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Garden and Forest. 



[June 6, ig 



cultivation of flowers (like the gardens of our grandmoth- 

 ers' days), although the paths might be straight and for- 

 mally edged with Box, the plants themselves were not 

 formally arranged — were not massed according to colors, 

 nor clipped into uniform shapes, nor relieved against broad 

 stretches of turf. It is only within comparatively recent 

 years that there has been a return to the genuine pattern- 

 bed, and its complement, the ribbon-border. An explana- 

 tion of the revival of a taste for such beds and borders has 

 often been found in that fancy for bright-flowered Gerani- 

 uins which was so strong some twenlv years ago that in 

 England, at least, it amounted to a veritable horticultural 

 craze, and in the general introduction a little later of the 

 Coleus and other colored-leaved plants. But it is a mistake 

 to attribute to a love for such plants the revi\-al of a love 

 for pattern-beds and borders. The converse statement 

 would be nearer the truth ; it might better be said that 

 they became popular because public taste demanded just 

 such plants for a particular purpose. 



This purpose, if its results be carefully exainined, proves 

 to have been identical with the desire to increase the 

 beauty of home-grounds in such a way that the small- 

 est expenditure of thought and pains might produce the 

 quickest and most conspicuous results. An immediate 

 effect and a showy effect — these were the things desired in 

 our gardens ; and it was perceived that the most seductive 

 recipe for securing them was to mass such plants as 

 Coleus and Geraniums in large bodies so that their vivid- 

 ness of leaf and flower should be brought into strong 

 relief by an expanse of closely cut turf. I'his desire was 

 not in itself a very laudable one ; and it would be easy to 

 show that the recipe upon \\'hich it seized was not so 

 satisfactor)^ even apart from assthetic questions, as it ap- 

 peared to superficial e)'es. It would be easy to show that 

 the practice of "bedding out" is, in -the long run, the cost- 

 liest which can be adopted for the adornment of a garden, 

 whether large or small. But we are concerned just now 

 simply with the artistic value of the formal pattern-bed. 

 Is it a beautiful thing, or is it an ugly thing? 



As thus put — in a general, abstract way — the question 

 cannot be categorically answered. What must be said is 

 that, like almost everything else in the world, a formal 

 flower bed is beautiful or ugly according to whether it is 

 in the right place or in the wrong place. It is never an 

 isolated object. It is always an object which the eye 

 embraces in a single glance with many others. And ac- 

 cording as it agrees or disagrees with its surroundings, 

 according as it helps or hurts the general impression 

 which all together make, it is beautiful or ugly. 



Let us see now what its characteristics are, in order 

 that we may understand where it may be used to good 

 eifect, and where it can be used only to bad effect. They 

 are easily defined characteristics : Conspicuous formality 

 — that is, symmetry and rigidity — of outline and surface, 

 and conspicuous brilliancy of color. And they are char- 

 acteristics which, when thus set forth in words, them- 

 selves explain their right employment. When rigid, sym- 

 metrical lines of other sorts enter into a scene, and when 

 a large spot of vivid color does not strike too loud a note 

 in the general effect, then the pattern-bed is in place. 

 Under other conditions it is out of place. 



Unfortunately this is to say that, as wc most often see 

 it used, it is decidedly out of place — decidedly injurious 

 to the scene which it is supposed to ornament, and, 

 therefore, ugly in itself. We most often see it used to 

 ornament the lawn in a place which has been laid out 

 according to a natural, unsymmetrical scheme. No po- 

 sition could be worse for a formally outlined flower bed 

 than one in which all the surrounding lines — alike of 

 gravel walk, of free-growing shrub and of untrimmed 

 tree — are varied, unsymmetrical and natural in effect. 

 And no position could be M'orse for a mass of brilliant 

 colors than an isolated position in the centre of a stretch 

 of shaven turf. It ruins that air of unity, repose and 

 breadth which is the one end and aim when a lawn is 



created, while the wide carpet of green throws its own 

 colors into such undue relief that it looks like a crude 

 and gaudy picture hung on a strongly tinted wall. 



In short, there must be something in the vicinity of 

 a formal flower bed to suggest what it suggests itself, 

 if the effect is to be a pleasing one. In the immediate 

 neighborhood of a work of architecture a pattern-bed 

 may be the most beautiful because the most appropriate 

 object which could be introduced; or, if intersecting walks 

 or roads leave a formally outlined space of small extent 

 between them, formal planting may there be the best. 

 In small urban parks, again, if discreetly introduced, it 

 is harmonious, both as agreeing with the symmetry of 

 street architecture and as filling a space palpably too re- 

 stricted to be properly utilized by a more natural arrange- 

 ment of plants. It is impossible in a single article to dis- 

 cuss the subject thoroughly. But enough has been said 

 for the moment if we have shown the true point of view 

 from which it should be approached. 



The ra]3id introduction into general cultivation in this 

 country of the purple-leaved Plum, known in gardens as 

 Primus Pissardi, to which attention is called in the notes 

 from the Arnold Arboretum printed on another page of 

 this issue, well illustrates the existing fancy in this coun- 

 try for garden novelties, and especially for plants with 

 abnormally colored foliage or habit of growth. It is less 

 than ten years since this plant was sent to Europe from 

 Persia, and yet the owners of a large proportion of the 

 pretentious villas in the United States now point to it with 

 pride as one of the chief treasures of their gardens. 

 Glowing descriptions in nursery catalogues, and gorgeous 

 chromos in the hands of tree agents, for which style of illus- 

 tration, the deep purple leaves of this plant are particularly 

 adapted, have quickly spread it far and near. And this 

 tree is neither very handsome nor very desirable, and it 

 is certainly, as an ornamental plant, inferior in every 

 way to the Myrobalan Plum, of which it is probably only 

 a purple-leaved form. But no one ever plants the green 

 tree, which is now practically unknown in this country, 

 and which probably could not be found in any American 

 nursery, while thousands of the purple-leaved variety are 

 planted every year. 



Terrace and Veranda — Back and Front. 



THE following queries suggested by the "Plan for a 

 Small Suburban Homestead," in the issue of Garden 

 AND Forest for Way 2d, have been referred to me. 



" On the south side, where, in a typical American liouse, 

 there would be a shady veranda, instead of it there is what is 

 called a terrace — an uncovered platform — upon wliich the 

 sun must fall and be reflected with liurning heat and blind- 

 ing light into the adjoining rooms. The house has no front 

 door. To enter it from the street, visitors must go round by the 

 back yard, close by the stable. What can be said for such 

 arrangements except that they are striking from their ori- 

 ginality or their foreign character ? If a speaker chose to 

 turn his back upon his audience he woultl offend a sense of 

 propriety. Is there no question of propriety about the front 

 and back of a house ?" 



I reply with pleasure to these inquiries. 



A well-shaded apartment having been provided, outside 

 the walls, at the south-west corner of the house, much better 

 adapted for the seating of a family circle than an ordinary 

 veranda, the platform called a terrace will serve desirable 

 purposes that a veranda in the same situation would not. 

 The family rooms giving upon it can be opened to sun- 

 shine, as it is best that all rooms should be occasionally, 

 summer and winter. The sun can be excluded from them 

 when it is better that it should be (leaving the air free 

 course through the windows), b)'' adjustable awnings. In- 

 teresting forms of decorative sub-tropical vegetation can be 

 fittingly set upon such a terrace in immediate connection 

 with the principal family rooms, as they could not be in the 



