"ARBOREAL MENAGERIE."

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 185, 7 August 1925, Page 6

"ARBOREAL MENAGERIE."

IMPRESSION OF ALBERT PARK.

A VISITOR'S CRITICISM.

TOO MANY "IMMIGRANTS."

"The beauties of Albert Park are self-evident. With its bold Bite overlooking city and harbour, its careful groom* Jng, and its proximity to the main street, enabling citizens and visitors to spend a pleasant morning there on eunny day*, the park must be a joy forever to Auek* landers. Yet I cannot enthu&e over this lovely landscape garden as you appear to think I should." So stated a visitor today, in conversation with a "Star" re* porter. • • He went on to remark that though not an Aucklandor, he was a New Zealander, and as such, he felt rather sorry to see that the Auckland people were (in hie opinion) throwing away a great opportunity of giving their central park a distinction of which the city, and every .New Zealander, might be proud. "I can't, for the life of Hie, understand," he said, "why that glorious site has not been converted into a New Zealand nreadia. Arcadia it certainly is, for it Jias been moat capably designed and. wrought into shape, but it lacks the distinction that certainly Would have placed it high above the hundreds of beautiful parks in other parts of the world, had the same designing talent and horticultural skill been brought to work in making it a paradise of the unique and outstanding fiord of this country. It has become, lovely as it is not a New Zealand park, such as one would expect in the show-place of the Dominion's foremost city, but an arboreal menagerie." In elaboration of this statement, {lie critic pointed out in prominent places, the graceful plumes of the Canary Island palms and the fan-like Washington palms of South America, and the banana-like Strelitzia palms of South Africa, this in contra-distinction to the absence of the beautiful nikuu palm of New Zealand, of tne cabbage-tree, whose slim beauties are co essentially characteristic of this country's landscapes, and of the punga, whose fronds form our national emblem. Shady spots there were, canopied by the glories of the oaks of Britain, or the weeping elm, or the macroearpa; elsewhere could be seen beautiful rest-ing-places under elms of Europe, the wide-spreading fig-trees of Australia, the 'Camphor tree of Japan, the cedar of Lebanon, the fire of Europe, Asia, and America, towering pines from Norfolk Island, and even the rattling bamboos of the East. But if one desired to re cline beneath, a New Zealand boscage, the choice was restricted to the pohutukawa, puriri, puka, kowhai or karo. The kauri, the riniu, kahikatea, matai. karaka, kapuka, miro and dozens of others of our lovely native trees have no opportunity of casting their shadows in this favoured eminence, or delighting the eyes of visitors With their lovely 'outlines and foliage. Quite interesting, no doubt, is the small spiny shrub from Uruguay, a wicked-looking little devil, despite the fact that its leaves are fashioned in the form of a cross; the flaming flo./ere of the 6a6tttS are Striking, and the oleanders, myrtles, veronicas, laurels and camclias have their peculiar beauties. "Yet precisely the same beauties and equally striking pecularities could be obtained by New Zealand myrtles, veroni* cas, laurels, and other plants, from the humble ti-tree to the bird-catching, ihrub, which have been displaced by immigrant trees and plants/ , concluded the visitor, "To travellers from overseas, the change would raise the park from a commonplace to a place of distinction, and the citizens would have just cause for national pride in their park. A well-directed policy in thia direction could be made to take effect gradually, and without laying the axe to the noblest of the present trees-, whose only offence is that they are not native-born." It happened that at this stage, the pressman ran across a travelled citizen, who is interested in native flora, and who emphatically endorsed what the visiting critic had said. "Why, ,, he remarked. " I came across a section in Golden Gate Park, at San Francisco, that looked like a bit of New Zealand. Kauri, J rimu, kahikatea, karaka, ti-tree, cabbage i tree, pungas, nikau and flax —not half-a-dozen, as in Albert Park, but dozens of New Zealand forest trees, shrubs and plants were set out artistically and ticketed with their common and botanical names, and the country of their origin. I am Certain, that there is not in New Zealand, a park or botanical garden, giving the same range of New Zealand flora. And htere, too, many of these imported forest tree had been raised from seed, tenderly transplanted from time to time in graduated pots and reared in shade houses till they could be set in their appointed places in the open. I am convinced that Albert Park could be made a wonderful showground of native flora, and have both its' interest: and landscape value preserved by retention of the most striking of the exotic trees and plants already there."