42 



THE CENTURY BOOK OF GARDENING. 



like Fatsia japonica, and wood or forest underlings, rarely do well and attain their natural 

 beauty if exposed to full sunshine. Moisture is a factor of importance, and we have a sliding 

 scale from the pure aquatics to the sand and gravel or dry rock' and wall plants, never so 

 happy as when fully exposed high and dry in the sun. In mild localities near the sea even 

 the Cape Fig Marigolds (Mesembryanthemums) are hardy and beautiful on dry rocks, 

 mud banks, and old walls. There are fifty or sixty species of these, quite hardy, at Tresco, 

 in the Scilly Isles. On the bastion walls of the garden at St. Michael's Mount they hang 

 in gigantic festoons green and flowery all the summer and autumn-tide, though in winter 

 and spring fully exposed to biting winds, rough gales, and clouds of salt spray from the 

 sea. In gardens where bare, hot, dry, rocky banks exist, these may often be rendered 

 most interesting by planting them with succulent plants of bold habit, such as Aloes, Opuntia, 

 Cereus, Phyllocactus, Echeverias, etc., on a low carpet of Sedum, Kleinia, or Fig Marigolds. 



Apart from sub-tropical plants proper, we have such hardy trees as Ailantus, Catalpa, 

 Paulownia, and many others that may be used with very good effect in groups or masses 

 offender vegetation. It is a good plan to pollard or cut down such large-leaved plants every 

 spring, partly to keep them in due bounds as to height and size, and partly to ensure the 

 production of much larger leaves. Very good effects are to be obtained at a reasonable 

 cost by focussing or grouping the real sub-tropical plants near the eye, and then continuing 

 the effect with hardy things that look equally as well in the distance. The question of 

 soil is important ; and as a broad rule those sub-tropical plants whose beauty consists in 

 their foliage do best in deep, moist, and well-manured soils. Flowering plants, such as 

 Cannas, Pelargoniums, etc., do better in light sandy or gravelly soils, not too richly manured. 

 Another practical point not to be overlooked is that while foliage plants often do best and 

 look best in shady or half-shaded nooks ; flowering plants, as a rule, bloom most freely 

 in full sunshine. Moisture, during hot, dry weather, is of the utmost importance, and if 

 possible a hose-pipe should be laid on to all the larger groups, so that they may be 

 watered and sprayed whenever desirable. It has of late years been the fashion to decry 

 "bedding out" in all its forms and phases; but in all things there is a happy medium. 

 There are good and bad phases in gardens and in gardening of all kinds, arid good "bedding 

 out," as done at Heckfield by the late Mr. Wildsmith, gained the praise and admiration of 

 some of the bitterest opponents of the system. 



The late Mr. Gibson, an old traveller in the Eastern tropics, when at Battersea felt 

 the flat tameness or sameness of the then outdoor flower gardening, and to him in the 

 main was due the introduction of bold tropical vegetation in a picturesque manner. 

 Wildsmith and others soon afterwards united the two systems, and flat beds were relieved 

 and broken by graceful irregularity — beautiful form, in fact, was added to bright colour. In 

 some few gardens of limited area, beds or the formal patterned flower gardens were done 

 away with, or not formed, and velvety lawns swept away from the house or the terrace, 

 the flowers being massed in front of sunny shrubbery borders, and so the colour was seen 

 and intensified by a cool background of tree trunks and green or grey foliage or of purple 

 and gold leaves. This kind of treatment, i.e., the suppression of the flower-beds and 

 massing of effective plants on borders across the smooth green lawn, is especially appropriate 

 in small places, giving breadth and at the same time reducing the cost of after keeping. 



Simplicity should be a guiding principle in sub-tropical as in other phases of gardening, 

 and, above all, do not dot and speckle the lawn with beds, groups, or single plants. Even in 

 our best public parks there is not a due proportion of smooth green lawn to contrast with 

 and intensity the colour of the flowers employed. Just as bedding plants were decried 

 thirty years or so ago, so to-day we find critics who object to sub-tropical plants in the 

 outdoor summer garden. One who preaches tolerance in many other matters has recently 

 written of sub-tropical plants, " Their room is better than their company, and there are 

 hundreds of plants quite as beautiful, which are perfectly able to take care of themselves 



