Railroad Garden
Read about Railroad Garden in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture
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Railroad-Gardening. That phase or application of landscape gardening (or landscape architecture) which aims to improve the appearance of railway rights-of-way and station grounds; and, as an art of design, which lays out the approaches and makes the subdivisions of the grounds as best to serve convenience and beauty. In this article, in a cyclopedia of horticulture, it is not intended to discuss the theory of design for railway properties, but rather to consider the plant-growing features; yet the layout must be taken into consideration. The subdivision of the property and the general theory of arrangement are necessarily controlled by the nature of the property itself, the extent of trackage, the need for passenger and freight access, the size of settlement to be served. Probably nowhere are the main elements more rigidly fixed by the necessities of the case, for the engineering requirements must be met; and yet there are large civic relations that should receive careful consideration. In a small suburban railway station property, the planting feature may well be very prominent or even, to the general observer, dominant. Large trees are in place, and flanking lines of shrubbery and many good gardening features. In small cities, of say 10,000 inhabitants more or less, the station buildings become relatively more dominant and the planting falls into a subordinate place, and the gardening may take on the features of ornament; the approaches and the general layout begin to assume a civic character. In large cities, the architecture, arrangement, and formal approaches necessarily dominate, the plant materials are reduced to a very minor feature or disappear altogether, and the landscape architect approaches the work as a problem in city-planning and design. There remains the small country station in the farming country, which usually has been wholly neglected in respect to its landscape features and which has little expanse beyond the mere right-of-way; this is a problem quite by itself and which has not yet been studied to any extent. This application of the landscape art to real rural conditions will develop when the whole subject of country-planning begins to appeal to the public mind. Historical sketch. The railroad-gardening movement is best understood by a consideration of its historical development, and this is here attempted, although the treatment is not complete nor does it pretend to bring the subject down to date. The movement in England.—Planting has been practised on the station grounds of some English railways for many years, but it is almost exclusively limited to purely ornamental gardening. The corporations do little beyond offering prizes to station-masters and their assistants. This system was put in operation about forty years ago on the Great Eastern, in about 1885 on the Midland, and at a more recent time on the Great Western Railway. The prizes range from 5s. to £5, and in 1900 aggregated £300 on the Midland Railway. The little planting that is done by the railway companies themselves is confined to a few trees of low growth near stations, to a background of shrubs for some of the so-called "platform gardens," and to sowing broom and gorse on certain slopes of the permanent way between stations. The "allotment gardens" that attract attention on English roads are small tracts near stations rented to employees of the roads, who use them as vegetable-, fruit-, and, to some extent, as flower- gardens. The Railway Banks Floral Association was an interesting factor in the improvement of English railway rights of way. Earl Grey was the originator of the novel and excellent scheme. The society was an organization for interesting owners of adjacent property, and for collecting money and materials for sowing and planting railway "banks" (downward slopes) and "cuttings" (upward slopes) of the permanent way, to the end of making them more attractive. The results have been eminently satisfactory. Denmark.—In Denmark the railways belong almost without exception to the government, and improvements are begun when the roads are constructed. These consist of five classes of work: (1) planting of station grounds; (2) hedges as a substitute for fences; (3) snow- shelters; (4) vegetation on embankments as a protection against erosion ; (5) allotment gardens near block signal stations. Planting on station grounds is purely for esthetic purposes; the other features, while possessing some attractions, are maintained chiefly for their economic advantages. The materials for planting are obtained from nurseries ("planteskoler") owned by the roads and consist for the most part of shrubs, largely coniferous. These nurseries, as well as the entire planting, are under the supervision of a "plantoer," i.e., a chief botanical instructor. The allotment gardens, like their English namesakes, are tracts near the block signal stations where railway employees conduct vegetable- and fruit-gardens for their own use, and sometimes care for a few flowering plants. Sweden.