June 23, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



241 



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, JUNE 23, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — The Park System of Greater Boston 241 



Private Forestry and State Forestry. — II C. A. Sckenck. 242 



Foreign Correspondence :— London Letter IV. Watson. 243 



New or Little-known Plants: — Robinsonella, a New Genus of Tree Mallows. 



(With figures. ) Professor J. N. Rose and E. G. Baker. 244 



Cultural Department : — Chrysanthemum Notes T. D. Hatfield. 245 



More June Irises J. N. Gerard. 245 



Strawberries under Glass C. E Hunn and Professor L. H. Bailey. 24S 



Asparagus Sprengeri J.N. G. 248 



Correspondence: — Fir-tree Oil as an Insecticide Dr. IV. C. Sturgis. 249 



Pokeweed as a Vegetable J. R. 249 



Exhibitions: — Flower Show in New York City Hall 249 



Notes 250 



Illustrations : — Robinsonella cordata. Fig. 31 246 



Robinsonella divergens, Fig. 32 247 



The Park System of Greater Boston. 



WE have several times made allusion to the Metro- 

 politan Park System, which includes public holdings 

 in various cities and towns within a radius of twelve miles 

 from the Boston State House. Under an act of the Massa- 

 chusetts Legislature passed in 1893 a Board was appointed 

 to take charge of this system in the thirty-seven cities and 

 towns which make up what is known as the Metropolitan 

 District. Outside of the parks of Boston proper this Commis- 

 sion now has charge of about 6,800 acres of land, and the 

 appropriations thus far made for the use of the Board have 

 amounted to $4,300,000. The annual reports of the Metro- 

 politan Park Commission have always had a genuine 

 educational value, as they give an account of the first 

 intelligent effort at providing a comprehensive and con- 

 sistent park system for so large an area, with its separate 

 reservations under different governments, and covering a 

 territory which will soon be densely populated. These 

 different pleasure-grounds are judiciously distributed from 

 the great Middlesex Fells and Lynn Woods Reservation on 

 the north, down through the Fens, Franklin Park and the 

 Arnold Arboretum, to the 4,000 acres of the Blue Hills on the 

 south, and from the magnificent stretch of Revere Beach, 

 which fronts the open sea, to the unique water parkway into 

 which it is proposed to convert the Charles River, stretching 

 out to the west. These reservations are not only con- 

 nected with the populous centre of the district by cheap 

 and rapid means of transportation by electric cars, but 

 stately parkways will provide dignified approaches to 

 the larger pleasure-grounds and make them agreeably 

 accessible to those who do not choose to take a public 

 conveyance. 



In the report lately issued it is a pleasure to note that 

 the Commission holds to the same high purpose, primarily 

 insisting that the foundation work for the future shall be 

 broad-set and firm, and not making any nervous haste for 

 immediate effect. Here is one great undertaking in which 

 nothing is left to chance. No detail is attacked in a desul- 

 tory or unrelated way or until there is a general de- 

 sign which will enable those who are entrusted with its 

 development to work with a definite purpose at every 

 point and all the time. A moment's reflection will convince 



any one that this is the only common-sense way of treat- 

 ing such a work, and yet we believe the Metropolitan Park 

 System of Boston is unique in that not only the original 

 selection of the reservations, but the adjustment of their 

 boundaries and the choice of routes for parkways to con- 

 nect them, have been matters of design. It may be added 

 that no detail of construction is begun in any one of the 

 reservations until the same close study has been made of 

 its interior features as has been given to the general scheme. 

 In nine cases out of ten the designers of public parks find 

 that some city has come into possession of a certain number 

 of acres of land by some chance, and then this land is 

 modeled or planned without any particular relation to 

 other pleasure-grounds or to the means of reaching them. 

 In this city, for instance, we have half a dozen so-called 

 parks lying north of the Harlem River, ranging in area 

 from seventeen hundred acres to a hundred in size. No intel- 

 ligent study of their boundaries has been made. Some of 

 these come within a few feet of an existing street, but leave 

 a narrow strip of land between the park and the roadway. 

 There is little doubt that in anyone of them a skilled designer 

 could point out how the possession of a few acres outside 

 of the line would be invaluable for completing a picture 

 or furnishing some desirable feature, and how a certain 

 area in another place might be surrendered with little loss 

 and sold. In Bronx Park, plans have already been prepared 

 for a botanical garden and for a zoological garden, without 

 any suggestions as to the revision of the limits of the park, and 

 without any adequate study of its approaches or surround- 

 ings. We may add that these so-called parks above the 

 Harlem have not even been surveyed, while new roads 

 are being built all about them without any thought of their 

 relation to the parks, and many of the parks themselves 

 are cut by roads for traffic and thus needlessly turned over 

 to business when they might as well have been made 

 pleasure-grounds pure and simple. 



No doubt, the Park Commissioners of Greater Boston are 

 right when they say that the reservations already acquired 

 are a distinct addition to the resources of the common- 

 wealth, and that considered as salable assets to-day they 

 are worth more than they have cost. No doubt, too, they 

 have a higher value than this in the renown they bring to 

 Metropolitan Boston, and in the health and pleasure they 

 will give to its future population. Beyond question, this 

 pleasure is greater because the new park system is the 

 result of study and not of chance, and it seems a thousand 

 pities that other cities wilj go on acquiring costly lands and 

 then allow them to fail of their highest purpose by neglect- 

 ing to treat them as they do any other great work. As to 

 the necessity of a careful study which not only includes 

 the topography, but the different kinds of vegetation in all 

 its parts before any roads are built or spaces are cleared, 

 the landscape-architects say : 



To us it seems that a due regard for the high purpose of 

 public reservations, as well as a due regard for the economical 

 fulfillment of that purpose, prohibits piecemeal, unrelated and 

 hand-to-mouth work in such domains, precisely as it pro- 

 hibits planless and disconnected work for the accomplishment 

 of any and every large purpose that can be imagined — for the 

 purpose of sewerageand watercommissions, or trustees of art 

 museums and public libraries, for example. Park commis- 

 sions are the trustees of the people's treasures of scenery ; 

 they are responsible for the safeguarding and the increase of 

 this treasure, and they are charged with the duty of making it 

 most effectively accessible. Being trustees they cannot safely 

 proceed planlessly any more than can they who are charged 

 with guarding and making accessible the people's treasure of 

 books and pictures, or with providing the people's drinking 

 water. The devising of comprehensive and far-seeing plans 

 or programmes of procedure is for park commissions as well 

 as for all other executive bodies the most necessary, arduous 

 and responsible labor which they are called upon to perform. 



It is clear that if the natural beauty of any place is to 

 be preserved and its poetic charm is to be enhanced, 

 while at the same time it is made accessible to thousands 

 of visitors every day, this is the one thing that requires the 



