I lO 



Garden and Forest. 



[May 



Plans for Small Places. 



MORE than once the request has come to us to publish a 

 plan for a small suburban building lot, and to this the 

 natural reply has been: "What lot?" Such plans cannot be 

 furnished like ready-made clothing, in assorted sizes and 

 warranted to fit any piece of land. Even from a cultural 

 point of view no list of plants for a given place can be re- 

 commended unless its soil, aspect, drainage and other 

 physical conditions are known and considered. And of 

 course the territory lying about and beyond the lot, together 

 with the relation of these surroundings to the lot itself, sug- 

 gests problems of prime importance. What disagreeable or 

 incongruous objects are to be planted out of sight? What 

 outlook is to be preserved and made more pleasing by a 

 proper treatment of the foreground ? What are the tastes 

 and necessities of the family which is to occupy and use 

 tlie house and grounds ? These and a hundred other 

 questions must be met with specific answers in every given 

 instance. 



It does not follow from this that all general plans, of 

 which so many have been published, are useless. The 

 best of them have been made with a view to solve some 

 special difficulties. They contain helpful suggestions and 

 illustrate principles vv^hich are of wide application. But 

 after all, no plan, however perfectly it may be adapted to 

 one location, can be repeated with the same success in 

 another. The attempt to reproduce effects in landscape 

 work that have been agreeable elsewhere is invarably dis- 

 appointing. To follow a fashion in gardening is rather 

 more displeasing than to copy second-hand ideas in any 

 other art. And even if it were not desirable in every case 

 to produce something original, characteristic and appro- 

 priate, all efforts at imitation must prove but parodies, be- 

 cause growing plants develop into infinite variety. No 

 two trees or shrubs — still less two groups of trees or shrubs 

 — can be exact duplicates. The same selection and ar- 

 rangement of plants at opposite ends of a village street 

 will make pictures totally unlike in spite of the most 

 painstaking effort to nurse them into a uniform effect. 



When, therefore, we requested Mr. Olmsted to prepare a 

 plan for an unpretentious homestead, we expected him to 

 choose a lot with a character of its own and e.xplain how 

 he would adjust it to the wants and tastes of a particular 

 household. The value of this study is not alone that it 

 shows how difficulty can be converted into opportunity, 

 and a strong-featured piece of ground on an abrupt hillside 

 with cramped and irregular boundaries can be turned into 

 a desirable building lot. In a broader way it is useful as 

 illustrating the class of problems that present themselves 

 whenever thorough work of this kind is contemplated, and 

 as illustrating, too, how these problems are solved by a 

 trained and conscientious artist. 



Cut Flowers and Growing Plants. 



IN Mr. Peter Henderson's article on " Floriculture in 

 America," ])ublished in the first number of this journal, 

 he spoke of the great love of Americans for cut flowers, 

 and contrasted it with the love of the residents of foreign 

 cities for growing plants. The difference which he notes, 

 and which he illustrates by instructive figures, must 

 strike every keen observer of national habits and tastes. 

 There is nothing in London or Paris to rival the display of 

 cut flowers in our florists' shops in winter. But, on the 

 other hand, we have nothing which even approaches in 

 magnitude or beauty the spectacle afforded at every 

 season of the year by the plant markets of Paris. The 

 surroundings of the Church of the Madeleine, on certain 

 days of the week in spring and summer, offer one of the 

 traditional sights which every tourist feels bound to 

 see when he first visits Paris ; and even stay-at-homes are 

 familiar with the brilliancy of the scene, for there is none 

 which has more often attracted the brush of the painter. 

 French artists of the moment are especially fond of paint- 



ing the streets of Paris, and if their gift lies in the direction 

 of brilliant color, where could they turn for a better subject 

 than to these crowded pavements, where gaily dressed 

 ladies and children and white-capped nurses thread the 

 rows of gorgeous blossoming plants, to bear away, now 

 a huge yellow Chrysanthemum, or a tall red Rose-tree, 

 and now a tiny pot, bought for a couple of cents, of Forget- 

 me-nots or Pansies ? And in every one of our home 

 exhibitions of art, especially in those devoted to water- 

 color painting, the individual plants of the French flower- 

 market are brought beneath our eyes, each enveloped in 

 one of those great cones of stift' white paper without which 

 no self-respecting Parisian plant would be seen in public. 

 But where shall one go in New York to find such scenes? 



In Germany, although such gorgeous out-door displays 

 of plants as we find in Paris are less common, there are 

 ahvaj^s plenty of market-booths in the public squares 

 where blooming plants may be bought in great variety ; 

 and in winter very beautiful specimens may be had from 

 every florist. In the latter weeks of winter Azaleas are the 

 favorites, and during all the preceding weeks Crocuses 

 and Hyacinths, Lilies-of-the-Valley and Cyclamens, as 

 well as Roses, are grown and sold in vast quantities. 

 The custom of sending flowers as gifts to friends is very 

 popular in Germany, although it has, of course, never 

 been carried to such extravagant lengths as with us. But 

 even more often than cut flowers, flowering plants are 

 used for the purpose — either a single fine specimen, solitary 

 in its pot, or a group of flowers of the same kind, or a 

 pretty arrangement of contrasting kinds grown in round, 

 wide, shallow, inexpensive baskets of bark. Such a basket 

 filled, for example, with Hyacinths of different colors, or 

 with a variety of Tulips, or with a pure white mass of 

 Lilies-of-the-Valley, is more beautiful than any bunch 

 of these flowers ; and it will last much longer even in 

 the atmosphere of a hot, dry living-room. Not the most 

 splendid bunch of Roses is nrore lovely than a fine Azalea 

 in full flower ; and if the plant is purchased in bud and left 

 to flower in its new owner's possession, she will be sure of 

 several weeks' instead of several hours' enjoyment. 



We have no wish to find fault with the love of cut 

 flowers, which is so distinctively an American character- 

 istic. Yet we think our almost exclusive preference for 

 them instead of for flowering plants is a misfortune, es- 

 pecially to persons of modest means, who, by a different ex- 

 penditure of their money, might buy more lasting pleasures. 



The wood of the Liquidambar has now become an article 

 of considerable commercial importance in this country. As 

 long as black walnut and cherry were abundant and cheap 

 it was considered worthless by the manufacturers of furni- 

 ture, but now more than three million feet are annually 

 used by them in this city alone. Blocks of this wood have 

 been employed for several years in paving the streets of 

 some western cities, and in the South liquidambar shingles 

 have long been common. This wood is nearly as heavy 

 as black walnut, but not as strong ; it is tough and close- 

 grained and can be made to take a beautiful satiny polish. 

 Its color is bright brown tinged with red. This wood, 

 however, shrinks and splits badly in seasoning and this is 

 its great defect. But it has now been found that if the 

 wood, as soon as it comes from the saw, can be steamed 

 for fifteen or twenty hours, according to the thickness of 

 the boards, and then carefully kiln-dried, it will not warp 

 or twist. This is a discovery of great importance and is 

 likely to have a considerable influence upon the lumber 

 supply of the country. The Liquidambar is a large, and 

 in some parts of the country a very common tree. It fre- 

 (]uently reaches a height of a hundred feet with a trunk 

 diameter of over six feet. It flourishes in the low and 

 often inundated river-swamps of the South and West, 

 where, mixed with the Cottonwood and the Big Tupelo, it 

 covers vast areas which can never be brought under culti- 

 vation from lack of sufficient drainasre and will alwavs remain 



