The position which I hold being an irregular one, not provided for in the by laws or in any way by a distinct general order, its scope is to be inferred only by the class of duties which the Board habitually accepts of me. If I may deduce from these a definition of the business of my office it is to advise the Board in regard to the design of grounds which have not yet been laid out, and the elaboration of such as have been; and more especially with respect to the Central Park to aid in the further true development of the original design and thus in the more complete realization of the objects which have been had in view in the larger part of the expenditure hitherto made upon it. I have no information to offer by which the Commissioners would be aided in just conclusions in regard to the future administration of either class of this business except the last.

The design of the Central Park is well realized in respect to its drive and walk system and, but for a slight matter of detail, in respect to its rides. Nor need I at this time add anything to what I have recently reported in regard to its buildings, or in regard to the border parts of the park which have not been graded. There remain two points in which the administration of the park is, in my judgmnt inadequate.

First in regard to its plantations:

The number of trees and shrubs which have been planted, with those allowed to remain of the indigenous growth on the Central Park is considerably more than half a million. They have stood (on the ground not occupied by roads, buildings, rocks, water and open meadows), on an average less than five feet apart. They were planted this closely for reasons perfectly familiar to every landscape gardener, with the intention that hardly one quarter of all should permanently remain. Once planted and growing, the designed effect was to be obtained by removal year by year of such as had exercised the influence desired of them upon the remainder and before they exercised, as in time, every one of them would do, an influence distructive of the design. The ultimate beauty of the park and the realization of the design of every important feature in it, even of the grading of the surface and the fertilization of the soil, would necessarily depend on the manner in which this work should be done, the proper trees left, the proper trees each year removed—neither too rapidly nor too slowly. This seems to me so self evident and is so well understood by all who have given any attention to the subject that I cannot without apology dwell upon it for a moment as if it could be questioned. I do so only because the course pursued by the Dept is certainly one directly at issue with the proposition. I may be allowed therefore to quote a few passages from [125] a recognized authority, John Claudius Loudon’s, (Encyclopedia of Gardening—p 962.)

These precepts are laid down more particularly with reference to plantations of timber for commercial purposes, but the principles on which they are based apply with tenfold force to plantations for artistic ends.

It follows that the proper managment of the plantations of the C Park should be under the constant direction of a man who is not only throughly charged with the designs with reference to which they have been made and who has a sincere respect for them but who will steadily pursue through a course of years a long and complex series of artistic motives; who knows what the requisite measures for doing so successfully will be and who will proceed with such measures confidently and boldly.

I suppose that it is mainly because I have the first of these qualifications that I am employed by the Departmnt, yet two years ago a Committee of the Board proposed that another man should be appointed the Landscape Gardener of the Park and that he should proceed with his duties in absolute independence of my control or instruction. This was a plain declaration that the Board preferred to have the original design of the park disregarded should the new Landscape Gardener be inclined to disregard it. On my intimation that the adoption of this recommendation would force me to leave the service of the Board altogether; the new Landscape Gardener was ordered to proceed under my direction in respect to landscape gardening but remained independent of me in respect to exotic & floral gardening. And so, as far as the Bylaws of the Dept show, the matter now stands. But suppose that I had accepted the responsibility of the managment of the plantations under this ambiguous arrangmnt, which I have never done, what opportunity had I for meeting it efficiently?

The Landscape Gardener who was to be my agent, has a force directly under his control for floral and exotic gardening—that is to say with reference to temporary & ephemeral decorations of the park but with reference to Landscape Gardening proper, the managmnt of the plantations, the realization of the permanently important purposes of the park, not one man. He directs no work except such as may be authorized and considered important by still another officer who is not a Landscape Gardener and is profoundly ignorant of Landscape Gardening. To guard however against the possibility that either or all three of these officers shall cause some work to be done, the reasons for doing which have not been fully understood and been reviewed & approved by the Commissioners it is ordered that not one of the many thousand trees {that stand} in excess on the park shall be removed without a special order of the Board—So far as I know an order for the cutting of a tree has never yet been given by the Board.

If the Board were composed of the best experts in the world, with reference to this work, it could hardly adopt a course less likely to lead to efficiency; [126] to having the proper work done at the proper time. But as a matter of fact so far from being a Board of experts, there has not in these 14 years been more than one of the 22 Commissioners of the Park who has professed to have even an elementary knowledge on the subject, and that one never so far as I know exercised the smallest degree of positive influence on the managmnt of the plantations. He simply acquiesced in a policy with regard to the park in this respect which he did not pursue in respect to his own private grounds.

The consequence of the policy or want of policy which has been pursued is melancholy. Visitors who know how such plantations as those of the park should be managed cannot go through it without being deeply pained at the wastefulness of the neglect they see. Remonstrances on the subject, on the presumption that I am responsible, are frequently addressed to me. And although I have taken all reasonable precautions to clear myself of responsibility short of publicly protesting against the course which has been followed, I cannot but feel mortified both by the lack of proper confidence of the Commission in my professional discretion and executive ability with reference to a matter so comparatively small and by the result of that lack of confidence in the gradual stultification of the design of the Park.

The other point on which I think the administration inadequate, is that of the park keepers.

I have never heard a Commissioner of the Park express dissent from the views which I have often and fully expressed as to what should be accomplished through the park keepers. When the measures which had been adopted by the Board at my suggestion for improving the efficiency of the police with reference to the practical realization of these views were abandoned,the Chairman of the Committee who reported the resolution for that purpose {stated} that he thoroughly agreed with me as to the objects of the force and that the Commission did so without exception, that it was fully intended that those objects should be strenuously pursued and that the most relentless discipline would be applied to secure efficiency in their pursuit. Yet the Captain of the force has within a few months shown that he regarded the most important and characteristic of these objects with contempt and, so far from wishing his subordinates to respect and induce the public to respect the design of the park as I understand it and as I suppose that the Board understands it, that he confidently and habitually treats it as a chimerical and romantic notion peculiar to a single soured and disappointed man and as a fit subject of ridicule in a deliberate and formal report to the President.

I consider it a mistake of the Board to treat such an occurrence as unworthy of its notice. It affords the clearest evidence either that the Board has repudiated the original design of the park, which I do not believe, or that its [127] keepers force is not adapted to that design and is practically causing it to {be} set aside in favor of one radically different.

The force is tolerably efficient for the business to which it confines its attention but very inadequate to the purpose of giving the public the full value of what has been prepared for it in the park.