Page:Report of the Park Board 1903.djvu/66



HOLLADAY PARK.
The problems presented in this existing park are very similar to those mentioned in the case of Columbia Park, and the same remarks with regard to thinning trees, opening up long vistas and open spaces for play fields and little children's lawns, and other means of providing recreation for children apply here equally well. No fence has been erected about this park, but unquestionably there should be one. If there happened to be indications that neighbors would make an outcry against the fence, it would be well to begin by planting a border of shrubbery, leaving the fence to be added later when the need becomes more obvious.

The lower branches of the fir trees have been trimmed up to a uniform height in this park, producing an ugly and very monotonous effect. A severe thinning out of the fir trees would tend to remedy this defect, but in addition masses of shade-enduring shrubbery should be planted among the groups of fir trees that are left. Although the fir trees are beautiful in themselves and effective in masses, it is too monotonous to have so many of them upon so small an area and as before explained they are inappropriate in such flat formal public squares because they are known to be the principal tree characteristic of the wild woods of the region, and wildness is not the appropriate effect to aim at in the midst of rectangular blocks of flat land occupied by houses. The cutting out of fir trees, therefore, ought to be somewhat radical, so that space may be secured for planting deciduous and broad-leaved trees. Among the latter, the evergreen magnolia is one of the best, yet it seems to have been but little used in the city. It has to be planted of very small size, and therefore the sooner it can be planted the better.

In order to distinguish this park from Columbia Park and other similar local parks which are flat and rectangular in shape, it might be well to adopt a formal plan for the whole or a portion of it. If a formal design for walks is determined upon, considerable ingenuity should be exercised to avoid a commonplace arrangement, yet to have one which will be perfectly convenient for short cutting. Unless this requirement is thoroughly well provided for, the work will prove a failure.

Considering the character of the neighborhood, a formal flower garden might be designed, which would be interesting and appropriate, and, if it should include a considerable proportion of turf, it need not be very expensive to maintain. It would be most effective if enclosed by a border of evergreen shrubbery. The formal flower garden may be either at the center of the square, leaving the two ends in grass, one end to have shade trees and to have its center marked by a bandstand