112 PACIFIC STATES FLORAL CONGRESS. 



recognize the influence of these rare forms of beauty, and their lives 

 testify that they have accepted both the precept and the illustration 

 which came to them from the Holy Land, for they delight to "consider 

 the lilies; how they grow." The agencies toward elevation and refine- 

 ment which the Aryans carried northward from Asia were tokens of the 

 greater gift which two millenniums later the same region bestowed upon 

 all mankind. 



The horticultural wealth which flowed out from the semitropical 

 regions adjacent to the Mediterranean was carried erelong by European 

 discoverers to the New World. In return therefor America and Australia 

 have made rich donations to European horticulture from their own 

 indigenous flora. The arts of peace, such as commerce, scientific ex- 

 ploration, and missionary enterprise, have, during the last few centuries, 

 made all the world akin, and brought the plants of all the world to the 

 hands of those who will properly care for them. The result is that 

 semitropical gardening at the present day belts the globe and delights 

 all nations. Though our later day has no instances of sumptuous 

 gardening such as Asiatic potentates secured at fabulous cost of gold 

 and slave labor, we have something inexpressibly better in the wider 

 dissemination of taste, refinement, and ennobling recreation. The 

 hanging gardens of Babylon were the logical culmination of horticul- 

 tural effort under the half-lights of ancient pagan civilization. They 

 gave embodiment to ambition, artifice, oppression. The full light of 

 Christian civilization fills our horticulture with humility, truth, 

 humanity. The central idea in the old garden was the palace; in the 

 garden of to-day it is the home. 



One of the most striking marks of semitropical gardening is the 

 contrast which it presents to gardening in northern latitudes in the 

 attainable variety of form and hue in stem, foliage, and bloom. This 

 hardly needs elaboration or definition. The fact is so well known that 

 it is a feature of northern landscape architecture to set apart suitable 

 areas to semitropical plants which are brought out from cellars or green- 

 houses each spring to display their beauties during the summer months, 

 is a commendable proceeding when well done. But, of course, the 

 achievement, even when secured with good taste and with ample means, 

 a faint exponent of the charms of the real semitropical garden. 

 t must lack the luxuriance, the diversity, and the splendid size of 

 )lants which full years of open-air growth produce for southern gar- 

 sners. These limitations are strikingly apparent to those who know 

 from observations both the true semitropical garden and its northern 

 emgy. 



Think of the almost endless list of evergreens which are perhaps the 

 most distinctive of the thermal regions, the palms or araucarias, and 



