482 LANDSCAPE GAEDENING. 



beauty and luxuriance which they never do or could 

 attain iu 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 dracsenas, the New Zealand flax {Phor- 

 mium tenax), Bamhusa Tnetale^ . (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 Cvmnmgha/inii 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 Ehododendrons, all of 

 which are too tender for our climate, we cannot but 

 helieve 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 



