November 21, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



461 



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, NOVEMBER 21, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles : — Park Boards and their Professional Advisers 461 



Reception to Dean Hole 462 



The Possibilities of Flower-shows Mrs. J. H. Rabbins. 462 



The Exoascacefe of Stone Fruits Professor George F. Atkinson. 463 



A Serious Blight of Cosmos. (With figures ). .Professor Byron D. Halsted. 464 

 New or Little-known Plants : — The Loganberry. (With figure.) 



Charles Howard Skinn. 465 



Plant Notes 466 



Cultural Department:— Peach-growing Professor L. H. Bailey. 467 



Grapes under Glass William Scott. 467 



Helleborus niger T. D. Hat field. 46S 



Isolomas .....' J. N. C. 468 



Correspondence: — Papyrus Antiquorum J. Nicoll. 468 



The Garden in Autumn J. N. Gerard. 468 



Exhibitions : — Flowers at the New York Farmers' Club 468 



R ecent Publications - 469 



Notes 470 



Illustrations : — Blighted Plant of Cosmos, Fig. 72 464 



Blight on stem of Cosmos, Fig. 73 465 



Plant of the Loganberry growing near Santa Cruz, California, Fig. 74 ... . 466 



Park Boards and their Professional Advisers. 



ABOUT two months ago we called attention to the fact 

 L that the Park Board of New York had once more 

 assumed to design certain of the city's public grounds 

 entrusted to their care, or, rather, that they had begun to 

 prepare these grounds without any design whatever, and 

 without even asking the opinion of the professional 

 adviser, who is employed and paid for just such work, 

 and who is thoroughly competent for the position. The 

 ground itself is only a small triangular area, one side of 

 which is rather more than two hundred feet long, and its 

 chief value lies in the fact that it helps to give some dig- 

 nity of approach to an expensive new bridge which has 

 just been built at that point across the Harlem River. 

 Such a place, under the hand of a skillful artist, could cer- 

 tainly be made attractive and useful. At all events, the 

 men who have it in charge owe it to the people of the city 

 to see that no opportunity for enhancing the beauty of its 

 possessions is thrown away. One would hardly think it 

 possible that so simple and evident a rule of action as this 

 could be set at defiance by public officials, and yet it is 

 stated that the Park Department, without any consultation 

 with its professional designer, has ordered a huge mass of 

 rock, which is the most conspicuous feature in this little 

 park, to be blasted down to the street-level and carted 

 away. Just what should be done with this rock is a ques- 

 tion which no one should answer without study, and the 

 mere fact that no study has been given to the subject is 

 sufficient to convict the Park Board of maladministration. 

 The matter is not so serious a one as the case of the Har- 

 lem Driveway, simply because the latter is a much more 

 important work, but the principle involved is precisely the 

 same, and it is one in which the people of this city and of 

 every city in the country ought to be profoundly inter- 

 ested. It involves the fundamental questions whether 

 landscape-art ought really to take rank as a profession, and, 

 if so, what should be the relations of the Park Board and 

 the landscape-architect and the distinctive functions of each. 

 If landscape-gardening in its best development is one of 

 the fine arts, it should certainly rank with other profes- 

 sions. Few will deny that the transformation of a series 

 of rock-ledges into the succession of smiling landsscape 

 which unite to form the consistent picture now presented 



by Central Park, is as truly the work of an artist as would 

 be the painting of one of these landscapes on a bit of can- 

 vas. It plainly requires true creative faculty to recognize 

 the controlling features of any landscape, and then to make 

 a design which, by emphasizing this one and softening 

 down another, will realize in a term of years the ideal 

 beauty which the maker foresaw from the beginning with 

 "the prophetic eye of taste." One of our city officials 

 lately said that "the woods are full of landscape-archi- 

 tects. " The fact is, that there are not half a dozen men on 

 this continent who have sufficient constructive talent and 

 breadth of training to undertake such work as the Park 

 Board of this city have in charge, with any guarantee that 

 it will be worthy of the city. Indeed, if we should search 

 the world over it would be hard to find half a dozen men 

 who-are finished artists in actual landscape composition 

 and skilled at the same time in the art of making the 

 enjoyment of these landscapes available for the multitudes 

 of a modern city. But this is just what a park maker of 

 the first rank is called upon to do, and this is what has been 

 done more than once by artists in our own country when 

 they have had the support of intelligent commissioners. 



Now, what should be the position of an artist with such 

 a field of activity in relation to the park board which se- 

 cures his services? Certainly his functions are not the 

 same as those of a clerk or a typewriter, who simply tran- 

 scribes the thought and executes the will of his employer. 

 A lawyer has duties to his profession with which his client 

 cannot interfere, and a physician makes prescriptions, not 

 in accordance with the whims of his patient, but in accord- 

 ance with the dictates of training and experience. An 

 architect is entrusted with the design of a building, and 

 within certain limits he is not interfered with, while in 

 the expression of artistic principles his judgment is 

 accepted as final. Certainly, the official adviser of a 

 park board in matters of design is entitled to as much con- 

 sideration as members of any of the professions we have 

 alluded to. That an artist of judgment and experience is 

 needed in solving the thousand questions which arise in 

 preparing and caring for the open-air resorts of a great 

 modern city is beyond question. He is appointed because 

 his skill is recognized in matters of which the park com- 

 missioners have made no study, and for which they may 

 be no more qualified than the majority of men ordinarily 

 summoned on a coroner's jury are qualified to make an 

 analysis of the contents of a dead man's stomach. In 

 cases where technical skill is required they ought to listen 

 with respect, at least, to professional judgment ; and when 

 Mr. Vaux, for example, makes a preliminary plan for a 

 speedway with two sidewalks, instead of one, as the Com- 

 missioners ordered, this ought to lead them to suspect that 

 their own scheme may be vicious, and that it probably 

 ought to be abandoned. 



There need be no apprehension that park commissioners 

 will find nothing to do when their professional advisers are 

 charged with the full responsibility of what is designed and 

 done within their legitimate field. Questions ofbusiness 

 policy and business method sufficiently complicated to 

 require the deliberation of a body of very broad-minded 

 men will always arise. It will often be necessarv for 

 commissioners to select from different plans which "their 

 own experts originate, or to decide between alternative 

 designs. Such questions at issue should be brought before 

 them, it is true, in distinct form as propositions which they 

 can comprehend, and they must have the aid of experts to 

 present these cases in oral or written reports or in the form of 

 drawings or models ; nevertheless, the ultimate decision of 

 these large questions must rest with them. Many of their 

 relations to a landscape-architect will be fundamentally 

 the same with those of a committee in charge of a mu- 

 nicipal building when dealing with its architect. The 

 board must determine questions of financial policy; it 

 must see, too, that individual features, as they are reached 

 in detail, are consistent with the broad general design 

 agreed upon, and, above all, it must see that the architect is 



