Marquand Park

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Bernie Miller, Arbor Day, and the Princeton Elm

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Arbor day was celebrated this year with the planting of a Princeton elm in front of the municipal building on Mercer street. The tree was planted in honor of Bernie Miller, a well-known and long-time citizen of Princeton. Bernie Miller served as mayor of Princeton Township and more recently retired from his elected position on Council, an office he held since Princeton consolidated in 2012. The event was organized by the Princeton Shade Tree Commission. Mr. Miller has been a strong advocate for street trees, parks, and open spaces in Princeton and served as the liaison on the Shade tree Commission for many years.
Like Mr. Miller, the Princeton elm (Ulmus americana ‘Princeton’ ) has an illustrious history in Princeton. It is a cultivar of the American Elm and was developed in 1922 by Princeton’s nurseryman William Flemer for its beauty but was later found to have a moderate resistance to the devasting Dutch Elm disease that wiped out most American elm trees. Many Princeton elms planted along Washington road survived the infestation and their upright branches form a beautiful cathedral-like canopy. Another Princeton elm was recently planted in the park and can be found close to the entrance on Stockton Street.

Loudon’s Circular Flower Beds

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John Claudius Loudon (1783 – 1843), often called the father of the English garden, wrote books and articles on gardening and growing plants which were widely read and used in the creation of private and public gardens in the 19th century. Loudon did not believe that gardens should imitate nature. His gardenesque style allowed for the placement of specially designed planting areas where plants could grow under optimal conditions. These planting areas were geometrically shaped like squares, triangles, and circles.
In his Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion, published in 1838, Loudon describes the construction of a circular flower bed on a grassy lawn. The outside of this flowerbed was made of a circle of bricks with the short sides of the bricks facing each other (a). The raised slope inside the circle (c) was covered by another row of bricks (b) laid perpendicular to the bricks forming the outside circle. A year after the publication of Loudon’s book, the description of this circular bed with accompanying illustrations was republished in The Magazine of Horticulture, Botany, and All Useful Discoveries and Improvements in Rural Affairs (Volume 5, 1839, p.133) in America. The circular bed was praised as an inexpensive method of creating desirable planting areas for growing a mixture of verbenas, and other plants with maybe a tall fuchsia as a center piece in the middle. In the next edition of this magazine, Mr. R.S. Field of Princeton is praised for having introduced this circular flower bed with “the result being quite pleasing and worth imitation.” The article recognizes Field as an innovator willing to experiment with building these new planting areas.

In 1840 when the article was written, Richard Stockton Field was still living on Stockton street across from the Morven estate and had not yet bought the property that later became Marquand Park. Thus, it is uncertain if he ever constructed similar flowerbeds on his newly purchased estate. But Field’s association with Loudon’s work is interesting. He most likely owned a copy of the Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion or was familiar with Loudon’s gardening methods from local publications. When, the time came for designing and constructing his newly purchased estate, then called Fieldwood, Field did not follow Loudon’s gardenesque style but preferred the more natural and pitturesque garden designs popularized by Andrew Jackson Downing. But even in this more natural landscape design, the construction of some circular flowerbeds could be easily imagined.

Paint Out Princeton

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Join us for the Arts Council’s continuing Paint Out Princeton program on Saturday May 19th, at Marquand Park, Lovers Lane; Ages: 15+; time: 12:30-5:00 pm. Marquand Park is a  beautiful 17-acre arboretum characterized by wide gently sloping lawns, winding paths and over 140 different tree specimens, among them flowering cherry trees, magnolias and some rare evergreens. In the wooded area you will find huge native trees, some dating back over 170 years!  The public will be invited to visit and observe artists at work!  Please email timevtim@gmail or info@artscouncilofprinceton.org with any questions.  This is a free event that requires pre-registration.

John Notman and Andrew Downing

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John Notman, the architect of Guernsey Hall (the estate house of the property that is now Marquand Park), was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on July 7, 1810.  He studied at the “School of Arts” also known as The Royal Academy of Scotland before emigrating to the United States in 1831.   Notman arrived in Philadelphia with excellent drawing skills and a four-year apprenticeship which put him at great advantage to American practicing architects.  He initially worked as a carpenter, quickly established his career as an architect around 1835, and eventually became well known for his designs of churches, private homes, and public buildings.

