et ee ee —— 
a aa. 
As You See It 
HERE is an old story of a painter, a lumberman, and a botanist 
who went for a walk together through a forest. The painter 
noted the play of light and shade on the forest floor, the coloring 
of the trunks and foliage, the arrangement and composition value of 
the trees and undergrowth. The lumberman noted the number of 
feet of oak and of maple that could be cut from the tract, and estimated 
the cost of getting it out. The botanist noted the species that made 
up the plant association and various factors bearing on their ecology. 
The three walked together; but each saw only what his own training 
and interests had fitted him to see. 
The interests of those who visit Garfield Park Conservatory are 
as diverse as those of the men of the story, and, similarly, each visitor 
sees the place according to his own training and interests. To the 
artist it is an exquisite study in mass and color. To the landscape 
architect it is a perfect example of the way in which an effect of spaci- 
ousness may be secured in a small space; of the way in which two or 
three specimens may be made to suggest a great mass of plants; of the 
way in which a handful of ferns may be made to blot out a walk. To 
the engineer it is an interesting example of the way a curved dome 
may be secured without using any curved sash;of the way humidity 
may be secured in a room by concealing great water tanks beneath 
banks of verdure; of the way the necessary heating pipes may be 
hidden from sight without any loss of efficiency. To the botanist it 
is a collection of rare and curious species, grouped in such a way as to 
allow him to study them with the greatest possible ease —nowhere 
else in the whole world is there a collection of anything like equal size 
grouped according to plant families. To the school child it is a bit of 
visual education, a presentation in the concrete of the things of which 
he has been studing in his geography and history—the coffee tree and 
tea shrub, the rubber trees and cotton plants, the coconut palms and 
fig trees, the mango and breadfruit trees, and a hundred other things. 
To the garden lover, the conservatory gives an opportunity to see and 
study the varieties and species of which he has been reading in his 
flower catalogs and garden magazines. To the general public, it is, 
as Lorado Taft has noted, a piece of fairyland. 
The impression of fairyland, as he has pointed out, strikes the 
visitor as soon as he is well within the doors: and though one sees the 
exquisite vista_a thousand times, the impression of fairyland never 
wears away. The impression is marked at any time; but is especially 
so during the evenings when the conservatory is open for the three 
great exhibitions of the year. Then the place seems the very em- 
bodiment of romance and enchantment, and one never gets over expect- 
ing to see Titania and her fairy subjects troop forth to dance on the 
meadows at the edge of the lagoon. 
Hundreds of those who enter the conservatory for the first time 
take it for granted that the Fern Room is simply a painted background. 
They say it is too perfect to be real—and indeed it seems that those 
who speak of it as the most beautiful room in the world are not over- 
praising it. The arrangement of the Palm Room adds to the illusion 
of a great picture. 
