IN FLORIDA 87 



by tendrils (Ampelopsis arbor ea) grows occasionally in our low 

 lands and is very beautiful. This I planted in this wild garden 

 with the common woodbine which is equally at home in dry or 

 wet land. Sambucus intermedia, a wild elderberry with hand- 

 some heads of white flowers, grows in swampy places and this, 

 too, was introduced here. 



At the north end of the garden I have planted a number of 

 cultivated things including some hothouse orchids, Bromeliads, 

 Aroids and some of the staghorn ferns. Phalanopsis schilleriana 

 and P. amabilis, two of the lovely Moth Orchids from the Philip- 

 pines, are growing wonderfully here and bloom gloriously every 

 winter. And there are Cattleyas, Dendrobiums, Brassias, Epi- 

 dendrums and Oncidiums nearly all of which are doing well in 

 the moist atmosphere of the swamp. 



Throughout the greater part of this tract I have put out only 

 native plants such as were already growing in it or would natu- 

 rally flourish in such a place and they are in consequence per- 

 fectly at home. Not a thing that the average visitor sees would 

 indicate that the place had ever been touched by the hand or 

 planned by the brain of man. It is just as it would be if Nature 

 had planted it and tended it as only she could. There is, however, 

 a fly in the ointment. The great blue West Indian land crabs 

 seem to know that nature has not planted this spot and they have 

 migrated to it in numbers, bent on destruction. Many of the 

 ferns and other plants on or near the ground have either been 

 destroyed or roughly handled by them. I have tried in vain to 

 keep them down with poison. 



I have not written this chapter nor the one on fern pools for 

 the purpose of giving instruction but rather in the way of sug- 

 gestion. There are many in Florida who have homes or who are 

 planning to have them where there are bits of waste land, dense 

 thickets, swamps or sink holes which are little better than eye- 

 sores as they are. The ordinary way of proceeding is to clear 

 them, drain or fill up, often at considerable expense, and when this 

 is done they add but little to the beauty of a place. 



It seems to me that it would be much better carefully to study 

 such situations with a view to beautifying them in some such natu- 

 ral, simple and inexpensive way as has been applied to this little 

 piece of useless, out-of-the-way swamp. 



