October 6, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



389 



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. OCTOBER 6, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — Penshurst Place. (With figure. ) 3S9 



A Scheme of California!] Lumbermen ?,qo 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — 1 C. S. S. 300 



The Hamburg Exposition Professor L. H. Bailey. 391 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 392 



Entomological: — A Willow Pest. (With figure.) % G.Jack. 394 



Cultural Department: — Some Autumn Flowers. . J. N. Gerard, T. D. Hatfield. 395 



Phloxes (Decussata section) William Scott. 395 



Chrysanthemums T. D. H. 395 



Tamarix Chinensis E. 0. Orfet. 396 



Correspondence :— Notes from my Wild Flower Garden Bessie L. Putnam. 396 



Meetings of Societies: — The American Forestry Association 396 



Notes 397 



Illustrations : — Gardens of Penshurst Place, Fig. 50 393 



A Willow Pest — Cryptorhynchus lapathi. Fig. 51 394 



Penshurst Place. 



PENSHURST PLACE will probably be remembered by 

 American tourists as one of the most homelike of the 

 great show-places of England. The house is placed on 

 level ground in a gently rolling park, where knotty old 

 Oaks stand singly, in immemorial security, on the grassy 

 uplands, and in the hollows where the bracken grows 

 breast-high. Some of these trees are known by the names 

 of distinguished members of the family, or honored guests 

 who have been received there, such as Sir Philip Sidney and 

 Queen Elizabeth. Those who object to the romping char- 

 acter of modern dances may not have noticed a picture in 

 the long gallery in which that illustrious dame is repre- 

 sented as dancing the coranto, a lively Spanish measure 

 much in fashion at the time, in which the lady is lifted at 

 least a foot from the floor by her partner. 



The park front of the house is simple (see illustration 

 on page 393), and the park is separated from the home 

 grounds by a low ha-ha, from which the lawn comes up 

 to the gray stone walls, not broken by flaunting beds of 

 gaudily colored foliage plants, but plain and severe, as is 

 suitable for the stern old building. 



The pile is long in comparison with its height, as is 

 often the case in old English houses, and bears on its face 

 the marks of having been lived in and added to by many 

 men at various times. The crenelated walls and narrow 

 lancet windows are memorials of the earlier days when the 

 home was only a home when it was possible to defend it, 

 while the larger windows, flanked by Ionic columns, re- 

 mind one of the work of Inigo Jones and Christopher 

 Wren. 



But it is to the garden front of the house, as usual, to which 

 one turns to see the real charm of the place. A wide grass 

 terrace runs very nearly the whole length of the house, 

 and serves as a foreground for one of the most successful 

 attempts at a reproduction of the old English formal gar- 

 den. About thirty years ago, Lord Delisle and his architect, 

 the late George Devey, designed the garden as it now is, 

 after the manner of those described by Gervase Markham, 

 and that other worthy who disguised his plain English 

 name of Thomas Hill as Didymus Mountaine. From the 



broad terrace close under the house one looks down on the 

 flower garden, which is on a lower level and crossed by 

 broad, straight gravel walks which meet at a circular foun- 

 tain in the middle. A low stone curbing inside the wide grass 

 margin of the paths marks a level still lower, where old- 

 fashioned flowers nod gayly over their little Yew enclosures, 

 which are not too high to hide anything but the earth of 

 the beds. By this arrangement of different levels the flowers 

 are seen from many points of view, so that the stroller has 

 a chance to decide whether he prefers to look down at a 

 mass of brilliant colors on a green lawn or to see and smell 

 the flowers by going among them. 



On one side of this sunken garden and at right angles to 

 the house runs a long terrace, called in the language of the 

 writers of old Herbals, a " mount." These mounts were 

 very characteristic of old English gardens and were origi- 

 nally meant to bring a little amusement into the long dull 

 days of the women living in the house. The boundary 

 wall of the garden often overlooked a road, and was some- 

 times more than ten feet high on the outside. Against this 

 the mount was built, an inside grassy terrace, reached 

 usually by stone steps from the flower garden or a lower 

 terrace. Persons walking on the upper level, which was 

 only a few feet from the top of the wall, could easily see all 

 that went on outside, while remaining safe from intruders. 

 At the end of the mount farthest from the house, and in the 

 angle of the enclosing wall, a garden house was built, 

 which gave shelter from showers and sun, and had the 

 further advantage of yet another outlook. 



At Penshurst the mount can be reached either from the 

 house terrace or the garden, but the original purpose of 

 the early designers of mounts has been lost sight of, as it 

 overlooks nothing but the home grounds. It must there- 

 fore be considered rather as a quaint addition to the plan, 

 and as a pretty finish to one side of the garden, than as 

 being archasologically correct. The walls of the mount 

 and the house terrace are not the least of the attractions of 

 the sunken garden, covered as they are with Ivy, spaliered 

 fruits and tender shrubs that enjoy the extra protection 

 given by the warmth of the brick. 



From the garden straight walks lead to the fish-pond, a 

 piece of water some thirty paces long and twenty wide, 

 surrounded on all four sides by a wide grass verge and a 

 high pleached Yew hedge. This little enclosure carries one 

 back to the middle ages, when such fish-ponds were a 

 necessary part of every priory or large manor house, since 

 their inhabitants contributed largely to the larder on the 

 many fast days ordered by the Church. One would hardly 

 feel surprised, i n a place like this, if some day one w ere to come 

 upon a jolly Friar Tuck, gazing down into the clear waters 

 of the pool and smacking his lips in anticipation of the de- 

 licious meal he would have from an especially fat and 

 tender carp. Beyond the quiet pond, long walks, bordered 

 by old Apple and Pear trees and bright with many flowers, 

 open little vistas of the park and woodland beyond. In 

 spring these walks are, perhaps, at their best, when the sun 

 throws chequered patterns through the blossoming trees on 

 the gravel, and the borders are gay with flowering bulbs ; 

 but autumn has its own charm in the fruit-laden trees and 

 golden and purple glow of the season's last flowers. 



As is so often the case in England, a little village of a 

 few dozen houses huddles under the shadow of the great 

 house, and a gate from the home grounds leads into a 

 quiet street bordered with old cottages and their gardens. 

 No railway disturbs the stillness of this hamlet, which can 

 only be reached by driving from the station some two 

 miles away, or taking a coach which runs from Tunbridge 

 Wells. After this has taken its jingling departure, and when 

 the last belated tourist has gone lingeringly away, the shrill 

 voices of children and the cawing of rooks are the loudest 

 sounds heard in the village. 



No more charming excursion than this can be made in 

 a day from London. Penshurst is in Kent, " the garden of 

 England." and surely nowhere does it better deserve the 

 name than at a place where there is a continuous succes- 



