June 16, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



231 



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. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Article :— Doing Too Much 231 



Pinus muricata. {With figure.) 232 



Private Forestry and State Forestry. — I C, A Sehenck. 232 



The California Orchards * Charles H. Shinn. 233 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter H~. Watson. 234 



Cultural Department:— The Asparagus Rust Again. 



Professor Byron D. Hoisted. 236 



Climbing Plants for the Greenhouse IV. H. Taplin. 236 



Hai dy Rhododendrons T. D. Hatfield. 237 



The Cultivation of Dioniea G. W Oliver. 237 



June Irises J- iV. Gerard. 238 



Asparagus Sprengeri E. O. Orpet. 238 



Ranunculus Ficaria John Chamberlin. 238 



Correspondence : — A Garden of Roses Danske Dandridge. 238 



Edible Wild Plants John Chamberlin. 238 



Recent Publications. 239 



Notes 240 



Illustration: — Pinus muricata on the coast of California, Fig. 30 235 



Doing- Too Much. 



MORE than once in these pages attention has been 

 drawn to one of the chief mistakes of those who 

 own or design country places in America. This is the 

 mistake of doing too much. The art of gardening design, 

 whether practiced upon a large or a small scale, is based 

 upon nature in a very literal sense. The painter and 

 the sculptor must base their art upon nature in so far that 

 they must aim to reproduce her effects. But the artist in 

 landscape is under closer obligations than this. He can- 

 not choose a blank canvas and reproduce any natural effect 

 that he happens to desire. Usually the outlines and main 

 features of his picture are already indicated by nature. 

 And even if he finds a piece of ground which is wholly 

 devoid of irregularities in surface and of native vegetation, 

 the proper method of treating it is suggested by its sur- 

 roundings and outlook, by the character of the exposure, 

 the climate and the soil, and by that of the vegetation to 

 which these have given birth upon neighboring areas. 



Of course, such a case as this is more uninteresting, more 

 discouraging than any other. Diversities of level and nat- 

 ural growths of trees, shrubs and flowers are highly prized 

 by the landscape artist. They make his task more grate- 

 ful, not merely because they furnish features which could 

 not be artificially produced at once, but also because they 

 indicate the special as well as the general character of the 

 effect which will be appropriate upon the given site. The 

 true artist carefully preserves nature's preliminary pro- 

 visions when he begins his work, accepts them as the 

 nucleus of his design, and adds nothing which is inharmo- 

 nious and nothing which is in excess of the actual artistic 

 requirements of the case. On the other hand, the inartistic- 

 gardener or owner does not accept nature's scheme and 

 loyally adhere to it. He fails to see that it is a scheme — a 

 true design, if only, perhaps, in outline and suggestion. 

 He confuses her intentions and spoils her suggested result 

 by disregarding the characteristics of the site in placing his 

 buildings and paths, by adding plants which do not har- 

 monize with the indigenous vegetation, and, in nine cases 

 out of ten, by using far too many of them and thus creating 

 a disorderly medley instead of a rational composition. 



This is what is usually meant when one speaks of "do- 

 ing too much" in the treatment of a country place. But 

 something even worse than this is done in certain instances 

 by the owners of American country sites — something which 

 cannot be seen or read about without exciting the utmost 

 surprise in the mind of any one who believes that our 

 fellow-countrymen are possessed of the common sense 

 which may not mean real artistic aptitude, but is absolutely 

 essential as its basis. In certain instances nature's handiwork 

 is altogetherswept away before the gardener is asked to begin 

 his work. This is doing too much, indeed. Of course, 

 even on the site most beautifully furnished by nature, the 

 artist is privileged to eliminate, no less than to add, as art 

 may dictate. But to eliminate everything in advance of 

 his advent is an act of vandalism and of purest folly. It is 

 to spoil nature, and at the same time to deprive art of its 

 chance to create beauty of any individual or effective kind. 



Every one knows, for example, that the surroundings of 

 the city of Chicago are for the most part flat and feature- 

 less, that the soil is poor and the vegetation scant and 

 scrubby. And every one should know that it must be 

 difficult in such localities to create country places, villa 

 sites, or those villages of houses each surrounded by its 

 own small grounds, which are characteristic of the suburbs 

 of our great western towns. For some miles to the 

 northward of Chicago the suburbs are, indeed, of a flat and 

 monotonous character most discouraging to the artist. 

 Even here, however, beauty of an orderly, quiet, modest 

 kind can be secured, as is shown by the streets near the 

 borders of Graceland Cemetery. And those who know 

 what the site of the newer part of this cemetery was less 

 than twenty years ago, and who have seen that it is to-day 

 one of the most attractive rural burial grounds in America, 

 understand the radical transformations which can be pro- 

 duced by an artist as intelligent and skillful as its creator, 

 Mr. Simonds. 



Nevertheless, it might be supposed that, in such a region 

 as this, all places to which nature has actually given a 

 degree of individuality and charm would be highly valued, 

 and their peculiarities sedulously preserved. Such is not 

 the case. As one drives, for example, along the lake 

 shore between the villages near Graceland and the more 

 distant one called Winnetka, the surface becomes more 

 diversified and the vegetation increases in size and variety 

 until, at Winnetka, a cross-range of hills ends on the shore 

 in a rolling expanse of country forming bluffs from thirty 

 to fifty feet in height at certain points. Larger trees than 

 one finds elsewhere now abound, chiefly Cottonwoods and 

 Oaks ; narrow but steep and rugged ravines are inter- 

 spersed with tracts of forest of much charm and pictur- 

 esqueness ; and in the more open parts thickets and clumps 

 of beautiful shrubs cover the soil, Thorns, Crab-apples. 

 Sumachs and Willows preponderating. 



On the edge of the highest of these ridges, with a beauti- 

 ful outlook over the lake, stands a house the grounds of 

 which have been carefully treated by Mr. Simonds. He 

 has done enough to make them fitting accompaniments 

 for a human habitation of some dignity, yet not too much 

 either in the way of addition or of elimination. The 

 site for the house was chosen with his assistance, and, 

 therefore, its foundation fits the irregularities of the spot ; 

 and the trees and shrubs which nature had planted 

 grow up around its walls in as friendly and harmonious 

 a manner as though man had set them out after the 

 walls were built. The sloping ground over which one 

 looks toward the lake still bears its natural crop of 

 Sumachs, Thorns and Crab-apples, beautiful at all 

 seasons, and enchanting when they are loaded with 

 blossoms, while the turf about them has been improved. 

 And on the entrance side of the house the approach 

 winds under Oak-trees which long have held their station, 

 and amid groups of native shrubs increased in number, 

 but not altered in general character and effect by har- 

 monious plantings. This house was built less than two 

 years ago, but it has been so well adapted to the natural 



