The National Nurseryman. 
FOR GROWERS AND DEALERS IN NURSERY STOCK. 
Copyright, 1893, by the National Nurseryman Publishing Co. 
VoL. 111 . ROCHESTER, N. Y., SEPTEMBER, 1895. No. 8. 
PARKS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS. 
So many utterly false ideas are persistently paraded be¬ 
fore the public on the formation and management of parks, 
recreation grounds and gardens, in engineering and archi¬ 
tectural magazines, and every possible opportunity taken 
to emphasize them before the commissions who control 
such matters, that I consider it a public duty to direct 
attention to their fallacy, without a particle of feeling 
other than a love of truth. It is persistently stated 
broadly, and implied constantly, that no one is competent 
to arrange a park, for instance, but a ‘‘ landscape archi¬ 
tect,” whatever that may mean. The assertion is so 
ridiculously untrue, that I venture to say the very term, 
“landscape architect,” is unknown outside the United 
States. Now there is a vast amount of literature on the 
subject of landscape in the English language, but I wish 
to point to this burning truth—that every word of it has 
its foundation and its origin in the work of the gardener ; 
for there is absolutely nothing of nature’s planting in the 
whole United Kingdom to afford a theme. 
Whately, Price, Repton, Gilpin, Loudon, and a half 
hundred others as writers, drew all that is best in their 
writings from the ground, the rocks, the water, and the 
embellishments which gardeners alone had suggested as 
appropriate clothing. Some of these managed to immor¬ 
talize themselves, as Langley, Switzer, Brown, and still 
later, Paxton, Marnock, liyles, and Gibson. The last 
named was the most original, daring and useful innovator 
who ever practiced, and the most subtle in his tasteful¬ 
ness and appropriateness. I doubt greatly if anyone who 
had been denied his advantages could either copy or 
properly appreciate him. He could employ the banana 
where it would not be out of place even beside the bar¬ 
berry, which is not - necessarily “ foreign.” In fact one 
of the most striking combinations among a hundred such 
of his, was a group of large-leaved bananas, backed up by 
cotoneasters in all their extreme of colour, size of foliage, 
and habit of growth, but only apparent geographical 
impossibility. Gibson knew of possible conjunctions in 
nature’s grouping, which were utterly denied to many of 
far more facility with the pen or the pencil, but utterly 
lacking in his power of concentration, utterly dt void of 
his knowledge or his taste, no matter though they con¬ 
trol the whole press of their country. His work, his 
object lessons, spread like wildfire from one end of the 
earth to the other, and I mention it because it is well- 
known to numbers of men now living'. 
Harry Veitch, of Chelsea, once remarked to me that 
Gibson did more to advance horticultural taste and trade 
than any man who ever lived, not only in specialties, but 
because his work called out the whole material of em¬ 
bellished landscape. I have mentioned these few men, 
because they or their works are more or less known, and 
because they were none of them eminent either as writers 
or draughtsmen. Plans are useful and even essential 
sometimes, especially working plans and memoranda, but 
when it comes to submitting a nicely pointed hypocrisy, 
which can never be so seen on the ground, to a set of 
commissioners, no one of whom know a tree by name, or 
to analyze a single component of landscape either natural 
or artificial or to evidence the merest iota of taste, or to 
display plain every-day sense in management, beyond the 
selection of the first chainmaker or coachman who can 
secure a few votes, for the execution of such plans, it is 
time to point out very plainly to the American people 
that there is something radically wrong with the system 
which not only is wasteful and extravagant to a degree, 
but which deliberately points out that “ most of the 
superintendents of parks in the United States have been 
trained either as horticulturists (fruit growers, perhaps !) 
or engineers, but it is not necessary or even desirable that 
such should be the case. Probably the best results will 
be achieved by men who, possessing the organizing faculty 
and a realizing sense of the importance of their work, shall, 
with the assistance of an engineer and a plantsman labor 
to execute faithfully designs which they thoroughly 
understand and approve.” 
Very good. Now, how does it work, good people? 
Right here where I write a plan was submitted to a pie- 
baker and a cigar maker and one or two others and duly 
approved. One at least of the parties was interested in 
the development of adjacent property. From the chair¬ 
man of the commission down to the German gardener, 
laborer, through the engineer, botanist and coachman 
superintendent there has never been a single man who 
knew a thing about the commonest rudiments of parks, 
their scenery, their purposes or their management. No 
self-respecting gardener would serve them. 
How does it work, ask you ? It can only work in one 
way—in double the needful expenditure for very, very 
stupid and extravagant work. The very elements of park 
scenery, the grass and the trees (nicely painted green in 
the plan, of course), have been neglected in their keeping, 
in their selection, and in their planting. Nearly 28,000 
trees and shrubs in thirty-four varieties or so! and largely 
poplars at that! planted helter skelter in a bell two feet 
and four feet apart—a perfect jungle ! without beauty, 
without a particle of taste, without affording a single item 
of interest or instruction. This, when $1,000 would have 
provided a specimen species of every tree and shrub hardy 
in the climate, and wooded the whole ground in time— 
