Subtropical Gardening. 5 



hardy Yuccas, noble and graceful in outline, and thoroughly hardy, 

 and which if planted well, are not to be surpassed, if equalled, by 

 anything of like habit we can preserve indoors. There are the 

 Arundos, conspicua and Donax, things that well repay for liberal 

 planting; and there are fine hardy herbaceous plants like Crambe 

 cordifolia. Rheum Emodi, Ferulas, and various fine umbelliferous 

 plants that will furnish effects equal to those we can produce by 

 using the tenderest. The Acanthuses too, when well grown, are 

 very suitable to this style ; one called latifolius, which is beginning to 

 get known, being of a peculiarly firm, polished, and noble leafage. 

 Then we have a hardy palm — very much hardier too than it is 

 supposed to be, because it has preserved its health and greenness 

 in sheltered positions, where its leaves may not be torn to shreds by 

 the storm through all our recent hard winters, including that of 

 1860. And when we have obtained these we may associate them 

 with not a few things of much beauty among trees and shrubs — 

 with elegant tapering young pines, many of which, like Cupressus 

 nutkaensis, have branchlets finely chiselled as a Selaginella, not of 

 necessity bringing the larger things into close or awkward associa- 

 tion with the humbler and dwarfer flowers, but sufficiently so to 

 carry the eye from the minute and pretty to the higher and more 

 dignified vegetation. By a judicious selection from the vast mass of 

 hardy plants now obtainable in this country, and by, where con- 

 •venient, associating with them house plants stood out for the 

 summer, \^e may arrange and enjoy a beauty in tlie flower garden 

 to which we are as yet strangers, simply because we have not suf- 

 ficiently selected from and utilized the vast amount of vegetable 

 beauty at our disposal. 



Let us next select the finer tender plants for this purpose, to 

 speak of the treatment they require, and the uses or associations 

 for which they are best adapted. In selecting tender plants ot 

 noble aspect or elegant foliage, suited for placing in the open air in 

 British gardens during the summer months, we shall confine our- 

 selves to first-class plants only. 



It is necessary that they be such as will alFord a distinct and beau- 