— Ornamental planting has been universal on government railways, as well as on most private railways in Sweden, since 1862. According to the Royal Administration of the Swedish State Railways, the following distinctions are made: (1) decorative and fire protective plantings on station grounds; (2) mixed plantings (decorative and economic) on "habitation grounds;" (3) plantings along the railway lines as hedges or for protection against snow. Station planting consists of trees selected to suit the climate of various parts of the country, of shrubs, and of perennials and annuals (flowering as well as bedding plants). At the largest stations (only about seventy-five) annuals are exclusively used for "modern or elegant combinations." The planting at habitation grounds consists of fruit- trees, small-fruits, a few ornamental shrubs, some flowering plants, and a small kitchen-garden. The state railways yearly plant out about 40,000 hard- wooded plants (trees and shrubs), and 400,000 soft- wooded plants (perennials and annuals), which are nearly all grown at five greenhouses, hotbeds, and nurseries situated in different parts of the country. On private railways the same plan is followed on a smaller scale. In various other countries there are scattered examples of ornamental, economic, and protective planting on railways, including the cultivation of fruits along the rights of way of certain railways of Germany and of France. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company has planted a considerable part of its right of way to tamarack and other suitable trees to supply the tie material of the future. The director of the association called Het National Belang, at Utrecht, says that the association has contracts with the State Railway Company and the Holland Railway to plant the dykes of their roads. Different kinds of willows, low apple and pear trees (half- stam appel en peeren-bloomen) and wild prune trees are used, the fruit of the last being "used for jams." The common quince is used to a limited extent in Uruguay for binding earth on embankments, and the paradise tree for shading station platforms. "The Ombu is the national tree of Uruguay,—useless as fuel or as timber, useless as food, but as welcome as Jonah's gourd at midday at certain seasons." The Royal Railway Department of Siam reports through M. Kloke, acting Director General of Railways, that efforts have formerly been made to establish protective tamarind hedges along embankments in the Korat section, which were destroyed by cattle; Eucalyptus trees grown from seed received from Australia have developed quickly into "stately trees;" and good success has also resulted from the introduction of a tree from Manila which is said strongly to resemble the cherry tree, and is well suited for making "shady alleys;" and that India-rubber trees are used at smaller stations. Remarkable work has been accomplished in Algiers. The director of the P. L. M. Railroad Company wrote some years ago that about 525,000 trees had been planted between 1869 and 1875, of which 495,000 were forest trees and 30,000 fruit-trees. The prevailing forest trees are eucalypts and locusts; others are mulberry, plane, pine, cypress, willow, poplar, oak, sycamore, and mimosa. About one-fifth of the forest trees were planted about stations and watch-towers for ornament, and the remaining four-fifths were used in protective plantings. The fruit-trees include mandarin, orange, lemon, medlars from Japan, pomegranate, apricot, and almond. In Mexico some companies, notably the Mexican Central, maintain flower-gardens and parks at larger stations. United States.—The first traceable indications of the movement in this country are about 1870. It was not until several years later that infrequent allusions to the work crept into print. From the year 1880, however, the movement gained in favor so rapidly that the late W. A. Stiles said of it in "Garden and Forest," March 13. 1889: "Railroad-gardening has come to be considered a necessary part of constructions and maintenance among prosperous and progressive companies seeking to develop local passenger business." As nearly as can be determined with certainty, the first railroad-garden made in this country occupied the triangular plot of ground formed by the main line and the "Y" of the Baltimore & Ohio Railway, at Relay Station, where the through line from Washington joins the main line from Baltimore to the West. Frank Bramhall, of the passenger department of the Michigan Central Railroad, says of this plot: "I first saw it just before the Civil War." "Harper's Magazine" for April, 1857, gives a wood-cut of this station and its surroundings, but makes no mention of the planting. The first example of gardening known to have been made by official order, as far as can be learned, was to be seen in 1869, on the line of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, on the stretch between Elizabeth and Bound Brook. The credit for this was directly due to the president of the railroad, J. T. Johnston. That gentleman was therefore one of the pioneers, if not actually the first American railway official to recognize the advantages, and to encourage the development of such improvement of station grounds. Another early example, also on the Baltimore & Ohio road, is a little flower-garden which has been maintained at Buckhorn Point, on a narrow strip of ground between the tracks and the edge of a precipitous height overlooking the valley of the Cheat River. In 1880, the Boston & Albany Company built a new station at Newtonville, Massachusetts, and a baggage- master (E. A. Richardson?) who took charge at that point in 1881 evinced an interest in the care of the grounds that attracted the favorable attention of the assistant engineer, who sent him men and material for grading and sodding. This so encouraged the baggage-master that he solicited the townspeople for money to buy seeds and plants, and with such success that he maintained for three years a flower-garden that favorably impressed the higher officials of the road, and led to the establishment of similar gardens at other points, and eventually to the adoption of a system of planting