A WILDWOOD GARDEN. 
Down in my low land which fronts on the bay is a strip of the 
wettest and blackest muck varying from twenty-five to forty 
feet wide and a hundred and fifty feet long and lying at the base 
of the high, rocky hammock. At its southeastern border is an 
artificial pool and along the northeastern part is a tract of slightly 
elevated marl. In this whole area is a dense growth of tangled, 
scrubby vegetation; Yaupon (Ilex cassine), Wax Myrtle (Myrica 
cerifera), two kinds of Pond Apple (Annona), Persimmon (D1os- 
pyros virginiana), a couple of willows, Wild Rubber (Ficus), 
Red Bay (Persea), Button Bush (Cephalanthus), and Button- 
wood (Conocarpus), the latter being a strange tree which, al- 
though upright in growth when young, almost always falls over 
when it has acquired age. - In one place there is a large clump of 
swamp magnolias (Magnolia glauca), and there is quite a growth 
of large saw palmetto here and there. The axils of the leaves of 
this palm are admirable places for sword and other ferns and the 
irregular cavities in the trunks of the buttonwoods prove equally 
good for this purpose. On the floor of the swamp were masses of 
‘royal ferns (Osmunda spectabilis), which is distributed over all the 
eastern United States and probably is found in Europe. There 
were also a few clumps of the great Acrostichums (A. aureum 
and A. lomarioides), which are the largest ferns in our country. 
On the trees and shrubs were a few epiphytic orchids and quite a 
number of air pines (Tillandsias). 
It was a wild, secluded place, shut away from the rest of the 
grounds, and so thickly grown up that it was difficult to enter 
it. It was pretty, but it seemed to me that I could improve a 
little on nature or rather help her out a little. There are few 
naturally beautiful effects of landscape gardening that nature 
does not sometimes produce; man can create many of these 
effects on a limited space and that was what I wanted to do; I 
was going to try to condense a little. 
I first made an irregular walk of broken rock, leading it around 
to the most interesting places and this I covered with palmetto 
leaves and other rubbish so that no one would suppose that a 
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