Empress tree, or Paulownia, is cut to the ground yearly for the sake of its vig- 

 orous shoots and large leaves. Ailanthus is similarly treated for tropical effect 



The noblest of hardy evergreen bamboos, having leaves ten to fifteen inches 

 long and three inches wide. Grows five feet high. Probably Bambusa pulmata 



New 

 York 



The Right and Wrong Kind of Tropical Effects— By wilhelm Miller, 



WHAT ENGLAND CAN TEACH US ABOUT HARDY FOLIAGE PLANTS — THEY COST LESS THAN TENDER ONES 

 AND HARMONIZE BETTER WITH OUR CLIMATE — BEAUTIFUL LEAF FORMS PREFERABLE TO GAUDY COLORS 



[Editor's Note. — This is the eleventh of a series of twelve articles on the materials of English gardens, showing which are hardy 

 and appropriate here and which are not. A companion series in Country Life in America describes the different types of garden seen in 

 England last year by the author.] 



ENGLAND has the right attitude toward 

 the beautiful plants that come from 

 the tropics. We have not. England knows 

 how to get the spirit of tropical beauty and 

 harmonize it with that of a northern clime. 

 We aim at the letter and succeed only in 

 getting a meretricious and evanescent show 

 of color which does not harmonize with our 

 climate and costs more than the better way 

 of doing things. 



We are just about seventy years behind 

 England in this respect. For it was about 

 1840 that England was taken by the craze 

 for tender bedding. You will still find in 

 England coleus and other foliage plants of 

 gaudy color in beds that are quite as geo- 

 metrical and complicated as those in any 

 public park of America. There are also 

 private gardens in the old style that are 

 preserved as faithfully as if they were paint- 

 ings of a school which, though no longer 

 esteemed, has its place in the history of art. 

 And in a country that is an endless suc- 

 cession of gardens you naturally expect to 

 find every style of gardening and every 

 shade of opinion. But England as a whole 

 has definitely abandoned the bedding folly 

 which still defaces American parks and is 

 particularly obnoxious in private gardens. 

 England has put her faith in hardy plants 

 and I believe she will never change again. 



For, in the first place, tender plants can 

 never harmonize with a northern climate. 

 Their transitory nature is too obvious. 

 When you look upon a canna bed you know 

 that it will be a blank expanse of earth all 

 winter, while our northern trees are revealing 



beauties of outline and structure that are 

 hid in summer. The tropics are beautiful 

 the year round, but we intensify our winter 

 bleakness and poverty if we make gardens 

 that are bare five-twelfths of the year. 



The winter ugliness of a tropical bedding 

 system might be forgiven if the summer 

 effect were pure and good. But one-half 

 of it is as weak as it is well intentioned, 

 while the other is as impure as it is strong. 



For example, the plants that really enjoy 

 our summer heat, such as coleus, alter- 

 nanthera, and acalypha, are the worst 

 disturbers of the peace. Their leaves may 

 be showier than hardy flowers, but they are 

 gaudy and monotonous. The purest and 

 sweetest way to get color in a garden is to 

 have a succession of hardy flowers. Last 

 May in an article called "England's New 

 Kind of Flower Bed" I showed how we can 

 have flowers quite as long by the hardy 

 system and beautiful foliage two months 

 longer. 



On the other hand, there is no nobler or 

 more characteristic tropical growth than the 

 palm. But its nobility consists largely in its 

 stature. Moreover, palms do not bear 

 flowers or fruit until they reach a consider- 

 able age and height. The only way we can 

 enjoy them to the full in the North is to have 

 extra tall greenhouses built for them — taller 

 than private means can afford. The day 

 will come when every large city will have 

 its palm houses where people may enjoy 

 the wonders of the tropics in something 

 like their native grandeur. Meanwhile, the 

 palms, bananas, rubber plants and dracsenas 

 179 



that are grown primarily for summer show 

 outdoors are a pitiful substitute for the real 

 thing. 



"My trip to the tropics," said a friend to 

 me, "has forever spoiled me for enjoying the 

 puny little palms which the park superin- 

 tendents set out for tropical effect." It is 

 all right enough to come upon a secluded 

 spot where the contents of a greenhouse have 

 been put outdoors for the summer. You 

 understand at once that this is done for their 

 health and that their real mission is winter 

 beauty. But to try to make a big summer 

 show with plants that ought to be seen as 

 tall trees is alternately painful and ridiculous. 



The logic of this is not so easy to see as 

 in the case of the gaudy and quicker growing 

 plants. Any person of taste can understand 

 that leaf forms give deeper and more lasting 

 pleasure than foliage of abnormal colors. 

 "Why then," you may ask, "should we 

 not have these palms, if we can get their 

 leaf forms in no other way?" 



The answer is twofold. First, we can and 

 should have these identical plants from the 

 tropics in our greenhouses, but they should 

 never be conspicuous in the landscape or 

 prominent in the garden. 



Second, every important leaf form in the 

 tropics is approximated by some plant that 

 can stay outdoors all winter and therefore 

 the hardy plant should be given the preference 

 in northern landscape and gardens. 



To illustrate this great principle let us take 

 one of the six largest families of plants — 

 the Leguminosae, to which peas, beans and 

 clovers belong. This order is very rich in 



