170 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 164. 



extent its beauty of form and color. But a geometrical 

 design is not injured, but improved, by confinement within 

 the straight lines of streets and blocks of buildings, and 

 areas with such sharply defined, rectilinear boundaries fur- 

 nish unequaled opportunity for the display of decorative 

 garden art. The floral flags and banners and pictures, with 

 which too many of our public parks have been adorned, are 

 simply abominations. But if some artist with genuine 

 creative faculty and a refined sense of color could be found 

 to make a design for strictly ornamental planting, as dis- 

 tinguished from natural planting, adapted to the area where 

 the reservoir now stands, he would confer a boon upon 

 New York, and offer an object-lesson well worth study and 

 imitation by other cities. 



The Sugar Maple. 



WE have already published an illustration of a New 

 England Sugar Maple, but good tree-portraits are not 

 so abundant that an apology is needed for offering the one 

 which appears on page 175. This Maple, too, is a universal 

 favorite among our native trees, and one which planters 

 never tire of using and no one ever tires of seeing in north- 

 ern fields and waysides where it is at home. When it is 

 young the Sugar Maple, although it is always a clean and 

 thrifty-looking tree, lacks something of dignity and individu- 

 ality. It is the general habit of this tree, instead of forking 

 into large limbs, to throw out from a central stem many com- 

 paratively slender branches, the lower tiers of which rise 

 at a slight angle above the horizontal, while those of suc- 

 cessive years become more and more upright. As these 

 branches grow out to about the same length with abun- 

 dant foliage at their extremities, they form a tree of per- 

 fectly symmetrical contour, usually egg-shaped, and al- 

 though the foliage is bright and cheerful its smooth and 

 regular surface presents too little variation of light and 

 shadow. These long and slim branches are easily 

 moved, however, so that the tree has a sprightly and 

 almost sparkling appearance in the sunshine when its 

 leaves are stirred by the gentlest breeze. As it grows 

 on to greater size, and the extremities of these numer- 

 ous branches are farther apart, breaks begin to appear 

 in the masses of foliage, and here and there some one of 

 these lateral branches will assert itself and outgrow its 

 neighbors until the entire outline of the tree is changed. 

 The top often becomes broad and nearly flat, the sameness 

 of the contour vanishes, and deep shadows give it a dig- 

 nity of expression which it altogether lacks when young. 



In the illustration the tree on the right has passed its 

 prime, as can be seen by its comparatively scant foliage, 

 which opens so as to show its main stem. Dead limbs 

 also appear at the summit and on some of the longer 

 side branches. Trees which are standing alone in pas- 

 tures often die before their time, because cattle resort so 

 much to their shade, and trample the ground beneath 

 their branches. Very often, too, they are struck by light- 

 ning. Sometimes a shock of this kind is apparently slight, 

 and the stricken tree seems at first to suffer no harm, but 

 generally, after lingering a year or two, it dies outright. 



The more distant tree on the left of the picture, and ap- 

 parently a larger one, is still in full vigor, and represents 

 an admirable specimen of its kind. It is growing on 

 lower land, and, probably, has been better supplied with 

 moisture than the one on the little hillock. 



The Sugar Maple is a beautiful tree at all seasons. In 

 early spring, when the greenish yellow flowers suddenly 

 burst forth with the first leaves, the tree has an appearance 

 altogether distinct from that presented by any other. 

 Standing in the sunshine, a tree in full flower seems 

 enveloped with a luminous mist, and is an object of 

 striking beauty. Later in the season, its light green and 

 very abundant foliage give it what has been aptly termed 

 a peculiarly sunny expression, and it stands for the very 

 type of cheerfulness among trees. In the autumn none 

 of our trees blaze with brighter or more varied colors, and 



in the winter its light, ash-colored bark is a pleasant relief 

 from the more sombre hue of other native trees. 



