224 
tiie amateur’s flower garden. 
artificial climate. Mr. Gibson has shown by his magnificent 
examples of subtropical gardening in Battersea and Hyde 
Parks, how to provide for the roots of subtropical plants a 
warmer soil and a more equable and genial climate than 
nature offers the artist for his work. By means of raised 
banks and mounds resting on a porous substratum of brick 
rubbish, the heat of the sun is caught and imprisoned in the 
soil; and by means of judiciously-disposed plantations of 
large-leaved deciduous trees, such as poplars, planes, and 
sycamores, the cold winds have their sharp edges blunted, and 
the protected region enjoys a more still and more genial 
atmosphere than the common world without, where the native 
flora takes its chance of storm or calm, of rain, and snow, 
and drought, of frost and sunshine. When we consider that 
subtropical plants require, in some cases, careful keeping in 
warm berths during winter, or careful raising from seed in 
spring, and in all cases careful preparation of the soil below 
and the air above for their tender nourishing when planted 
out, there can be no violence in pronouncing the general 
deduction that subtropical plants are not everybody’s plants, 
and those who contemplate an indulgence of the new and 
extravagant fashion should count the cost and “ cut the coat 
according to the cloth.” Bind the proper place and suitable 
means and talent equal to the task, and we shall be very 
grateful for an example of subtropical gardening,—first, 
because of a change away from the intensely strong flat 
colouring which has become obnoxiously popular; and, 
secondly, because we can better compare, and criticise, and 
enjoy the various characteristics of plants that are chosen 
princi pally for beauty of form : for in truth it is but seldom 
we can grasp the whole expression of a plant when we are 
restricted in our contemplation to a view of it under glass. 
When we have made some progress in the artistic dis¬ 
position of palms, ferns, and musas in the open ground, we 
shall not be slow to discover that many hardy plants may be 
associated with them to the advantage of artistic effect. Thus 
subtropical gardening always tends to subarctic gardening; 
for the true artist, to whom effect is everything and materials 
nothing, except as means to an end, will be always seeking 
for hardy plants equal in distinctive beauty, and all the inte¬ 
rest that for the artistic eye belongs to form as apart from 
colour, to the most truly tropical or subtropical; and happy 
