SUBTROPICAL PLANTS FOR THE FLOWER GARDEN. 183 



nearer truth and success will be attained. Nature in puris 

 naluralibus we cannot have in our gardens, but Nature's 

 laws should not be violated, and few human beings have 

 contravened them more than our flower gardeners during 

 the past twenty years. We must compose from Nature, as 

 the best landscape artists do, not imitate her basely. We 

 may have all the shade, the relief, the grace, and the beauty, 

 and nearly all the irregularity of Nature seen in every 

 blade of grass, in every sea-wave, and in every human 

 countenance, and which may be found too, in some way, 

 in every garden that affords us lasting pleasure either from 

 its contents or design. Subtropical gardening has taught 

 us that one of the greatest mistakes ever made in the 

 flower garden was the adoption of a few varieties of plants 

 for culture on a vast scale, to the exclusion of interest and 

 variety, and too often of beauty or taste. We have seen 

 how well the pointed, tapering leaves of the Cannas carry 

 the eye upwards; how refreshing it is to cool the eyes 

 in the deep green of those thoroughly tropical Castor- 

 oil plants with their gigantic leaves ; how grand the Wi- 

 gandia, with its wrought-iron texture and massive outline, 

 looks after we have surveyed brilliant hues and richly painted 

 leaves ; how greatly the sweeping palm-leaves beautify the 

 British flower garden; — and, in a word, the system has 

 shown us the difference between gardening that interests 

 and delights all the public, as well as the mere horticul- 

 turist, and that which is too often offensive to the eye of 

 taste, and pernicious to every true interest of what Bacon 

 calls the " Purest of Humane pleasures." 



But are we to adopt this system in its purity ? Cer- 

 tainly not. All practical men see that to accommodate it 

 to private gardens an expense and a revolution of appliances 

 would be necessary, which are in nearly all cases quite im- 

 possible, and if possible, hardly desirable. We can, how- 

 ever, introduce to our gardens most of its better features ; 

 we can vary their contents, and render them more inte- 

 resting by a cheaper and a nobler system. The use of all 

 plants without any particular and striking habit or foliage, 

 or other distinct peculiarity, merely because they are " sub- 



