SUBTROPICAL GARDENING. 



INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL 

 CONSIDERATIONS. 



THE system of garden-decoration popularly known 

 as " Subtropical/' and which simply means the 

 use in gardens of plants having large and hand- 

 some leaves, noble habit, or graceful port, has 

 taught us the value of grace and verdure amid 

 masses of low, brilliant, and unrelieved flowers, 

 and has reminded us how far we have diverged 

 from Nature's ways of displaying the beauty of 

 vegetation, our love for rude colour having led us 

 to ignore the exquisite and inexhaustible way in 

 which plants are naturally arranged. In a wild 

 state brilliant blossoms are usually relieved by 

 a setting of abundant green ; and even where 

 mountain and meadow plants of one kind pro- 

 duce a wide blaze of colour at one season, there 

 is intermingled a spray of pointed grass and other 

 leaves, which tone down the mass and quite 

 separate it from anything shown by what is called 



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