July 22, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



347 



too few are named. A tenth part of those which Mr. Parsons 

 describes would amply fill home grounds of considerable size 

 with all the variety that the most insatiate planter could desire. 

 One omission seems worth remarking upon. More than once 

 he mentions the Virgilia or White-wood {Cladrastis lutea), but 

 he does not mention it when naming the trees which bear 

 conspicuous blossoms in late June or early July, although, 

 with its graceful light green foliage and its great pendent 

 panicles of white blossoms, it is then the most beautiful of all 

 the flowering trees which will flourish in the neighborhoods 

 for which this book is specially helpful. 



Mr. Parsons' selection of plants for popular use will meet 

 with general approval. Itwould have been as well, however, to 

 have omitted some trees and shrubs of abnormal habit and color, 

 or else to include a comprehensive warning against their excess- 

 ive use. Monotony in color should be avoided by the planter ; 

 but it should be avoided more by the employment of different 

 shades of green than by the introduction of plants with purple 

 or brown or yellow or variegated foliage. These may be beau- 

 tiful and useful when intelligently used, but this means when 

 used sparingly, as rare punctuation marks, in a scheme 

 composed of greens. Every one who is familiar with Mr. 

 Parsons' own practice knows that he realizes this fact. In 

 Central Park, for instance, the eye is far less often offended by 

 too brilliant a spot or mass of foliage than in any other park, 

 American or foreign, which we remember. But the people 

 for whom Mr. Parsons writes are certain to be less expe- 

 rienced and likely to be much less intelligent in these matters 

 than himself, while the attraction of mere novelty will lead 

 them to admire in excess many things which, to the horticul- 

 turist and landscape-gardener, are as commonplace as grass 

 and Huckleberry-bushes. We should have been pleased, 

 therefore, if the danger of using too many purple Beeches, 

 golden Elders and spotted Negundos had been minimized by 

 more stringent cautions than Mr. Parsons has given. 



" It is," says Mr. Parsons, " the arrangement of foliage, of 

 trees, and shrubs and grass that should compose and charac- 

 terize the lawn," or, as we should prefer to say, the home 

 grounds. " But," he continues, " I believe in making a dis- 

 tinct and comfortable abode for flowers — in a wdrd, a flower- 

 garden. ... It should be one where everything conspires to 

 favor the growth of flowers, so that one may gather them 

 without stint. To look only at a tree or shrub satisfies the 

 observer, but flowers, to be enjoyed to the full, must be 

 plucked, their fragrance inhaled, and their beauty of detail 

 admired at leisure." For this flower-garden Mr. Parsons very 

 wisely recommends, above all others, "hardy herbaceous 

 perennial plants," while acknowledging that "it is easy to name 

 shrubs and bedding plants that bear plenty of flowers, and 

 there is certainly no valid objection to planting them in the 

 garden." This chapter on "Garden-flowers" and the follow- 

 ing one called "Grandmother's Garden" are admirable, and 

 the annexed plan of a small private place laid out by Messrs. 

 Vaux & Company shows an excellent way to provide a large 

 flower-garden without disturbing the repose and artistic unity 

 of the grounds. 



In the chapter on " Bedding Plants" Mr. Parsons sanctions 

 the use of formal beds of brilliant hue because "the universal 

 delight in rich color is satisfied by their employment." But 

 confiding readers will be disappointed if they believe that 

 " the expense of their employment is comparatively small." 

