The Subtropical Garden

PART III.

SELECTIONS OF PLANTS FOR VARIOUS PURPOSES 221

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Separate plates to face the pages given.

PAGE

Frontispiece--Hardy and tender Plants in the Subtropical Garden.

Cannas in a London park 13

Anemone japonica alba 17

Group and single specimens of plants isolated on the grass 23

Portion of plan showing Yuccas, etc. 25

Formal arrangements in London parks 26

Tree Ferns and other Stove Plants 28

Ailantus and Cannas 30

Young Conifers, etc. 32

Gourds 34

Section of raised bed at Battersea 40

Acanthus latifolius 47

Aralia canescens 58

Aralia japonica 60

Aralia papyrifera 61

Asplenium Nidus-avis 70

Bambusa aurea 72

Bambusa falcata 74

Berberis nepalensis 79

Blechnum brasiliense 80

Bocconia cordata 81

Buphthalmum speciosum 83

Caladium esculentum 84

Colocasia odorata 85

Canna 86

Carlina acaulis 110

Caryota sobolifera 111

Centaurea babylonica 112

Chamædorea 114

Chamærops excelsa 116

Cycas 120

Tree Fern 123

Dimorphanthus mandschuricus 124

Erianthus Ravennæ 132

Ferula communis 136

Ficus elastica 139

Gynerium argenteum 142

Gunnera scabra 144

Heracleum 147

Malva crispa 153

Melianthus major 155

Monstera deliciosa 156

Montagnæa heracleifolia 157

Morina longifolia 158

Mulgedium alpinum 159

Musa Ensete 160

Nicotiana Tabacum 163

Onopordum Acanthium 164

Poa fertilis 174

Rheum Emodi 178

Rhus glabra laciniata 180

Seaforthia elegans 185

Solanum robustum 190

Solanum Warscewiczii 195

Uhdea bipinnatifida 205

Wigandia macrophylla 208

Yucca filamentosa 212

Yucca pendula 214

Yucca filamentosa variegata 217

PART I.. Introduction and General Considerations.

INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.

SUBTROPICAL GARDENING.

INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.

The system of garden-decoration popularly known as “Subtropical,” and which simply means the use in gardens of plants having large and handsome leaves, noble habit, or graceful port, has taught us the value of grace and verdure amid masses of low, brilliant, and unrelieved flowers, and has reminded us how far we have diverged from Nature’s ways of displaying the beauty of vegetation, our love for rude colour having led us to ignore the exquisite and inexhaustible way in which plants are naturally arranged. In a wild state brilliant blossoms are usually relieved by a setting of abundant green; and even where mountain and meadow plants of one kind produce a wide blaze of colour at one season, there is intermingled a spray of pointed grass and other leaves, which tone down the mass and quite separate it from anything shown by what is called the “bedding system” in gardens. When we come to examine the most charming examples of our own indigenous or any other wild vegetation, we find that their attraction mainly depends on flower and fern, trailer, shrub, and tree, sheltering, supporting, relieving and beautifying each other, so that the whole array has an indefinite tone, and the mind is satisfied with the refreshing mystery of the arrangement.

We may be pleased by the wide spread of purple on a heath or mountain, but when we go near and examine it in detail, we find that its most exquisite aspect is seen in places where the long moss cushions itself beside the ling, and the fronds of the Polypody peer forth around little masses of heather. Everywhere we see Nature judicious in the arrangement of her highest effects, setting them in clouds of verdant leafage, so that monotony is rarely produced--a state of things which it is highly desirable to attain as far as possible in the garden.

We cannot attempt to reproduce this literally--nor would it be wise or convenient to do so--but assuredly herein will be found the chief source of true beauty and interest in our gardens as well as in those of Nature; and the more we keep this fact before our eyes, the nearer will be our approach to truth and success.

Nature in puris naturalibus we cannot have in our gardens, but Nature’s laws should not be violated; and few human beings have contravened them more than our flower-gardeners during the past twenty years. We should compose from Nature, as landscape artists do. We may have in our gardens--and without making wildernesses of them either--all the shade, the relief, the grace, the beauty, and nearly all the irregularity of Nature.

