19. City Beautification with Boxes and Planters

Plant containers make cities and towns more attractive. Often installed and maintained by local governments, but women's clubs and chambers of commerce also co­operate in this civic project. Window boxes on city build­ings, plant boxes in front of libraries and courthouses, planters in parks and public gardens, as well as hanging baskets on lampposts, help make a city beautiful.

New buildings are often equipped with planters. Spa­cious, free-standing types with permanent trees and shrubs now adorn many parks and small squares. In pub­lic places, their broad copings provide a resting place for strollers.

Flower Baskets
Flower baskets are charming on the lampposts of the lovely seacoast town of Camden, Maine, probably the first in the country to adopt them. Hanging baskets are now established features of other cities and towns.

ILLUSTRATION XLIII
A few of the twenty-seven rectangular and twenty-five circular planters along the Tremont Street Mall in Boston. Tired shop pers and visitors like to rest on the wide copings.

The Camden project started when Edward Bok ad­mired the flower baskets on the lampposts of Leamington, England. From photographs which he had brought back, he had a local blacksmith make thirteen similar baskets and presented them to the town in 1925. They were planted and cared for by the Camden Garden Club, and during the thirties their number was increased to thirty-three. Secured to the posts with clamps, the baskets are at­tached high enough not to interfere with tall trucks that park along the curbs.

The baskets are lined with sphagnum moss before planting and then filled with good soil. A local nursery plants and puts them up before Memorial Day and re­moves the plants in the fall. In the summer, the baskets are watered and fed by firemen, who are paid by the Gar­den Club. For years, the baskets were filled with greens and red berries for the winter months, but since 1955 they have been enlivened with lighted Christmas trees, a gay sight for motorists who drive through.

This project is the result of the combined efforts of the Camden Garden Club, the town, and the Chamber of Commerce. Though Leamington, England, provided the inspiration, this city no longer has flower baskets. Bombed during the last war, the new concrete lampposts are with­out such ornament.

ILLUSTRATION XLIV
White chrysanthemums in an urn and in a wall planter in the garden of the First Church in Salem, Massachusetts. Container plants are most attractive in church gardens.

Victoria's Graceful Baskets

Also famous for its hanging baskets is the city of Vic­toria, the capital of British Columbia, Canada. The lamp­post baskets of Camden do not hang, but in Victoria they do; they are suspended twenty inches from the lamp standards on iron arms placed eleven feet or more above the sidewalks and usually parallel to the curb for reasons of safety. Each basket, weighing up to seventy pounds, is thirteen inches wide and eleven inches deep and is con­structed of twelve-gauge galvanized wire on a nine-gauge frame.

Since 1937, baskets have decorated Victoria's business districts and sections bordering the picturesque inner harbor. After a trial of various plants these are now grown: the ivy-leaved geranium Enchantress, dwarf petunia Rose Queen, lobelia Sapphire, schizanthus Giant Blotched, dwarf coreopsis Dazzler, viscaria Rose Beauty, Mexican marigold Golden Gem, variegated ground ivy, and nastur­tium Hermine Grashoff. Except for geraniums and nas­  turtiums, all plants are raised from seed. The schizanthus, nasturtiums and petunias are at their height early in the season, the viscaria in July, while the others come later. The soil mixture consists of two parts peat, two parts sand and nine parts sterilized rotted turf loam, supplemented with two ounces of ground limestone, two ounces of su­perphosphate, and one ounce of sulphate of potash per bushel of mixture.

Method of Watering

According to Mr. W. H. Warren, Park Administrator, "the baskets are maintained by one man with a right-hand tank truck powered by a take-off gear from the truck's motor. He waters the baskets during the hours of 11 P.M. to 7:30 A.M., six days a week, as he drives along the curb with an aluminum pipe wand shaped like a shepherd's crook. Liquid fertilizer is supplied every two or three weeks in the form of a three pound ammophos (16-20-0) per gallon tank."

To make watering more effective, a two-inch strip of galvanized iron runs around the top of each basket inside the moss and above the soil level. This prevents loss of water over the sides. To conserve moisture, a size thirty-four tin wash basin, treated with roofing cement on the inside and always kept full of water, is attached to the bot­tom. Baskets are prepared in the greenhouse in April and displayed on the lampposts from early June to early Octo­ber. The cost for each including the basket, pan, plants and labor, is $10.00, plus $6.00 each for maintenance. Five other British Columbia cities have followed Victoria's lead, Nanimo, Vancouver, New Westminster, Kelowna and Vernon. Olympia, Washington, has also set up bas­kets and recently, Everett, in the same state had a favor­able showing for the first time.

