188 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



December, 1913 



ly give us a second bloom in June; while 

 the fruit is unsurpassably beautiful from 

 the first of September until the picking is 

 finished in March. The loquat is another 

 of our semi-tropical bushes, and if grown in 

 pyramid style looks very much like cypress, 

 only that the leaves are elm-like and coarse. 

 Flowers are put out very freely through 

 August and September, and from that time 

 on, continuously until fruit sets in Janu- 

 ary, to be ripened in February and March. 

 We are lengthening the season of this fruit 

 very much. As a fruit it is the very cli- 

 max of Florida treasures, while the small 

 trees or bushes are very beautiful. 



This leaves out the lilacs I am sorry to 

 say. The mock oranges do very little better, 

 and I have not yet found a spirea of essen- 

 tial value in this State. Some of them will 

 bloom indifferently well, but lack entirely 

 the attraction which they offer in the North. 

 The weigela does somewhat better, but I 

 have never seen it in perfection in Florida. 

 Roses of course are nowhere else any more 

 at home than among the lakes and hills of 

 central Florida. It is a rare week in any 

 year, or any part of a year, that we cannot 

 pick an armful of Marechal Niel, Etoile de 

 France or a dozen other of the choicest, 

 like Liberty and Gen. McArthur. Over 

 our verandas run with marvelous profusion 

 of bloom,Gainsboro and climbing Wootton. 



A splendid specimen of the old but delicious 

 Baltimore Belle covers my cow shed. 



Climbing bushes are by no means con- 

 fined however to roses. The glory of this 

 section is the orange trumpet vine, Bignonia 

 venusta. Even if frozen down (and it is 

 very tender) it will climb seventy feet in a 

 season, and swing, with a kind of defiance, 

 its great trusses of orange colored flowers 

 over trees and balconies. Bignonia radi- 

 cans or the common trumpet creeper, 

 is equally at home under a tropical sun, 

 but it is not to be compared with its cousin. 

 The wisterias both purple and white are 

 happy here, blooming profusely after they 

 are well grown, and marvelously beautiful 

 when twined together with honeysuckles. 

 With these we must of course have the 

 jessamines, which cover the whole side of 

 a house with star-like flowers. 



However, there is one climber that is 

 so noble, in vine and in flower, that 

 it excuses the utmost extravagance of 

 language. I refer to the alamanda. There 

 is one sort that constitutes a medium sized 

 bush, but it does not offer us inferior flowers. 

 The vine completely covers a whole ver- 

 anda. I am accustomed to mix with it 

 the edible passion vine, for they blend 

 together finely. The alamanda and the 

 passion vine together completely hide the 

 house. The flowers are precisely the same 



in bush and vine — that is are purest gold, 

 just touched with chocolate in the bud, and 

 each blossom is as large as a man's fist, 

 rolling open in great-lipped petals that 

 unite in an unbroken calyx. The whole 

 vine is covered every day, from April until 

 November; and not seldom the alamanda 

 will not miss a single day through the 

 winter. Right out of this wealth of foliage, 

 we are at the same time picking delicious 

 fruits from the passion vine. I do not 

 know anything finer, not even in the vine- 

 yards full of Niagaras, Brightons and 

 Herberts; and yet Florida can cover its 

 trellises and arbors and homes with hot- 

 house grapes quite as well as with ala- 

 mandas. 



The magnificence of a shrubbery in 

 Florida is that it is doing its best when 

 our Northern lawns are under the snow. 

 We have, in fact, but one really gay shrub 

 month in our Northern States. That is 

 May, supplemented by hydrangeas and 

 altheas in August. In Florida roses are 

 more likely to be in full bloom in January 

 than in June, and there is not a single 

 month in the year which is not full of blos- 

 som, unless a drought is displacing good or- 

 der and drying the life out of plants and 

 men. However, irrigation is a simple mat- 

 ter here, and water is plenty in lakes, that 

 fill every hollow of central Florida. 



The oleander is known in many 



;hades of pink and in white. It is equally at home in Florida as it is in Galveston, where this photograph was made. 

 The shrub is in bloom all summer 



