April 2S 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



161 



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, APRIL 28, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Ejitorial Articles " — The Field of Landscape-art 161 



The new Forest Reservations 1 61 



Pinus flex il is. (With figure.) 162 



The Park Systems of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, 



Mrs. y H. Ralbins. 162 



L'Ecole Nationale d'Horticulture de Versailles Jules G&clielm. 164 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 164 



Cultural Department : — The Hippeastrums — I //. Nekrlitjg. 166 



Notes from Baden-Baden Max Le/chtlin. 167 



April Irises J. N. Gerard. 167 



Correspondence : — The Red Cedar 11. S H. 168 



Horticultural Education Professor L. H. Bailey. 169 



Recent Publications 169 



Notes 170 



Illustration : — Pinus fiexilis in the Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 



Fifr. 19 *• 165 



The Field of Landscape-art. 



WE are constantly asked whether the profession of 

 landscape-gardening offers a promising field for 

 young men who are looking for some calling in life which 

 will be useful and remunerative. We have always felt 

 obliged to reply that there is comparatively small demand 

 for the counsel of landscape-gardeners in this country, and 

 we have added that until the true functions of these artists 

 are more thoroughly recognized the call for their profes- 

 sional services will be limited. Most of the men who 

 make inquiries on this point have themselves hazy notions 

 as to what the legitimate field of a landscape-gardener is. 

 The prevalent idea is that his work is chiefly ornamental 

 and that his province is to do about the same thing for the 

 surroundings of a house that the decorative artist does for 

 its interior when he selects the furniture, rugs and hangings 

 and decides upon color-schemes and the like. That is, after 

 an architect has built a house, it is considered proper to 

 call in a landscape-gardener to plant some ornamental trees 

 and shrubs about it and lay out paths and flower-beds in 

 order to beautify the grounds. Now, it is true that the 

 landscape-gardener, like any other artist, has to deal with 

 beauty, but his first and fundamental study is to provide 

 for human use, for comfort and for convenience. An archi- 

 tect of taste does not make a building and then hang orna- 

 ments upon it without and within. His structures will be 

 beautiful, but this beauty is developed out of the design so 

 as to be an essential part of it, and this is so profoundly 

 true that the best architectural work will be beautiful pri- 

 marily because it serves the purpose for which it was 

 created. The same rule should hold in regard to the 

 development of the grounds about a house. These should 

 be primarily laid out for use and convenience, and their 

 beauty should grow out of their perfect adaptation to the 

 wants of those who are to use them. In short, as we have 

 said a great many times, the house and grounds should be 

 planned together, so as to make one picture ; but even 

 beyond this they should have a unity of design which' 

 is more than superficial. In fact, the beauty of the 

 scene, which includes both the house and the grounds, 

 should grow up from the general design and frame- 

 work of the house and grounds as a place where all the 



varied necessities of the family in the way of health and 

 happiness and home life are the first things considered. 

 This is the reason why no ready-made house-plan is 

 adapted to all sorts of ground and why any ready-made 

 planting plan is not available for use with all sorts of houses. 



The most hopeful symptom we know is that architects 

 are inquiring more and more for competent designers in 

 landscape to assist them. That is, they feel the need of 

 advice from some one who is trained to the planning and 

 modeling of ground, one who is skilled to see at once all 

 the possibilities that lie in any situation, not only for ap- 

 pearance but for use; one who knows how to take advan- 

 tage of any diversities of surface or differences of outlook 

 so as to make them available for varied purposes. Such a 

 man can be of assistance to an architect not only in locat- 

 ing the house in such a way that it will appear to the best 

 advantage, but also for placing it where the principal rooms 

 will have a pleasing outlook. He will contrive facilities 

 for access to it and agreeable lines of approach. The 

 arrangement of different parts of the grounds for special 

 uses requires thought and experience which are outside of 

 the ordinary lines of the architect's study, and therefore the 

 best architects have learned that the highest service which 

 a landscape-gardener can render is precisely at the point 

 where the essentials of the combined design of house and 

 grounds are being considered. 



All this means that a landscape-gardener ought to be 

 much more than a mere decorative planter. The success- 

 ful designing of public parks or of private grounds for 

 daily occupation means first of all the study of human 

 wants — the necessities of men and women and children of 

 various circumstances and conditions. A good artist must 

 be primarily a man of sound judgment and he should have 

 a cultivated mind, wide sympathies and catholic tastes. 

 Reading and travel and scholarship can do for the designer 

 in landscape all that they can accomplish for the architect. 

 A man may be able to mass a shrubbery effectively or 

 arrange a border of herbaceous plants with skill and yet 

 not have a particle of that profounder art which was seen 

 in the grouping of the great buildings at the Columbian 

 Exposition, and the planning of that Court of Honor which 

 was the crowning artistic success of Mr. Olmsted's life. 

 This view of the case contemplates an ideal that is rarely 

 attained, and it is because the work of real artists in this 

 line is rarely seen and still more rarely appreciated that 

 the very existence of such an art is practically ignored or 

 denied. If City Park Boards realized what a trained park 

 maker is capable of creating out of a given piece of ground 

 they would never content themselves with asking an 

 engineer or surveyor or mere gardener to design a public 

 pleasure-ground. We ought to have reached a stage of 

 civilization when it is no longer believed that any unskilled 

 journeyman is competent to lay out a park or garden, or 

 pass judgment on the plans of a park or garden. If any 

 artist needs sound judgment united with taste and training 

 it is the man who studies public and private grounds and 

 prepares them for the use and enjoyment of man. 



We have already taken occasion to say that the op- 

 position to the recently established forest reservations 

 which is made by members of Congress from certain of 

 the states in which they are situated is not shared by all 

 the people. The Miner and the Electrician,- a. paper pub- 

 lished in Spokane, Washington, speaks of President Cleve- 

 land's act as one of the most statesmanlike measures that 

 ever emanated from the White House. It characterizes the 

 opposition to the reservation principle as extremely short- 

 sighted and selfish, and adds that people of intelligence, 

 whose judgment is not warped by any money considera- 

 tions in the immediate future, see the wisdom and justice 

 of the act. In fact, it is the people in the neighborhood of 

 the reservations who will receive the most substantia] 

 benefit from them, and the future population of the 

 "Teat north-west has rights which the people of this gen- 