 Of course it does not cost much to buy enough young plants 

 to stock a bed or two in a door-yard. But carpet-bedding on 

 a large scale demands a great preliminary outlay for this pur- 

 pose every year, or the existence of greenhouses for wintering 

 and starting the plants, and a corresponding force of gardeners 

 to attend to their cultivation and transplantation. The sums 

 annually expended to stock the beds in the Boston Public Gar- 

 den, or in one of our large cemeteries, where the bedding-out 

 system is extensively developed, are enormous. Again, while 

 Mr. Parsons is undoubtedly right in saying that, were formal 

 color-beds more harmoniously designed, persons of taste 

 would less sternly condemn them, we should have been glad 

 had he likewise accentuated the fact that they are good or bad 

 according as they are properly or improperly placed. The 

 most beautiful pattern-bed in the centre of a wide green lawn 

 is an atrocity, while even a less artistically designed one close 

 to the foundations of a house, or in some small enclosed spot, 

 where a "natural" effect could not well be achieved by the 

 planter, may have a very happy effect. Such beds, it cannot 

 too often be said, are architectural in character, and belong 

 amid formal, if not strictly architectural, surroundings. In the 

 middle of Union Square, or at the entrance of Central Park at 

 Fifth Avenue, nothing else would look so well as those which, 

 year by year, Mr. Parsons tastefully arranges. But even the 



simple circles of Tulips, which were so beautiful in the latter 

 spot last spring, would have grossly offended the eye if trans- 

 ported to the edge of one of the adjacent lawns, or if set, even 

 in a more secluded locality, at the base of a rock draped with 

 naturally growing creepers. These facts are again among 

 those which Mr. Parsons mentions, and which he respects in 

 his own practice, but he might have urged them more strongly 

 upon his readers. We dissent, however, from his views when 

 he says that the flower or foliage-bed is " apt to look stiff and 

 inartistic" because its extreme edge or border is " usually too 

 sharply cut in outline," and that " to overcome this stiffness of 

 outline, single plants of the Coleus or Geranium size should 

 be set out in the grass just beyond the actual border of the 

 bed," and that lower plants, like Pyrethrums and Alternan- 

 theras, "should be brought forward close to the low border, 

 and here and there several of them should be allowed to get 

 over the border and establish themselves in the neighboring 

 grass. This will create a properly related emphasis of outline, 

 a pleasing variety, and irregularity enough to just escape for- 

 mality. There must, necessarily, be a certain precision of 

 lines, but the treatment should all the time bear a distinct and 

 well-defined kinship to that employed by nature in our fields 

 and pastures." 



To our mind this is just the sort of kinship that the treat- 

 ment of formal beds should not bear. One great reason why 

 the art of gardening lags at the present time behind its sisters 

 is, that gardeners are seldom clear in their minds with regard 

 to the special kind of beauty they wish to attain, or are incon- 

 sistent in their efforts to attain it. Hence the confusion, the 

 lack of coherence, and, therefore, of beauty, which mark 

 most of our private grounds and many parts of our public 

 parks. First of all, a natural or a formal scheme should be de- 

 cided upon, or, if the place be large, a scheme in which natural 

 and formal elements are properly contrasted and yet harmon- 

 ized. And then the chosen idea should be definitely expressed 

 and boldly carried out. So distinctly artificial a feature as a 

 pattern bed should never be employed at all, except in places 

 where there is no need to mitigate or half-deny its artificiality. 

 If, when boldly formal, it looks too stiff, it had better be done 

 away with entirely, for its stiffness, instead of being " inartistic," 

 is its essential character, and, therefore, is artistic if the en- 

 vironment be such as to sanction its presence at all, and the 

 outline of its border seems to us just the place where this 

 character should be most clearly expressed. We follow Mr. 

 Parsons gladly when he teaches that we often see too mechani- 

 cal a regularity in the filling of formal beds, feeling that such 

 beds are, in truth, of two kinds — those where delicate stiff 

 patterns are wrought by the use of brilliant, low, close-clipped 

 plants, and those where freer masses of taller plants are 

 grouped in only a semi-formal way. But in both cases the 

 ornamental bed should confessedly be a bed, with a distinctly 

 marked form and outline. Some of the most beautiful beds 

 we remember to have seen were in France, and were filled 

 with white and pink flowered Geraniums, not set in a pattern 

 but mingling naturally together. But the shape of these beds 

 was marked, and their character expressed, by a low close-clipped 

 border of some other sort of plant. In short, while a natural 

 arrangement should be consistently natural,. a formal arrange- 

 ment should as consistently be formal. The only question is, 

 whether the one or the other will look best in the given spot. 



The charming chapter on the "Ornamentation of Ponds and 

 Lakes" was noticed in these columns when it appeared, not 

 long ago, in one of the magazines. The one on " City Parks " 

 gives an interesting account of the formation of Central 

 Park, but we should have liked to see the great skill of its de- 

 signers more strongly emphasized as it is revealed in the 

 arrangement of the roads and walks. In a small place plant- 

 ing is the landscape-gardener's chief task ; but in a large place, 

 and above all in a public park, where crowds of persons on 

 foot and in carriages must be accommodated, and must have 

 the various portions of the enclosure beautifully revealed to 

 their passing eyes, his preliminary work in laying out the roads 

 is almost more important and even more complicated and ex- 

 acting. This work has been exceptionally well done in 

 Central Park, while it was exceptionally hard to do it well, 

 owing to the broken character of the ground. 



" Landscape-gardening" is handsomely printed and bound, 

 and profusely illustrated ; but the larger illustrations, although 

 often taken from very interesting objects or scenes, are not all 

 of the first quality. On the whole, the volume is one for 

 which we are grateful, and one which should do much to 

 stimulate an interest in plants and planting and garden ar- 

 rangement. There is still need, however, for a companion 

 volume, in the shape of a systematic treatise on landscape- 

 gardening considered primarily as an art of design. 



