June 



1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



251 



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-CL.\SS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — Natural Beauty iu Urban Parks. 251 



Private Forestry and State Forestry.— Ill C. A S. keiick. 252 



Dock Gardens. (With plan) W. Hamilton Bell. 252 



Roots in Commerce. — 1 .1/. B. C. 253 



Plant Notes : — New Plants in Santa Barbara F. Frames, hi. 254 



Iris Robinsoniana. (With figure.) 255 



Cultural Department: — Seasonable Notes E. O. Orpet. 256 



Plants in Flower at Wellesley, Massachusetts T. D. Hatfield. 256 



Rock Garden Notes G. \V Oliver. 256 



Greenhouse Notes W. H. Taplin. 257 



Correspondence : — Sycamore Blight. ...A". A. S. and Professor Byron D. Halste, 



The Durabilityof Pitch Pine II'. A. S. 25S 



Exhibitions : — Horticulture at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, 



Professor XVilliam A*. Lazenby. 258 



Boston Rose and Strawberry Show R. 258 



R ecent Publications 259 



Notes 260 



Illustrations : — Suggestion for a Dock Park by Edw. Hamilton Bell 253 



Iris Robinsoniana in a California Garden, Fig. 33 255 



Natural Beauty in Urban Parks. 



WHETHER our appreciation of the beauty of natural 

 scenery becomes profounder and more sympathetic 

 with what we fondly term the advance of civilization is a 

 subject which it is not our purpose here to discuss, 

 although volumes have been written on the question. What 

 we do know beyond dispute is that men and women of 

 refined taste always feel something like indignation when 

 they see natural beauty needlessly defaced. It is this 

 sentiment which moved the Prime Minister of England a 

 few years ago to advocate an act of Parliament to jirotect 

 the scenery of Great Britain from vulgarization by the 

 paint-pot of the advertiser, which impelled the Massa- 

 chusetts Legislature to pass a law making it unlawful to 

 proclaim in staring characters the virtues of a patent medi- 

 cine, and which has clothed the Park Board of this city 

 with- authority over signs erected within three hundred 

 feet of the public grounds in this city. The same feeling im- 

 pelled Mr. Charles Eliot, seven or eight years ago, and his 

 co-workers not only to make an organized effort to protect 

 beautiful scenery from disfigurement, but to secure it as a 

 possession of the people forever. To serve this end the 

 Board of Trustees of Public Reservations was founded, 

 which has been the model for many other organizations of 

 this sort. No one can doubt, too, that the great majority 

 of the enlightened people of Greater New York feel that 

 somehow their personal rights are invaded by the dis- 

 figurement of the Palisades which is now going on, and 

 there can be no question that the Legislature of this state 

 never passed an act more thoroughly in accord with the 

 sentiment of the whole people than the one which set 

 apart Niagara Falls as a reservation to be the property 

 of all the people. The National Government has recog- 

 nized the same sentiment in not permitting Yosemite 

 Valley and the Yellowstone region to pass into the hands 

 of individuals as private property, but has taken these 

 two great national wonders, as well as certain Sequoia 

 groves, and held them permanently for public enjoyment. 



In regard to places so noteworthy for sublimity or 

 features of unique beauty there seems to be a feeling that 

 these, at least, are the common heritage of all the people, 

 and it runs counter to our innate sense of right that 



great mountain peaks or natural objects of commanding 

 grandeur should be the private property of an individual 

 to be monopolized for personal profit or subject to the 

 passing whims of any puny mortal. But if we adopt 

 this reasoning we may as well go a step further and hold 

 that all natural beauty is the inheritance of all the people, 

 that it has a distinct value to them just as clear air and 

 pure water have, and that the men who needlessly scar 

 the face of nature or turn it into a desert when they bore 

 their oil wells, dig out ore, quarry rocks, or build factories 

 and railroads, are as truly public enemies as those who 

 pollute springs of running water or load the air with 

 noxious vapors. It is certain, at all events, that men who 

 appreciate their duties as citizens will not needlessly mar 

 the beauty of the earth in which we live, they will not 

 wantonly destroy the forests which give a glory to our 

 landscapes, and they will treat with reverence natural 

 scenery whose grandeur has an elevating influence and 

 whose beauty brings refreshment to the spirit. 



We are safe, too, in asserting that beautiful natural 

 scenery has a positive value as a refreshment to the 

 mind, especially of those who are worn and wearied by the 

 stress of city life. This is not a mere metaphor. It is 

 asserted over and over again, not only by poets and phi- 

 losophers who give expression to the profoundest truths 

 in our nature, but the curative value of natural scenery is 

 distinctly recognized by the medical profession. All of us 

 have felt the soothing and restful influence of natural 

 beauty, acting in a subtle way through the very highest 

 functions of our being, and tending to establish sound 

 minds in sound bodies. When a city possesses a piece of 

 scenery like Mount Royal, for example, it owns something 

 more than so many acres of land whose beauty has power 

 to attract the residents of the city to visit it for the sake of 

 fresh air or exercise, or for a change of mental occupation. 

 Such scenery, as is delightfully shown in a pamphlet pub- 

 lished by Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted nearly a score of years 

 ago, acts "in a directly remedial way to enable men to 

 better resist the harmful influences of ordinary town life 

 and recover what they lose from them. It is thus, in 

 medical phrase, a prophylactic and therapeutic agent of 

 vital value. There is not one in the apothecaries' shops as 

 important to the health and strength and to the earning 

 and taxpaying capacities of a large city.'' Whenever, 

 therefore, a city possesses park-lands with exceptionally 

 beautiful features, their preservation, even from a pecu- 

 niary standpoint, means the saving of capital ; it is the 

 husbanding of a source of health which is the source of all 

 wage-earning power and the foundation of all wealth. The 

 preservation and enhancement of natural beauty in public 

 parks ought, therefore, to be insisted on, not from senti- 

 mental considerations alone, but for reasons based on the 

 most substantial and practical truth. 



When we consider the almost universal admiration and 

 even affection among civilized men and women for broad 

 natural landscapes, for "scenery as distinct from scenes," 

 ami consider its special restoring effect upon those who 

 suffer from the nervous strain of city life, we have the one 

 justifying reason for large urban parks. Small parks and 

 playgrounds, formal squares, plazas and promenades are 

 all valuable for other purposes, but for the highest rest and 

 refreshment nothing will fill the place of stretches of beau- 

 tiful natural scenery. Artificiality, the needless intrusion 

 of buildings, anything which interferes with seclusion and 

 the actual contact and communion with pure nature, defeats 

 to some extent the highest purpose of such parks. The 

 idea should never be harbored that rural parks ran be 

 improved by buildings however noble, by any work of art 

 which is not entirely in harmony with the spirit of the 

 scene, or by so-called decorative gardening, how 

 choice and rare the plants employed. It is with regret, 

 therefore, that we hear of a threat to ere< 1 a large museum in 

 one of the Buffalo parks. No mattter how stately the building 

 will be, no matter how attractive or instructive the mate 

 rial it contains, it must forever be a defacement to the 



