to follow the course here pointed out. Hardy plants may be isolated on the turf, and may be arranged in beautiful irregular groups, with the turf also for a carpet, or some graceful spray of hardy trailing plants. Beds may be readily placed so that no such objectionable stage-like results will be seen as those shown in the preceding figure: tender plants may be grouped as freely as may be desired—a formal edge avoided by the turf being allowed to play irregularly under and along the margins, while the remaining bare ground beneath the tall plants may be quickly covered with some fast-growing annuals like Mignonette or Nolanas, some soft-spreading bedding plants like Lobelias or Petunias, or subjects still more peculiarly suited for this purpose, such as the common Lycopodium denticulatum and Tradescantia discolor. Choice tender specimens of Tree ferns, etc., placed in dark shady dells, may be plunged to the rims of the pots in the turf or earth, and some graceful or bold trailing herb placed round the cavity so as to conceal it; and in this way such results may be attained as those indicated in the first plate, in those showing the Dimorphanthus, Musa Ensete, and in the frontispiece. The day will come when we shall be as anxious to avoid all formal twirlings in our gardens as we now are to have them perpetrated in them by landscape-gardeners of great repute for applying wall-paper or fire-shovel patterns to the surface of the reluctant earth, and when we shall no more think of tolerating in a garden such a scene as that shown in the preceding figure, than a landscape artist would tolerate it in a picture.
The old landscape-gardening dogma, which tells us we cannot have all the wild beauty of nature in our gardens, and may as well resign ourselves to the compass, and the level, and the defined daub of colour and pudding-like heaps of shrubs, had some faint force when our materials for gardening were few,[A] but considering our present rich and, to a great extent, unused stores from every clime, and from almost every important section of the vegetable kingdom, it is demonstrably false and foolish.
[A] “In gardening, the materials of the scene are few, and those few unwieldy, and the artist must often content himself with the reflection that he has given the best disposition in his power to the scanty and intractable materials of nature.”—Allison.
To these observations on arrangement, etc., one good rule may be added:—Make your garden as distinct as possible from those of your
neighbours—which by no means necessitates a departure from the rules of good taste.
I wish particularly to call attention to the fine effects which may be secured, from the simplest and most easily obtained materials, by using some of our hardy trees and shrubs in the subtropical garden. Our object generally is to secure large and handsome types of leaves; and for this purpose we usually place in the open air young plants of exotic trees, taking them in again in autumn; and, perhaps, as we never see them but in a diminutive state, we often forget that, when branched into a large head in their native countries, they are not a whit more remarkable in foliage than many of the trees of our pleasure-grounds. Thus, if the well-known Paulownia imperialis were too tender to stand our winters, and if we were accustomed to see it only in a young and simple-stemmed condition and with large leaves, we should doubtless plant it out every summer as we do the Ferdinanda. There is no occasion whatever to resort to exotic subjects, while we can so easily obtain fine hardy subjects—which, moreover, may be grown by everybody and everywhere. By annually cutting down young plants of various hardy trees and shrubs, and letting them make a clean, simple-stemmed growth every year, we will, as a rule, obtain finer effects than can be got from tender ones. The Ailantus, for example, treated in this way, gives us as fine a type of pinnate leaf as can be desired. Nobody need place Astrapæa Wallichii in the open air, as I have seen done, so long as a simple-stemmed young plant of the Paulownia makes such a column of magnificent leaves. The delicately-cut leaves of the Gleditschias, borne on strong young stems, would be as pretty as those of any fern; and so in the case of various other hardy trees and shrubs. Persons in the coldest and least favourable parts of the country need not doubt of being able to obtain as fine types of foliage as they can desire, by selecting a dozen kinds of hardy trees and treating them in this way. What may be done in this way, in one case, is shown in the accompanying plate, representing a young plant of Ailantus, with its current year’s shoot and leaves, standing gracefully in the midst of a bed of Cannas.
A few words may now be added about some types of vegetation which, though not included among what are commonly termed subtropical plants, may yet be judiciously used in combination with them, and go far to produce very charming effects.
Among conifers we find many subjects of the most exquisite grace, and of a beautiful free and pointed habit, which it is most desirable we should have associated with vegetation more distinguished for brilliancy than grace. They are in many cases as elegantly chiselled and dissected as the finest fern, and it is difficult to find more beautiful masses of verdure than such plants as Retinospora plumosa and R. obtusa display when well developed; they are simply invaluable for those who use them with taste. Apart altogether from our want of a more elegantly diversified surface in the flower-garden—the best and most practical way to meet which is by the use of such plants as these and neat and elegant young specimens of such things as Thujopsis borealis—there is, in many British gardens, a great gulf between the larger tree and shrub vegetation and the humbler colouring material, which most will admit should be filled up, and there is nothing more suitable for it than the many graceful conifers we now possess. Much as conifers are grown with us, how few people have any idea of their great value as ornamental plants for the very choicest position in a garden! We are sometimes too apt to put them in what is called their “proper place,”—or, at all events, too far from the seat of interest to thoroughly enjoy them in winter, when the beauty of their form and their exquisite verdure are best seen. If the dwarfer and choicer conifers were tastefully disposed in and immediately around a flower-garden not altogether spoiled by a profusion of beds for masses of colour, that flower-garden could hardly fail to look as well in winter as in summer; in fact I have seen places where, from rather close association of the more elegant types, the best kind of winter garden was made. Our efforts must tend to prevent a desert-like aspect at any time of the year; and to this end nothing can help us more than a judicious selection of conifers. Almost every beauty of form is theirs. They possess a permanent dignity and interest, always occupying the ground and embellishing it, displaying distinct tints of ever-grateful green in spring and summer, waving majestically before the gusts of autumn, and beautiful when bearing on their deepest green the snows of winter. Some of the more suitable kinds are named in a list at the end of this book, but the graceful pines are so commonly grown that few will have any difficulty in securing proper sorts.
The Gourd tribe is capable, if properly used, of adding much remarkable beauty and character to
the garden; yet, as a rule, it is seldom used. There is no natural order more wonderful in the variety and singular shapes of its fruit than that to which the melon, cucumber, and vegetable marrow belong. From the writhing Snake-cucumber, which hangs down four or five feet long from its stem, to the round enormous giant pumpkin or gourd, the grotesque variation,