INDOOR GARDENS in 



into the largest house at Kew is to enter a new wonder world. For 

 there you will see all those great features of the tropics that have 

 for centuries amazed the minds or stirred the hearts of mankind. 

 You will see great palms and monkey puzzles towering up to a 

 height of fifty feet or more, bananas bearing their fruit in huge 

 bunches, the traveller's joy with its hidden cups of water, pitcher 

 plants with insects drowned in their alluring cups, orchids that 

 feed only upon the air, the bird-of-paradise plant) with its un- 

 dreamt of colour scheme, the marvellous Madagascar lace leaf 

 and such deathless forms of beauty as the papyrus plant, the 

 sacred lotus rising above the water, gorgeous blue water-lilies like 

 those that floated upon the Nile and the orange tree producing 

 simultaneously its fragrant bloom and richly coloured fruit. A 

 greenhouse of this kind is mysterious, enchanting, full of moods. 

 Of course the illusion is not complete, but nevertheless it is the 

 "real thing" because it presents the spirit of the tropics in forms 

 that powerfully stimulate the imagination. (See plate 47.) 



How different from all this is the conventional hot-house in 

 America. It may have all the plants I mentioned, but the spirit 

 is gone. Everything of natural grandeur or world-old charm is 

 crowded by a host of modern interlopers which make no appeal to 

 the mind only to the lust for show. I refer to gaudy foliage 

 plants like crotons, dracsenas, and variegated kinds of pandanus 

 the veriest weeds of the tropics. There is an endless feast of 

 colour,fform, and texture in ferns alone without going outside of 

 nature's leaf colour green. Palms, too, would be a delight if 

 we ever gave them room enough to show their simple majesty. 

 But everywhere the unconscious aim is to fill a greenhouse with 

 the showiest plants that have the longest season of showiness. 



There is nothing wrong in foliage plants as such. The 



