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It
is well known that the Japanese landscape-gardener prides himself on
his treatment of areas so small that we should give them up to a gravel
walk and a couple of Geranium beds. So it was a
disappointment not to find, on the soil of the Japanese Horticultural
Section in the Exhibition grounds at Paris, some illustration of his practice.
The Japanese Horticultural Section
was only a small space on a rather steep part of the Trocadéro
slope, surrounded by a rough bamboo fence which would doubtless have
looked pretty amid consonant surroundings, but seemed a little slovenly
and poor by contrast with neighboring French arrangements, which were
scrupulously trim and durable looking. Almost the whole of the
enclosed space was laid out in a series of low terraces, each of which
bore a row of potted plants.
I was not wise enough to know
whether any of these plants had especial interest for the European
botanist. But I soon saw that some of them were extremely
interesting to the cultivator and the student of art. These were
the examples of dwarfed trees. We have become familiar, in our own gardens, with
certain dwarf varieties of trees produced in Japan,
as with many kinds of little Maples; but I speak especially of dwarfed
specimens of individuals which, if left to themselves, would
have been large, but which generations of gardeners had patiently restricted to
the most exiguous proportions. These we constantly see in Japanese
pictures, but there is seldom a chance to behold them alive.
In the Bulletin de la Société Botanique de la France some
facts were recently given with regard to the method of their
production, on the authority of two Japanese connoisseurs, one of whom
was an exhibitor in Paris.
The chief point is that the trees are grown in the smallest possible
quantity of soil. The baby plants are put in pots so small that
their roots soon fill them entirely, and, seeking further nourishment,
break out above the surface. Then a somewhat larger pot is given,
in which, however, the same want of sufficient nourishment soon
produces the same result; and this treatment is perpetually continued.
Moreover, only just so much water is supplied as is absolutely needful
to preserve life. The main root thus becomes bent and the lateral
roots develop neither quickly enough nor profusely enough for vigorous
growth, and all the processes of life are very greatly retarded.
The roots are never cut off; and through their gradual elevation the
whole plant is sometimes raised on what looks like a system of aërial
roots.
Again, the twigs are early bent,
so that they cross one another, or the stem, in abrupt or zigzag ways,
Bamboo-fibres being used to bind them temporarily in place. Thus all
growth which does take place is kept within dwarf dimensions, so that
the stem, after fifty or one hundred years of life, is often but from
an inch and a half to three inches in diameter and about ten times as
high. If a bent twig dies it is cut off, and the new one which
springs from below it is forced to take its place. This sometimes
produces the look of a graft. Frequently a piece of
Fern-stem or a bit of tufa or coral is so placed that the main stem
bends around it. If all the twisted branches die, new ones are
then grafted on the old stock. Conifers bear this sort of
treatment much better than dicotyledonous plants, as
the tendency of these to throw out side shoots can tire the patience
even of Japanese gardeners. For no detail of free growth out of
harmony with the forms of the main branches can be allowed. Every
smallest twig must scrupulously accommodate itself to the general
effect. Thuyopsis dolobrata, Chamæcyparis obtusa, Pinus parviflora
and P. densifolia are among the conifers most commonly chosen for dwarfing.
Some of those exhibited in Paris were nearly 150 years old, and were valued at hundreds of
dollars. They tempted the purse of many observers, but I doubt
whether any one was rash enough to buy, for it was plain that their
value depended on a continuance of the Japanese cultivator's skill -- they might
as well die at once as live to lose their character through unregulated growth.
