May 19 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



191 



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, MAY 19, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles —Art and Nature in Landscape-gardening 191 



Vacant-lot Farming 192 



Three New Jersey Pines. (With figure.) Gijford Pincliot. 192 



The Hardy Flower Garden A. Herrington. 193 



Entomological :— The Plant-house Aleyrodes. (With figure ) IV. E. Britton. 194 



Cultural Department:— The Hippeastrums.— IV //. Nehrling. 194 



The Hardy Plant Border Robert Cameron 106 



Seasonable Flower Notes T. D. Hatfield- 197 



Flower Garden Notes . E. O. Orpet. 197 



Xanthoceras sorbiiolia Danske Da-ndridge. 198 



Correspondence : — The Red Cedar Volney Rogers. 198 



John Evans T/iomns Meehatt. 198 



Early Flowers % N. Gerard. iog 



Flowers at the Farmers 1 Club HI. B. C. 199 



Recent Publications i 199 



Notes 200 



Illustrations : — Aleyrodes vaporariorum, Westwood, Fig. 23 194 



New growth, one year old, on Pinus rigida alter the destruction of all 

 green leaves by fire, Fig. 24 195 



Art and Nature in Landscape-gardening. 



TFIIS is the season when we receive the most frequent 

 inquiries from amateur planters about shrubs, trees 

 and herbs for what they call "decorative planting." Many 

 persons who have lately acquired new homes in the 

 country or in the suburbs of cities are now moved to 

 beautify them in some way, and the first thought that 

 occurs to every one is to secure an abundance and variety 

 of what are known as "ornamental" plants. It is notour 

 purpose to make out any such list, and even if we con- 

 sidered it advisable the season is too far advanced to 

 begin to arrange for planting. Nevertheless, these re- 

 quests suggest a word or two of counsel which may as 

 well be repeated at one season as another. We have no 

 novel doctrine to advance, nothing but a few principles 

 which do not change every year like fashions in millinery. 

 The spring planting of trees and shrubs is practically 

 over for the year, and where these have been planted by 

 novices it is probable that they have been badly selected and 

 planted in improper positions. Nevertheless, this fact is not 

 utterly discouraging, for when once a landowner begins to 

 take any serious interest in his home-grounds it is probable 

 that the habit will grow on him and become a life- 

 long and increasing source of refreshment and refine- 

 ment. We have said that both planning and planting 

 by novices are, as a rule, worse than unsatisfactory, 

 for if there is any art which needs original aptitude, 

 special training and long experience for the highest suc- 

 cess, it is the art of planting public and private grounds. 

 This statement will be admitted by most men of cultiva- 

 tion, but practically they do not realize its truth. An engi- 

 neer or a botanist is considered qualified to plan a public 

 garden. Places of remarkable natural beauty, when 

 once they are acquired by a city, are often put under 

 the control of commissioners, who may have a fair educa- 

 tion and experience in business, and if they have in addi- 

 tion to this what is known as good taste they are esteemed 

 perfectly competent to preserve these scenes, to develop 

 their charms and to devise facilities for exhibiting them. 

 Gentlemen of wealth who have some cultivation consider 

 themselves quite able to lay out their own places, especially 

 if they have the help of some journeyman gardener, who 



often has no appreciation of the character and beauty of 

 the grounds, and whose first work will be to despoil the 

 scenery of all that makes it really valuable, and then begin 

 the work of decorating it with flower-beds, Golden Elders 

 and purple-leaved shrubs of various kinds. The worst 

 part of the matter is that the men who are utterly 

 lacking in their abilty to foresee what a piece of 

 ground will look like a few years after they have set 

 out to "improve" it, are quite unconscious of their lack 

 of qualification, and have not the slightest idea that any 

 such qualification is needed. Even if they were capable 

 of taking such a look into the future, they would 

 not be competent to pass any intelligent judgment on 

 the result of their work. The fact is that no one but 

 a man of genuine creative faculty can see just what 

 elements in a landscape are the essentials that ought to fix 

 its character, or can estimate the relative proportional im- 

 portance which should be given to each one so as to 

 produce the best combined effect and invest the whole 

 with a charm which is distinctly its own. 



This brings us again to the point that for the treatment 

 of any piece of ground, public or private, the counsel of a 

 landscape-gardener of recognized standing should be at 

 once taken. The novice who insists upon improving his 

 own grounds must educate himself through his own mis- 

 takes. If he begins at the wrong end and buys a great 

 many more novelties and oddities among trees and shrubs 

 than he needs, and then wanders around in his lot for a 

 place to plant them, he will soon see that his crowded grounds 

 have no unity of expression or of purpose. If, however, he 

 will endeavor to set before his mind a clear and definite 

 picture of what his house and grounds together are to look 

 like, and will then attempt to construct his picture, he will 

 not be led to choose a plant simply because the cata- 

 logue pronounces it beautiful, but because it is necessary to 

 complete his idea and give expression to his thought. All 

 this sounds very simple, but he will find it no easy task 

 to create such a picture even in imagination. But if he 

 has in mind a design which is reasonably distinct, and for 

 the details of which he can give intelligent reasons, he 

 will certainly learn some things by his experience which 

 very few of his fellow-men understand. When he studies 

 his house and grounds not only as a unit, but in their rela- 

 tion to what is beyond them, and endeavors to shut out 

 what is distracting or unsightly and preserve within a fitting 

 framework the view of distant prospects that are pleasing, and 

 when he attempts to provide for conveniences in the way of 

 buildings and walks and place them so that they do not dis- 

 turb his picture, he will learn that it requires not only taste, 

 but hard study, to solve the complex problem that he has 

 in hand. He will learn, too, that even within the modest 

 limits of his home acre there are chances for an individu- 

 ality of plan and for a refinement and finish in the details 

 which an artist of the first rank would not deem unworthy 

 of his powers. 



The objection is sometimes made to the work of artists 

 in landscape that, after all, purely natural scenery is the 

 most impressive, and the art of man can only interfere 

 with nature to belittle it or weaken its strongest effects. 

 But the true artist aims to help, and not to hinder, nature. 

 Even the broadest landscape can be improved — that is, 

 adapted to human use and enjoyment if it is treated in a 

 reverent spirit. We do not attempt to thwart nature when 

 we open her thickets and help magnificent trees in their 

 development. We are working with nature if we encourage 

 a screen of foliage deep enough to exclude the intrusion of 

 some disagreeable object, or if we open vistas which will 

 uncover to us the sky-line made by a mountain range. 

 Nature alone does not spread out for us broad stretches of 

 meadow, but if we come to her aid she will give to us all 

 the turf we need. That is, the real artist emphasizes and 

 intensifies here or subdues and qualifies there. He uses 

 the art that mends nature, working in harmony with, and 

 not against her. This truth is not thoroughly compre- 

 hended by persons who consider the true work of the land- 



