December 8, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



479 



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, DECEMBER 8, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — City Playgrounds 479 



Mistakes in the Maintenance of Philadelphia Parks 480 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — X C. S. S. 480 



New or Little-known Plants: — Orchids in the South Mountain, Pennsyl- 

 vania. (With figures ) M. L. Dock. 483 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 484 



Cultural Department: — Seasonable Work William N . Craig. 484 



The Pink Color in Chrysanthemums Wilhehn Miller. 486 



Correspondence :— City Playgrounds Mrs. J H. Rabbins. 487 



Notes 4SS 



Illustrations : — Habenaria fimbiiata. Fig. 60 483 



Pogonia ophioglossioides. Fig. 61 4S5 



City Playgrounds. 



THE importance of fresh air to the inhabitants of crowded 

 city -tenement districts certainly needs no demonstra- 

 tion ; and there are now few thoughtful persons who do 

 notrealize the necessity of providing city children with abun- 

 dant and convenient opportunity to play the outdoor games 

 which belong to their age. The value of playgrounds for 

 the general welfare and uplifting of urban populations is 

 so well understood in Europe that every large European 

 city is well supplied with small parks, squares and play- 

 grounds. London men and boys can now stretch their 

 limbs and harden their muscles in more than a thousand 

 municipal cricket grounds and football fields, and on in- 

 numerable public tennis courts, hockey grounds and golf 

 links. Other large English cities are following the example 

 set by the capital ; and in Paris, Berlin and Vienna the 

 welfare of children is provided for as it never has been 

 before. In this country there is little stent to the money 

 spent in cramming the youthful mind with information 

 which is not always particularly useful to the recipients in 

 their later practical struggles with the world, but compara- 

 tively little is done by our municipalities to make children 

 physically strong and healthy. Almost invariably the 

 public school-houses in thickly-settled districts are destitute 

 of open spaces about them, or these are limited to a few 

 square feet of brick-paved yards usually too small to hold all 

 the children of the school, to say nothing of affording them an 

 opportunity for exercise. Small children and girls usually 

 play in the streets, and the large boys, if they play their 

 games at all, are forced to make excursions to distant parts 

 of the city, or into open suburbs which every year become 

 more remote. American cities are growing in population 

 at the expense of the country, and unless this movement 

 from the country to centres of population is checked, the 

 men and, what is more important, the mothers of the men 

 who are going to make American democracy a success 

 or a failure, will be largely city bred. Something, to be 

 sure, has been done to help the boys and girls of several 

 American cities to secure health, strength and cheerfulness, 

 but the movement for a better provision for their physical 



welfare certainly has not kept pace with municipal devel- 

 opment in some other directions. 



In this city the small parks at Mulberry Bend and 

 Corlear's Hook, in the very heart of what is said to be the 

 most thickly populated region in America or Europe, show 

 what can be accomplished in a short time, and how the 

 health and character of the inhabitants of whole districts 

 can be improved by knocking down a few buildings and 

 covering the space which they had occupied with grass 

 and trees, well-graded walks and comfortable benches. 

 New York has legislative authority to spend a million 

 dollars a year in buying land for small parks and play- 

 grounds, and has recently acquired a number of squares 

 for this purpose ; and in a recent report of the Mayor's 

 Advisory Committee on Small Parks, of which Mr. Abram 

 S. Hewitt is chairman, the laying out of thirteen additional 

 playgrounds is recommended. 



Philadelphia, where a healthy public interest in the sub- 

 ject has been roused by the activity and zeal of the 

 members of the City Parks Association, a body of men 

 and women joined together for the purpose, has purchased 

 since i SS8 about one hundred and forty acres of land for 

 small parks and playgrounds and now has two hundred 

 and seventy acres of public grounds outside its large park 

 system. As compared with either New York or Philadel- 

 phia Boston is badly equipped with playgrounds in her 

 crowded districts. The city has spent great sums of 

 money in developing an excellent park system, with large 

 and small country parks connected by an admirable 

 parkway ; and in Franklin Field, which is still re- 

 mote from the crowded parts of the city, it has a really 

 noble country playground. During the past year several 

 pieces of land have been purchased by the city for play- 

 grounds but these are mostly in too remote outlying dis- 

 tricts to be of real value to the present generation of boys 

 and girls ; and with the exception of two north end 

 school-houses, for which a very inadequate playground 

 has been recently bought, no provision is made for 

 the outdoor recreation of school-children near their schools. 

 No good opportunity is given to boys to play baseball, 

 football or hockey anywhere in the city proper except on 

 the Common or anywhere outside the city nearer than 

 Franklin Park or Franklin Field, and the Common is so 

 much used for other purposes that it cannot safely serve 

 now as a playground any more than Madison Square in 

 this city or Liberty Square in Philadelphia can be 

 properly used for games of baseball. The Charles- 

 bank, a narrow strip of land between Charles 

 Street and the Charles River, with its well-equipped 

 gymnasium for boys and girls, is an excellent play- 

 ground for those who are satisfied with gymnastic exer- 

 cises ; and small boys and girls find an opportunity to 

 play on Charlestown Heights and in the small north 

 end marine park. In other parts of the city there is 

 little space for the recreation of small children, and the 

 story of the efforts of the Massachusetts Emergency and 

 Hygienic Association to furnish places for the little 

 children of Boston to play during the summer months, 

 which is printed in another column, is, to say the least, 

 pathetic. 



Even in this city and in Philadelphia, where certainly 

 more attention has been given to this subject than in the 

 other American cities, the full meaning of what is needed 

 in the way of urban recreation grounds has not always 

 been fully understood, and there is evidently some contu- 

 sion in the public mind with regard to a proper distinc- 

 tion between small parks and playgrounds. Mulberry 

 Bend is a small city park or square laid out with broad 

 walks, and lawns planted with trees and shrubs ; it is an 

 attractive and beautiful spot, ami it has already had an 

 elevating and healthy influence mi the community. 

 Mothers with sick children can find there fresh air, shade, 

 and comfortable seats, and little boys and girls can run 

 about with more freedom on the broad, smooth asphalted 

 walks than they can in narrow crowded streets. Mulberry 



