FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
73 
in the matter of civic pride and home de¬ 
velopment. 
This first picture was not taken in Italy 
or Spain, but right here in Florida, and 
serves to illustrate how graphically real 
the illusion of Mediterranean life can be 
recreated in our own land. Further than 
that, for years I have been stressing the 
great value and desirability for the gen¬ 
eral adoption of the Mediterranean type 
of architecture by Florida builders. Not 
only is it peculiarly well adapted to our 
life and climate, but it will serve to lend 
that atmosphere of rare charm and ro¬ 
mance so strongly coupled with the name 
but not the reality of Florida! 
This next slide serves to make clear the 
point that while a plant picture may be 
grotesque in character, yet it can at least 
be consistently so! And again in this 
next view, note the delightful harmony of 
texture in the several kinds of plants mak¬ 
ing up the group. Remember that in 
making your selection of plant materials 
every element of your composition should 
contribute to the harmonizing and refin¬ 
ing of the picture as an entity. 
While good lawns in Florida are often 
not easily obtained, they are always most 
essential to the completed picture, for 
without them landscape effects lack the 
finished foreground so necessary to afford 
proper proportion to all the various struc¬ 
tures and planting elements. Note in 
these several slides how the smooth green 
lawn gives a feeling of dignity and re¬ 
pose to the view and how the tree shadows 
softly lace the surface into a charming 
net-work of sunlight and shade, a most 
important consideration in the location of 
lawn specimens. 
So many times we see a property where 
there has been considerable attention cen¬ 
tered on the planting about the house and 
other buildings and as far as lawn speci¬ 
mens are concerned, yet as one views the 
scene there seems to be something lacking 
in clear definition—the eye and mind 
travel beyond the property and thought is 
dissipated in the indefinite beyond. The 
result is unsatisfying, naturally, and the 
reason, on more mature consideration, is 
quite obvious—there is an absence of an 
embracing border planting to enclose the 
thought-picture as originally conceived in 
the mind of the designer. This is a fatal 
error conspicuous in many otherwise fair¬ 
ly attractive developments. Virtually it is 
as though one tacked good pictures on the 
walls instead of hanging them in frames. 
For the border planting to any grounds is 
just as valuable—or more so—and like 
any picture frame, should be of size, pro¬ 
portion and design to best elaborate the 
original conception of the picture itself. 
But it is the absence of foundation 
plantings around houses that expresses the 
crude, uncultured stage of our growth 
more than any other one factor. From 
north to south and east to west of the 
State it is the same story—bare, ugly, 
unscreened bases of houses that are more 
often than not stuck on stilts of concrete 
or brick or even wooden blocks. Some¬ 
times these are screened, or partly 
screened, with lattice in more or less good 
condition—sufficient perhaps to keep Fido 
from dragging underneath all the old 
shoes and bones and other rubbish he can 
