The way to make Washington city the Eden of America ..

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The way to make Washington Ciip
The Eden of America

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO
MY GRAND NIECE, MISS MAY
FLETCHER BECAUSE OF HER
GREAT LOVE OF THE BEAUTY
OPNATORE EVEN AS A CHILD

COPYRIGHT 1916 BY MINTER P. KEY,WASHINGTON, D. Cc
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AN APP#HAL TO REPLACE CROOKED, DEFORMED AND INCON-
GRUOUS TREES OF THE WHITE HOUSE LAWN AND PUBLIC
PARKS OF WASHINGTON, D. C., BY THE BEST SPECIMEN
OF FRUIT AND TREE LIFE TO Be FOUND IN
AMERICA OR AMERICA’S EDEN.

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To one whe has made a study of trees, bushes, vines, and flowers, and
the part they can be made to play in making a home in a city or suburb so
as to give it that degree of beauty, dignity, or grandeur that the building
and the place it oceupies would seem best adapted for it, 1s constantly
shocked by the absence of any well formed plan to select and arrange these
so as to show more grace and beauty than mere brick and stone ean give to
a home. ‘To those who are constantly erying out for a ‘‘ Beautiful Wash-
ington,’ let me remind them that mere houses, however beautiful in strue-
ture, and streets, however straight and smooth, must be supplemented by
an intelligent and well designed plan of arranging its flora, so as to make
it conform to the architectural beauty of the building and grounds sur-
rounding the same, as well as to the character of those who are to occupy
it, even inciuding their nationality.

No man will attempt to herd his sheep with a bulldog, or hunt pheasants
with a coach dog, or use a hound to draw his snow-sleigh. Why not use the
same degrce of intelligence in arranging trees, shrubs, flowers, ete., about
the house ?

let tne German home be surrounded by ‘‘Unter den Linden’’ and the
home of the Norwegian with the spruce, but give your Vermont neighbor a
yard full of sugar maples and let the Southern gentleman have his magnolia
grandiflora, and who would deny to the hardy Seotehman, though in minia-
eure, his rocky glen or stony cliff, familiar scene of his boyhood days, with
its native trees and shrubs growing among them, even here in the National
Capital ?

Washington, D. C., is no mushroom town, to be moved when a new
gold strike is made or another oil gus er 18 ee but the permanent

(ole
©ciase 5989

JAN 18 1916

Capital of a great nation, and the trees should be hardy and long-lived, and
of a more stately character than our present ones.

Too much attention is given in all our cities to planting soft wood trees
that break easily in a brisk wind or storm, while their leaves serve as a
favorite food for the web ecatipilla. If the propagation of worms in our
modern cities is desired, why not plant the mulberry tree and raise the sill:
worm, as ihere is some profit to be had in the matter of silk culture, beside
viving profitable employment to those who need it. The architect, stone
masous, ai ™bricklayers have given our city many beautiful buildings, and
ihese should not be marred by the presence of deformed, diseased, and
maimed trees. Let the trees that surround the Congressional Library and
the Coreoran Gallery of Art be such as are in keeping with their beauty,
erace, and dignity. The trees in Capitol Park and those that surround the
several stately buildings on Capitol Hill ean be replaced by others that will
add 100 pez cent to the beauty of them, as well as giving more dignity and
character to these buildings.

_ After fretting over the unprepossessing and incongruous character of
the trees in the front lawn of the White House for a number of years, I
secured a permit in June to take photographs of them. Not being willing
to risk my judgment in the matter, I got Mr. W. H. Forman, of the Wash-
ington Tree Exjert Co., to assist in securing photos of the bent, diseased,
and ill-designed trees there. Although a lover of trees and a specialist in
treating them, and having lived in the city for several years, he expressed
hims«lf profoundly astonished at their poor condition. He quite agreed
with me tuat every one of them should be removed and replaced by trees
that would be more nearly in keeping with the dignity of the Presidential
residence. .No house in the United States should be surrounded by trees
of a more beautiful type and stately appearance than those on the front
lawn of the White House. This lawn should be the pride and joy of every
American and the envy of every European.

More than a century has passed sinee the City of Washington became
the National Capital. With the passing of the last wigwam the last ineon-
gruons growth of forest trees should have passed, if we are intelligent and
“ultured enough to understand the design God had in view in giving man
so many varieties of trees for his many uses, and use Dour intelligence to
ioeate these trees, shrubbery, vines, ete., about our cities and homes, so as te
designate both the character of the man, as well as his nationality, and thus
show our refined taste to its best advantage.

The eim tree is essentially a tree designed by God to shade the wide
streets and sidewalks of our cities, towns, and villages, or to stand alone as a
giant umbrella shade tree, while the Lombardy de poplar was designed to line
the roadside leading from the pretentious farm mansion on an elevation to
the main thoroughfare leading to the market town. There are many localities
in our cities where this stately poplar ean be artistically planted, say as a

shade tree on a very narrow strect, or when shade is needed in the upper
windows ot our tall office buildings, just as those on the south front of the
Carnegie Library and apartment houses.

