SUBTROPICAL PLANTS FOR THE FLOWER GARDEN. 185 



planting hardy ones only ! There is the Pampas Grass — which 

 when well grown is unsurpassed by anything that requires 

 protection. Let us in planting it take the trouble to plant and 

 place it very well — and we can afford to do that, since one 

 good planting is all that it requires of us, while tender 

 things of one-tenth the value may demand daily attention. 

 There are the 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 

 Don ax, 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 

 usirig 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, po- 

 lished, 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 could not be torn to shreds by storms 

 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 association with the humbler and 

 dwarfer flowers, but sufficiently so to carry the eye from the 

 minute and pretty to the higher and more dignified forms of 

 vegetation. By a judicious selection from the vast mass of 

 hardy plants now obtainable in this country, and by asso- 

 ciating with them where it is convenient, house plants that are 

 stood out for the summer, we may arrange and enjoy charms 

 in the flower garden to which we are as yet strangers, simply 

 because we have not sufficiently selected from and utilized 

 the vast amount of vegetable beauty at our disposal. ^ 



Let us next select the finer tender plants for this pur- 

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



