462 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 352. 



doing his work wisely and well. A park board will always 

 have responsibilities weighty enough to call out all the tact 

 and talent which wide business experience can furnish and 

 all the discrimination which comes from cultivation of 

 mind and refinement of taste. Indeed, the broader and 

 more thorough the training of a commissioner; the more 

 work he will find which is worthy of his powers, the more 

 judicious he will be in selecting experts and the more care- 

 fully he will consider the judgment of these experts in 

 strictly professional matters. And since the best artists are 

 not infallible, fortunate is that city which has a commis- 

 sioner who is competent to aid its landscape-gardener by 

 his criticism and counsel. 



Of course, in public works the landscape-architect has 

 to consider his duties to the people as well as his relation 

 to the park board. More than once in the history of.Cen- 

 tral Park the professional counsel of the board have felt it 

 their duty to resign when their judgment has been over- 

 ruled by commissioners who could not comprehend the 

 value of expert advice. Every one who knows the history 

 of Central Park knows that it has been saved from actual 

 desolation, because the people have arisen at critical times 

 to the support of these artists against the projects of the 

 commissioners. Over and over again this park has been 

 rescued from serious defacement and from destructive inva- 

 sion of one sort or another in the same way, and for the 

 courageous stand taken by these men who were loyal to 

 their art, and, therefore, loyal to the highest interest of the 

 people, the city owes a debt of gratitude that can never be 

 canceled. Indeed, it can be demonstrated before any jury 

 of reasonable men that the actual money value of the park 

 to the city is more to-day by millions of dollars than it 

 would have been had not park commissioners, time and 

 again, been forced by one circumstance or another to accept 

 against their will the counsel of their landscape-architects. 



A very pleasant incident of the week was a reception and 

 dinner at the Savoy Hotel in this city, at which Dean Hole 

 was the guest of about fifty gentlemen, all of whom have 

 some special interest in horticulture. The company in- 

 cluded eminent jurists and journalists, physicians and men 

 of business, representatives of various horticultural socie- 

 ties, nurserymen, seedsmen, florists, men representing the 

 widest possible diversity of interest and activity, but all 

 united in a desire to testify to their esteem of one who is 

 known the world over for his unaffected love of nature, 

 for his intelligent and sympathetic appreciation of garden- 

 art, and for his contributions to the literature of the garden, 

 especially for his charming book on Roses. There were 

 roses everywhere throughout the dining and reception 

 rooms, and marvels of Chrysanthemums ; there was abound- 

 ing good-fellowship to prove that there is a real bond 

 of sympathy between all who have a genuine love for 

 flowers and gardens ; there were pleasant little speeches, 

 and, above all, there was a response by the guest of the 

 evening to an address of welcome by Mr. W. C. Barry, 

 who had come nearly four hundred miles to preside at the 

 table. Dean Hole's familiar talk was on the unfailing 

 delight of gardening as a refreshment and restoration for 

 body, mind and spirit, while his unaffected manner and 

 quiet humor, revealing the simplicity, sincerity and whole- 

 someness of his nature, were singularly winning. In the 

 course of his address, Dean Hole took occasion to speak 

 of Central Park, Morningside Park and Riverside Drive as 

 admirable examples of consistent work in landscape-art, 

 and superior in their way to any similar constructions in 

 Europe. He urged upon his hearers the duty of helping to 

 establish a public sentiment which will tolerate no devia- 

 tion in Central Park from its original aim to produce broad 

 natural effects instead of breaking up the landscape and 

 frittering it away with a multitude of details. He spoke 

 strongly upon the necessity of protecting it from the intru- 

 sion of everything incongruous or out of harmony with its 

 central and controlling motive. 



The Possibilities of Flower-shows. 



THE arrangement of flower-shows is always a difficult 

 matter, for to reconcile the requirements of exhib- 

 itors with a general artistic effect seems almost impossible. 

 Of late years several societies have taken steps in the right 

 direction by offering prizes for plants arranged for decora- 

 tive effect, and at the recent Chrysanthemum show in Bos- 

 ton the first prize awarded in this competition went to the 

 exhibit which contained the fewest Chrysanthemums. 



In this exhibit, made by the Bussey Institute, much of 

 the charm was gained by the free use of Palms and Ferns 

 interspersed with the brilliant blossoms, the green and 

 graceful foliage helping, by its coolness and sweeping lines, 

 to reconcile the sometimes clashing tints of the flowers and 

 their tendency to stiffness. Moreover, the presence of 

 simple varieties and unstaked specimens in this collection 

 gave an air of freedom and naturalness to the group that 

 at once attracted the eye. A similar use of Palms behind 

 the potted Chrysanthemums on the platform, in the lower 

 room, devoted to cut blooms, would have vastly improved 

 the general effect. Even as it was, the grouping of the cut 

 specimens, arranged on tables running horizontally, was 

 much better than usual, and each year seems to add to the 

 glory of this superb show. 



There are those who irreverently declare that the exag- 

 gerated Chrysanthemum scarcely appeals more to the sen- 

 timent than a feather duster, and others who revolt against 

 the conspicuous stakes which destroy the grace of the 

 potted plants ; but no one could deny the overpowering 

 splendor of one of the vases of the Society filled with 

 blooms of Eugene Dailledouze, of great size and beauty, 

 which stood directly opposite the entrance ; nor of its com- 

 panion vase of different colored flowers, equally well 

 arranged, which took the first prize. Both of these came 

 from tJie estate of Hon. John Simpkins, whose gardener, 

 Mr. James Brydon, seems quite as successful in the arrange- 

 ment of his flowers as in their production. Other gardeners 

 complain that it is impossible to compete with growers on 

 "The Cape," the mild, soft, moist air of that region being 

 so much better for the encouragement of richness and per- 

 fection of bloom than the long droughts and dry summers 

 of the neighborhood of Boston. However this may be, the 

 merit of the flowers is undeniable. 



Much art also was displayed by Mr. T. D. Hatfield in 

 grouping the Hunnewell collection of plants, which received 

 the first prize, each color being so harmonized with its 

 neighbor as to enhance the charm of each. One wonders 

 sometimes why a Japanese is not invited to preside over 

 the arrangement of a Boston flower-show, so that we might 

 have a touch of oriental imagination to enliven our rather 

 prosaic conception of what appropriate grouping is. It 

 always seems as if the opportunity were missed to a de- 

 gree ; that more might be made of it ; that an artistic con- 

 ception of the whole, with such a wealth of material to 

 work in, might result in a vision of fantastic beauty which 

 would be a lesson in the art of arrangement. 



When Dean Hole, in his delightful book about Roses, 

 describes that first grand National Rose Show in London, 

 held in 1S57 in St. James's Hall, then new and beautiful, we 

 receive the impression of something bewildering in its 

 loveliness, though this is possibly owing to the art of the 

 narrator, but the Boston show is certainly not lovely, 

 though undeniably interesting. 



That surrounding, the frame, means something, even in 

 a gallery of pictures, the artists are beginning to show us 

 by their careful attention to the coup d'osil in their annual 

 exhibitions. Not content with merely hanging their works 

 side by side as of old, they make the halls and staircase 

 tasteful and beautiful with other adornments to enhance 

 the value of the paintings. To begin with, it seems as if 

 a building for the exhibition of flowers should have an 

 architectural attractiveness of its own — that the interior 

 should be planned so that there might be room for sur- 

 prises ; that alcoves, recesses with fountains, possibly a 



