262 
THE LADIES’ FLORAL CABINET. 
The plants most useful to window-gardeners may be 
naturally and conveniently divided into two groups. First, 
Virginia and Japan creepers, ivies, hardy bulbs, annuals, 
and other plants, which will thrive outside a sunny win¬ 
dow ; and secondly, the little dragon trees, small palms, 
acacias, india-rubber plants and many of the begonias, 
which require more heat and shelter, and so thrive best 
inside the room. 
For the outside or window-sill a stout wooden box is 
by far the best receptacle for plants. It should have a 
few holes in the bottom to let out the waste water and an 
inch or two of broken crockery or bricks for drainage. 
Such a box, two feet or four feet long, may be a foot 
broad and eight inches deep. Plants in boxes of this 
kind require far less attention than those in pots, which 
become parched up in hot or windy weather; besides, 
boxes of this size and weight are not so easily toppled 
over and broken by that most energetic of anti-gardeners 
in town—the domestic cat. Here and there in town you 
may now and then see whole windows quite full of 
healthy plants, but not often, for I notice that in most 
windows their health and beauty are in inverse proportion 
to the numbers. My advice is, do not grow too many 
plants ; few and good is the watchword, especially for a 
beginner. One of the 
Best Evergreen Plants for a room is Aspidistra 
lurida , green and variegated. A specimen here has been 
grown in a shady window in the Haddington Road for the 
last three years, and when first brought into the house it 
had six small leaves only, and it has never been repotted 
or manured during that time. No other plant I know 
does better, and it is an especial favorite in France and 
Holland, where fresh and healthy evergreen room-plants 
are highly appreciated. The india-rubber {Ficus) is 
another good room plant, as is also the graceful Acacia 
lophantha. Several kinds of green-leaved dracaenas are 
thoroughly reliable, as also are small plants of the Aus¬ 
tralian “ fever tree.” I have seen a fine plant of this in 
the window of a drawing-room in Clare Street for the 
past two or three years. Some small palms grow well in 
warm rooms, and none better than the Corypha australis. 
Another favorite, especially at this season, is the arum 
lily, while the Scarborough lily ( Vallota) is very attractive 
when it throws up its cluster of scarlet lily-like flowers in 
the autumn months, just before the chrysanthemum comes 
into bloom. 
Fortunately, there is a good deal of healthy emulation 
among window-gardeners, and a little ingenuity will 
enable any of you who may so desire to become possessed 
of plants not generally to be met with in rooms or win¬ 
dows. Orange and lemon trees are very easily reared by 
sowing the seeds in a pot of earth and watering them 
now and then with warm water not hotter than the tea 
you drink, if so hot. It is most interesting to watch the 
growth of seeds of all kinds, and I recommend you to 
sow every seed you can obtain. I once saw a healthy 
little date-palm which its owner, a dock laborer, had 
reared from a stone. It obtained a prize at a flower show 
in London, much to the delight of its owner, who had 
grown it in a dingy little room in East London for nine 
or ten years. An old lady living in an almshouse once 
asked me to name a plant she had grown for five years 
in her room, and it was none other than a real tea-tree 
{Thea bohea), the seed (“a little round thing,” as she 
described it) of which, she had accidentally found at the 
bottom of her tea-caddy. 
Last year I was one of those appointed to make the 
prize awards at a flower show at Litton Hall, Leeson 
Park, and the perfection to which geraniums, fuch¬ 
sias, petunias, cactus plants and annuals had been 
brought was really surprising, when one remembers the 
difficulties and makeshift contrivances under which they 
had been grown. What most surprised me, however, was 
the little garden belonging to an inmate of the Blind Asy¬ 
lum—a little sunny corner, gay with flowers and creep¬ 
ers. This little plot had been made, planted and tended 
by a blind woman, a Mrs. or Miss Morgan, and nothing 
could well be neater or show more loving care than did 
her flowers. She knew the position of every plant, and 
could actually tell me, by means of the tips of her fingers, 
the names of them, and could show me each treasure 
almost as well as if she had had her sight. Now, great 
as your difficulties may be, you will own that those which 
this blind gardener surmounted were greater than any 
you may expect to encounter. It would not be quite fair 
to conclude without making some reference to the sani¬ 
tary or health question in relation to window-gardening. 
I am sure I need not tell you that plants in reality belong 
to Nature’s scavengers, and benefit us by eating up de¬ 
composing matter which, if left unutilized by them, 
would become a source of extreme danger to ourselves. 
Apart from such direct gifts as corn and wine, or fruit 
and timber, we must not forget the draining and disin¬ 
fecting value of vegetation. So that now we come to the 
Uses of Vegetation. —The proper function, or one 
of the right uses of all vegetation, is to produce food and 
clothing for us from the refuse matter of our large towns. 
Every little green leaf, apart from its individual beauty, 
has a share in the great work of purification which all 
leaves carry on. In malarious countries the blue or fever 
gum tree is now largely planted, because it grows rapidly, 
and its roots and leaves suck up moisture so quickly that 
a few of these trees actually drain any swamp or marsh 
near or in which they are planted. It is so with our own 
poplar trees, which in wet, low-lying places act most effi¬ 
ciently as the best of natural drains for a stagnant bit of 
marsh or land. Now, if you drain a swamp in the ordi¬ 
nary way you simply carry pollution from one place and 
deposit it in another place ; but tree roots suck up offen¬ 
sive matter, and tree leaves actually purify it. The leaves 
throw off pure water by evaporation, and with it life-giv¬ 
ing oxygen, instead of the poisonous gases of the atmos¬ 
phere. What is true of large trees is in degree equally 
true of the smallest window plant. The highest mission 
of plants is not merely to please our eyes with color, our 
mouths with delicious fruits; not only do they do this 
and more, but they are ever silently but surely eating up 
what is impure and injurious to ourselves in the atmos¬ 
phere and in the earth all around our homes; and any 
dwelling in which plants are well and healthily grown will 
be more likely to be a clean and healthy house than if the 
plants were not there. 
