Throughout this program of improvement of existing features, the paths and roads and grading should be considered solely as a necessary means to the end of developing and maintaining in the most beautiful manner possible, those features of scientific and horticultural and landscape interest for the sake of which the Botanical Garden exists, and of making them conveniently and pleasurably accessible to the public without their destruction by public use; while at the same time recognizing that this mechanism of good circulation for crowds is a necessary means to such an end and in some cases can be properly provided for on such topography only by radical surgical operations the scars of which must be made and healed before the final esthetic and scientific end can be attained.
For example: in a number of places important lines of path circulation are needed running transversely to sharp ridges and hollows. This is a very difficult situation, in which a half-hearted compromise may be easy but is most deplorable. Every effort should be made to find a satisfactory way of really solving the problem without violence to the natural topography, as by seeking a more circuitous route which will not seem disagreeably indirect and which will fully accomplish the purposes that need to be served. But where this can not be satisfactorily done—and there are places where it can not—a bold course, which pierces through a rocky ridge in a narrow ravine-like passage artificially made but not unnatural in appearance, or even by a short tunnel, or which spans a narrow ravine on an arched bridge at the level of the flanking ridges, may not merely produce a more convenient path system and one which leaves its users free to appreciate what they see instead of focussing their attention on the inconvenience and discomfort of the path, but it may also make nine-tenths of the path fit naturally and pleasantly to the surface of the ground it traverses instead of its all looking somewhat forced and unnatural as it climbs and drops over ground obviously uninviting for a main path. Again, in view of the necessity, in so large an area, of permanent means of circulation for automobiles, and of the increasing danger and annoyance of innumerable crossings of this traffic by crowds of people on foot, it is important to provide for the ultimate separation of the grades of main paths and main automobile roads where crossings are inevitable, much as was done in Central Park at a time when the danger and annoyance of such crossings were infinitely less than in these days of motor traffic.
All this sort of thing is of very great ultimate importance, can not sensibly be ignored and should be planned for, in a courageous, far-sighted, uncompromising way. But, as previously pointed out, this does not mean that the construction of a first-rate system of circulation should take precedence over refining and perfecting details of planting and planting maintenance. Preference should be given, in this improvement of the vegetation, to areas the least likely to be upset by such construction. On the other hand, in areas that are likely to be upset by such construction, improvements in the vegetation should be undertaken only when the desirable changes in the paths and roads seem, because of lack of funds, unlikely to be made for so long a time that the value of the temporary improvement in the vegetation would, in the meantime, justify the money and effort expended on it.
6. Qualities generally to be sought in improving the vegetation through better maintenance. The esthetic qualities to be sought and developed in the care of the vegetation must of course vary widely. Anything approaching a stereotyped effect, which one seeing elsewhere would at once recognize as the “Botanic Garden style” is to be avoided at almost any cost. But some qualities are desirable nearly everywhere, qualities now too often lacking. The plants should look well-nourished and vigorous. No pains should be spared, of the kind a good plantsman best knows how to give, in building up the fertility of the soil in those respects necessary for the healthy typical growth of each kind of vegetation in its place, in adjusting different kinds of plants to the places most favorable for their healthy continued growth, and in fighting their enemies. One of the agents destructive to this quality is the public; in its careless or wanton injury of plants by trampling, breaking and deliberate picking. Both constant watchfulness by a sufficient number of maintenance men and the promptest possible restoration of injuries when they occur are essential to keeping up a good standard in this quality. Nothing encourages depredations so much as the evidence of previous depredations supinely accepted.
Hence there is no question but that the Garden should be so planned as to be closed at night and that there should be uniformed guards on duty when it is open; not merely a few City Police temporarily assigned to duty here, but special Botanical Garden Guards forming part of the Garden’s maintenance force, carefully selected and trained for the double purpose, first, of guiding and assisting the public to get the greatest legitimate benefit out of what the Garden has to offer, and, second, of preventing those individually trifling abuses of the Garden which in cumulative effect tend so greatly to make it shabby.
An important quality, hard to describe in positive terms, is one which is the reverse of “weediness.” It is not necessarily “tidiness.” That may be highly appropriate in some sophisticated places: on clipped lawns, among garden beds of a frankly artificial man-made sort, on paths and roads and picnic grounds; but for most of the Botanical Garden, where a natural-seeming aspect should be sedulously sought, the word “tidiness” suggests a smug and artificial quality quite too sophisticated. Yet weediness with its connotation of neglect, ought everywhere to be avoided; and there is a good deal of it today. It comes from the presence of plants—whether classed in common parlance as “weeds” or not—which look out of place in their surroundings; often plants much coarser of texture or ranker in growth than their neighbors, and always suggestive of encroachment on something that would be pleasanter without them. Millions of volunteer seedlings spring up every year and many of them, if not systematically repressed, are able to survive in places where they look distinctly weedy.
The avoidance of shabbiness and weediness is the negative aspect of the problem. The positive aspect, in addition to securing healthy vigorous growth of all vegetation that is not to be suppressed as weedy, lies in the progressive, appropriate enrichment not merely of the regular “collections” but of the incidental or background flora.
The latter may in some places involve the introduction of more kinds of plants, especially of the more delicate native flowering plants, but is perhaps more likely to mean simply the multiplication in certain places of a limited number of species peculiarly and charmingly characteristic of distinctive types of flora, at the expense of those species which are less characteristic.
PART III
IMPROVEMENTS CONSTITUTING NEW DEPARTURES AND SUBSTANTIALLY INDEPENDENT OF PARTS IV AND V
1. Rhododendron Glade. One of the most beautiful, striking and completely self-contained and independent new features which could be added to the Botanical Garden is that which has been for some time under favorable consideration by the Director-in-Chief in the so-called “Lake Valley”—a great naturalistic exhibition of rhododendrons (including azaleas) and of plants suitable for association therewith, in such a manner as to make a notably impressive landscape unit, a valley of rich foliage and brilliant bloom enclosed by wooded rocky hills. The natural enframement of this valley is almost perfect except on the southeast, where the frame must be completed by adequate grading and massive border planting. As a scenic and topographic unit the valley begins in a rocky wooded defile just east of the Lorillard Mansion, whence it descends, widening slightly but still almost overarched by trees, to the point where the earth-fill of the road now under construction traverses and blocks the valley. South of this it widens out into a broader sunlit valley flanked by pleasantly wooded hills, the site of a former artificial lake abandoned because of the intercepting of much of its natural water supply.