Window-Box Competition in Montreal

In the United States and Canada, many organizations sponsor window-box contests to stimulate interest in this simple and effective method of making cities more attrac­tive. The Window Box Competition of Montreal, Canada, is conducted by Mr. Henry Teuscher, Curator of the Montreal Botanical Garden. Every spring, from March to April, the Botanical Garden offers three lectures on win­dow-box gardening in which students prepare and plant at least one box.

According to Mr. Teuscher: "The Window Box Com­petition has been active for about fifteen years and is still going strong. In the beginning, we had up to one thousand entries, but most so inferior they could not be considered for prizes. Only one hundred prizes were given, and the prize winning boxes were so superior they established high standards. In consequence, only those registered who really had good boxes and so had a chance to get a prize. During the last few years we have rarely had more than 250 entries, but these really were the best in the city."

Four silver trophies comprise the donated awards given each year to the owners of the best boxes, and if an entrant receives a trophy for three successive years, he is entitled to keep it. This has happened several times. A bouquet of roses or other flowers is also presented to each of the first four winners, while ninety-six others are given pots of house plants. Mr. Teuscher has a sum of $300.00 to spend on this project, and this covers the expenses of judges and secretarial help.

Civic Beautification in Philadelphia

The Neighborhood Garden Association of Philadel­phia was started in 1953 by Mrs. James Bush-Brown, re­tired Director of the School of Horticulture for Women at Ambler, Pennsylvania, with the purpose of beautifying through window boxes and gardens, the blighted areas of the city. The first year seven garden blocks with four hundred boxes participated. By 1959, the project in­cluded 272 blocks and numerous gardens in vacant lots and around individual homes.

When a group decides to improve the appearance of a block, it forms a block unit, enlisting the services of the occupants of the houses. The members make their own boxes, set them up, and fill them with soil. Then the block is assigned to a suburban garden club, whose members supply the block with plants and instruct the owners on planting and care. Blocks hold weekly meetings in members' homes, and there is a monthly get-together in a community center.

ILLUSTRATION XLVII
Clipped sweet bay trees in attractive wooden boxes. English ivy serves as a ground cover and softens the edges of the boxes.

The Philadelphia project is valuable because it helps to clean up untidy city blocks and makes them attractive with plants. It also teaches community cooperation among the occupants of tenements and apartments. Because of its success, other cities have sent delegates to study the methods. The Tonawanda Project near Buffalo, New York, and the beautification contests of the Beacon Hill Garden Club and the Beacon Hill Civic Association, as well as the Federation of South End Settlements, of Bos­ton have been inspired by the Philadelphia project.

In Boston

Visitors to Boston in recent years have noted the row of planters along the Tremont Street Mall on the Boston Common in the heart of the downtown shopping area. In all there are twenty-seven rectangular brick planters, each eighteen and one half feet long, six feet wide, and twenty inches high with a single outlet for watering. Between them are twenty-five circular brick planters, six feet in diameter and twenty inches high. Each circular bed holds a white flowering crab-apple with a ground cover of evergreen creeping euonymus. The rectangular planters are edged with low Japanese yew, sheared to twelve inches, and some of the beds have patterns of clipped boxwood in the manner of a knot garden. In spring, the beds are gay with 10,000 bulbs of early-flowering tulips, Vermilion Brilliant, Pelican, Rising Sun, and General de Wet. These are replaced with summer-flowering plants—geraniums, begonias, petunias, ageratums, and marigolds. Mr. John Kane, the Superintendent of the Greenhouses of the Bos­ton Park Department, maintains the beds with two full-time gardeners.

The Window Box Contest sponsored jointly by Bos­ton's Beacon Hill Garden Club and the Beacon Hill Association was started in 1958 under the chairmanship of Mrs. Houlder Hudgins. Today, there are more than 350 window boxes on the historic Hill. To aid partici­pants in the project, literature is distributed with instruc­tions on how to make window boxes, how to secure them firmly, how to fill them with soil, what kinds of plants to grow and what care to give. Most important were the plant lists, suggesting the best kinds for sun and shade. Since the Hill is located in the heart of the city, soil was distributed free to all residents who needed it. During the first year, a crew of forty boys delivered the soil in pails, in many instances hauling it up several flights of stairs to occupants who had no other way of getting it.

