482 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



beauty and luxuriance which, they never do or could 

 attain in a green-house or conservatory ; and which 

 require in the winter simply the protection of a cool 

 green-house, or in most cases of a cold pit sufficiently 

 deep and protected to exclude the frost, and with faci- 

 lities for occasionally admitting air for ventilation. 



A pit of this description, well drained and dry, and 

 twelve or fifteen feet deep, might accommodate plants 

 ten or twelve feet high, which, when planted out in the 

 pleasure-grounds during the summer, the tub or pots 

 being sunk out of sight in the soil, would produce the 

 most extraordinary and charming effects. By an intro- 

 duction and combination in our own grounds of bananas, 

 palms, aloes, the different arundos (a species of bamboo), 

 the different dracaenas, the New Zealand flax (Phor- 

 mium tenax), Bairibusa metake (another variety of 

 bamboo), which we hope will prove hardy, the different 

 Cannas, and a mingling of the rarer evergreens, like the 

 Araucarias (of which Cunninghamii and excelsa are 

 very effective), we have, we think, produced a very 

 pleasing effect. These, with the Indian cedars, and 

 Southern and Mexican long-leaved pines, have quite 

 changed a portion of our grounds from an American to 

 a tropical and oriental landscape. 



All these plants we have named, and the newer tender 

 evergreens which we have not as yet named, would win- 

 ter safely (excepting perhaps the araucaria excelsa), in 

 a cold pit or cool green-house, or a dry cellar, where 

 there was some light and no frost. If we add to these 

 the great variety and number of evergreen shrubs the 

 different evergreen Magnolias, the Hollies, the Laurel, 

 the Portugal laurel, the half-hardy Rhododendrons, all of 

 which are too tender for our climate, we cannot but 

 believe the time is not far distant when instead of 

 keeping green-houses for the preservation of the ordinary 

 green-house plants, persons of taste will build pits for 

 the preservation of half-hardy evergreens and ligneous 



