452 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 351. 



magnifica and Abies amabilis trees of our Pacific forest- 

 flora, which will only live in New England when cared for 

 with exceptional intelligence. Of course, there are many 

 smaller trees and younger ones, for whenever a new Coni- 

 fer is to be had it is at once put on trial at Wellesley. Even 

 if Mr. Hunnewell were planting simply for his personal 

 pleasure, these nurslings would not be neglected, for he 

 does not believe that the sole delight in a tree comes from 

 sitting under its shade when it is fully grown. The skillful 

 and hopeful planter finds a genuine pleasure in watching 

 the very seedlings in his frame, and his attachment to them 

 strengthens as they develop under his care. Each tree in 

 Wellesley, from the smallest to the largest, is repaying its 

 owner every day for any care or anxiety it has cost. And 

 apart from the delight and instruction which this unique 

 plantation gives to hundreds of visitors, to whom its treas- 

 ures are generously thrown open, it is an unfailing source 

 of pleasure to its proprietor, who enjoys it with a relish 

 which grows keener every year. 



Gardening at Newport. 



IT is difficult to convey in words the individuality of a 

 beautiful landscape, especially if it is not very sharply 

 or forcibly marked in character. Keen sensibilities, acute 

 powers of analysis, and a trained command of language 

 are required if a place which is individualized by its gen- 

 tle contrasts of form, its delicate scheme of color, and its 

 subtly changeful atmospheric effects is convincingly to be 

 described. Therefore, we have read with much admira- 

 tion the description of the natural beauty of Newport, in sum- 

 mer and in winter, which Mr. Brownell gave in the August 

 number of Scribncrs Magazine. We could not do it jus- 

 tice by fragmentary quotations, but we can recommend it 

 as sure to satisfy those who know and love Newport, and 

 to give a charming and veracious idea of it to those who 

 have never beheld it. 



Mr. Brownell rightly says that you miss the quality of 

 Newport's beauty entirely " if your own faculties are not 

 in a state of real activity. . . . The appeal of the place is to 

 an intelligent rather than a purely sensuous appreciation." 

 This means that only an eye accustomed to the analysis of 

 beauty can fully understand and value it ; and doubtless 

 Mr. Brownell's own description is so adequate because he 

 is a critic of art of wide experience. But this fact only 

 makes more surprising his insensibility to some of the 

 mistakes which man has committed on this beautiful spot. 

 One compares with astonishment his praise of Newport as 

 Nature made it, and his praise of the way in which the 

 summer resident has "improved" it. "Newport," he says. 

 " owes to the summer resident not only a high standard of 

 social life and a decorous employment of leisure, but also 

 an aesthetic ideal of architecture and landscape-garden- 

 ing." This statement he qualifies by finding fault with 

 many of its buildings, confessing that "architecture has, 

 perhaps, been as much travestied as illustrated. But," he 

 then adds, " there is no doubt at all of the immense service 

 to the place rendered by the summer resident's landscape- 

 gardener, who has covered broad acres of it with lawns 

 and boscages, clumps of trees and bushes, heaps of flowery 

 luxuriance walled in by Privet and Buckthorn, and has, 

 more than any other agency, except the climate and the 

 natural lay of the land, exhibited the potentialities of ele- 

 gance inherent in these latter." 



We think that Mr. Brownell's strictures upon Newport 

 architecture might well have been more strongly couched, 

 but his failure to criticise with more explicit severity in this 

 direction is less a matter for regret than his unstinted 

 bestowal of praise upon Newport gardening. 



One fault displayed by Newport architecture can cer- 

 tainly not be charged agamst its gardens ; they show no 

 distressing degree of discordant variety. In fact, they sin 

 in the opposite direction. Variety is one of the most 

 precious things in art when it can be secured without dis- 

 cords ; without the impairment of general harmony. Any 



well-laid out public park shows us that, in gardening-art, 

 perfect unity and beauty of general effect may be achieved 

 with never a repetition of the same scene ; the same ar- 

 rangement of trees and shrubs ; the same choice of floral 

 ornaments. And a similar result might have been achieved 

 at Newport even with a succession of grounds as limited 

 in size as is usually the case there. Had competent land- 

 scape-artists designed these grounds, or had their owners 

 felt any genuine personal interest in them, and been able 

 to express it with any modicum of horticultural knowledge 

 and artistic skill, there might have been a long succession 

 of gardens, each individually arranged and furnished ; 

 each displaying fresh beauties, novel effects, distinctive 

 characteristics, yet none of them "swearing" at their 

 neighbors, for the reason that there is no such bold opposi- 

 tion between one good gardening scheme and another as 

 there may be between architectural schemes even of the 

 most excellent sort. 



But a quite wonderful degree of monotony marks New- 

 port gardens. It is due in part to the general lack of any 

 definite scheme at all — any real appreciation of the special 

 character of the site ; any clear intention to produce well- 

 balanced, well-marked, harmoniously beautiful effects ; any 

 desire to accommodate these effects to the character of the 

 house or to the chief points of observation supplied by the 

 features of the house, or the line of the street or the private 

 road. And in part it is due to the perpetual repetition of 

 the same short list of ornamental plants, each owner striv- 

 ing, apparently, to possess what his neighbors possess — to 

 be in the current horticultural fashion. The average New- 

 port garden — and there are few exceptions — lacks both 

 coherence and personality in design ; and its contents 

 bear witness not so much to the tastes of its owner as to 

 the changing floricultural currents of the year. 



Yet this monotony would be less displeasing were the 

 general local ideal with regard to what such gardens 

 should be more sensible, and more sensitive to the dic- 

 tates of local Nature. One sees no difference between the 

 gardening ideals which dominate here and those which 

 dominate at inland places like Lenox or in the villa suburbs 

 of Boston or Philadelphia. When this is said, and when 

 Mr. Brownell's description of the peculiar quality of New- 

 port's natural beauty has been read, it will be understood 

 that the result must be far from satisfying, because true 

 harmony between Nature's work and man's cannot under 

 such conditions exist. 



True artists in gardening would have appreciated the 

 individuality of the spot, in its lines, its colors, its outlooks 

 and its atmospheric conditions, and would have tried to 

 conform their own schemes thereto, while not disregarding 

 the fact that architectural elements are, in many parts, 

 dominantly conspicuous. Often, in deference to the prom- 

 inence of the house and the paucity of the grounds, they 

 would have chosen some formal type of garden, at least 

 on sites which are encircled by straight lines of street. 

 Then, their naturalistic designs would have been very 

 simply cast, in deference to the simplicity of Nature's 

 forms ; and, especially, their color schemes would have 

 been reticently managed, to harmonize with the delicate 

 opalescent quality of Nature's coloring. 



But, instead of this, we see attempts at elaborate land- 

 scape schemes, confined within a few roods or even rods of 

 ground. We see an overcrowding of vegetation, at war 

 with the wide, open, airy placidity that makes the special 

 charm of the natural landscape. We see no effort to pro- 

 duce artistic effects with materials drawn from local veg- 

 etation, but an inartistic huddling together of exotics from 

 every part of the world. And we see the most lavish use 

 of the brightest, crudest colors which commerce can supply. 

 Nothing could be more out of place in any small natural- 

 istic garden than large pattern beds, stiff in line and glar- 

 ing in color; they are especially inappropriate at Newport, 

 because Newport's natural coloring is so tender and delicate, 

 and yet they are used here with a prodigality in number, 

 a puerility in design, a disharmony in brilliant hues, 



