November ii, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



529 



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 POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article :— Public Gardens 529 



Waste Places H. B. Ayres. 530 



Holiday Notes from Switzerland. — II George Nicholson. 531 



Forest-vegetation of the Upper Mississippi. — 111.. Prof essor L. H.Pammel. 531 



New or Little-known Plants :— A New Hybrid Rose. (With figures.) 532 



New Orchids R. A. Rolfe. 532 



Plant Notes :— Some Recent Portraits 532 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter TV. Watson. 534 



Cultural Department :— Notes on Small Fruits C. E. Hunn. 534 



The Hardy Flower Garden E. O. Orpet. 536 



Andromeda speciosa for Forcing Jackson Dawson. 537 



Lininanthemum Indicum M. Barker. 537 



Plumbago Larpentse 5. 537 



Good Dessert Apples n E. P. Powell. 537 



Correspondence : — A Rhode Island Forest Davis. 538 



Exhibitions: — Chrysanthemums in New York 53g 



Notes 54° 



Illustrations :— A New Hybrid Rose, Fig. 82 S33 



Rosa multiflora, trained over a post. Fig. 83 535 



Public Gardens. 



IT has been urged in defense of the methods employed 

 in the Boston Public Garden, to which a writer in 

 these columns recently took exception, that this form of 

 gardening is popular with the public. This might also 

 with truth be said of a certain extraordinary construction 

 in a Chicago park, where, for the admiration of the public, 

 is displayed a gigantic vegetable globe, bearing upon its 

 surface a map of the world delineated in Echeverias Lipon 

 a ground of Sedum. Popular this undoubtedly is, and 

 wonderfully made, the pride and delight of the local gar- 

 deners and of the press ; it represents a vast amount of 

 labor and care, as well as great expense ; but it is bad art 

 all the same, as foreign to the real mission of a public 

 garden as it is obnoxious to cultivated taste. An object 

 distinctly demoralizing to those to whom it is exposed as 

 an object of admiration. 



It is not the function of the true gardener to cater to 

 popular taste, but to educate it. As a general thing people 

 do not know just what they ought to like until they are 

 told. There are those unfortunates who prefer the glory 

 of a chromo to the quiet of an etching, a Brussels carpet 

 to an Indian rug, a shilling shocker to a novel by an emi- 

 nent hand, but it does not follow 7 that these should be the 

 only things provided because they happen to hit the 

 popular fancy ; on the contrary, it is the constant effort of 

 the best reviews, the best newspapers and the best public 

 libraries to elevate the taste of the uneducated, to show 

 wherein simplicity and breadth in art excel violence and 

 pettiness, to establish tests of beauty, and to help the 

 world to distinguish the true from the false standard. 

 And this should be equally true of the best gardens.' 



There is no excuse for uncertain notes from public gar- 

 dens, for here there is no question of supply and demand. 

 The public have to take what is given them, and they will 

 not absent themselves from their accustomed pleasure- 

 grounds even if their beloved monstrosities are removed, 

 and a quiet and artistic arrangement substituted for one 



that is artificial and grotesque. A public garden is even 

 more valuable than an art museum as an educator of taste, 

 since it is seen by ten times as many people, and the city 

 which owns one owes it to its inhabitants to instruct them 

 in matters of taste as well as to excite their wonder and 

 curiosity. To do things simply to please them when such 

 things are in themselves violations of good taste, is equiv- 

 alent to hanging the walls of the Art Museum with chromo- 

 lithographs as more likely to be " understanded of the 

 people " than the mysteries of Corot or the subtle values of 

 a landscape by Daubigne. 



The general public does not know good from bad in gar- 

 dening, and, therefore, this is the requisite lesson to teach 

 it. Americans are as keen to recognize the good, when 

 once distinctly shown to them, as any people who exist ; 

 and a Boston public is especially conscientious and eager 

 to think aright if it can only be taught how. 



The instance adduced by our correspondent is a case in 

 point. The Water-lilies were introduced as an experiment 

 into the parks and squares of this city when it was doubted 

 whether the public would care for them, and it was feared 

 they might molest and injure them. On the contrary, they 

 have been appreciated and enjo3 r ed, and have not been 

 disturbed. They are beautiful, they are refined, they have 

 appealed alike to the most delicate and the simplest taste, and 

 have so proved themselves both enjoyable and appropriate 

 decoration. The immense parks in this city and in Brook- 

 lyn are great models in landscape-gardening. Are they 

 the less satisfactory to any one on that account ? Give the 

 people beauty, both of color and arrangement, and insen- 

 sibly it impresses itself upon them as a law. Good garden- 

 ing, skillful grouping of shrubs and flowers, will be quickly 

 imitated in a small way, and a knowledge of propriety in 

 composition will thus be disseminated. 



As a nation, the French have fine and discriminating 

 taste, but that taste has been cultivated to its present point 

 of perfection by the constant familiarity of the masses with 

 what is excellent in architecture, painting and the plastic 

 arts, of which they constantly behold excellent specimens. 

 In the galleries of the Louvre and the Luxembourg the 

 traveler is often struck by the delicate appreciation of beauty 

 shown by people in caps and blouses. For generations 

 this sense has been unconsciously trained by the continual 

 observation of beautiful and appropriate forms, and by the 

 knowledge that certain things are admirable, and the con- 

 sequent effort to understand why they are worthy of es- 

 teem. The standard being once set up, insensibly their 

 minds become adapted to it, and their judgment grows 

 secure. It is only thus that the education of any populace 

 can be accomplished. Constant familiarity with the really 

 beautiful cultivates a distaste for what is false and violent. 

 In Japan the very infants have an instinct, which we acquire 

 only by patient study, of that restraint and delicacy and 

 economy of material which is the secret of the best art. 



In old times, before exploration and facilities of trans- 

 portation brought masses of exotic and tropical plants to 

 the gardener's hands, gardening was more beautiful than 

 it is at present, because it was simpler and less confused. 

 The temptation now is to overdecoration, both of public 

 and private gardens, and even the French suffer from an 

 embarrassment of riches which they have not quite learned 

 to grapple with. They show the same tendency to inter- 

 fere with the breadth of a lovely garden view by the inter- 

 polation of great overloaded flower-beds that we do, but 

 in the composition of these beds their trained color-sense 

 shows itself, and they produce a more harmonious compo- 

 sition. Thanks to the inherent German love of nature, 

 and possibly also to the fact that the climate of Berlin is 

 so severe that the number of varieties of delicate plants 

 which can be grown there is very much restricted, the 

 finest city gardens, that is to say the simplest and most 

 natural, are now to be seen in the Prussian capital. 



The most general failure in modern gardening arises 

 from the attempt to grow as many things as possible with- 

 out any reference to the propriety of associating them 