which, under intelligent artistic supervision, has been radically changed in style till it now stands as the nearest approach to a comprehensive and consistent example of railroad-gardening. (Fig. 3334.) In 1882 and 1884 several new and exceptionally artistic stations had been built for the Boston & Albany Railway Company after designs by the late eminent architect, H. H. Richardson, and the latter date marks the adoption of a consistent scheme of permanent planting, aiming at nature-like effects instead of the purely ornamental, i. e., formal gardening, previously used. This happy result was due to the influence of Charles S. Sargent, of the Arnold Arboretum, a director of the road, and to Wm. Bliss, its president. Designs for the improvement of the grounds around these stations were made by F. L. Olmsted, the veteran landscape architect, and since 1884 the development of these plans, as well as all of the horticultural interests of the road, have been in charge of a competent landscape gardener, E. A. Richardson, who says: "The plan followed is to conform the treatment and development of the station grounds to the adjacent ground: a natural style being followed amid natural surroundings, and a more cultivated style in highly cultivated regions; to utilize all natural advantages of ground surface, rocks, water, and native growths; to make large use of trees, shrubs, vines, and plants indigenous to the locality where improvements are being made; to supply beds for shrubs with from eighteen to twenty-four inches of good loam; and to plant so closely in the beginning that as the plants grow they can be thinned to supply other grounds as needed." It goes without saying that these methods are not only the most practical but that they insure the most artistic results. Among the first railway companies to improve their station grounds by planting were the Central of New Jersey (1869), the Baltimore & Ohio (date uncertain), the Boston & Albany (1880), the New York Central & Hudson River (1880), the Erie (1881), the Southern Pacific (1885), the Pennsylvania (1886), and the Austin & Northwestern of Texas (1887). Other roads appreciate the value of the work and encourage it; and railroad-gardening has now become a recognized form of landscape improvement, although yet at its merest beginnings. The methods. In the public mind, railroad-gardening usually means the formal use of flower-beds about stations. Such work is ornamental gardening, not landscape gardening. Most of the so-called landscape gardening at railroad stations is really merely decorative. Carpet-beds are relatively costly as compared with hardy shrubbery. They last but a few months and then leave bareness, while the best hardy trees and shrubs skilfully arranged are interesting all the year round. (Figs. 3335. 3336.) This making of nature-like pictures with relatively simple, inexpensive, and permanent materials is a much higher art than that involved in creating and maintaining flower-beds and a few summer-blooming plants. However, both have their places. Many a tired traveler is cheered by the bright colors of a neatly kept railroad station. Such displays are suitable at the stations if anywhere along the line. They are always preferable to dirt, ugliness, and a general air of indifference. But railroad-gardening never becomes worthy our best attention until it rises to the plane and importance of planning. (Fig. 3337.) Some of the underlying considerations in the landscape improvement were stated in an editorial in "Garden and Forest," 1889, by the late W. A. Stiles, from which we quote: "Up to the present time, with few exceptions, railroad-gardening has failed to accomplish what the public has a right to expect of it from an artistic point of view. Instead of using their opportunities for increasing the taste and knowledge of the communities they serve, railroad managers have generally been satisfied to reproduce all that was glaringly bad in the prevailing horticultural fashion of the time. Perhaps this is inevitable, and it will continue so as long as they feel that they need not call for the advice of an expert of a higher class than the ordinary jobbing gardener. It is the old story—a man employs an architect to build his house, but thinks he needs no advice in laying out the park that surrounds it. "The principles that underlie good railroad-gardening are simple. They relate,—so far as such gardening has been attempted,—to the immediate surroundings of country stations and to the shaping and turfing of the slopes rising and falling from the permanent way. "The essential features are: convenient and abundant approaches, and some treatment of the ground not needed for approaches. This treatment should be at once economical and permanent, and of a character simple enough to be successfully maintained by the station-master and his assistants, under the inspection and with the occasional advice of a higher official charged with the management of the horticultural affairs of the corporation. "The selection of a system of general treatment is the only difficult thing, and it is here that railroad managers have usually failed. Most railroad-gardens,—and this is as true of Europe as of America,—consist of a badly laid out and constructed approach, bordered with turf in which are cut as many large and often grotesquely shaped beds as can be crowded in and filled during four months of the year with the most showy and ill-assorted plants, and quite bare of all covering during the remaining eight months; of a few shrubs, mutilated almost past recognition by bad pruning, and by a clump of pampas grass to complete the decoration ; also often the name of the