What now was the artistic interest
of these specimens? Sometimes it was merely the charm that lies
in anything quaint, bizarre, grotesque. But often we saw forms so
beautiful in their way and so clearly illustrative of one phase of Japanese artistic endeavor
that it was a pure delight to study them. Often these little
trees were not bizarre and patently deformed, but as fine in their
outlines, as grand in their masses, as imposing in their effect, as
suggestive of ideas of long existence and vigorous development, as
could be the most mighty specimen seen out-of-doors. It needed a
little effort to put one's self at the right point of view. But
it soon was easy to look at them as the Japanese himself must look -- to consider
them as miniature representations which the eye knew to be small, but
the imagination accepted as large -- that is, it was soon easy to look
at them as we look at little pictures or at statuettes. If a
reproduction of a large form on canvas can satisfy eye and mind,
although it measures but a few inches itself, why cannot one be
likewise accepted when wrought in the same material as the
original? Here was a portrait, so to say, of a great Thuyopsis or
Pine, which, in a pot scarce twelve inches across, we could have
perpetually at hand not merely to suggest, but actually to show, the
beauty of its original. Here in portable shape we had form,
color, substance, movement, odor -- everything but size; and when we
had learned how to look we missed size even less than in one of Barye's
tigers or in a miniature of a familiar face. The best of these
little trees were not mere curiosities, but true works of art. If
simply kept small they would have been the former; but kept small and
looking gigantic, they were artistic in intention
and result. Of course such an effect could be produced only by
the twisting processes employed. Mere retardation of
development would not answer. If we could keep a six-year-old
White Pine forever of the same size and shape it would never look like
a century-old one. It must be forced to take a shape
characteristic of maturity. Nor does it matter, I think, whether
or not the shape achieved is precisely that of a freely-developed
individual of the same species. So long as the dwarfed tree looks
as though a freely-grown large one might have assumed this shape, the
artistic ideal is achieved.
But still more interesting than
these isolated dwarfs were certain arrangements where a number had been
grown together. Several creations
of this sort had been brought to Paris, but so
far as I saw, only one remained in perfect condition. This was exhibited in
August at one of the flower shows in the great tent, and may have been
noticed there even by visitors who did not penetrate the Japanese section. It consisted of a
board about as big as a tea-tray with a raised rim around the back and
sides. At the right hand back corner was a thick irregular group
of conifers, some eighteen inches in height, massed around a large
stone. So carefully had the shape of this stone been chosen and
the shape and arrangement of the plants
been studied that the effect was precisely the same as though we saw a
great precipitous rock surrounded by graceful yet
imposing trees of natural size. A lower mass of foliage formed
the centre of the background, and to the left was another higher mass
of conifers interspersed with deciduous
trees, seen beyond a lofty bridge. The foreground was composed of
moss and low grasses broken by taller tufts and by patches of a tiny
flowering plant -- as I remember, an Oxalis -- and foreground and
background were united by plants of intermediate sizes in the most
thoroughly artistic way. The horticultural skill displayed was
marvelous; for not only the trees but the grasses and everything else
must have been dwarfed to bring them to such fairy-like proportions, an inch
counting for a considerable elevation, and the flowers being no bigger
than pin-heads, yet each and every plant being in perfect condition,
and the general effect luxuriant and rich. It
was not a little toy-shop garden -- it was a little living picture of a
broad landscape of incomparable beauty and grandeur. If one took
a moment to get absorbed in the scene before him, he thought no more of
dimensions than if he had been looking at painted canvas. What he
saw was a shadowy glen where rich green grass was starred with yellow
flowers, where coolness and freshness breathed from the air, and in the
background great masses of rock and foliage that stirred the
imagination as well as refreshed the eye. The marvelous skill of
the horticulturist was forgotten in wonder at the power of the artist
who could conceive so beautiful a landscape. The way in
which foreground, middle distance and background had been contrasted
yet harmonized, the grandeur yet softness of the
massing, the loveliness of the sky-line, the variety and beauty of the
color, all kept in a low, quiet tone with no crude notes -- these
merits impressed one as in the work of some great painter; and what a
painter would have supplied in the way of atmosphere and perspective
was added by the modeling and shadowing of Nature herself. Of
course the result had not the suggested poetry that we find in a Corot;
nor could such a living picture on a board ever give effects of
distance or supply the canopy of heaven. But within the limits
possible to such work, there seemed nothing that the Japanese artist
had not accomplished. As a "realistic" picture of a rocky glen no
painter could begin to equal it, for it was as perfect to the tiniest
detail as it was in the effect of its largest masses. In short,
if on the soil the Japanese landscape-gardener
had shown us nothing, here he showed us something in which we could
read an account of his larger enterprises.
There was nothing I saw in all the
Paris Exhibition that I coveted as I did this exquisite, and, to my
eyes, novel work of art. But if it would have been rash to think
a single dwarfed tree might survive in European hands, how should one
dare to touch this far more complex bit of art-created life? It
seemed a pure marvel that it had been brought half way round the world
even by those competent to care for it at home. 1
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