Notman was responsible for many of the great historic buildings still standing in Princeton including Prospect House,  expansions to Nassau Hall, and the Lowrie House located at 83 Stockton Street.  His biographer, Connie Greiff writes of Notman: “He introduced the Italianate villa to the United Stated at Burlington, NJ and was recognized by the chief apostle of the picturesque,  A. J. Downing, as one of the country’s most skilled practitioners in that vein.“

The Princeton University Library has a drawing  by Notman intended  as a design for the garden of Guernsey Hall. It shows similarities to the current lay-out of Marquand park.  In this drawing and an another for Laurel Hill, the first architecturally designed park-like rural cemetery in the country,  the strongly influence of the landscaped garden principles of Andrew Downing on Notman can be observed in the meandering paths, clusters of trees, wide lawns, and open vistas.  In his Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening and essays published in his magazine, The Horticulturist, Downing popularized landscape gardening among America’s growing middle and upper middle classes.  Following British models, he categorized landscape design styles as “The Beautiful” (calm and serene) and “The Picturesque” (dramatic), with the style to be determined by the existing landscape context. Proponents of the Picturesque strove to make “improvements” to the natural landscape.  They aimed to perfect nature by considering the real site-specific characteristics of a place, the genius loci or what we might consider a “sense of place.”   This might be realized by recognizing the topography of a site or framing a view of a borrowed landscape.  These approaches often were employed on a single site.  Olmsted, Downing, and Weidenmann all created picturesque landscapes, including many public parks. The picturesque style remained popular from the 1840s well into the early 20th century.


 

Urania speciosa

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In 1842, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society held its annual exhibit in a building that was originally the Chinese museum of Philadelphia. Covering the show, the Farmers’ Cabinet** reported an Urania Speciosa, a banana-like plant donated by Richard S. Field of Princeton as one of the star attractions. The plant must have been quite tall because the report notes that there was fortunately enough space for its towering stalks in the large exhibition room with high ceilings.   A year earlier, a description of important green houses in Princeton*** lists an Urania Speciosa among a collection of plants in the hot-house of Richard S. Field.  Thus, we can safely assume that this Urania Speciosa was the same plant as the one entered into the show in Philadelphia a year later.  Richard Field who is also the first owner and creator of what is now Marquand Park, may have carefully cultivated this exotic and rare species to be exhibited in the show.

The Urania Speciosa or Ravenala madagascariensis (also known as  the Traveler’s tree) is a tropical plant with large paddle-shaped leaves arranged like a giant fan. Although already mentioned in the 17th century by explorers traveling to Madagascar, it was carefully described and illustrated for the first time by Pierre Sonnerat in his Voyages aux Indes orientales et à la Chine of 1782.  Arboreta like Kew Garden in London and Les Jardin des Plantes in Paris had an Urania Speciosa in their collection in the 19th century. They were considered rare and exotic specimens. Richard Field was an active collector of plants and trees and well known for his horticultural interests. Privately owning and exhibiting such a plant must have been especially thrilling for him.

**The Farmers’ Cabinet, and American Herd-book: Devoted to …, Volume 7; edited by Francis S. Wiggins, James Pedder, Josiah Tatum, 1842, p. 103

***The Magazine of Horticulture, Botany, and All Useful Discoveries …, Volume 7; edited by M. Hovey, Boston 1841, p. 123.

 

 

Beech Trees and Climate Change

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According to an article by Arun Bose and coworkers**, changes in forest composition associated with climate change have been observed in the forests of the North-Eastern United Sates. The occurrence of American Beech trees (Fagus grandifolia) has increased while at the same time the number of sugar maples (Acer saccharum), red maples (Acer rubrum) and birch trees (Fagus grandifolia) has declined resulting in a clear shift in species composition. The increased dominance of beech trees raises concerns about a lack of biodiversity. Also, the American beech is disease prone and commercially less desirable than other tree species.

**Bose, A. K., Weiskittel, A. and Wagner, R. G. (2017), A three decade assessment of climate-associated changes in forest composition across the north-eastern USA. J. Appl Ecol, 54: pp. 1592–1604.