station in stones (mere 'toys'). As Bacon wrote three centuries ago, 'You may see as good sights many times in tarts.' Such grounds are not artistic, and are therefore bad from the point of view of the public. They are enormously expensive and difficult to maintain, therefore bad from the point of view of the railroad. "If railroad-gardening is ever to become a potent and permanent means of public education, it must be organized upon a more economical basis, and with more regard to the laws of good taste and good business. This subject has already occupied the attention of a few thoughtful men, and we are confident that some progress has at last been made." Mr. Stiles commends the plans of the then new station grounds of the Boston & Albany Railway for "convenience, neatness, and simplicity. No beds, no brilliant flowers, no startling effects. They rely for attractiveness on convenient, well-kept roads, neat turf, a few good trees, and masses of well-selected and well-planted shrubs, among which herbaceous and bulbous plants are allowed to grow. The plan is simple, and when thoroughly carried out in the beginning it is easy to maintain." On the treatment of the right-of-way between stations, Mr. Stiles says: "What is needed is a ground- covering that will be more permanent than turf and will not need its constant cutting and attention, and which can be secured without the enormous first expenditure for accurate grading and the deep soil that makes a grass slope presentable," and adds: "Such low plants as wild roses, dwarf willows and sumacs, sweet fern, bayberry, etc., when once established will prevent surface soil from washing, will not grow tall enough to interfere with operating the road, and if destroyed by fire would soon grow again from the root and re-cover the ground." The proof of these deductions is seen yearly on many roads, where thousands of miles of railroad rights-of- way which, in the spring and early summer, are like ribbons of flowered brocade linking the towns together but later in the season become blackened wastes from accidental or intentional fires. Year by year this mournful program is repeated. Railway officials offer no practical objections to the use of small trees and of shrubs between stations which apply when the work is done with discretion ; viz., on the outer boundaries of rights of way that are 100 or more feet wide, on straight stretches, or on long tangents, and not on short curves or near grade crossings. The tracks should never be menaced by the danger of trees falling across them in wind-storms, nor should the telegraph wires and poles be interfered with, nor the view of the line obstructed. The danger to planting from fire can never be entirely eliminated until some non-spark-producing fuel is substituted for coal. Planting for protection, as practised so far, includes: (1) covering banks with vegetation to prevent erosion, and (2) planting for protection from wind and snow, and from landslides. All this has been successfully done in various parts of the world. Snow-hedges are comparatively common at home and abroad. A notable example of confidence in the advantage of belts of trees for this purpose is seen in the groves planted some years ago by the Northern Pacific Railway Company. About 600,000 trees were set out in 1900, and the chief engineer of the road says: "This experiment has been undertaken to determine the possibility of substituting groves for snow-fences. It is necessary to protect all railway cuts in these prairie regions in some manner, as the strong winds across the treeless prairies cause the snow to drift badly. A strip 100 feet wide is cultivated to keep down weeds and overcome danger from fire, and through the middle of it runs a grove 60 feet wide, the inner edge being 125 feet from the center line and parallel with the tracks through cuts. The trees are planted in parallel rows spaced 6 feet apart at right angles with and 3 feet apart parallel with the track. The two outer rows on each side are golden Russian and laurel-leaved willows; the third row from the outer margins, box-elder and ash; and the five central rows, cottonwood. This arrangement is expected to produce a dense grove, increasing in height from both sides to the center, which will furnish an effective windbreak." The feasibility of planting for protection against the encroachment of shifting sand on the seacoast, along rivers, and on so-called desert lands, has been demonstrated by the researches and experiments of the United States Department of Agriculture. The advantages of such plantings are sure to be eventually recognized and utilized by railway companies whose lines are exposed to this danger. The disagreeable features and their suppression constitute an important phase of landscape improvement about railway properties. There are two important classes of disfigurement: defacement by signs, and defacement by abused and neglected grounds adjoining railway rights-of-way. The more noticeable of these is the display of hideous sign-boards that disfigure railway rights of way and, indeed, seem to have the right of way on highways of every description. These amount to a public nuisance that should be legally controlled, but as they are placed on adjacent land or buildings instead of on railway property, their direct suppression by railway officials is out of the question. These eyesores, however, furnish an added and cogent reason for massing plantations of small trees, shrubs, and vines at certain points along rights-of-way where the topography of adjacent land invites such disfigurement. These gaudy signs not only blot out or mar most fine landscape views (being adroitly