January io, 1894. 



Garden and Forest. 



1 1 



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, JANUARY 10, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles :— Work for the Municipal Art Society 



Josinh Gregg 



Native Plants for Florida Gardens H. Nehrling. 



Plant Notes : — The Cocoanut-tree. (With figure.) 



The Mexican Ash C. G. Pringlt. 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter IV. Watson. 



Cultural Department : — The Russian Cherries l\ H. Hoskhis. M.D. 



Carnations - T. D. Hatfield. 



Some Saxifrages J. N. Gerard. 



Work in the Greenhouse E. O. Orpet. 



Correspondence : — Oil of Basswood J. E. C. 



Timber Cutting on State Lands S. 



Grafting Grapes Qur's. 



Recent Publications 



Noies 



Illustration : — Cocoanut-tree in Key West, Florida, Fig. 2 



Work for the Municipal Art Society. 



THE proposition just made by the Municipal Art Society 

 of this city to decorate, without expense to the city, 

 a portion of the new Criminal Court Building is a definite 

 step in the right direction. Appropriate sculptural and 

 pictorial adornment for our public buildings and parks, 

 when the works are designed and executed under the 

 auspices of such a society and with its approbation, can- 

 not but have an educating influence. The movement is a 

 recognition, if nothing more, of the true position of art as 

 related to civilized communities, and it is a declaration of 

 the truth that the influence of beauty on our daily lives is a 

 genuine need, and that the obligation to provide it for the 

 people is just as imperative as it is to furnish schools or 

 libraries, or pure water or fresh air or rapid transit. This 

 first work of the Society, which will be the beginning, let 

 us hope, of what is to be a long-continued usefulness, 

 will draw attention to itself and the field it is to occupy, 

 and hasten the time when it shall have the standing and 

 command the respect which it deserves, and when its pe- 

 titions and remonstrances will be heeded both by the peo- 

 ple and by the city government. 



The duty of this society to advise and criticise in the de- 

 sign of public parks and buildings is plainly higher and 

 more important than to assist in the mere decoration of 

 these works, and, no doubt, the time will come when a 

 protest like that which it made a few weeks ago against the 

 design of the speedway on Harlem River will not be treated 

 with contempt by Park Commissioners. It will be remem- 

 bered that a plan for this driveway was made by Mr. Vaux, 

 the landscape-architect of the Board, which provided for 

 just such a road as was needed, and included designs for 

 preserving and enhancing the natural beauties of the water- 

 front. For some reason, however, which has never been 

 explained, the Park Department ignored the plan prepared 

 by Mr. Vaux, and ordered the road to be constructed with- 

 out any walk on the river-border. This exclusion of the 

 people on foot from the bank of the river was aggravated 

 by the fact that the road absorbed land which was already 



park territory, and which was valuable because it came to 

 the water-front. No reason with any shadow of force in it 

 was ever assigned for this outrageous legislation in favor of 

 a small class, and no excuse was made for ignoring the 

 design of the consulting landscape-adviser of the depart- 

 ment. Since all this is public ground, and since by proper 

 treatment it could be made a most beautiful addition to 

 the city's parks, the Municipal Art Society made a formal 

 protest against the plan itself and against the violation of 

 sound principle and of precedent by the Department in at- 

 tempting to construct a public work of this sort without 

 consulting its landscape-architect. This protest, however, 

 was brushed aside as if it was of no consequence, and the 

 Park Board has gone on to call for bids to construct the road 

 as they had determined. 



The most discouraging feature of this case is that the 

 majority of the Park Board have not the slightest idea that 

 they are outraging public decency by ignoring the claims 

 of art and doing despite to special training and skill. At a 

 meeting, when the report of the landscape-architect was 

 called for, one of these Commissioners asked, impatiently, 

 "What has he to do with it?" Because a worthy and pros- 

 perous dry-goods merchant can bid a cash-boy run on an 

 errand, it by no means logically follows that he can order a 

 statue carved or a picture painted or a park designed in the 

 same way. This inability to appreciate the value of taste 

 and training is the very essence of vulgarity, and men of 

 coarse fibre can never be made to understand by argu- 

 ment what every one with any refinement of mind knows 

 by intuition. It is not likely that the Harlem speedway 

 will be built with one sidewalk, but the plan will be changed, 

 not because the Commissioners appreciate thegrossness of 

 their offense against the principles upon which all enlight- 

 ened society rests, but because they cannot face the storm 

 of indignation which will burst over them when the best 

 public opinion of the city is once thoroughly aroused. 



The proposal to erect a new Municipal Building in City 

 Hall Park offers another opportunity for the Municipal Art 

 Society to step in to protect the people from the vandalism 

 of the city government. In deference to public opinion, a 

 committee of architects have been empowered to exam- 

 ine a hundred or more proposed plans, and they reported 

 that not one of them all was worthy to be considered. 

 His Honor the Mayor then inquired if the Commission 

 could not shuffle up the different sections of half a dozen of 

 the best plans and patch them together so as to make an 

 appropriate building, and, oddly enough, Mr. Le Brun, 

 chairman of the commission, thought that this could very 

 easily be done. Of course, it is absurd to suppose that any- 

 monumental building was ever put together in this way. 

 Does any one imagine that St. Paul's Cathedral or the Capi- 

 tol in Washington could have been designed after this 

 fashion ? Suppose Mr. Atwood, instead of developing the 

 beautiful Art Building in Jackson Park, and directing its 

 growth from one central and commanding thought, had 

 dovetailed together pieces of the other buildings, and then 

 put a roof over them, does any one imagine that the result 

 would have been satisfactory? Of course, a municipal 

 building constructed on the principle advocated by Mayor 

 Gilroy would be a disgrace to an enlightened people: and 

 yet in order to perpetrate this outrage it is proposed to tear 

 down the one public building in the city of which every one 

 is proud, and which is hallowed by the memories of a cen- 

 tury. Besides this, the new monstrosity would cover up 

 the only strip of grass on Broadway between Bowling 

 Green and Union Square — that is, on two and a half miles 

 of the most frequented part of the principal street of the 

 principal city of the New World: and that, too, when Ihe 

 lofty buildings which are piling up about City Hall Park 

 will make its immediate neighborhood the most densely 

 populated spot in the world. No tenement district 

 compare with it in population during the day-time, and 

 yet the city is tearing down blocks in other parts of the 

 in order to provide small parks for the people. In m 

 on Manhattan Island, certainly, is there more need 01 