We have nothing to add here to what we have often 

 said about the value of this tree for timber and for fuel, 

 and for its sugar product, but merely wish to say, that it 

 was a sagacious popular instinct which selected this as one 

 of our best trees for ornamental planting, and that few trees 

 can excel it in situations where it will thrive. In some 

 of the old places on the Hudson River long avenues 

 were planted with it, three-quarters of a century ago, 

 and some of them are now worth a long journey 

 to see. 



How We Renewed an Old Place. 



III. — A BABY FOREST. 



\X/E know that mothers love best those children who give 

 ** them the most trouble, and it must be on some such 

 principle that this barren hill-side of ours wins our best 

 affections ; for, as we cultivate its seemingly thankless surface, 

 while it disappoints and resists our loving efforts, all the 

 more there grows in us a tender comprehension of its hidden 

 beauty, a wider sense of its possibilities, and a greater patience 

 with the slow processes by which it is to be restored to vigor 

 and productiveness. 



We sympathize with its struggle for self-adornment, poor, 

 barren, ugly thing. The cold, northern slope conies slowly to 

 life, turned away as it lies from the fostering sunlight. When 

 the plain and swale are bright with the hues of spring, the 

 uncut grass upon its side is still brown and withered ; it seems 

 to dread awakening from its winter sleep, but at last it begins 

 to star itself over with blossoms of white Saxifrage, and anon 

 it grows purple with Bird's-foot Violets, sending out in the 

 sunshine that soft, fleeting perfume which is a hint of the 

 riper fragrance of their English cousins. 



At this season, too, the exquisite wild Columbine decks it 

 with earrings of coral and gold, which the country children 

 call meeting-houses from their steeple-shaped horns, and 

 over it the all-pervading Daisy waves its white and yellow 

 blossoms sturdily in the wind, while the wild Briers put forth 

 their roses, and the Dog's-bane its fragrant cymes, till the 

 Golden-rods and Asters come at last to hide its barrenness 

 with their royal splendor. And all the while there are short, 

 thin grasses, of tender greens and browns, clothing it humbly, 

 while spots of vivid emerald moss indicate the presence of 

 hidden rivulets that feed a living spring that lies at its foot. 



In this spring is the possibility of a water garden, of which 

 there is already a beginning. All summer long you can see 

 shining there the blue eyes of great Forget-me-nots, the seeds 

 of whose forebears were brought, long ago, from stately 

 Fontainebleau by a gentle artist, who planted them by his 

 own brook-side, whence they have overrun and made famous 

 the Hingham Meadows, their bright blossoms, like scattered 

 fragments of the sky, gleaming among the rushes, and afford- 

 ing a valuable industry to the small boys who sell them at the 

 railway station as you pass. In addition to these continuously 

 blooming flowers, there are Pussy Willows and white Violets 

 in the spring, and in the late summer the Arrowhead lifts its 

 sculpturesque blossom and fine outlined leaf from the water, 

 and the Cardinal-flower uprears its scarlet spikes amid the 

 blossoms of stately grasses. Some day we hope to see a 

 Pond Lily asleep upon its surface, and if the Lotus-flower 

 would but brook our rigorous winters, we should add one to 

 the collection. 



At the foot of the hill, at each end, is a clump of White 

 Birches, ladies of the woods that have strayed from their 

 home, and lost themselves on this waste, and rustle their thin 

 leaves timorously, bending their slender white stems as the 

 sea-blasts strike them. Now that we have stopped mowing 

 and pasturing, we find clumps of Bayberry and Choke- 

 cherry bushes coming up under the tumble-down old rail- 

 fences between us and our neighbors, so that these last are 

 already high enough to shade the boys when, tired and hot 

 with play, they throw themselves upon the ground under their 

 grateful protection. For on the summit of the hill there is 

 level space enough, inside our line, for a tennis-court, from 

 which you can look for a mile across the meadow to the tree- 

 clad hills beyond, and the clustered houses and masts of the 

 harbor, half-buried in trees, and seek for the blue line upon 

 the high horizon that indicates the sea. 



Straggling paths, worn by careless feet, lead up the hill-side 

 in those pleasant, meandering ways that indicate the foot of 

 man, and, in imagination, we see them shaded by the Birches 



