38 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 153. 



executed can be rightly executed only in some way deter- 

 mined in advance by causes which must be studied accord- 

 ing to the canons of landscape-art as well as of architec- 

 ture. Very often the only choice will be whether a build- 

 ing of this character is to be placed on a given spot ; with 

 that determined, the one right way of treating both house 

 and site will be prescribed by conditions which the archi- 

 tect cannot ignore; or if he does, no subsequent dressing 

 by a landscape-gardener can redeem or even mask the 

 error. And when a choice is possible between different 

 good methods of planning and treatment, still this choice 

 must be preliminary to the architect's action and should 

 not be made according to his lights alone. 



A ; 



A Vase of Chrysanthemums. 



S a contrast to the group of Chrysanthemums of a single 

 sort which we published some weeks ago (vol. iii., p. 397), 

 we now present on page 43 a picture of a vase in which rive 

 flowers, each of a different kind, have been placed. We do 

 not consider the arrangement entirely fortunate, as the weak 

 stems of the two on the right of the picture hardly harmonize 

 with the sturdier bearing of the others. But it will at least 

 serve as a hint of what maybe accomplished by thus contrast- 

 ing specimen flowers of different forms and colors. Itis often 

 said that the best way to arrange Chrysanthemums, and, in- 

 deed, most kinds of flowers, is in groups or masses of a single 

 kind. Certainly this advice is good, because eminently safe. 

 So long as excessive crowding is avoided a really unbeautiful 

 effect can hardly be produced with flowers of one kind with 

 their foliage ; moreover, it is always easier to find an appro- 

 priate place and background for such a group than for one of 

 varied colors, and our readers hardly need to be told again 

 that the beauty of a vase of flowers depends as much upon 

 its proper environment as does the beauty of a painting. 

 Nevertheless, safety is not the only, nor always the highest, 

 aim even in arranging flowers, and too close an adherence to 

 the generally excellent practice of massing may deprive us of 

 occasional effects whose beauty, depending upon harmonious 

 contrasts, is especially striking and individual. Feeble paint- 

 ers, we may say in explanation, are apt to win success by using 

 a simple scheme of color and attempting no vivid contrasts, 

 and great painters constantly do the same ; but occasionally a 

 great painter will boldly put the most strongly contrasted tones 

 together — even upon occasion scarlets and crimsons — and 

 produce a more striking sort of beauty by the harmony he 

 wins from them. And so with flowers we may well at times 

 exercise our taste in trying to produce a harmonious group 

 with strongly contrasting blossoms. In our picture, for in- 

 stance, the uppermost flower is of the deep yellow variety 

 called Kioto; the central one is G. F. Mooseman, whose 

 color is a dull crimson within the florets and a light brown 

 without; the one to the left is a pure white blossom of 

 Mrs. Langtry; the upper one on the right is a pink Mrs. Fottler, 

 and the one beneath it is a bright yellow named Gold. Those 

 who can command a variety of Chrysanthemums will do well 

 some day to repeat this arrangement with the same flowers or 

 others of similar colors. It requires care to make a coloristic 

 success of such a group ; but if the result does not suit them 

 they will at least have a starting-point for an interesting series 

 of experiments which may result in some other varied arrange- 

 ment of entire and surprising beauty. 



Muskau — A German Country Park. 



THE River Neisse flows with no great rapidity from its 

 source in the highlands which divide Germany from 

 Austria to its meeting with the Oder in the plains south-east of 

 Berlin. Its total length is perhaps one hundred miles, or 

 about that of our New England Merrimac or Housatonic. In 

 the lower half of its course it traverses an exceedingly sandy 

 region, out of which the river has carved a shallow and 

 crooked valley. Occasionally a cheerful meadow lies along 

 the stream, but the banks or hills which bound the valley, and 

 all the uplands beyond, are covered with a dismal and monoto- 

 nous forest of Pines. The region has few natural advantages 

 and little natural beauty. 



In 1785, in the moated house of the Count or Lord of a part 

 of this forest-country, was born a hoy who was destined to 

 work a wonderful revolution in the scenery of his native val- 

 ley, and. by so doing to awaken throughout Germany an inter- 

 est in designed landscape which is still active and growing. 

