December 5, 1888.] 



Garden and Forest. 



481 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



b'UBLlSHEl) WEEKL\ BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Conducted by 



(3ffick : Tribune Huilding, New Yokk. 

 Professor C. S. Sakgknt. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, rS8S. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



KidiuiaAi. Akucles; — Natural Beautv and the Landscape Gardener. — List of 

 the Writinjj;s of the late Professor Gra}". — Rochester's New Park 

 Commission. — An Experimental Fruit Garden at Louveciennes, 



France 



Newport — II J'/rs. Sclivykr Van Rensselaer. 



Chinese Horticulture in New York Miss E. T. Lander. 



New or Little Known Plants : — Acidanthera bicolor {with illustrations), 



IV. E. Endicott. 



Foreign Correspondence ; — London Letter W. Watson. 



CuLTirRAL Department : — Sum mer Apples in New England, T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 



Green-house Climbers for Cut Flowers . .W. 



Soils C. L.Allen. 



Top-dressing for Trees — Pruning Trees — Pruning Shrubs — Out-door 



Roses 



The Forest; — Do Forests Influence Rainfall ? B. E. Ecrncnv. 



Correspondence 



Recent Publications 



Recent Plant Portraits 



Meetings of Societies : — Pennsylvania Forestry Association 



Notes 



Illustrations ; — Acidanthera bicolor, Fig. 75 



Acidanthera bicolor, grown in a tub. Fig, 76. 



485 

 4S7 

 48S 



4SS 

 4S9 

 49° 

 491 

 491 

 491 



49= 

 486 

 4S7 



Natural Beauty and the Landscape Gardener. 



IN the Century Magazine for October" was an interesting 

 article called "An English Deer Park," by Mr. Richard 

 Jeffries, a well-known writer on the beauties of nature, 

 who died, we believe, before his words were in print. 

 Chief among the attractions of the tine park to which he 

 refers — without giving us its name or indicating its local- 

 ity — is its naturalness of aspect. ' ' Happily, " he says, ' ' the 

 place escaped notice in that artilicial era when half the 

 parks and woods were spoiled to make the engraver's 

 ideal landscape of straight vistas, broad in the fore- 

 ground and narrowing up to nothing. Wide, straight 

 roads — you can call them nothing else — were cut 

 through the finest woods, so that upon looking from 

 a certain window or standing at a certain spot in the 

 grounds you might see a church-tower at the end of 

 the cutting. . . . Many common highway roads are 

 really delightful, winding through trees and hedge-rows, 

 with glimpses of hills and distant villages. But these 

 planned, straight vistas ... at once destroy the 

 pleasant illusion of primeval forest. . . . Happily, 

 this park escaped, and it is beautiful. Our English land- 

 scape wants no gardening ; it camiol be gardened. The 

 least interference kills it. The beauty of English wood- 

 land and country is in its detail. There is nothing empty 

 and unclothed. . . . Nature is a miniature painter, 

 and handles a delicate brush, the tip of which touches 

 the tiniest spot and leaves something living. The park has 

 indeed its larger lines, its broad, open sweep and gradual 

 slope, to which the eye accustomed to small inclosures 

 requires time to adjust itself. These left to themselves are 

 beautiful; the)' are the surface of the earth, which is always 

 true to itself, and needs no banks nor artificial hollows. 

 The earth is right and the tree is right; trim either and 

 all is wrong." 



These words have doubtless been read by many ot 

 our readers ; and as they are prettily written and savor oi 

 that "love of nature " which most people are apt to think. 



means the same thing as a love of the beautiful in nature, 

 they have perhaps deceived many into agreement with 

 the ideas they voice. We are glad, therefore, to be able 

 to quote from another English writer (in the pages of 

 Tlie Garden) an e.xcellent statement of what we conceive 

 to be a better point of view in such matters. Criticising 

 the paragraph v\'e have cited, this writer says : 



"Our best natural landscapes certainly want but little 

 gardening, but it is possible to garden them. The least 

 interference with Nature always kills it, as Jeffries wrote ; 

 but, then, a little assistance — a little enrichment — is some- 

 times better than the 'masterly inactivity' which beseems 

 to recommend as everything. Man likes to adjust himself 

 to Nature, and often must do so, while the true gardener 

 can help Nature wield her paint-brush, and he will also 

 touch the tiny spots and leave 'something living' and 

 beautiful wherever he goes. Tlie great landscape gardener 

 merely helps Nature to do her work quickly and easily, 

 and that he can do so is past all doubt. Throwing up 

 unnecessary terraces and scooping out unnecessary ditches 

 over which unnecessary bridges are thrown is not garden- 

 ing. If Nature puts a brook or a river, then the bridge is a 

 real human want, and may be supplied with good effect ; 

 rarely or never can it be done otherwise. It is not in doing 

 things that the landscape gardener's art is most fully illus- 

 trated. Some of his greatest triumphs have been achieved 

 in knowing exactl)^ what to leave alone." 



But even these words would not leave upon a reader's 

 mind exactly the impression which we conceive to be the 

 right one. The right impression with regard to landscape- 

 gardening we conceive to be this. There are very many 

 beautiful spots on earth, but very few of them are beau- 

 tiful in a way that fits them, untouched by art, for asso- 

 ciation with the homes of men. A primeval forest 

 would be a priceless possession on some distant part of 

 an estate ; but to permit it to come up close to a splen- 

 did dwelling would be an offense against appropriateness 

 and harmony, and therefore against beauty. A forest is 

 not a park, and to make a park art is needed. Whether 

 it is made by a process of addition or by a process of sub- 

 traction matters nothing. It needs as much art to disen- 

 gage a beautiful landscape from encumbering details as 

 to create one from the beginning. If certain English 

 landscapes are so beautiful, and at the same time so ap- 

 propriate for dwelling-places, that it seems sacrilege to 

 touch them, it is because man has been at work over the 

 whole surface of England for many centuries. Primeval 

 effects nowhere exist where the country wears its typically 

 English look. In our own land we seldom find English 

 landscape effects near where we wish to build our homes. 

 The reason is obvious, and so likewise is the necessity 

 why we should be more careful than the English to call in 

 the aid of art. 



Moreover, while in the majority of cases those natural 

 effects which Mr. Jeffries loved are the best ones to desire, 

 there are certain cases when the straight roads he con- 

 demns are very beautiful, and when formal features of 

 other kinds may well accompany them. Everything de- 

 pends on appropriateness and harmonjr. What is good in 

 one case is bad in another ; and no computation of the 

 average number of cases when a thing is good or is bad 

 can help to determine its excellence when a given problem 

 is in view. And finally, it will be confessed that in cer- 

 tain places where men must live Nature is not beautiful. 

 Then the artist may well interfere with her intentions 

 and create a loveliness of his own. Then he may make 

 brooks and rivers if he can induce her to help him, and 

 alter the surface of the ground, and decide what trees 

 shall grow upon it and where. In short, it is only a ques- 

 tion of degree. Everyvi'here and always the artist is 

 needed. He has first to decide whether much or little 

 should be done, and then to decide in what manner it should 

 be done. If he does not understand the art of gardening 



■. he will create ugliness, not beauty ; but this is not to say 



^that the art itself should be condemned. 



s. 



