5oo 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 513. 



will confidently assert his ability to design and to conserve 

 them, and that the public will endorse his claim, believing 

 him to be an expert. In one sense his art stands closer to 

 that of the landscape-gardener than any other. Both con- 

 cern themselves with the production, not of merely orna- 

 mental objects, but of objects of practical utility destined 

 for actual occupation or frequentation by human beings ; 

 and the work of laying out formal gardens has a close 

 aesthetic as well as practical affinity with architectural work. 

 But here the parallel ends. Naturalistic gardening has very 

 little aesthetic affinity with architecture. Symmetry and 

 definite balance, mathematically exact proportioning, unity 

 achieved by the repetition of conspicuous forms and fea- 

 tures, and harmony achieved by the reiteration of subor- 

 dinate ornamental motives — these are merits so characteristic 

 of the art of architecture that, whenever we see them 

 achieved in other arts, we say that the result has an archi- 

 tectural kind of beauty. But they are not the merits for 

 which the landscape-gardener strives. He strives, indeed, 

 for unity and harmony, for balance of parts and for appro- 

 priateness in the use of ornamental details ; but he achieves 

 them by avoiding symmetry and obvious repetitions, by 

 appearing to treat each passage in his work for the sake of 

 its individual importance and yet by combining them in 

 subtile ways, often inexplicable in words, into a coherent 

 artistic whole. The student of Oriental art will get a 

 glimpse of his ideals when we recall the fact that the Chi- 

 nese were the earliest landscape-gardeners, and say that, 

 as modern architecture — with its helper, formal gardening — 

 has come down to us in a straight line from classic art, so 

 landscape-gardening has come down to us in a straight 

 line from early Oriental art. It is not now in America the 

 same art that it was in ancient China, any more than our 

 buildings are the same as those which the Egyptians, 

 Greeks and Romans knew. But the general ideal has been 

 preserved in the one case as in the other. The radical dif- 

 ference between the ideals of the architect and of the land- 

 scape-gardener therefore lies in the fact that the one secures 

 unity, harmony and beauty by the use of symmetry, the 

 other by its avoidance. 



This is the great reason why the modern architect, un- 

 less he has also made a special and sympathetic study of 

 landscape-gardening, should not pose as an expert in park 

 matters. The better architect he is, the less likely he is to 

 understand the aims of an art so radically unlike his own 

 in its ideals, or even to confess that it is as true and 

 worthy an art as his own. Other things being equal, a 

 landscape-painter is much more likely to understand the 

 beauty and therefore to realize the needs of a naturalistic 

 park than an architect. He knows that a natural landscape 

 is not always beautiful, but often needs to be " arranged " 

 before it can be turned into a picture ; and he knows that 

 this may be done without injury to its naturalistic charac- 

 ter. He understands how composition — meaning a beau- 

 tiful harmonious arrangement of lines and colors, of masses 

 and voids, of lights and shadows — may lie achieved with- 

 out symmetry ; he knows how balance may be secured 

 without an obvious opposition of equal parts, how details 

 may be made truly ornamental without reiteration, and 

 how all this may be done in accordance with binding artis- 

 tic laws and yet the general result seem spontaneous and 

 natural. 



Of course, on the other hand, the landscape-painter can- 

 not be expected to understand those practical problems 

 which, in the making of large parks, are of equal impor- 

 tance with aesthetic problems. He is not an engineer, he 

 is not a horticulturist, and he is not experienced in regard 

 to the needs and habits of masses of people seeking refresh- 

 ment in the open air. Thus we come back to our main 

 proposition : No one is experienced in all these matters 

 except the man who has studied the making of naturalistic 

 parks in and for itself. There are not many such men in 

 our country. There are some, however, and they alone 

 have the right to be regarded as experts. And until the 

 public on the one hand and the artistic professions on the 



other recognize this fact and act in accordance with it, our 

 parks will never for a day be really safe from educated or 

 isrnorant vandalism. 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — XII. 



CEDRUS, which is confined to the Atlas Mountains of 

 Algeria, the Island of Cyprus, the Lebanon, the 

 Cilician Taurus, and to the mountains of northern India 

 and southern Thibet, is a well-marked genus of three 

 species, with scattered primary and tufted secondary per- 

 sistent leaves, solitary staminate flowers on the ends of 

 short spur-like branches, and erect cones with thin, entire, 

 rounded, persistent scales. The type of the genus, Cedrus 

 Libani, is one of the most magnificent of all cultivated 

 conifers in those regions like some parts of England and 

 France, where it really flourishes. The Cedar of Lebanon 

 is not hardy, however, in Massachusetts ; it barely survives 

 in the neighborhood of New York, although a few years 

 ago there was a fairly good specimen on the grounds of 

 the old Prince Nursery, on Long Island ; it is more success- 

 ful further south and there are a number of healthy 

 plants near Philadelphia and Washington. On the whole, 

 the Cedar of Lebanon must be considered a failure in 

 eastern North America. All the cultivated plants, however, 

 are derived from seeds raised in Europe on trees taken from 

 the original Lebanon stock, and it is quite possible that if 

 plants were raised from seeds obtained from the high 

 Cilician Taurus, a more northern and a colder region than 

 the Lebanon, they would prove as hardy here as the Cilician 

 Fir, another conifer of the same region. This would be an 

 interesting and useful experiment to make, but, unfor- 

 tunately, it appears practically impossible to find any one 

 in the central part of Asia Minor to gather the seeds. 

 The Algerian Cedar (Cedrus Atlantica) is rather more hardy 

 than its near relative of the Lebanon, and small plants of 

 the beautiful blue leaved form of this tree have lived for 

 the last two or three years in Mr. Huiinewell's pinetum. 

 It is more vigorous, however, further south, and the best 

 plants of this form which I have seen in the eastern states 

 are at Biltmore, North Carolina. The Himalayan Cedar 

 (Cedrus Deodara) has not proved a successful tree in 

 Europe, where it has been planted in large numbers ; it is 

 not at all hardy here at the north, but I have seen healthy 

 plants in Georgia and other southern states, and in California. 



Larix, the Larch, is closely related to Cedrus, but the 

 leaves are deciduous ; the male flowers are borne on lateral 

 branches of the previous year, and the much smaller cones 

 with scales shorter than the bracts in some species, are at 

 first nearly horizontal, and then assurgent. The genus, 

 which is widely distributed over the boreal and elevated 

 regions of the two hemispheres, is composed of about 

 seven species, which are generally large trees and produce 

 strong, durable and very valuable timber. 



The Larch which has been most planted in the eastern 

 states is Larix Larix, the Larch-tree of the mountains of 

 central Europe, where it sometimes grows in extensive 

 forests, and frequently forms the timber-line either alone or 

 with the Spruce and Stone Pine. This Larch has been 

 largely planted in Europe for timber, especially in Scotland, 

 and successful experiments have been made with it as a 

 timber-tree in New England. It is very hardy here and 

 grows rapidly even in dry gravels, but, like the native spe- 

 cies, it is now frequently disfigured by insects which kill 

 the leaves during the early summer and weaken the trees, 

 although they usually cover themselves with a second crop 

 of leaves. In very early spring the Larch is lovely with the 

 tender green of its young foliage, but later in the season 

 the leaves often have a rusty look, due perhaps to the heat 

 and dryness of our summers ; and this Larch, which seems 

 to belong only on rough mountain sides, appears, with its 

 small regular branches and straight pyramidal habit, out of 

 harmony with round-headed trees and out of place in pas- 

 toral landscapes. There is a form of Larix Larix with dis- 

 tinctly pendulous branches (var. pendula) of Swiss origin, 



