Garden and Forest. 



[Number 484. 



I lie tact is, that for all practical purposes the cheapest 

 plants are the best. Among the novel introductions every 

 year there are some that will stand the test of time, and as 

 soon as they demonstrate their usefulness they will be 

 common. In order to be widely useful a plant must be 

 easily propagated, it must be hardy and long-lived, and 

 these are qualities that will ultimately make it cheap, just 

 as the Tartarian Honeysuckle is cheap, although one of 

 the most beautiful and indispensable of shrubs. Grass is 

 common, but it is an unfailing refreshment to the eye, and 

 it is so universally appreciated that no one considers 

 Ruskin's glowing description pitched on too high a key. 

 No novice need be deterred from planting trees or shrubs on 

 account of the high price of novelties or rarities. If his 

 purse will allow him to import the most expensive sorts he 

 may find pleasure in gratifying his desires in this direction, 

 but if he buys no others he will discover at last that he has 

 but a sickly lot of incongruities. He will learn that the 

 common plants are the basis of every good collection, and 

 that cheap plants are the most effective in producing pic- 

 tures which are impressive and permanent. 



The True Purpose of a Large Public Park.* 



THE true purpose of a large public park is to provide 

 for the dwellers in cities convenient opportunity to 

 enjoy beautiful natural scenery and to obtain occasional 

 relief from the nervous strain due to the excessive artifi- 

 ciality of city life. 



By large public park is not meant one covering more 

 than a certain number of acres, but one large enough 

 to contain a complete natural landscape, where the boun- 

 daries will not be obtrusive ; where city conditions 

 will not be unduly apparent ; where one may stroll over 

 hill and dale, across meadows and through woods, always 

 amid natural surroundings, for hours, without twice follow- 

 ing the same routes ; where one may come again and 

 again without becoming familiar with all its interesting 

 localities and natural features ; where many thousands of 

 visitors may be enjoying the scenery at the same time 

 without crowding each other ; where those who especially 

 seek seclusion may find parts so remote from the bounda- 

 ries that even if city houses are not completely hidden they 

 become reduced in the distant perspective to inconspicuous 

 proportions as compared with the foliage of trees and other 

 natural objects in the foreground; so remote that the roar 

 of street traffic is less noticeable than the rustle of foliage 

 stirred by the breeze or than the songs of birds and insects. 



That the scenery of such a park should be beautiful no 

 one will deny, but that it should be natural needs ex- 

 planation. There can hardly be such a thing as absolutely 

 natural scenery in a public park near a large city. Fires, 

 pasturing, cultivation, wood-chopping, the destruction or 

 driving away of the wild animals, wild birds and insects, 

 and the introduction of others, have long since ended 

 purely natural conditions about every large city, leaving at 

 best only a general resemblance to natural scenery. Even 

 if a tract of land is still to be found in a comparatively 

 natural condition while in private ownership, it could not 

 remain entirely in that condition after being properly fitted 

 for and used as a public park. 



With these limitations in mind, what is meant by the 

 natural scenery of a large public park may be itemized as 

 ordinarily either open meadow, open grassy hillsides or 

 rolling ground, open groves of trees with good turf, dense 

 woods, borders of shrubbery, or low woody or herbaceous 

 undergrowth, water in river, brook, pond or pool, and more 

 rarely cliffs or ledges of rock. These principal features of 

 the scenery again may be divided into their elements of 

 earth or rock surface, water surface and foliage, either 

 ground cover, shrubbery or trees. 



In most cases a good deal of grading needs to be done 



* From a paper read before the recent meeting of the Park and Outdoor Art 

 Association of Louisville, Kentucky, by John C. Olmsted, of Brookline, Massa- 

 chusetts. 



in places. The original natural surface is wholly or par- 

 tially destroyed and a new surface is created artificially, 

 but it should be so shaped and finished as to appear natural, 

 or, at least, as closely in harmony with natural surfaces as 

 study and care can make it. Too often, however, through 

 lack of appreciation of the true purpose of a large public 

 park, the grading which must be done, either ignorantly or 

 carelessly, or owing to mistaken ideas as to economy, or 

 owing to personal preference for artificiality, is made as 

 regular and unnatural as possible, so that what might have 

 been done in harmony with the natural scenery antago- 

 nizes it and greatly lessens its value for its true purpose. 

 Abundant instances of artificial-looking grading in the wrong 

 place exist in many of our large public parks. The respon- 

 sibility of park commissioners for this sort of interference 

 with the true purpose of a large public park is generally 

 only in the indirect way of entrusting the work to men not 

 properly trained in park work or by enforcing an unwise 

 economy ; for it must be acknowledged that to grade 

 naturally and gracefully usually costs more than to grade 

 formally and stiffly. 



The water surfaces of a park need more study and care 

 to make them appear natural in outline and as to their 

 margins than does the general ground surface of the park. 

 Too often park waters are almost as stiff and formal in 

 their outlines and in the shaping of their shores as are the 

 curvilinear distributing reservoirs of waterworks. Here, 

 again, the park commissioners are indirectly responsible for 

 the bad results in consequence of working without the 

 plans and directions of a trained artist or without a fore- 

 man trained in producing natural effects in park grading. 



The verdure of a large public park is what the eye rests 

 upon almost everywhere, and it is therefore the. most 

 important of the natural elements of the scenery. The 

 almost universal ground cover is grass, since no other 

 plant is so well adapted to the purpose of hiding bare earth 

 while enduring, with due care and under sufficient restric- 

 tions, the trampling of great numbers of people. But there 

 are places where even grass will not thrive, or where a 

 wilder or more varied effect is desirable. Such cases are 

 very generally ignored in our large public parks owing to 

 a lack of knowledge or of artistic appreciation of the possi- 

 bilities or requirements of particular cases. If gardeners 

 studied natural scenery more they would almost surely dis- 

 cover many opportunities in parks for the application of 

 what they observed in the country. For instance, a dense 

 natural wood which need not be or cannot be well thinned 

 out sufficiently to permit a good turf to be grown, so that 

 people may properly be allowed to ramble everywhere in 

 it, may often be rendered far more natural and interesting 

 by planting pretty wild flowers in its margins and suitable 

 shrubby undergrowth in its interior. Again, steep, open 

 banks, where it is difficult and expensive, and often un- 

 natural, to maintain turf, can be made far more interesting 

 by the use of low ground-covering plants or shrubbery. 



Relief from the nervous strain of an artificial city life is 

 afforded in no way so agreeably and conveniently as by a 

 ramble amid the natural scenery of a large park and by the 

 leisurely contemplation of the landscape. There are many 

 workers in a city who suffer more or less from nervous 

 strain, though often they are not fully aware of it. Where 

 a large public park with ample provisions of natural 

 scenery has been created, it has never failed to be much 

 frequented for this purpose and to afford untold benefit to 

 those who use it. Not only are the quiet and seclusion 

 obtainable in the middle of a large area necessary in afford- 

 ing opportunities for occasional relief from the nervous 

 stress of our artificial city life, but they are necessary to the 

 enjoyment of the landscape of the park. Therefore, not 

 only should conspicuous artificial objects unnecessary for 

 the convenient use of the park be excluded from its natural 

 parts, but noisy and dangerous occupations and amusements 

 should also be kept out of, at least, the middle portions 

 of a large park. In order to have the essential quality of 

 seclusion, a large park should not be attempted on both 