Judging each year takes place in late July, when the boxes look their best. At the end of the season, there is a general meeting at which color slides of the boxes are shown and awards are made. There are two grand prizes, one for the "best individual window box on Beacon Hill" and the other for the "best group of two or more window boxes on a single building." The four top prizes consist of two silver trays and two Paul Revere bowls. In addition, potted plants are offered by merchants on the Hill, as well as other donors. There are two prizes in the chil­dren's division.
Window boxes, other containers, and pots and tubs at doorways, have made this old section of Boston more dis­tinctive. "A new idea for Boston," read the application blanks, "a contest which combines the fun of gardening with the pleasure of making Beacon Hill a more beautiful and enjoyable place in which to live."

In New York City

Extensive planting of streets and buildings in New York City began in 1956 when Mrs. Mary Lasker per­suaded the Park Department to allow her to plant four blocks along Park Avenue with tulips. Amazed at her suc­cess, despite the soot and grime, they gave her permission to plant twenty-two Park Avenue blocks the next year and there adopted the enthusiastic beautification program known as "Salute the Seasons." Its purpose is to bring beauty to the downtown areas of New York by planting trees, shrubs and flowers and by setting up window boxes and tubs at shops, banks, hotels, museums, and churches. As the theme suggests, flowers are changed according to the season, with pansies and bulbs in spring, gera­niums, begonias and other annuals in summer, and chrysanthemums in fall. Offering valuable information, with instructions on kinds to grow and when and where to plant, is a practical booklet prepared under the direc­tion of the New York City Department of Parks in co­operation with the Department of Commerce and Public Events.

In Pittsburgh

A container garden on a grand scale is at Mellon Square Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Viewed from above, this almost one and a half acre park presents a magnifi­cent spectacle with its attractive design, well planted beds, and patterned pavements. Mellon Square Park, built in 1955, covers a six-floor underground parking ga­rage for 1000 cars. An eighteen-inch roof holds up con­tainers made of reinforced concrete, capped and faced with polished Minnesota gray granite. Drainage lines and irrigation pipes for the planters were installed during con­struction.

The minimum depth of the planters is fourteen inches; here English ivy and trailing euonymus are grown. Other planters, ranging in depth from twenty-four inches to four feet, hold large deciduous trees. Watering is by means of installed bubblers and sprinkler heads, supple­mented by considerable hand watering with short sections of hose. Plants are fed a dry complete fertilizer in early spring, followed by applications of liquid fertilizer in late spring and midsummer.
Planting material was selected on the basis of appro­priateness for the design and its ability to withstand soot and grime, fumes from automobiles, and wind that sweeps between tall buildings. There are three enormous neatly-sheared Japanese yews, and the trees include European beech, honey-locust, sourwood, little-leaf linden, sweet-gum, sophora, sweet bay magnolia, and crab-apples.

Aronia, azalea Gable Hybrid Orange, Japanese holly varieties, Laland firethorn, hybrid catawba rhododen­drons, Hick's Japanese yews, Maries double-file vibur­num, English boxwood, and wintergreen barberry are the shrubs in the park. Pachysandra, purple-leaf euonymus, and English ivy varieties, Hahn's Maple Queen and Hahn's Shamrock, are used as ground covers. In spring there is color from bulbs; these are followed by annuals and chrysanthemums for summer and autumn displays. Some tropical plants, crotons, pandanus, acalyphas, shrimp plant, and hibiscus, are in a special box, which is also used for a Christmas tree display. For protection against winter injury, plants are sprayed with Wilt-Pruf in early November when the weather is bright, warm, and sunny.

Beautifully maintained, Mellon Square Park is consid­ered "one of the most outstanding examples of redevelop­ment in an urban area. Surrounded on all four sides by skyscrapers, the park is a cool and inviting oasis to the tired shopper, the harried executive, and the multitude of workers who are employed in the downtown area."

In the midst of concrete and steel, where gardening in the open ground is not possible, Mellon Square Park represents a large-scale garden created in boxes and plant­ers—an outstanding and successful example of this new gardening concept.