LITTLE GARDENS 



If our garden has a high fence or wall to 

 keep off the winds and reflect the sunshine, there 

 are many tropical or semitropical plants that will 

 be willing guests of ours through the summer — 

 the palms, the crotons, the velvety gloxinias, the 

 huge elephant's-ear, the decorative castor-plant, 

 the dracenas, the jasmin, and even those strange 

 things of the air: the stag-horn fern, the tilland- 

 sia, and the orchids. We have swamp and field 

 orchids that can be grown about our houses, pro- 

 vided they can have the soils and conditions of 

 light and shade which they elect in the open, 

 and the orchids of the Indies and Amazon can 

 be kept through the summer in a warm and shel- 

 tered yard. Indeed, these have a stronger hold 

 on life than is commonly supposed. The lycaste 

 Skinneri and the cattleya triana cheered a winter 

 for me by putting forth some beautiful blooms in 

 a south window, where they had been hung 

 against pieces of cork with a packing of moss 

 about the roots ; yet I have to confess that v/hile 

 they lived for several years, they never flowered 

 again. The tropical varieties are not for do- 

 mestic cultivation, at least, for more than a single 

 season, except to that happy person who has a 

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