Please think well over the Memorandum about the Lagoon which Mr Codman will give you. It is most important that you should get the right ideal in your mind and work for it heartily.

The thing is to make it appear that we found this body of water and its shores and have done nothing to them except at the landings and bridges. They were rich, rank, luxurious, crowded with vegetation, like the banks of some tropical rivers that I have seen or Louisiana bayous. The vegetation must appear spontaneous and thoroughly wild (to all unlearned visitors). The stronger the contrast thus to be obtained with the highly gardened, finished and kept ground, the better the latter will be—the more effective. We cannot get trees that will be large and fine and effective as trees. The highest things that we can grow that will appear flourishing, indigenous and natural to the locality as we shall be supposed to have found it, will be Typhas. I hope that in two years we can have these in perfection in great bodies and grouping with them flags (acorus) and lots of other things of less height that will group with them and fringe the shores. A sort of fringe of luxurient vegetation is all that we can hope in perfection. We must be very careful not to attempt anything small, local and petty and nothing in which we cannot make sure of perfect success. We cannot in the poor sandy sour soil be sure of high success, on the necessary large scale, with anything radically different from what the Memorandum proposes, I think. The neat sloping lawns of a common pleasure ground could not be made in time so that they would not compare unfavorably with what many of our visitors will have been accustomed to. The natural condition of the locality is a swamp. Chicago has grown out of a swamp, and as far as I know [331]a swamp without beauty. Let us try to show the possible beauty of a swamp, even without trees.

A very difficult thing to do, I fully recognize, but not, I believe, impossible. Nor do I see that there is anything else that can be done on the grand scale required and within the limits of time and expense imposed upon us, that has not greater difficulties.

We must depend on you to anticipate and contrive means in advance for conquering the difficulties. If you succeed it will be a great surprise and delight to the people of Chicago and they will have learned something of our art of which they have no conception.

The whole lagoon district must, through its wildness, luxurience, unrestrained and informal aspect of natural scenery of a type rarely seen in close connection with grand affairs, be a foil for the highly enriched, refined and delicate gardening decoration of other parts of the Fair Ground.

Yours Truly

I have received from you a communication in behalf of your Board, inviting me to take part in an examination of the plantations of Prospect Park. I much regret that I shall be unable to visit Brooklyn at the time specified. At some other time I shall be thankful for an opportunity to advise with the Commissioners on the subject.

Within a few years after my public relations with your Department ended, in a private and personal capacity I repeatedly and strenuously urged that, to prevent a great waste of what had before been done, it was essential that the plantations of Prospect Park should be gradually thinned with cautious discretion, under the close personal direction of a man of capacity, trained and practiced in such duty, and who would understand and be in sympathy with the motives of the design and respect the principles with regard to which the plantations had been started. Also, that certain operations equally essential to prevent the frustration of important features of the design, then nearly [333]realized, should be intelligently pursued to a successful end. I felt it to be so wasteful and so altogether pitiable that the latter object should be neglected that I expressed my willingness not only to give such personal services as might be desirable, but to furnish needed plants at my own expense. Straightened circumstances and the political necessity of accommodating the management to the conditions of public opinion, even though unwise public opinion, were given me as reasons for not following such counsel.

The planting of Prospect Park began about ten years after that of Central Park. Out of a similar regard for an inconsiderate, improvident, ignorant, superstitious and deluded superficial public opinion, a suitable thinning of the plantations of Central Park was, also, most wastefully prevented for many years. Two years ago, as a warning of what results were impending in Prospect Park, I sent to each member of your Board a copy of a pamphlet containing a brief history of the plantations of Central Park, and with it, not simply a statement of my opinion, but a body of testimony as to facts of experience given by many eminent tree planters. This testimony establishes the supreme folly of the supposed public opinion that had been alleged as the reason of the course of management—pursued with reference to the plantations of the park; vindicates the proverbial injunction to planters, “Plant thick and thin quick,” and enforces the conviction that prolonged delay of thinning must lead to a condition of well-started plantations that can be judiciously dealt with only by a complete clearance and re-planting of the ground.

There can be no question of park management calling for a higher order of artistic and technical wisdom, or more patient and painstaking personal detailed direction, than that with which your Board is now confronted. The importance cannot be overestimated of a refined, sensitive and seriously studied discrimination between those trees and bushes that remain available for producing the landscape character with regard to which the original outlay for all the constructive work of Prospect Park was planned, and those which can no longer remain on the ground, only to cause a yet more scandalous waste than has yet occurred of the value of the property with the care of which the Commissioners have been entrusted.

Your obedient servant,