2670 



PLANTING 



PLANTING 



tropics. There is an effect of airy lightness to it all that 

 is a thrilling surprise as one passes in from the snows of 

 winter out-of-doors. Equally as distinctive and effec- 

 tive results would be secured by the use of such green- 

 house vines as tacsonia, allamanda and bougainvillea, 

 or by the use of the somber greens of ficus. 



In the open air, the use of palms, tree ferns, dracenas, 

 crotons, caladiums, and ficus for summer decoration is 

 not widespread. On large estates and in parks that can 

 boast of greenhouses, a group planting of these subjects 

 in the summer in the open is often to be found. In this 

 case the outdoor use of the plants is more or less for the 

 good of the plants and therefore little care or study is 

 given to the grouping. The plants are "turned out to 

 pasture" to rest up from the strenuous winter and 

 stiffen their stems and roots for another year. Their 

 winter appearance is their main purpose. Sometimes, 

 especially in parks and botanic gardens, the plants are 

 grouped by family or 

 ecology, as a succulent 

 group, desert group, or 

 palm group, keeping 

 closely to their winter 

 arrangement under glass, 

 more to put them under 

 somewhat natural con- 

 ditions for their best 

 growth that they may 

 require less personal at- 

 tention from the gar- 

 dener, than from a desire 

 for any definite land- 

 scape effects. 



The nearest approach 

 in the United States 

 (outside the very south- 

 ernmost parts) to the 

 tree-like palm vegetation 

 of the tropics and sub- 

 tropics is in the palmetto 

 (Fig. 3013; also Fig. 3516, 

 Vol. VI), which is native 

 as far north as North 

 Carolina, and is very 

 useful as a decorative 

 plant. 



The smaller - growing 

 subtropical plants are 

 much used in the produc- 

 tion of the most studied 

 designs in planting, 

 namely, in the construc- 

 tion of floral patterns, 

 the very precise designs 

 of city seals and the 

 emblems of the many 



3012. A tropical growth. Giant bamboo in the Botanic Garden 

 of Ceylon. Gigantochloa atter. 



secret orders, "floral signs," and rarely, as in Regent 

 Park, London, in the making of floral clocks. In 

 these plantings, use is made of celosias, alternan- 

 theras, coleus, and echeverias and other tender succu- 

 lents. This use of plants is decidedly on the wane on 

 private estates and in the larger parks, for it has not 

 now the sanction of fashion for the making of permanent 

 seasonal garden features, but it has a value as display 

 in horticultural or other exhibitions as a temporary 

 affair, showing gardeners' ingenuity. 



One great use of individual subtropical plants in pots 

 has been in formal gardens as decorative adjuncts. 

 These are then distinct garden features, garden acces- 

 sories of rank similar to statuary and special flower- 

 beds. For such effects, large "orangeries" were main- 

 tained in the great day of the formal garden in Italy 

 and France, and the use of such plants has been retained 

 in our elaborate gardens today. 



In park planting, the use of subtropical plants often 

 produces pleasing pictures, but only when the entire 



surroundings are very artificial and refined. Since the 

 final character of a finished planting is based solely 

 upon the foliage mass, plants of the same character 

 only should be used in the separate plantings. The 

 most natural effect is gained when the plants are grown 

 in the ground, either with the pots plunged or planted 

 directly in the soil. For this purpose the plants must 

 be given conditions under glass to keep them alive all 

 winter, but not necessarily in active growth, or kept in a 

 dormant condition in pits, or stored as tubers. Plants 

 for this purpose may be thus grouped the taller woody 

 plants to give height of green foliage to the group, low 

 tender flowering herbs to give color from leaf or flower, 

 and bulbous plants for bold leafage or bright flowers as 

 fillers among the foliage plants. 



Plantings of this kind involve considerable yearly 

 cost for storage of potted plants or tubers, and great 

 expense of annual planting and digging. Then there is a 



comparatively short sea- 

 son of foliage and flow- 

 ers, from the time that 

 the semi-dormant vege- 

 tation gets under way in 

 July until cut down by 

 early frosts. Yet effects 

 not otherwise to be 

 secured by plant ma- 

 terials can be given gar- 

 dens and parks in this 

 way. This is a use of 

 tender plants that will 

 be greatly developed in 

 the future, by park super- 

 intendents and owners 

 of large estates who have 

 the courage to break 

 away from the usual 

 specimen or jumbled 

 planting, and make real 

 garden pictures. There 

 is very little of this kind 

 of gardening as yet. The 

 temporary tropical foli- 

 age of our summer gar- 

 dens is much more effec- 

 tively used today than 

 it was a few years ago, 

 but the problem must 

 be studied more carefully 

 before the best possible 

 use is made of this 

 material. 



The ideal subtropical 

 garden gives in a small 

 compass the feeling of 

 the wonder and luxu- 



riance of the vegetation of the tropics, and suggests 

 some of its pictures, whether under great glass roofs or 

 in the open ground in the summer. 



WARREN H. MANNING. 



Plants for the seaside. 



Very distinctive types of American scenery are to be 

 found along our seashores. The very dark green man- 

 grove thickets come to the salt-water's edge on the 

 Florida and the Gulf coasts with a backing of savannas 

 of tall grasses, fringes, and islands of palms, and gloomy 

 thickets of cypress trees draped heavily with the hang- 

 ing gray moss-like tillandsias. Farther north on the 

 Atlantic coast are great hills and sweeps of sand-dunes, 

 constantly shifting, overwhelming the stunted growth 

 of pine, cedar, oak, and maple. Here the sand-reeds 

 push out their long fingers of undergrowth and root- 

 fibers to hold the sand in place, and they establish con- 

 ditions for shrubs of huckleberry, rose, deciduous holly, 



