no INDOOR GARDENS 



I am sure that greenhouse owners do not realize how many 

 different purposes are covered by the same roof and how much 

 these different aims conflict. Do you own a range of greenhouses ? 

 If so, may I make a suggestion ? Take the list of eleven purposes 

 mentioned in a preceding paragraph and go over it with your 

 gardener. Assign roughly the per cent, of space you are willing 

 to give to each purpose. Then go into your greenhouses and you 

 will see them from a new point of view. Ask your gardener where 

 the shoe pinches. This scheme will help you decide what to throw 

 out and how to get more pleasure from what you have. You can- 

 not enjoy pictorial effects (see plates 46 and 47) without 

 purging your greenhouse. And you must decide for yourself 

 whether you want a plant factory, a picture of the tropics, or a 

 living room. 



Perhaps my reader does not know these three types of green- 

 house, and perhaps, therefore, he may not understand why they 

 clash. Well, then, any florist's rose or carnation house is a plant 

 factory. There is not a particle of romance in it. Every line of it 

 means business. It exists solely for cut flowers. In this type of 

 work America excels England, but it is no great credit to us. A 

 few years ago the American people spent more money on cut 

 flowers than on plants. The English love to live with plants the 

 year round and so shall we when we learn better. Meanwhile, the 

 first thing an American usually thinks of when he plans a range of 

 private greenhouses is roses and carnations the very things in 

 which he cannot expect to compete with professionals who grow 

 them by the hundred thousand. It is all well enough to grow a 

 few roses and carnations, but to have no other idea of using green- 

 houses shows a deplorable lack of imagination. 



Now a picture of the tropics is a very different thing. To step 