placed to that direct end), but are allowed to distort otherwise unobjectionable farm buildings, while the approach to villages and towns is announced in screaming colors by the crowding together of these frightful adjuncts of civilization. While railway companies are not strictly responsible for these conditions, it is certain that they might sway public opinion and effect a much-needed reform by continuous, systematic work in the way of "planting out" the disfigurements, and by establishing attractive plantations wherever possible. This policy is likely to result in a reformation in the direction of the second source of unpleasant views from trains; viz., the unkempt, sordid, and often wretchedly squalid appearance of grounds adjoining rights-of-way through villages, towns, and small cities. If a park is maintained on the station grounds, nearby residents are likely to catch the good spirit and improve the looks of neighboring back yards. To this end, a rule against dumping on railway ground should be strictly enforced. The objectionable features that obtain in large cities must probably be endured until mitigated by the efforts of municipal art and social-service leagues. Protection of natural scenery is a prime consideration. Notwithstanding the prominence given in railway advertising to fine natural scenery, little credit seems due to railway companies in general for protecting such scenery. That they might wield a mighty influence for their own and the public good is proved by a few examples. It is learned that the unofficial work of representatives of the New York Central and the Michigan Central roads did much to create the public sentiment that led to the formation of government parks on each side of Niagara Falls, and that the same roads should be credited with comprehensive and extended efforts to secure legislation looking to the prevention of further defacement of the palisades of the Hudson. Many of the movements for protecting natural views and worthy objects have close relation with the improvement of railway properties. Planting for economic purposes is among the possibilities along rights of way, for the purpose of producing timber for furnishing cross-ties, poles, and posts. It is asserted that, under competent supervision, this branch can be made not only to pay the entire expenses of the department but to become a source of revenue. This branch of the work appeals to practical railway men as perhaps no other phase can be expected to, and to what extent the fortunes of various groves of locust, catalpa, and tamarack influence the point of view of chief engineers it would be difficult to learn, but that numbers of them are turning otherwise unoccupied railways lands to this use is certain. In Indiana, for example, some railway companies have planted a part of their holdings with trees for the double purpose of growing timber for economic uses and to secure the resulting reduction in taxes, which is a feature of the state forestry law. It is often asked whether the planting or horticultural department of a railroad can be made partly self-supporting. There seems little doubt that by one means or another this department might be made at least partly self-sustaining, but the consensus of opinion among railroad men is distinctly against the advisability of making it so, except indirectly. It is conceivable that railroad nurseries and greenhouses might supply planting stock to individuals to their advantage; and possibly railway rights-of-way aggregating immense areas might be planted to crops, perhaps to fruit-trees as is done to some extent in European countries (a project which has also been recently suggested for the roads of India), but the opinion is general that legitimate railroad business is limited to the transportation of people and of freight. Even if this is true, it is still certain that the department may legitimately be made to yield substantial financial returns. This feature of the department work is as yet in a preliminary stage that makes definite conclusions as to the extent of its benefits impossible, but enough has already been accomplished to demonstrate the usefulness of a well-conceived and correctly developed policy of protective and economic planting. The attainable ideals are many. Railway companies can do no more effective advertising than by demonstrating the possibilities of the country traversed for home-making. Instead of dreary wastes of dust and cinders; theirway-station grounds should present refreshing scenes of shade and verdure. Their grounds should be treated according to the rules of landscape art that hold good in all planting. When adjacent land drops away, giving good vistas, these should be preserved; objectionable features should, as far as possible, be "planted out;" sky-lines should be varied, banks clothed, and variety and views supplied, particularly in flat and uninteresting regions. Railroad- gardens should be in the hands of those who will adorn instead of deface them; who will look to the formation of features that will take care of themselves after planting is established—features that require considerable expenditure, a good knowledge of trees and of shrubs, and a large amount of taste in the designer at the outset, but after being established, like the island gardens of Paris, "the hand of man might be withheld for half a century without their suffering in the least." This conception of railroad improvement is therefore much larger and more inclusive than the mere adornment of station grounds; eventually it will modify the development of the entire property over which passengers ride.
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