Subtropical gardening has shown us that one of the greatest mistakes ever made in the flower-garden was the adoption of a few varieties of plants for culture on a vast scale, to the exclusion of interest and variety, and, too often, of beauty or taste. We have seen how well the pointed, tapering leaves of the Cannas carry the eye upwards; how refreshing it is to cool the eyes in the deep green of those thoroughly tropical Castor-oil plants, with their gigantic leaves; how grand the Wigandia, with its wrought-iron texture and massive outline, looks, after we have surveyed brilliant hues and richly-painted leaves; how greatly the sweeping palm-leaves beautify the British flower-garden; and, in a word, the system has shown us the difference between the gardening that interests and delights all beholders, as well as the mere horticulturist, and that which is too often offensive to the eye of taste, and pernicious to every true interest of what Bacon calls the “purest of humane pleasures.”

But are we to adopt this system in its purity? as shown, for example, by Mr. Gibson when superintendent of Battersea Park. Certainly not. It is evident, that to accommodate it to private gardens an expense and a revolution of appliances would be necessary, which are in nearly all cases quite impossible, and if possible, hardly desirable. We can, however, introduce into our gardens most of its better features; we can vary their contents, and render them more interesting by a better and nobler system. The use of all plants without any particular and striking habit, or foliage, or other desirable peculiarity, merely because they are natives of very hot countries, should be tabooed at once, as tending to make much work, and to return--a lot of weeds; for “weediness” is all that I can ascribe to many Solanums and stove plants, of no real merit, which have been employed under this name. Selection of the most beautiful and useful from the great mass of plants known to science is one of the most important of the horticulturist’s duties, and in no branch must he exercise it more thoroughly than in this. Some of the plants used are indispensable--the different kinds of Ricinus, Cannas in great variety, Polymnia, Colocasia, Uhdea, Wigandia, Ferdinanda, Palms, Yuccas, Dracænas, and fine-leaved plants of coriaceous texture generally. A few specimens of these may be accommodated in many gardens; they will embellish the houses in winter, and, transferred to the open garden in summer, will lend interest to it when we are tired of the houses. Some Palms, like Seaforthia, may be used with the best effect for the winter decoration of the conservatory, and be placed out with a good result, and without danger, in summer. Many fine kinds of Dracænas, Yuccas, Agaves, etc., which have been seen to some perfection at our shows of late, are eminently adapted for standing out in summer, and are in fact benefited by it. Among the noblest ornaments of a good conservatory are the Norfolk Island and other tender Araucarias; and these may be placed out for the summer, much to their advantage, because the rains will thoroughly clean and freshen them for winter storing. So with some Cycads and other plants of distinct habit--the very things best fitted to add to the attractions of the flower-garden. Thus we may, in all but the smallest gardens, enjoy all the benefits of what is called Subtropical Gardening, without creating any special arrangements for it.

But what of those who have no conservatory, no hothouses, no means for preserving large tender plants in winter? They too may enjoy the beauty which plants of fine form afford. A better effect than any yet seen in an English garden from tender plants may be obtained by planting hardy ones only! There is the Pampas grass, which when well grown is unsurpassed by anything that requires protection. There are the Yuccas, noble and graceful in outline, and thoroughly hardy, and which, if planted well, are not to be surpassed, if equalled, by anything of like habit we can preserve indoors. There are the Arundos, conspicua and Donax, things that well repay for liberal planting; and there are fine hardy herbaceous plants like Crambe cordifolia, Rheum Emodi, Ferulas, and various graceful umbelliferous plants that will furnish effects equal to any we can produce by using the tenderest exotics. The Acanthuses too, when well grown, are very suitable for this use. Then we have a hardy Palm, that has preserved its health and greenness in sheltered positions, where its leaves could not be torn to shreds by storms, through all our recent hard winters.

And when we have obtained these, and many like subjects, we may associate them with not a few things of much beauty among trees and shrubs--with elegant tapering young pines, many of which, like Cupressus nutkaensis and the true Thuja gigantea, have branchlets as graceful as a Selaginella; not of necessity bringing the larger things into close or awkward association with the humbler and dwarfer subjects, but sufficiently so to carry the eye from the minute and pretty to the higher and more dignified forms of vegetation. By a judicious selection from the vast number of hardy plants now obtainable in this country, and by associating with them, where it is convenient, house plants that may be placed out for the summer, we may arrange and enjoy charms in the flower-garden to which we are as yet strangers, simply because we have not sufficiently selected from and utilized the vast amount of vegetable beauty at our disposal.

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