September i, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



339 



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. SEPTEMBER 1, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — Harmony in Small Country Places 339 



William L. Bradley 340 



The New View of the Hortulana Plums Professor F. A. Wauglu 340 



Cruelty of Asclepias Mrs. Mary Treat. 341 



Notes from Santa Monica Forestry Station Professor John H. Barber. 34 1 



New or Little-known Plants: — Coiiaria Japonica. (With figure.) C. S. S. 342 



Foreign Correspondence :— London Letter W. Watson. 344 



Cultural Department : — Gooseberries W. N. Craig. 345 



Fern Notes IV. H. Tallin. 345 



Gloxinias William Scott. 346 



Hardy Perennials Robert Cameron. 346 



Rock Garden Notes G. W Oliver. 346 



Correspondence: — The Green Scale of Coffee Professor T. D. A. Cocherell. 347 



H ardiness of the Montbretias C. II'. Hoitt. 347 



Japan Plums. E. O. Orptt 347 



Notes 34S 



Illustration: — Coriaria Japonica, Fig. 45 343 



Harmony in Small Country Places. 



IN planting the ornamental grounds of a small country- 

 place a wise choice of material is just as important 

 as a wise decision with regard to the needed amount of 

 foliage and its proper distribution. Of course, almost all 

 of Nature's products are beautiful when considered in them- 

 selves ; but now that the resources of all climes and countries 

 are at the planter's command, he may so combine and 

 contrast beautiful plants that their collective effect will 

 be displeasing. 



The most important quality to obtain in ornamental 

 grounds is unity — harmony of general effect. And, in 

 one sense, it is very hard to obtain, for it means much 

 self-denial. Horticultural interest develops with its exer- 

 cise. Year by year the planter is tempted to introduce 

 more and more kinds of plants within his gates, as his 

 knowledge of their variety and his appreciation of their 

 different kinds of beauty develop. If his place is very 

 large he may somewhere find a good, chance to indulge all 

 his likings. But on a small place formal avenues and 

 graceful groves and clumps of trees of many sorts, peace- 

 ful lawns and varied shrubberies, orchards, flower-borders, 

 rose gardens, pineries, arrays of native flowering-plants, 

 and collections of showy exotics cannot all be secured 

 without detriment to the effect of each group and fatal 

 injury to the effect of the place as a whole. Many things 

 in themselves desirable must sternly be refused admittance 

 if the most desirable of all possible things — restful harmony 

 in the general result — is to be achieved. 



Given a small place, the best course for the owner to 

 pursue is, first, to decide whether he has so strong a desire 

 for a collection of any special sort that he positively can- 

 not do without it. If he decides that he has, he should 

 reserve for it the spot where it will interfere least with the 

 effect of the rest of his grounds. And then he should 

 sacrifice his desire for collections and specimens of other 

 sorts and simply endeavor to make the remainder of his 

 grounds beautiful. 



In prosecuting this aim the best test will be the question : 

 Will the result please the eye of a cultivated person who is 

 not a horticulturist ? Will it, for example, please the eye 



of an artist ? This is the only right result to secure in the 

 grounds immediately about a dwelling-house. If they are 

 given up to the indulgence of special horticultural tastes 

 they may prove very interesting to examine, but they will 

 not be beautiful as a picture. And the environment of a 

 home should always be a charming picture of one sort or 

 another. 



If this truth has been accepted, and if, as was indicated 

 in a former article, the owner has decided where his thicker 

 plantations shall be made, and where his more isolated 

 trees and shrubs shall be set, still he is not ready to begin 

 actual work. He must decide what kinds of trees and 

 shrubs and flowering plants he will use to produce his 

 artistic little landscape. If any conspicuous plants of 

 Nature's growing already occupy his ground, the proper 

 character of his scheme is indicated thereby. Nothing 

 should be introduced which is out of harmony with them, 

 and the most harmonious things are likely to be those 

 which Nature has associated with them in this same part 

 of the world. No rule, however, is more generally ignored 

 than this. The more definitely Nature has laid down the 

 path which the planter should follow, the more likely he 

 is to wish to escape from it. If his grounds are altogether 

 bare, he may be satisfied to set out native Maples, Elms, 

 Pines or Hickories. But if some of these already grow 

 inside his fences he is pretty sure to seek the nurseryman 

 and inquire what he can offer that will add " variety " to 

 his place. Thus we may discover the genesis of those 

 unfortunate agglomerations of inharmonious trees, shrubs 

 and flowering plants which so often distress the careful 

 observer of American country places. Monotony has been 

 feared ; variety has been desired ; an inartistic medley is 

 the result ; and very often it is of a glaring kind, including 

 profuse displays of plants which bear foliage of some 

 abnormal hue, red or yellow or purple, bluish or whitish, 

 blotched or streaked, or which grow in abnormal forms, 

 weeping or pyramidal, prostrate or umbrella-shaped. Even 

 a single plant of ny asuch sort should not be introduced 

 into our plantations without great care. But if many are 

 employed the effect cannot be good, no matter how much 

 care is taken. Simplicity, restfulness, naturalness, harmony 

 — these are the great requirements, and all of them are 

 sacrificed when many eccentric, abnormal, or even very 

 showy plants are introduced. Many a small place 

 which has been filled with these at great expense is an 

 offense to the eye of the artist, and all the more so if 

 dignified trees or beautiful shrubs of native growth raise 

 their heads amid the medley. And, morever, real variety 

 is not thus achieved. While each place is a medley in 

 itself, each one resembles its neighbor, for the owners of 

 all have been guided by the same mistaken ideas and 

 followed the same mistaken path. 



Variety is indeed desirable in our pleasure-grounds. 

 They should not be individually monotonous ; they should 

 not all resemble each other, and they should not look like 

 bits reserved from pre-existent meadows or cut out of pre- 

 existent forests, no matter how beautiful these meadows and 

 forests may have been ; they should all reveal the touch of 

 art, and each of them should have its individual, personal 

 charm. Nevertheless, a study of the native forest and the 

 neighboring meadow, brookside and glen will afford the 

 best possible patterns for the effective and varied as well as 

 for the harmonious planting of our pleasure-grounds. 



Among the hills and valleys and higher mountains of 

 northern New Jersey and southern New York, for instance, 

 man} r colonies of summer residences have been established 

 in recent years, many fine large country places have been 

 laid out, and the suburbs of many towns show streets of 

 pretty cottages or expensive villas. Nowhere has Nature 

 been more lavish with the beauty or with the variety of her 

 gifts than in these regions ; yet nowhere can more pitiful, 

 or pitifully costly, mistakes in the way of planting be dis- 

 covered. Hundreds of villa grounds and small places may 

 be examined, and very few be found which are not de- 

 formed by a profusion of eccentric exotics or garden varie- 