On the east front of one of our local millionaire’s palatial homes, the
trees and shrubbery bespeak the home of culture and refinement, while the
trees on the west side seem to be designed to shade the big log hut of some
poor man, and he too lazy to care for them. The surprising thing in this
case is that both conditions have been produced without any design on the
part of its occupants, able as they are to have both trees and shrubbery
that will add more beauty and dignity to the appearance of their eom-
fortable home. . :

I sineerely hope that the present commissioner of parks will not permit
the parking between the Union Station and the Capitol building to be
marred by crooked and deformed forest trees, but make it a beauty spot,
the beauty and loveliness of which will not be surpassed on the continent,
and vet not hide any of the fine buildings now in view.

That portion of the plaza lying between the Union Station and the
Capitol Building can be greatly improved by selecting one or more of the
largest squares—one of which should be in front of the Senate Office Build-
ing and the other near the station—and convert them into lakes, amply
supplied with fish and swan, and their edges planted with such semi-aquatie
plants and trees as will make the best show, while some of the smaller spaces
should be used for the display of an almost innumerable variety of spray-
ing and spouting fountains, and, when possible, glass tubes should be
employed so as to hide or keep secret, by their invisibility, the source of the
water’s many 2ivolous forms, ete. Glass bowls, many feet across, of the
same whiteness as the water which overflows its edge, then sprays from
invisible or colored glass tubes should be used to puzzle visiting friends, and

interest alike old and young. The surface of all the land should
be closely sodded by blue grass, because of its richer color, and this should
be duplicated on the White House lawn. Colored glass dams and
tubes can be made to vary this scene of beauty ; indeed, faney should here be
set free to do her most gorgeous work, and that in the best manner, for the
cost can never equal, much less surpass, the refining effect that such a seene
will have for the inspiration of a dull comprehension, much less when
viewed by a soul hungering for visions of loveliness. To-day this space,
with its fringe of deformed trees and ugly red clay, only reminds one of a
widow’s field, and she too pror to care for it. Shame on a rich Government
that will permit such a desert waste of red and yellow clay spots, where
only beauty and loveliness. if rt grandeur of scenery, can and should be
displayed in a most ravishing manner.

The beautifying of our mid-city parks in this and the many other ways
that an educated fancy may dictate. will do more toward a permanent
uplift of inspiring souls than all other efforts combined can do, besides

chasiug gloom aud sadness from downeast souls and hearts hardened by the
irony of fate. Beautiful pictures, when wrought in nature, are far more
inspiring than any that the artist’s brush can spread upon canvass, so let
us have them for all the cities upon this continent. Washington should be
the most beautiful and inspiring to man, if not the end of human effort in
this direction. Water, trees, fruits, flowers, rocks, hills, gorges, brocks, and
vales were given to man by God to weave into things of beauty about our
cities and homes, for the purpose of ennobling and uplifting his soul, so as to
make it easier for him to worship Him who made all things. Read the
deseription of the Garden of Eden; brief as it is, a whole volume filled with
photcgraphs and elaborately worded could not do adequate justice to its
beauty. ‘‘And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there
he put man whom He had formed.’’ ‘‘And out of the ground made the Lord
to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.””> * * *
**And a river went out of Eden to water the garden.’’ Without question,
no man can make a garden as beautiful as God can, and did make in Eden;
but this is no reason why the American people should be content with the
present coarse arrangement of the flora and water distribution we have in
vhis, the National Capital. Let us do our best to imitate the garden God
planted for man, ‘‘eastward in Eden,’’ and maybe we may become more like
the man God weuld have us be. The savage is content to live amidst unkept
surroundings, aid shall we? If we would make our boast good, that we are a
Christian, civilized people, then we should make our city the most attractive
in America. A veritable garden of trees, fruits, flowers, water so highly
arranged that all men will exclaim, What a beautiful city Washington is.

Sir, do you live in or near the National Capitol, and have you a refined
iaste, and are you a lover of the beautiful? Then so stamp this fact around
your dweliing that the stranger, as well as your intimates, will intuitively
stop and exclaim, Here lives one gentleman, of refined tastes, possessing a
soul easily stirred by Nature’s beautiful designs when gorgeously arranged
in tasty order. Do not be content with stone and brick for eG home ;
these will do for a house; but a home cannot be made without a display of
nature’s best and most attractive flora, artistically arranged about the
building into a veritable poem of trees, shrubbery, vines, flowers, and water.
These are nature’s royal gifts to man for home building, and should be
used to the best advantage.

The average American comes to Washington for inspiration. Do not
disappoint him any longer. Give him beauty spots at the White House,
arouid the Capitol building, at Union Station, in the Smithsonian grounds,
that will make him an interesting entertainer to his children and neighbors,
the rest of his life about the beauty of the National Capital and its many
private homes, so elegantly and artistically beautified, thus stamping
Washington as the capital of a cultured people, whose superior refinement
surpasses that of all other people.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

MN

Baltimore Sun of September 3 has this say of Gardens:
GARDENS.
3y the Bentztown Bard.
All gardens are God’s gardens;
Soon or later
His hand comes by to open wide the gate
That he may sanction with His utter grace
Each vine and flower
That decks the lovely place!
MINTER P. KEY,
225 E St. N. E.

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