March 28, 1888.] 



Garden and Forest. 



51 



summer with myriads of drooping white bells, and by the 

 Sour-wood with pendulous racemes of Lily-of-the-Valley- 

 like flowers and with scarlet leaves in autumn. 



And with these and many other native flowering trees, 

 might be grouped an almost endless variety of shrubs 

 blooming in succession from earliest spring to late summer, 

 and brilliant with autumn tints or conspicuous fruit ; — the 

 delicate Rhodora which tinges our northern swamps with 

 pink in early spring ; the gorgeous orange-colored Azalea 

 which flames on the slopes of many southern mountains ; 

 the deliciously fragrant Calycanthus and Clethra ; a host 

 of Dogwoods and Viburnums, beautiful in flower and 

 fruit ; Blueberries of many varieties, modest in flower but 

 hardly equalled in grace of habit and richness of October 

 hues ; the Sumachs and the Black Alder which in winter en- 

 livens northern swamps with its scarlet fruit. And in such 

 a garden a collection of native Roses would not be the least 

 attractive feature. We have here merely indicated some 

 of the rich material within reach of American gardeners. 

 But the subject will be elaborated in future issues of this 

 Journal, and some of the most valuable and some of the 

 least known American shrubs will be figured and de- 

 scribed. 



We are glad to publish the letter on landscape gardening 

 which will be found upon another page, for the subject is 

 one about which it is desirable to create discussion. The 

 statement in the first paragraph, that landscape gardening 

 as a fine art means something very different from the mere 

 cultivation of ornamental plants and the designing of iso- 

 lated minor decorative features, is undeniable. But we can- 

 not agree with our correspondent when bethinks it needful 

 to give the name of " landscape horticulture, " or any narrow- 

 ly distinctive name, to "the industrial art which shapes the 

 ground, plants the trees, makes the walks and drives." 

 The actual manual work of doing such things is, of course, 

 artisans' work — work similar to that which masons and 

 carpenters do for the architect. But to know how such 

 things should be done seems to us an integral part of the 

 equipment of the landscape gardener as an artist. Knowl- 

 edge of this kind will not make him an artist. But he 

 cannot be a good artist without it any more than an archi 

 tect can be a good artist without a knowledge of building 

 construction ; and, on the other hand, it cannot itself be 

 put to good service unless guided and inspired by artistic 

 impulses, any more than a knowledge of building con- 

 struction can. These two arts — landscape gardening and 

 architecture — are like one another and unlike the other 

 arts by reason of the fact that they can never be mani- 

 festations of the a:>sthetic instinct in a pure form. Practical 

 considerations must always mingle with and largely limit 

 and control aesthetic considerations when their works are 

 in question. In the prehminary stages of education the 

 acquirement of practical knowledge and the development 

 of aesthetic feeling may seem distinct and different aims. 

 But they should always be fostered together as far as possi- 

 ble ; and to divorce them in theoretical expositions of the 

 art of landscape gardening, in its practice, or even in its 

 nomenclature, would be a g-rave mistake. 



Nothing indicates so clearly the rapidly increasing 

 scarcity of the more valuable woods produced by our for- 

 ests as the gradual substitution for them in the markets of 

 the country of woods which up to a short time ago were 

 considered useless. 



The wood of the Cottonwood (Po/>ti/iis nioiii/i/era) a few 

 years ago had no commercial value whatever in the United 

 States, and was used for fuel only on the plains, where 

 nothing better could be obtained. Improved and stronger 

 machinery, however, has made it possible to saw this 

 wood into lumber in spite of its tough, difficult grain, and 

 there is now a large demand for Cottonwood lumber 

 throughout the West as a substitute for white pine and 

 yellow poplar {Liriodendron) for light packing-cases of all 



kinds, immense quantities being manufactured at St. Louis 

 and other places. The wood is found to possess the merits 

 of cheapness and of greater lightness than white pine, and 

 it is absolutely free from all odor or taste, valuable quali- 

 ties in a case where articles of food are to be packed. It is 

 also used for lining refrigerator-cars, and to some extent in 

 the manufacture of cheap furniture. 



The Cottonwoods, of which there are several species in 

 the West and South-west, all produce wood very similar in 

 quality, and are among the largest, most common and 

 widely distributed trees along all the rivers west of the Al- 

 leghany Mountains. They grow with great rapidity, propa- 

 gate themselves freely by their light seeds, and are more 

 easily raised from cuttings than almost any other trees. 

 The Cottonwood thrives also in the dry climate of the 

 western plains and prairies better than almost any other 

 tree. There is every prospect, therefore, that our sup]3lies 

 of Cottonwood lumber will not soon become exhausted. 



A recent issue of the Bosto7i yoiinial contains the state- 

 ment that City Forester Doogue of that town had been ex- 

 perimenting with a preparation invented by him for the de- 

 struction of Canker-worms, with such success as to deter- 

 mine him to put it to general use on the city Elms. His meth- 

 od is to bore a hole, about three inches deep and an inch and 

 one-half in diameter, in the trunk of the tree, and to insert 

 a mysterious powder, the composition of which is known 

 only to himself. The hole is then plugged up and made 

 perfectly tight \-i'ith wax. Boring and plugging trees with 

 nostrums is an old and futile remedy ; and it seems almost 

 mcomprehensible that a man occupying so responsible a 

 position could be guilty of such quackery. The old way 

 of using oil-troughs to stop the ascent of Canker-worms, 

 if systematically carried out, is effectual in destroying them; 

 and they might easily be exterminated if communities would 

 combine in the use of such appliances. 



Landscape Gardening'. — V. 



'MERE is still one point which must be noticed as 

 affecting the question how much the landscape 

 artist owes to nature, how much to himself and his fellow- 

 men. When we speak of " natural scenes" we are apt to 

 mean, illogically, all those which have not been modified 

 by the conscious action of art as art. We recognize a park 

 landscape as non-natural ; but those rural landscapes in 

 cultivated countries from which the designer of a park gets 

 his best inspirations — these, too, are non-natural. "If in 

 the idea of a natural state," sa)'s an old English writer, 

 " we include ground and wood and water, no spot in this 

 island can be said to be in a state of nature. . . Wher- 

 ever cultivation has set its foot — wherever the plow and 

 spade have laid fallow the soil — nature is become extinct." 

 Extinct, of course, is too strong a word if we take it in its 

 full significance. But it is not too strong if we understand 

 it as referring to those things which are most important to 

 the landscape gardener: — the compositions, the broad gen- 

 eral jjictures, of nature, have become extinct in all thickly 

 settled countries. The effects we see may not be artistic 

 effects — may not have resulted from a conscious effort after 

 beauty ; but they are none the less artificial effects. They 

 do not show us what nature wants to do or can do — only 

 what man and nature have chanced to do together. When 

 English artists became dissatisfied with the formal, archi- 

 tectural gardening of the seventeenth century, they fondly 

 imagined that they were learning from nature how to pro- 

 duce those effects of rural freedom, of id}'llic repose, of 

 seemingly unstudied beauty, grace and charm, which were 

 their new desire. But, in reality, they were learning from 

 the face of a country which for centuries had been care- 

 fully moulded, tended and put to use by man. In some of 

 its parts, of course, the effects of man's presence were 

 comparatively inconspicuous. But of most parts it could 

 be said that for ages not a stream or tree or blade of grass 

 had existed except in answer to his efforts, or, at least, in 



