January 28, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



37 



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 TOST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles: — The "Sauce" of Architecture 



A Vase of Chrysanthemums. (With figure.) 



Muskau— A German Country Park. (With plan.) Charles Eliot. 



Plant Notes : — Lyonothamnus asplenifolius 



New or Little Kkown Plants : — New Orchids R. A. Rolfc. 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 



Cultural Department: — A Winter Campaign Against Insects, 



Professor John B. Smith. 



The Cracking of Fruits and Vegetal >Ics Professor E. S. Coff. 



Lapagerias ]V. H. Taplin. 



Notes on Some Hardy Wild Roses.— I Y J. G. Jack. 



Protecting Evergreen Plants Josef li Median. 



Iris Bakeriana..' M. Barker. 



Correspondence : — Orchids at North F.aston M. Barker. 



The Proposed Monument to General Grant 1. W. C. 



The Gardens of Wellesley College If. G. 



Lilium Hansoni C. L. Allen. 



Recent Publications 



Notes 



Illustrations: — Map of the Park at Muskau, Lower Lausitz, Germany 



A Vase ot Chrysanthemums, Fig. 10 



The "Sauce" of Architecture. 



AN architect who has studied in Paris, and, unlike many 

 L of his American brethren whose opportunities have 

 been as good, has learned to appreciate the interest and 

 importance of landscape-gardening and its vital connec- 

 tion with architecture, said, not long ago: "Yes; all 

 French architects feel as I do, and in the studios they call 

 landscape-gardening 'la sauce de l'architecture. '" 



Now, a Frenchman's idea of the importance of a sauce 

 is very different from our own, and one must know Parisian 

 dinners and Parisian cooks to appreciate the full import of 

 the phrase. Nevertheless, taking it in its highest potency, 

 we are inclined to utter a mild protest against it. A truer 

 simile would suggest the difference between an article of 

 food which is cooked or prepared in any way and one 

 which is raw. In any case where landscape-architecture 

 might help the sister art (which means in every case except 

 that of a building on a closely covered city street) there is 

 as much necessity for its service as for the service of fire upon 

 meat. A building badly placed when it might be well placed 

 and surrounded is worse than ungarnished, it is incom- 

 plete. Moreover, in most cases, the way in which it should 

 be placed and surrounded is not an open question for the 

 architect to decide as he will. It is a question decided 

 largely in advance by unalterable facts and settled canons 

 of taste, and these the landscape-gardener is better fitted 

 than the architect to understand. Take the instance of a 

 country house. If the domain is small there will hardly 

 be more than one spot where it can be set and one way in 

 which its entrances and chief rooms .can be arranged for 

 convenience and good effect, and success here is involved 

 in the arrangement of the grounds, as well as in that of the 

 building. The architect cannot safely design the house 

 without studying its relation to neighboring streets and 

 structures and to the character of its own site, and then call 

 in the landscape-gardener to add a "sauce " that will make 

 it attractive. If he does this the owner is apt to find his 

 chief windows looking where they should not look, and 

 his entrances placed where they will necessitate incon- 



venient approaches, and these in their turn spoiling the 

 grounds by preventing the best arrangement of lawns and 

 gardens. If the domain is larger the problem is only more 

 complicated, and more likely, if improperly attacked, to re- 

 sult in error and loss. 



Not long ago an architect who stands high in popular 

 repute was asked to design a large country house in a pic- 

 turesque situation a mile or two from a New England 

 town. Being unfamiliar with the spot, yet feeling obliged 

 to begin his work in winter, he took a flying trip from his 

 office in another city, drove up to the house of a friend in a 

 sleigh, and asked for guidance to his client's property. 

 There, walking about for just a quarter of an hour, he de- 

 cided upon the site, turning a deaf ear to his friend's remon- 

 strance that the view was so noble it ought to be carefully 

 considered, and that it could not be considered when the 

 trees were leafless, and the little lakes, so immensely im- 

 portant in summer, were blotted into the solid ground by 

 a universal sheet of snow. To-day the house stands where 

 no one would think of placing it wdio meant to live in it 

 and had the slightest feeling for the beauty of nature. No 

 garnishing, though supplied by the greatest landscape- 

 gardener who ever lived, could now change this ruined 

 estate into a fine one. Only a few miles from this is 

 another large country house which, apparently for the 

 sake of having it well seen from the highway, has been 

 placed on the summit of such a steep rise in the ground 

 that the carriage approach has been carried to the highway 

 by a grade so heavy and a turn so sharp that even skillful 

 drivers run danger of disaster every time they traverse it. 



Nor should these be thought extreme cases. They could 

 be matched by a thousand others of every-day occurrence. 

 At every step, in every part of the country, we see what 

 might have been fine places spoiled by the placing of the 

 house, and even fine houses robbed of their right effect, be- 

 cause their builders thought of nothing beyond the con- 

 spicuous placing of the structure. Not every picture shows 

 to best advantage when hung in a bright light in the centre 

 of a wide field of wall, though a picture is an independent 

 work of art. This a building never is; yet we constantly 

 see proof that an architect thinks his structure will look 

 best when most boldly shown from a hill-top or some ex- 

 posure where no plantations can screen it from the road. It 

 is a fatal mistake to think of the house as something inde- 

 pendent of its surroundings. Even when its aspect has 

 been more wisely considered, questions of prospect have 

 often been forgotten. Or else the view from the piazzas 

 and windows has been borne in mind while the aspect of 

 the house from a distance has been ne?lected. To consider 

 both together means a wider range of view than most of 

 our architects take, and to secure excellence in both 

 (which often necessitates a compromise involving some 

 sacrifice in both directions) a power of foresight is de- 

 manded and a degree of skill which only a study of the art 

 of landscape-gardening can give. 



In our country hardly any one but professed landscape- 

 architects has studied this art at all, while in France some 

 knowledge of it is regarded as essential to architects. 

 Here, therefore, the architect will do well not to trust him- 

 self, but to ask for the help of his brother artist. And, of 

 course, he must ask it in advance, and not when his own 

 labors are ended. We should be glad if all American archi- 

 tects were convinced of even as much as is expressed by 

 the careless studio phrase we have quoted — if all could 

 feel about sauces as Frenchmen do and then really be con- 

 vinced that landscape-gardening is the " sauce of architec- 

 ture." But this would only be a half step in the right 

 direction. Happier still will be the time when they will 

 realize that a building and its surroundings are one and 

 indissoluble, that they must be considered together from 

 the very outset, and that the claims of the one should 

 never be unduly pushed to the unfair detriment of the 

 claims of the others. There may be cases when a mere 

 " sauce " of ornamental planting after architectural com- 

 pletion will serve. But almost always the work to be 



