 

 looking for an agreeable and fairly remunerative calUng. 

 The inquirer usually seems to have an idea that this is an art 

 in which one can readily become a master — indeed, that it 

 is an art in which any one who is endowed w^ith what he 

 considers a " love for nature " is already well equipped. Of 

 course, these people have a confused idea of what they 

 mean by landscape-gardening, which may stand for one of 

 the highest of the arts of design, or it may mean some- 

 thing which is purely handicraft. One of the leading daily 

 journals in New England, for example, not long ago spoke 

 of the planting of some Petunias and Geraniums about the 

 pedestal of a statue in Boston as a specimen of landscape- 

 art. Last week we tried to show that an artist was needed 

 whose true province was to comprehend the work of the 

 architect and the gardener and to arrange the building and 

 its surroundings so as to form a landscape with unity of 

 design. Successful work in this field certainly demands 

 taste and training of the highest kind. There may be gar- 

 deners who are artists in their line, and architects, too, who 

 are artists, but, after all, there is a necessity to cultivate the 

 conception of landscape as composed of the harmonized 

 works of these two kinds of artists. Whoever harmonizes 

 them successfully, whether he calls himself a landscape- 

 architect or not, is an artist of the first rank. 



We can say, however, to all inquirers that there is little 

 demand now for specialists in this field, for few people 

 have yet realized its possibilities. It is true that there is a 

 dawning conception of the truth in this matter, and the Co- 

 lumbian Fair grounds will, no doubt, prove an influence of 

 surpassing importance in showing how an artist, working 

 with and through architects, could make possible such a 

 creation as the White City. When a few more men like 

 Mr. Olmsted, who is neither an architect nor a gardener, 



technically, shall have proved to architects and to garden- 

 ers, as well as to the people generally, the supreme impor- 

 tance of general design in the arrangement of buildings and 

 grounds, there will arise a call for designers in this field. 

 In very few of the professions are there many persons who 

 excel in design, and, perhaps, there are not more than half 

 a dozen men in the world who have achieved greatness in 

 this field of landscape-art. To be eminent, much study 

 must be added to original natural ability, for the artist must 

 have enough knowledge of the principles of engineering 

 and architecture and gardening to know their possibilities 

 and to work through experts in them. And yet it is prob- 

 able that as the call arises this profession will be crowded 

 as full as any of the others. Most of these practitioners will, 

 probably, do very indifferent work, but then there are not a 

 few sculptors and landscape-painters and architects who do 

 indifferent work, too. 



This somewhat exalted and yet, as we believe, funda- 

 mentally true conception of the functions of the landscape- 

 architect ought not to weaken the purpose of any oire who 

 is preparing to enter the field of what is often called land- 

 scape-gardening. If the day should ever come when de- 

 signers such as we have described will always be employed 

 in works of importance, there would still be as much need 

 of an artistic gardener as an architect. Such a man would 

 always be needed to carry out the details of any great de- 

 sign and realize its suggested features, and even now it is 

 probable that a man who is possessed of a good knowl- 

 edge of plants and some artistic training — the more he 

 has the better — might be able in almost any suburban 

 neighborhood to work up a practice in various subordinate 

 branches of garden design and render good service to 

 owners of small places. The call for such work is proved 

 by the fact that planters are constantly asking for advice 

 and suggestions, as every nurseryman knows, when he 

 receives an order for plants. The ideal landscape-gar- 

 dener, however, is free from such business, connections. 

 The reason of this is that the relation of the landscape-gar- 

 dener to his client should be strictly professional; that is, he 

 places his talent and training and experience entirely at the 

 services of his client, and owes no business obligations 

 to others. This does not mean that it is improper to take 

 commissions for selling trees, still less does it mean that a 

 nurseryman's agent may not have good ideas about plant- 

 ing, but the only way in which the professions can win 

 complete confidence is to have no commercial connections. 



It seems, therefore, that a young man of fair intelligence 

 who is known to accept no coinmissions and buys his 

 material in the cheapest market might soon gain a position 

 with an assured, if not a large, income. Several of our 

 agricultural colleges are giving instruction in the elements 

 of garden-art, and furnishing their pupils with something 

 beyond a knowledge of how to graft and propagate and 

 do the other routine work of gardening. Besides this, 

 there is a liinited number of men in various parts of the 

 country who are already doing creditable work in this field, 

 and good schooling can be obtained by study and practice 

 under their direction. In this way a class of men can be 

 trained who, while not landscape-architects in the broad 

 sense of the term, may yet do much to redeem country and 

 suburban places from the commonplace look too many of 

 them now wear. 



A Museum Specimen of Sequoia gigantea. 



A SECTION of a trunk of one of the California Big Trees 

 is how almost ready to be set up in the Jesup collec- 

 tion of American woods in the Museum of Natural History 

 in this city. Like the other specimens of this collection, 

 this one is four and a half feet in long, measuring with the 

 grain, but it is rather more than twenty feet in diameter, and 

 when fully prepared the great wheel will be set up on its 

 rim as the beautiful specimen of Redwood is near by. The 

 tree grew on land now owned by the King's River Lumber 

 Company, near Sequoia, Fresno County, California, a long 



