3. Iris Garden Region. What seems on preliminary inspection 

 like an opportunity for an essentially new feature of much beauty 

 and interest, if dealt with boldly and skilfully in a large way, 

 is presented in the vicinity of the present Iris Garden and Horti- 

 cultural Garden. Here is an open hillside sloping irregularly to 

 the eastward from a bench at about elevation 90 near the Southern 

 Boulevard, to a hollow at about elevation 60 near the interior 

 road, and flanked on either side by bold well-wooded hills. Its 

 landscape unit, however, is disturbed by the bulge of the rounding 

 ridge occupied by the Horticultural Garden and by the fact that 

 the open space, once quiet meadow or lawn, is cut up and spotted 

 with paths and flower beds which are yet not sufficiently continu- 

 ous to produce a unified texture of a richer sort. 



Directly opposite to the east is the one important gap in the 

 rocky ridges which border the Bronx River on the west for three 

 quarters of a mile, and in and beyond this gap the natural woods 

 are thin or altogether lacking, giving opportunity, at the sacrifice 

 of a few trees, for a very lovely natural-seeming transverse 

 vista extending to the ridge just west of the Rose Garden. 



The vista is well worth getting in itself, because one of the 

 defects of the Botanical Garden today is its deficiency in land- 

 scape reaches and views of sufficient length to give the sense of 

 spaciousness and the mystery of distance. Moreover there is an 

 unpleasantly complete landscape separation of all the land to 

 the east of the river from that to the west. 



But the special opportunity which the situation of the Iris 

 and Horticultural Gardens seems to present lies, in connection 

 with opening the vista, in the bold regrading of portions of the 

 non-conforming hillside above mentioned, and the extension 

 of the mainly herbaceous planting of these gardens so as to 

 produce a continuous and unified, though rich and varied, texture 

 throughout the space within the framing trees and hills. 



Within the limits of this general conception the garden might 

 successfully be given any one of an infinitude of local expressions, 

 from that of a naturalistic hillside rich in flowers, like some alpine 

 glades, to that of an intricately terraced hillside where the flower 

 beds and paths would be made flatter in cross-section for the 

 practical convenience of intensive use and be supported by low 

 walls. Such a terraced treatment might, on the one hand, be highly 

 architectural in its general structure, or, on the other hand, it 

 might be rather casual and unobtrusively irregular and pictur- 

 esque like many of the hillsides so pleasantly and richly terraced 

 into vineyards and gardens by the peasants of Italy, of Switzer- 

 land, of the Rhine and of Japan. Considering the practical 



[aoD 



