July 14 1S97.J 



Garden and Forest. 



71 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY HY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Ruilding, 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, JULY 14, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — One Way to Reduce the Cost of Park Maintenance 271 



Second-growth White Pine in Pennsylvania -/. K. Mlodziansky. 272 



Roots in Commerce — II M. B. C. 273 



The Canon Winds in U tan F. C Sears. 274 



The Care of Weak Limbs of Trees. (With figure.) J. G. Jack. 274 



Plant Notes 276 



Cultural Department: — Transplanting Pa^onies. Tke London Garden. 276 



Notes from Baden-Baden l/,;.r LeickUin. 277 



Garden Notes 'C. E. Endi\ ■'.". 277 



Opuntias and Sedums, Coronilla varia, Centaurea macrocephala, 



Joseph Median. 277 



Correspondence: — Notes from West Virginia Danske Dandridge. 277 



Dodder in Clover Professor Byron D. Hal ' 



Pear Blight G. F. 27S 



Two Insect Pests S.deL. Van Rensselaer Strong. 27S 



Gardens for Public Schools Henry L. Ciapp. 278 



Current Literature 279 



Recent Publications 279 



Notes 2S0 



Illustration : — The right and the wrong way to support a weak branch, Fig. 35. 275 



One Way to Reduce the Cost of Park Maintenance. 



THERE are few public parks in this country in which 

 the trained eye does not generally detect a disheveled 

 or untidy look. The shrubberies are disfigured by dead 

 wood ; strong, coarse-growing bushes are smothering the 

 more delicate ones ; trees are defoliated by insects and 

 fungi, and many of them are making a sickly growth ; the 

 road borders are ragged and the general effect is a weak 

 imitation of untamed nature. The hand of man is visible 

 everywhere, but his efforts are too feeble to be the con- 

 trolling force, and they rather mar than make the landscape. 

 If this fact is pointed out to park superintendents or park 

 commissioners they at once reply that in the first place 

 they cannot secure enough money to do the work as it is 

 done in the most carefully managed private grounds, while, 

 in the second place, if they had all the money the work 

 demands it would be impossible to secure enough skilled 

 labor and intelligent superintendence to do it in the most 

 approved way. And there is much to justify this excuse — that 

 is, parks do languish for lack of maintenance, and adequate 

 maintenance is impracticable for lack of funds and trained 

 workmen. 



Under such conditions the parks must suffer, of course, 

 but it is singular that some commissioner, instead of strug- 

 gling after appropriations which, under the growing ex- 

 penses of modern cities, are much harder to secure every 

 year, does not argue in favor of designing and constructing 

 parks in such a way that they can be cared for more 

 cheaply. We are speaking now of large rural parks where 

 quiet landscapes are the essential features. To provide 

 such landscapes we need good grass, good trees, an abun- 

 dance of hardy shrubs effectively arranged, with good 

 roads and walks to make the pleasant prospects available. 

 Little else is necessary, from an artistic point of view, for 

 the more simple the material the more effective and endur- 

 ing will be the picture which an artist of real creative 

 faculty will produce. To insure cheap maintenance it is 

 essential that all work should, in the first place, be done 

 thoroughly and well. The roads should be perfectly 

 drained and constructed of the best material, and there 

 should not be too many of them. Equally or even more 



important is it to have a deep, rich, well-drained soil, for 

 turf on such a soil lasts longer and is more easily kept free 

 from weeds, while the trees and shrubs planted in it will 

 also be long-lived and their branches will not be dying 

 back every year as they do on trees and shrubs which 

 lead a starved life on thin, sterile soil. Of course, the 

 hardiest trees and shrubs should be selected, for there is no 

 economy in planting trees or shrubs which are liable to be 

 killed every year or so, partially if not entirely, by frost or 

 heat, or drought or winds, or some other freak of Ameri- 

 can weather which annually works ruin upon a large- 

 percentage of our exotic garden plants. Nor should we 

 select plants like garden Roses, which, unless carefully 

 watched, are disfigured every year by insects. It costs 

 time and labor to cut out dead or dying branches, to 

 remove dead trees and fight insects. 



But the shrubs and trees which need the least attention 

 are not only the most economical ones to plant; they are 

 the best from an artistic point of view. The fact is, that 

 for producing large effects, for making scenes which a 

 painter would like to transfer to canvas, we do not need 

 any great variety. With wood borders of our native 

 American trees, a dozen good shrubs, half as many 

 climbers and green turf, a good landscape-gardener can 

 produce scenery which is more truly restful to nerves 

 overstrained by city life than any more elaborate planting 

 scheme could make. In fact, it is quite impossible to take 

 all the showy trees and shrubs which are available in this 

 climate and group them together so that they will have 

 any consistency or unity of design. A landscape-painter 

 would make himself ridiculous if he argued that his picture 

 was valuable in proportion to the number of different colors 

 which he could manage to work into his canvas, and cer- 

 tainly the landscape-gardener who tries to use all known 

 shrubs and trees of diverse form and habit, and with 

 flowers and leaves of every color, is more likely to create a 

 landscape which resembles a crazy quilt than one which 

 suggests a picture of peace. Some of the noblest pleasure- 

 grounds in the world contain nothing but big trees and 

 grass ; and how superior simplicity of this sort is to the 

 fussiness of modern decorative gardening will be appre- 

 ciated by any one who compares St. James Park, in Lon- 

 don, with Battersea, on the other side of the Thames. 



The tendency among superintendents of planting in parks 

 is constantly toward showy plants, and particularly exotic 

 ones, and if they are rather rare so much the better. They 

 seem to feel that the way to establish a reputation is to 

 produce something that will excite surprise and which will 

 strike the beholder as remarkable, and, no doubt, the shrubs 

 and trees which can show the gayest flowers will be more 

 likely to arrest popular attention, and therefore these plants 

 are very largely selected. Now, a very elaborate and 

 varied planting scheme may be admissible on private 

 grounds of limited extent, although on a large place a true 

 artist will exercise restraint in this particular. But when a 

 man can afford to plant a collection of rarities he can 

 probably afford to maintain them. If any of them are 

 unable to take care of themselves he pays for the labor and 

 other expenses which are required to give them special 

 protection. He sprays them against attacks of fungous 

 diseases and defends them against the assaults of destruc- 

 tive insects ; when they die back in winter, his gardeners 

 cut the dead wood away and he gives them all the 

 pruning and training that is necessary to keep them 

 looking trim and happy. Public grounds, however, should 

 be considered from an entirely different point of view. 

 Shrubs with gaudy flowers are out of place where children, 

 old or young, will be tempted to break off their branches. 

 Shrubs and trees which need constant pruning to keep 

 them from looking shabby should be rejected. Elabora- 

 tion in planting ought to be forbidden as utterly as needless 

 construction. The very qualities which would make a par- 

 ticular shrub or tree tempting to a man who is searching 

 for a showy specimen to decorate the border of his small 

 lawn are the very ones which ought to condemn it for use 