 This boy, Ludwig Heinrich Hermann von Puckler, became a 



restless youth, who first attempted at Leipsic the study of law, 

 then tried and abandoned the military life, and finally declined 

 to enter even the civil service of his country, because, as lie 

 said, " my liberty is too dear to me." 



At the age of twenty-one he set out on a round of travels 

 which occupied four years. He saw Vienna, Munich, Switzer- 

 land, Venice, Rome, Naples, southern France, Paris and the 

 lands between, for all his journeying was done either on foot 

 or on horseback. In 1812 he was cordially received by Goethe 

 in Weimar ; and in the following year, under the Duke of Saxe- 

 Weimar, he was military governor of a post in the Nether- 

 lands. When peace was established he made his first visit to 

 England, where he saw the landscape works of Brown and 

 Repton ; and in 1815, his father having died, he at last turned 

 homeward to his Standesherrschaft of Muskau, on the River 

 Neisse. 



There is every reason to believe that the idea of improving 

 the surroundings of his home and village had been cherished 

 by Puckler during all his wanderings. His letters show his 

 intense interest in both natural and humanized scenery; and 

 they make it evident that the sight of the great works then 

 lately accomplished in England had only made him the more 

 eager to begin the arduous task he had set himself. 



This task was nothing less than the transformation of the 

 almost ugly valley of the Neisse into a vale of beauty and de- 

 light ; and the great distinction of his idea lay in the fact that 

 he proposed to accomplish this transformation not by extend- 

 ing architectural works throughout the valley — not by con- 

 structing mighty terraces, mile-long avenues or great formal 

 water-basins, such as he had seen in Italy, at Versailles and at 

 Wilhelmshohe — but by quietly inducing Nature to transform 

 herself. He would not force upon his native landscape 

 any foreign type of beauty; on the contrary, his aim was the 

 transfiguration, the idealization of such beauty as was in- 

 digenous. 



In the picture galleries of Europe he had seen the first-fruits 

 of the young art of landscape-painting. In common with the 

 painter he had found in the study of the beauty of nature a 

 source of pure joy which the men of the renaissance had failed 

 to discover. Somewhere and somehow he had learned the 

 landscape painter's secret, that deepest interest and finest 

 beauty spring from landscape-character — character strongly 

 marked and never contradicted. In England he had seen this 

 truth illustrated by actual living landscape, for Repton's 

 parks were simply the idealization of characteristic English 

 scenery. 



Accordingly we find Puckler, on his return to Muskau, intent 

 upon including in one great landscape-scheme his schloss, 

 his village, his mill, his alum works and all the slopes and 

 levels which enclose them — intent upon evolving from out 

 the confused natural situation a composition in which all that 

 was fundamentally characteristic of the scenery, the history 

 and the industry of his estate should be harmoniously and 

 beautifully united. 



One circumstance greatly favored the happy accomplish- 

 ment of his design — namely, the very fact that he had to do 

 with a valley and not with a plain or plateau. The irregularly 

 rising land skirting the river-levels supplied a frame for his 

 picture ; the considerable stream, flowing through the midst 

 of the level, with here and there a sweep toward the enclosing 

 hills, became the all-connecting and controlling element in his 

 landscape. Well he knew that what artists call " breadth " and 

 "unity of effect" was fully assured if only he abstained from 

 inserting impertinent structures or other objects in the midst 

 of this hill-bounded intervale. 



On the other hand, his difficulties were many and great. To 

 restore the unity of the river-level just mentioned he had to 

 buy and remove a whole street of village houses which ex- 

 tended from the town square to the mill. To perfect the 

 levels themselves required the removal of the wild growth 

 from many acres and the cultivation and improvement of the 

 soil. To carry the park lands completely around the village, 

 so as to make the latter a part of the perfected scene, and to 

 otherwise rectify the boundaries of his estate, required the 

 purchase of some 2,000 morgen of land. Moreover, the hill- 

 slopes behind the village, where the Count particularly wanted 

 a background of rich verdure, were so barren they would 

 hardly grow even Pines, so that these and many of the other 

 upland slopes of the estate had to be improved at much cost 

 and trouble. 



In the valley the pre-existing but confused elements of 

 breadth and peace and dignity were to be developed and en- 

 hanced. In the thickets of the lowlands and along the bases 

 of the hills were found many large Oaks and Lindens which 

 helped much to give character to the intervale. In the upland 



